Trade Routes Discussion

[dturtle1]

I was replying to a thread( Cities as Service Hubs) and half way through i figured that this topic probably should be in it own thread.
Commence random musings about Civ 6 Trade Routes:

There is a lot more Trade routes than in Civ5 and they work a bit different as well. In 5 Trade routes were capped by an arbitrary limit, you got some from wonders and the rest came from Tech Unlocks. In Civ6 however they capped primarily by number of Cities(as long as you dedicate the district slots to them). Wide Civs will have up to 50-60 different trade routes running by end game. One of the subtle strengths of England is they technically get a free trade route with their unique harbour as it doesn't cost a District slot. As England, you could have a 4 Pop cities supplying two trade routes each. As long as you can defend your trade routes that is a pretty powerful 4 pop City . I would not at all be surprised if Arabia get the Commercial District equivalent. Trade routes are not divided into sea/land or Internal/External really for that matter. It seems that a Trade Route can be Land And Sea, the only thing it cares about is its destination. A trade route that goes to another Civ also potentially benefits any City along its path.This is because they also Create Trading Posts in their destination. These trading posts create extra yields for every Trade route that runs through them.

So what you want is multiple trade routes running through the same cities but with different destinations. You should endeavour to have at least one trade route running to each city on the Critical Trading Path to set up these Trading Posts. On top of this you should make sure that Cities(based on their location) that have lots of trade routes running through them are also buffing gold as much as they can. It is highly likely that the Trading Post is just extra gold. There is a City State(Jakarta) that also buffs these Trading Posts. These trading Posts also work on internal Trade Routes as well.

Say you wanted to the time honoured strategy of running internal Trade Routes to your Capital.You have 5 Cities, with a total of 6 trade routes with 3 cities one side of the Capital and 1 city the other side.
Lets call them E-C-A-B-D where C is the Capital. An optimum Capital Boost internal trade route set up would be:

E-B, E-A, E-C :Set Up Trading Posts in B, D and a Trade route to the Capital.
D-C, B-C, A-C. This gives 1 Trade route to the Capital from D, B, A to the Capital.

Note that A has 2 trade routes running through it and B has 1. The Capital has 3 trade routes running through it. They will provide extra gold in those cities.
Note that the Capital gets 4 Trade route Boosts whilst A and B get 1 each. Their is a total of 6 extra trade route Yields. Notice that it only takes 2 extra trade routes to create a significant increase in yield. If you just ran 4 trade routes 1 from each city to the Capital you would get no Trading Post Boni. By running 6 Trade routes this way you get an extra 6 Trading Post Boni as well as boosting the two cities(with a trade Route) that receive these Trading Post Boni.

I really like this implementation. I like how it naturally boosts the Cities that lie along trade routes and these larger trade route zones may change over time. There is going to significant decision making when working out your trade routes to make sure that you are boosting the right cities. As an Example:
Lets just say that E is a coastal City and you recently discovered Egypt with 4 Cities to Trade with. Obviously you will want to take advantage of this for the extra food.(unless Egypt was winning and you didnt want to help her cause )
Now E becomes your Trading Hub. Lets call The Egypt Cities 1, 2,3,4 and the Optimum Trading Route structure of the Egyptian Trade becomes:

A-E, A-C to set up the 2 Trade Posts
A-1, A-2, A-3, A-4 to set up the external Trading Routes

This gives 2 Internal Trade routes with 1 Trading Post in C and 4 External Trade Routes that give 8 Trading Posts,!!, 4 in E and 4 in C. With more trading routes you could of course extend this further and it is highly likely the make up of your cities and trade route yield(maybe trade routes form your capital generate more yield, this might be more valuable than the Trading Post Yield) will also dictate your decisions. I am really looking forward to seeing how this all pans out but the trading post idea as well as the Traders making roads is welcome addition the Civilisation mechanics.

 

[stealth_nsk]

1. It's not confirmed whether Harbor gives additional trade route or not.

2. Speaking about 50-60 trade routes, I believe you mean Huge map? On Standard map size you'll unlikely have more than 5-6 Commercial Hubs and Harbors each, so I'd expect around 20 trade routes by the end.

3. So far each civ had only 1 unique infrastructure (improvement, building or districts). With Arabia having Madrasa chances for them to have unique district are nearly zero.

 

[bookman_]

Before going into a lot of optimization with Trade Posts, traders will primarly be utilized to create roads between you cities, and if there is many thecs levels to roads, you'll have to reguraly spend a lot of time upgrading the roads instead of doing actual trade.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

We have seen the harbour tooltip several times and it have said +1 trade route capacity so it clearly do increase the number of trade routes you can have.

 

[qadams]

I'm not clear about Trading Posts — are these located within cities/districts, or are they external, outside city boundaries, along roadways?

 

[bookman_]

I'm not clear about Trading Posts — are these located within cities/districts, or are they external, outside city boundaries, along roadways?

