Not sure if this is possible but the trade route system is a kludge and hopefully will be resolved in an upcoming patch. The main problem (stated in another thread) is:

- Wagons lose their trade routes when they get near an enemy.
This makes the user have to go through every wagon to find which route was lost in order to recreate it.

Resolution:

- Trade Route List:
-- Ability to create a named trade route
-- Use of the existing trade route selection screen for the Named Route instead of wagons
-- New list of Trade Routes is shown when you select a wagon and hit the auto-route button. User can select a route by name rather than the individual items.

---

There are other issues with trade routes that might get some love here:

- Routes have no priority system
The ability when setting up a route of specifying (move up/move down or numerical) the priority of items. Pick up Ore if there is any, if have room, pick up cotton, etc.

- Routes dump to the warehouse even if the warehouse is full
-- Warning system when the route overflows the warehouse before the loss occurs

-- Option to keep the goods on the train if the house is full
This would allow a lumber route for instance where a wagon could make sure all the warehouses are stocked with lumber rather than just dumping it in one house (though this may be possible by setting Import and Export (200) to a colony).

Ive been looking at the automated trade routes in the code and every time I look it makes less and less sense.

The real current flaw in trade routes is that they are too complex for anyone to try and manualy do them.

The problem Ive run into is that the trade routes are done item by item, city by city so with 5 cities each importing and exporting the 5 base items and the 5 finished goods you end up with 50 routes (8 * 5 (inc europe)).

The second thing is that the default system automagicly creates the routes for you, possibly when you click OK on governor option so that 50 item list is now in some random order.

That seems to be the 'hard' part in fixing the issue.
Other than my python skills sucking (im 90% shure i understand 80% of the code) it aslo seems that someone wrote a complete "proper" trade interface in parrell that does not get used/called. But since I cant figure out how the popups that do get called get called in the first i cant tell if they are not really used or i just havent seen them.

The route lost/full house issue 'should' be 'fixable' since there is already script for that somewhere, just badly done.
The only apperent checks for cargo is
1A)is the hold empty
1B)if not is there goods i can take
1C)take goods
2A)Is cargo empty
B)get goods
So 'better' should be very easy but 'good' might be hard


Wierdly there is a "+/-" in the trade route screen on the domestic advisor that in the code never gets filled w/ a # and the cancel button on each line does jack.

Thats not a cancel button. It means the unit whos button is shown at the bottom of that column can't take that route. Most likely the unit is a ship and the route is a land route or visa versa.

The plus and minus buttons that never get numbers are there to add or remove a route from a unit. Though I also don't like there implementation of trade routes, that page on the Domestic Advisor Screen makes dealing with them soooo much easyer.


I am currently working on mod that will make the whole thing much more like Col1. I am doing most of it as a new interface to the old system, but I'm planning to add a few new SDK things to the CvTradeRoute objects to add things like priority and multiple stops in a single route.

EDIT: JTradeRoutes Mod Discussion Thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7311882)

Cool, actually i never actually used that screen to do trade routes because by the time i got far enough into my first game loading the domestic advisor would actually freeze my system for 5-10min (10 colonies w/ 10+ import/export items each so say 200+ "routes") and at first i thought i was actually crashing the game.

After Playing with it for a few min I now see how the +/- buttons fill in (after selecting a ship, then opening the advisor) but since i cant seem to change the selected ship from in it that makes it not all that usefull. It aslo seems to reorder/redraw the table after every add/subtract and reverts to its random order. Oh, some of the routes while showing a nice + or - button wont actually let me add or remove the ship from that route.

Well, I wish you luck with an improved system since managing more than 10 routes with the current system is just annoying.

Cool, actually i never actually used that screen to do trade routes because by the time i got far enough into my first game loading the domestic advisor would actually freeze my system for 5-10min (10 colonies w/ 10+ import/export items each so say 200+ "routes") and at first i thought i was actually crashing the game.


