Trade Routes: Tweaks, yes; Drastic changes, no

Hello,

in seemingly every other thread, regardless of how relevant the comments are to the thread topic, I continually see people complaining about trade routes, and saying how they need to be drastically nerfed/reduced, etc. I think those of us who don't find trade routes so problematic need to chime in and bring the other side of the discussion to the fore.

The 2 issues people seem to have with trade routes:

1) Trade Routes are "too much work".

Response: I will agree 100% with those who say the Trade Route UI could use work to make it more player friendly. For those who find it too much work, there should be an autorenew route feature somewhere. The trade route overview should also be modified to make it easier to parse/sort etc.

I will disagree 100% with those who say trade routes are "too much work" vs. reward. To me, trade routes are one of the more interesting CHOICES the game has to offer at this point. CHOICES are what everyone seems to want. Do you go with internal trade routes to build up your cities faster, external trade routes to beef up science immensely faster and get energy to buy units/improvements, or a mixture of both?

For internal trade routes, do you run from large to small cities to build them up faster, smaller cities to capital to make the capital a monster wonder-producer megacity, or run to outposts to get them up ASAP? For external trade routes, which AI do you want to build good relations with? Do you build and send out explorer units earlier to chart more external trade routes at the expense of internal improvements? Those who want to reduce trade routes drastically are taking away player choices, which no one seems to want.

2) Trade Routes are "OverPowered" (OP)

Response: I see plenty of people just recite the mantra "Trade Routes are so OP". Yet, people have different reasons for saying so: some say the internal trade routes build up cities too quickly. Others say science and energy yield from early trade routes double or triple your early science. Well, that's a choice isn't it? If you choose one, you are hurting yourself in the other way. The main critique seems to be that "internal trade routes develop expansion cities quickly to build everything you need to improve your civ quickly." To that I pose the question, is that a bad thing? Frankly, I like that my cities don't need 30 turns to build an Old Earth Relic before moving on to other buildings. It speeds the game pace up and allows you to branch into more interesting choices with your expansion cities more quickly. The expansion cities already have a waiting period to develop as an outpost. Do they really need to have their development slowed down even more?

I think the "OP" aspect of the internal trade routes currently stems from the AI's undersuse of trade routes, and the lack of meaningful penalties for unhealth. I would rather see more biting penalties for unhealth, such that building up cities so quickly might not always be to a player's best advantage. Of course, improving the AI is not as easy as most think it should be, but factoring in trade routes more for the AI civs should be near the top of AI improvement priorities.

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If trade routes are nerfed drastically, I think then people will start complaining how slow it is to build up cities and how there are fewer choices to make. There will then be a whack-a-mole aspect to introduce more "balances" to balance out the previous attempts at balances.

Basically, my perception after many hours of play thus far is that trade routes similar to as they are now are good for the game: They offer more choices to the player and speed up the pace of advancing your civ. If so many people are finding them "OP", I would suggest the best fix is to increase penalties for unhealth, increase AI's prioritization of trade routes, and tweak the effects slightly if need be. Small changes, yes; drastic changes would lessen the player experience in my opinion.

The Trade Route Overview UI does not bother me since I make my trade route choices as each one ends, but there is no disputing the Trade Route UI should be drastically improved . Rather than cut trade routes a lot because some find them "too much work", let those people have an autorenew feature, and let the rest of us be free to enjoy our choices with the trade routes. Degrading our experience because some don't want to deal with choices so often is not very fair. Letting them have fewer choices to deal with with an autorenew button, and allowing us to continue our enjoyment of strategizing the trade routes is best for everyone.

These are my observations after many hours of gameplay (4 finished games and a bunch of games half in progress or stopped), not simply one game or two. I know my opinions are not shared by everyone, but I would ask others who feel similarly to chime in, and those who just recite the "trade routes are OP" mantra to open your minds as to how they are not necessarily the devil they are being made out to be. I respect everyone's opinions; I just want the game developers to hear how some (many?) don't find trade routes to be the OP killjoy that many complaining posters seem to posit. They increase my enjoyment as a player. Tweaks to them would be fine by me; giant nerf axes would degrade my CivBE experience though. As always, YMMV.

I agree with you on the trade routes needing tweaks rather than the nerf hammer.
They do have a lot of administrative overhead, and they are absolutely needed especially in the early to mid game, where there are so many things to be built and not enough production.

Personally (I do enjoy developing my cities as much as possible) the game feels like it has increased the number of buildings a city can built, the tech web also feels larger than the tech tree (in term of technology numbers), and the fact that leaf techs cost a little more than the branch tech, make the obstacle we have to overcome that much more difficult.
Trade routes help a lot towards reducing the effect of these changes.

That trade routes are horribly balanced in *two different ways* forcing you to choose which overpowered way to use them does not magically make them balanced!

That's equivalent to saying that if a trade route could give you 1000 energy per turn OR 1000 hammers per turn it's perfectly fine because you have to choose one or the other. No, it's horrifically overpowered in two different ways both of which need nerfing.

Agent_TBC said:

That trade routes are horribly balanced in *two different ways* forcing you to choose which overpowered way to use them does not magically make them balanced!

That's equivalent to saying that if a trade route could give you 1000 energy per turn OR 1000 hammers per turn it's perfectly fine because you have to choose one or the other. No, it's horrifically overpowered in two different ways both of which need nerfing.

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But if you nerf trade routes "both ways", you need to create other incentives to go for a wide empire.

Without investing heavily in prosperity, your empire's health always drops rapidly if you attempt to be expansionistic and it's also quite punishing in terms of extra science and culture needed for new technologies and virtues.

If trade routes get nerfed aswell, what is left as an incentive ? Taking cities/space away from the A.I. at higher difficulties, even at the expense of one's own empire ?
Getting extra ressources that you could also just trade for ? That's not enough, at least not on anything lower than Apollo difficulty.