We have absolutly no idea, the only thing we know about them was given by the Jakarta suzerrain bonus.

 

[dturtle1]

1. Every resource we have have seen speaks otherwise.

2. So are you saying you will only have 5-6 cities on a standard Map? If you have a harbour you are going to want a commerce district as well for the Major Adjacency Bonus. 50-60 Trade routes = 25-30 Cities. I believe this would be reasonable target to aim for someone looking maximise trade routes. England, no doubt. Free harbour, England could easily have 20 4 Pop cities each with a commerce district and a harbour -> 40 Trade route right there. Other Civs, maybe not so much.

3.You got me there , However if There is a Unique District(only two that are missing, Campus and Commerce) Who will get it? Arabia sounds made for it. Is the Madrasa Building actually confirmed or are we basing this off screenshots?

You will not have to resend a Trade route to upgrade the road. I would be highly surprised if roads required you to resend traders on the route to upgrade it. But for arguments sake, say you do. Say you have a trade route that travel's through all 5 of your cities, such as my example. Wouldn't that single trade Route upgrade all of the roads? What about the other 5 trade Routes you have? With the concept of trading Posts you going to want Traders running through your cities, even if their destination is somewhere else. There will be plenty of time to setup Trade Route Empires and some level of thought will be required to maximise trade route yield and effect

Trading Posts are created when the City in question is the destination of any trade route. Once the city stops being a destination for a trade route the Trading Post Disappears. Trading Post's create a yield(highly likely just Gold) for the city for every trade route that passes through the city.

 

[UnknownHuman]

One thing I’m disappointed about is that, from the look of it, trade routes don’t apply religious pressure, might be a unique Arabia ability though, but more importantly trade routes look like they won’t give bonuses for the sender and the receiver, but the bonuses will only be applied to the owner of the trade route. While it’s probably a balance choose I still consider CiV trade routes to be better since they created a sort of mutual prosperity which disincentive war.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Some thoughts.

1. Because trade routes mostly come from districts and wonderrs, hopefully they are tied to the city that has the district. (So there isnt a constant juggle of where the route comes from)

2. It appears to Only give the sender benefits (but Cleo's Unique talks about trade routes giving benefits to the receiving city)...this could balance internal trade routes if you need a district to send a route and only the sender benefits

3. It appears there is no religious pressure on the routes....this makes managing religion for someone like India much harder


Hopefully I'm wrong on #3

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Trade route limit look to be gloabal because you can see it in the top bar.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Trade route limit look to be gloabal because you can see it in the top bar.

Which seems counterintuitive and opening up a nightmare of fiddly trade micro if you have a large trade empire.

(Although perhaps Some of them are global, the others local...since you Can get some from government)

 

[dturtle1]

If you have a look at Quill18's video at roughly 7:00 he get a new Trader. I cant see a relocate button can you, maybe they are linked to Cities with "extra" from Tech/Civic Trees linked to the Capital,, idk. I would assumed you could relocate as you desire but i understand the micro nightmare that will entice... maybe we will have to wait see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO58UkNeAzc
@ 7mins
On a side note this video does indeed clarify that Harbours increase your Trade Routes Cap. Quinn just finished building a Harbour.
@ KrikkitTwo

2. , That is interesting, it does give benefits to the sender only which would invert my first idea where you send Trade routes to your Capital, rather you would send trade routes from your capital. This of course becomes an issue if Trade Routes are linked to Cities as it becomes hard to really stack them. You would need to build both Commerce district and a harbour plus all of the Trade route wonders in your capital to get something approaching beneficial.

3. Yeah, it won't help but it will still be manageable. I know you get the follower belief at only 1 follower. maybe you can build Missionaries with only 1 follower as well, maybe not. I wonder how it handles multi religions.
I will surprised if they do not allow you someway of managing your religions. I had a dialogue yesterday about this in another thread, mainly about Kongo and the ability to switch your Religion based on your needs and the Founder Bonus of the time. With India i am thinking of managing religion down to the number of followers in each religion and specialising cities based on this. I feel it will be a missed opportunity not to fully explore the gameplay available from this

 

[Ebrim]

It's very unlikely you'll be building commercial districts in every city. Districts increase in cost for every one completed so that even if you want to specialize commercial you'll likely still need other districts as well. That is until we get a civ with unique commercial district which would alter the cost/benefit more favorably toward commercial districts.

 

[Seek]

1) You will not have to resend a Trade route to upgrade the road. I would be highly surprised if roads required you to resend traders on the route to upgrade it. But for arguments sake, say you do. Say you have a trade route that travel's through all 5 of your cities, such as my example. Wouldn't that single trade Route upgrade all of the roads? What about the other 5 trade Routes you have? With the concept of trading Posts you going to want Traders running through your cities, even if their destination is somewhere else. There will be plenty of time to setup Trade Route Empires and some level of thought will be required to maximise trade route yield and effect

2) Trading Posts are created when the City in question is the destination of any trade route. Once the city stops being a destination for a trade route the Trading Post Disappears. Trading Post's create a yield(highly likely just Gold) for the city for every trade route that passes through the city.