That screen is one of the most useful areas in the game, you can set import/exports move your people to new jobs (for switching you may need to move someone off/on but that is kinda to be expected) set routes with your ships... the works. About making multiple trade routes, it can get kinda confusing, but most the time they go with the set it & forget it method it seems, so even if you have 100's of trade routes that there is less confusion.

Unfortunetly this is a good idea until something happends where that trade route has to change (More being used at point B, or too many goods being shiped in so now you need to move the excess elsewhere), or gets canceled (Because of war).. Then it all just goes down the drain.

So yea it does need a little work... but the base system is great. With a few more options it could be awesome :)

:goodjob:

I am currently making a mod that will directly address most of these issues.

JTradeRoutes Mod Discussion Thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7311882)

- Wagons lose their trade routes when they get near an enemy.

Until a patch comes out and fixes this, I will see what I can do about including one.

- Trade Route List:
-- Ability to create a named trade route
-- Use of the existing trade route selection screen for the Named Route instead of wagons
-- New list of Trade Routes is shown when you select a wagon and hit the auto-route button. User can select a route by name rather than the individual items.

The Screen with the Trade Route list is done. I'm now working on the buttons to allow you to Create, Edit, and Delete Trade Routes from that Screen. I also have the SDK done to give Trade Routes their own Names, but I haven't implemented it in the game yet.

- Routes have no priority system
The ability when setting up a route of specifying (move up/move down or numerical) the priority of items.

This is also one of my highest.. priorities ;).. to add to Trade Routes. It really is not that complex to add and should be done soon.


- Routes dump to the warehouse even if the warehouse is full
-- Warning system when the route overflows the warehouse before the loss occurs

I'm thinking some kind of popup to inform you before any Yields are lost due to lack of storage space.

-- Option to keep the goods on the train if the house is full
This would allow a lumber route for instance where a wagon could make sure all the warehouses are stocked with lumber rather than just dumping it in one house (though this may be possible by setting Import and Export (200) to a colony).

Hmm, this is an interesting idea. I'll see what I can come up with.

Super. Jeckel is on the case!

Actually I believe that the trade automation is severely flawed in design, therefore it should be scrapped and replaced completely.

So why do I think it can't work? The automation system doesn't have any concept of a trade route. All it has is goods transport from a single source to a single destination. This means that there's no way to fine-tune things even if a lot is changed. It doesn't allow you to use relay stations, it's not possible to pick up goods at multiple locations, you can't load multiple things somewhere and drop them in a few different destinations, etc.

So what we need is, yes, a real trade route system. I'll play a bit more and think about one could be designed :mischief:

I did not look at the code so far but what you describe sounds like a system of individual agents (like ants) and even if it seems to lack intelligence it fulfills it's purpose quite good (except for the overflow). Just be sure to have enough wagon trains moving ...

I set most transported commodities to Import + Export + Keep 600 (on marathon) so the wagontrains would equally spread goods in my colony ... I never bothered to set up an individual trade route since the automatic trade route worked fine for a compact colony of 5-10 cities.

I set most transported commodities to Import + Export + Keep 600 (on marathon) so the wagontrains would equally spread goods in my colony ... I never bothered to set up an individual trade route since the automatic trade route worked fine for a compact colony of 5-10 cities.

Do you set ALL wagons to ALL trade routes, and let them spread out by themselves, to achieve this?

I just used the "automate"-Button for all waggons as described in the manual.

About the individual traderoutes I learned from the forum but due to an unfortunate german translation, the trade-screen is unusable without changing the translation first.

Do you set ALL wagons to ALL trade routes, and let them spread out by themselves, to achieve this?

Be careful with setting this stuff up if you want to continue to use the domestic screen. The number of possible trade routes (ALL calculated for the screen) is n*(n-1) with n being the number of goods traded in this way and will make sure that whenever you hit F1 you're going to wait for a minute or so with a large colony ;)

For a 19 cities empire with automated trade, it is 2,5 minutes ... but it feels more like 5 minutes ... I learned to not use this Screen anymore ....

If I remove all Import / Export - Orders from all cities, it takes less than 5 secs to get the Screen ... :cry:

So obviously it is better to keep Import / Export very simple or to skip F1-Screen ...