Trade routes???

V. Soma

long time civ fan
Joined
Apr 13, 2004
Messages
3,943
Location
Hungary
I think this alone deserves discussion:

Trade routes?
What are them?

Perhaps we cannot simple make trade of goods, we need to establish routes...
 
i want camels
 
In the city screenshot below, one can see something that could be the effect of traderoutes in the upper left corner. It seems that this UN resolution will have a large effect (single currency: +1 trade route in all). I guess that it means that cities can support one extra traderoute (4 instead of 3) as there is some room left below the 3 already present traderoutes. But how the traderoutes are established is not yet clear.

 
I hope it is clear for Firaxis by now, at least! :)
These city screens are changing with each iteration we see...
 
V. Soma said:
I think this alone deserves discussion:

Trade routes?
What are them?

Perhaps we cannot simple make trade of goods, we need to establish routes...

In Civ2 you had to send a caravan from a city to another to establish a trade route between 2 cities. And by the way you had a maximum of trade routes per city, so this is PERHAPS the same mecanism here (a special unit to make the trade route).

regards,
 
I liked caravans too, but it did get a little frustrating when the goto command had them walk to the coast in the wrong direction or the demand changed before they arrived.

I would have been better to sort out these issues rather then get rid of the caravan in favour of these daft AI diplomatic negotiation trades where they always want twice as much as they are willing to give.
 
Well they did sort out those issues didn't they?
 
The cool thing about trade in Civ 2 was that each city had their own supplies and demand. Sure the resources meant nothing in terms of gameplay, but it felt so real. Now because of the streamlining of resources and such, I don't think we could ever go back to the Civ 2 dynamic of each city with it's own pseudo economy.
 
Trade routes really do remain the 'great mystery' for Civ4. We know there is a lot more to them than in previous civ games, because Soren alluded to how he wanted to say more about it in the GameSHOUT interview, but got so nervous he forgot.
As for the city screen we are looking at, you may notice that the only cities we are seeing are fellow American cities-so this tells us nothing about how inter-Civ trade routes will work.
My hope is that each individual trade route you form grants you a set income for every city through which the trade route passes, dependant on the size of the city involved and the cultural strength of the initiating city (relative to the city through which the route passes). This way, it might be hoped that cities which lie at a 'cross-roads' between multiple intra and inter-civ trade routes will become very wealthy indeed, as they collect money from trade which passes through their territory.
Anyway, this is something I am VERY keen to hear more about.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
 
There's still a vast gulf between a set of user-created trade routes and an organically constructed trade network. Oh well. I guess that leaves something for Civ5.
 
slozenger said:
i want camels

ferenginar said:
I liked caravans too

I like both, even if this time they make it a donkey (which upgrades to a space shuttle), as long as trade is made on the map and not like that in Civ3...
 
just to add to the stuff to think about:
 

Attachments

  • routes.JPG
    routes.JPG
    14 KB · Views: 668
****.from this new shot it seems that it will be as crappy as AOE 3,where trqde routes are already there.

what I´d really like to see is the automatic network,where citys would link automatically on the deficits and surpluses of one another(although you could regulate this using border control,taxes,etc),and the max number of routes regulated by size and improvements(just like the port-docks-shipyard in rome total war)
 
I just have a question off topic.....I think I remeber readin somw where that if you have a trade route runnin trough your territory that 2 ai civs are using to trade, you get some kind of a commerce bonus?
 
Actually, that screenshot is from the World Builder. What this means is that a player can add in trade routes that he/she feels belongs in the scenario. It doesn't mean trade routes will pre-exist in the Epic Game.
I, for one, really don't want to have to move a unit half-way around the world in order to generate a trade route. Instead, I want a system where-if I connect two of my cities together-then trade will automatically occur between them, producing income. I also want a situation where, if I set up a resource trade with another civ, that this will result in the formation of an underlying trade route-that represents the on-going trade in goods and services which is occuring between our two nations-the value of which should be dependant on factors like 'relative wealth', 'relative culture' and 'relative size'. If they have even come close to doing this, then I will be VERY happy!!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
 
I have the feeling that you will have trade routes available only with your own cities in case you have closed borders with all foreign civs...
We had city screen of New York (?) with only American cities trading...
 
Well I think the ideal system would give each city the ability to make a limited number of 'trade routes' to Nearby cities. Long range trade routes would go along the network of 'trade routes' and cities and split up their $ among all the trade routes they passed over (so the silk Road would generate a fixed amount of $ based on consumption of silks at the end and each of the routes that were passed over would take an amount of that $...so a City on the 'Silk road' would get $ from all the silk going through it, but once it began braking up into seperat routes, north to Germany South to Carthage, those routes would not get as much since there is not as much trade going over them.)
 
Top Bottom