Do you have sources for these claims? While 1) seems likely, the tooltips for upgraded roads/rails suggests that it could be otherwise. As for 2) when sending a TR the trading post icon is present, which suggests that it possibly remains after the initial TR was completed (if what you say is true, it could lead to some interesting scenarios for certain).

One further speculation: Trading posts "reup" the distance a TR can be sent, so maybe the base distance is 10 tiles, but if it passes through a TP it can travel another 10 tiles beyond that city, and so forth. This would be a fantastic way to really create trade hubs as well as Silk Road situations.

 

[Magil]

It's very unlikely you'll be building commercial districts in every city. Districts increase in cost for every one completed so that even if you want to specialize commercial you'll likely still need other districts as well. That is until we get a civ with unique commercial district which would alter the cost/benefit more favorably toward commercial districts.

On the other hand, districts and buildings and units cost gold maintenance, seemingly in increasing amounts based on era. Based on that, I feel like commercial hubs may be one of the most-built districts, since they seem to be one of the best ways to earn gold (we haven't seen any non-unique tile improvements that award gold to my knowledge). Especially in larger empires.

 

[Haggbart]

I hope they learn from CivBE and don't make Trade Route Tycoon 2....

 

[dturtle1]

Do you have sources for these claims? While 1) seems likely, the tooltips for upgraded roads/rails suggests that it could be otherwise. As for 2) when sending a TR the trading post icon is present, which suggests that it possibly remains after the initial TR was completed (if what you say is true, it could lead to some interesting scenarios for certain).

One further speculation: Trading posts "reup" the distance a TR can be sent, so maybe the base distance is 10 tiles, but if it passes through a TP it can travel another 10 tiles beyond that city, and so forth. This would be a fantastic way to really create trade hubs as well as Silk Road situations.

Well as far as i know we haven't seen upgrade roads, could you share the tooltips? I haven't seen them. Just that it seems a bit silly. Also it is of no real concern because if they do require the trade route to "re-beat" the path, then it will be done organically anyway. Especially when you consider it may be likely that Traders are linked to the city with the District in question, meaning that the route will likely always have a trader.
Of course you could only have 1 trader for multiple cities, which would require you to cycle the Trader in question to upgrade the roads but that doesn't sound like efficient use of assets. I feel you would want a trade route at least in every city. Where that travels of course is a different story

I am struggling to see max range on trade routes, everything i have seen indicates if you know where the city is you can send it. The only thing i know is that trading Posts are created in cities that are the destination of a Trade route. As far as i know they disappear on removal of the trade route. If they stayed on it would be to easy to have trading Posts in all cities and defeat the purpose of it. The way i believe it is feels more likely because it
actually has some type of nuance and depth.

@ Haggbert, Considering that trade routes Caps are limited only by the number of commercial districts and Harbours, I feel that ship has sailed. I never played Civ:BE, Other games had my attention at the time and didnt really want to play a reskin of 5, Idk maybe i should have

 

[Haggbart]

@ Haggbert, Considering that trade routes Caps are limited only by the number of commercial districts and Harbours, I feel that ship has sailed. I never played Civ:BE, Other games had my attention at the time and didnt really want to play a reskin of 5, Idk maybe i should have

Sure, if you can pick up an edition with Rising Tide real cheap it's not a bad game. Some interesting design choices. However the trade route game is NOT one of them.

The main problem with BE is that another trade route is ALWAYS first priority. And the trade route itself will make every new city worth it. They tried to nerf it, but it's vastly OP compared to everything else you can build in the game, so you basically can win the game by building colonists (settlers), rush buying recycler building for prod, build a trade depot, build trade unit. Rinse and repeat. Terrain doesn't matter, resources don't matter etc.

Also the yields in BE were tied to differences between the cities. So a low prod city trading with a high prod city would get insane prod yields. Same with food surplus. So you could grow huge cities really quick.

And on top of all that the AI wouldn't manage its trade routes well at all, making all difficulty levels cheat mode if you maxed the trade route game. Even if you limited yourself to one trade route/city, you could cruise to victory on apollo difficulty.

 

[dturtle1]

Lol, no wonder it is such a bugbear, that all sounds horrible. Yield based on Difference is a recipe for disaster. On top of this the A.I Cant Play...... Yeah maybe in the summer Steam sale if it goes cheap. I am not one for going back to games, i am not sure i could after Civ6 releases...I'll be crying "wheres my districts?" "What i have to actually build Roads", oh the Humanity

 

[Cyon]

Would be cool if other civs trading posts in your cites gave you 1 gold per trading post and trade routre that passes through, so you could get lots of gold by building strategic cities through choke points that forces the AI to trade via you. Would be unflavorful if a trading post did not give anything to the city it is in.