Firaxis would need to create another incentive or everybody would simply stick to building 3-4 cities, which would greatly limit choices and make the game more boring.

Lol Harmony, Purity and Supremacy posted in this thread consecutively.

Everyone's argument is invalid.

There are plenty of ways to go wide even outside of prosperity
Biowells remove any health limit to expanding and more cities = more production overall.

2) Trade Routes are "OverPowered" (OP)

Response: I see plenty of people just recite the mantra "Trade Routes are so OP". Yet, people have different reasons for saying so: some say the internal trade routes build up cities too quickly. Others say science and energy yield from early trade routes double or triple your early science. Well, that's a choice isn't it? [...].

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The problem with trade routes is that they are overpowered in relation to the other game mechanics. If 50% of your empire food and production comes from trade routes (and that is possible if you have coastal cities), they dwarf other game mechanics and create an imbalance within the game design.

Because trade routes offer so much production, there is less choise in regards to buildings, because you will get all of them eventually. This in return has an impact on the tech system, because now your tech priorities shift from techs that grant bonus yields to techs that unlock new buildings. It also affects the growth system because you can convert 25% prod to food - which is actually a pretty significant amount.

My biggest gripe with the trade route system, however, is the underlying design ideas:
Is it really necessary gamplay wise to have # of trade routes per city instead of a global limit? I am not sure, but leaning towards *no*.
The fact that the receiving city always gets the bigger yield benefits creates some absurd scenarios, like 1 pop 4-food 2-prod cities generating 8-food and 12-prod yields for the capital.

This is stuff beyond mere balancing of # of trade routes or trade route yield.

Dellan said:

Lol Harmony, Purity and Supremacy posted in this thread consecutively.

Everyone's argument is invalid.

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And now Daoming says ...

Hui Huang Gaozoing Tiangong Gon Reng!

Do I think trade routes are overpowered? Yes. There's really no questioning this - between the massive boosts to pretty much every major yield, they are a game changer.

However, what I've seen on the forums for "fixes" is way too big of a nerf. Many people want to cut the amount of routes down to 1 per city AND decrease their yields, which would pretty much make them useless IMO. I'd be in favor of having a flat 33% decrease of all yields. I also think the number of routes should be based on population, which would balance the whole "tall" vs "wide" argument. Just my two cents. I just know I'd be very sad to see the number of routes to get squished.

GAGA Extrem said:

The problem with trade routes is that they are overpowered in relation to the other game mechanics. If 50% of your empire food and production comes from trade routes (and that is possible if you have coastal cities), they dwarf other game mechanics and create an imbalance within the game design.

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Exactly.

The bonuses that come from trade routes dwarf everything else, you have wonders that give you +4 culture and you have trade routes that give you 15 culture.

Trade routes as they are now are OP enough that you could basically disregard everything else, you could just go ICS never build anything except trade routes and still complete the tech web before anyone else

Ryoga said:

Exactly.



The bonuses that come from trade routes dwarf everything else, you have wonders that give you +4 culture and you have trade routes that give you 15 culture.



Trade routes as they are now are OP enough that you could basically disregard everything else, you could just go ICS never build anything except trade routes and still complete the tech web before anyone else

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The underpowered wonder thing is a whole other story. What really needs to happen is a reworking of health penalties (is in actually having them mean something), a wonder buff, and a slight trade route nerf.

Trade routes are overpowered because their bonuses basically dwarf anything else that you do.

The main mechanic, in how bonuses for trade are earned, need to be tweaked to make sense.

For example, we know that trade bonus depends from the difference between "base" food/hammer production of two cities.

Yet, it is always that receiver gets better bonus, giving player the option to create megacities, by sending traders from multiple smaller cities to one big city.

This is ridiculous and needs to be removed. How can small underdeveloped city help big city a lot, that is nonsense.

It should be always a weaker party in trade to get better benefits. Of course, larger cities would still earn something from it, but it would noy be overpowered like now.

This way, weaker cities will eventually start to catch up, and trade bonuses will naturally diminish.

Also, this would make obsolete situations in current model, where it was difficult to reverse the route to go into other direction (requires two trade units to not do anything). With this change, this would not matter anymore (would not depend from direction).

Also, total number of trade routes need to be smaller. Even something simple like removing Autoplant bonus would be a big plus.

The Culture Wonder -vs- Trade Route thing is an excellent point. It's just crazy how overpowered the trade routes are compared to the wonder yields.

That, combined with the lack of National Wonder equivalents, means there is no city specialization. You just build every single building in every single city and end up with a sprawl of identical cities with nothing to differentiate them. Because the production and food rewards from trade routes means you don't have to decide what to build, you just build it all.

My suggestion would be to make all trade routes tier-ed like station trade routes.

This way they wont be so extremely powerful right away and they could also maybe add additional effects to them at maximum tier. Like, for example: "Tier 3 trade routes are permanent but can be cancelled and reassigned at will"

I would just decrease the output of internal trade routes 60% and 35% international trade.
Change the autoplants quest to increase the yields internal trade routes by 2 food or 1 production. It would reduce the management of trade routes and nerf them.

They make the game boring because:

A: You do pretty much the exact same thing each game because no other build is viable.

B: Half your turn every turn is spent re-establishing trade routes as you mash end turn waiting for your beacon to activate or w/e.

TheBigKahuna said:

My suggestion would be to make all trade routes tier-ed like station trade routes.

This way they wont be so extremely powerful right away and they could also maybe add additional effects to them at maximum tier. Like, for example: "Tier 3 trade routes are permanent but can be cancelled and reassigned at will"

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Permanent trade routes should be by default. The tiered idea is kind of neat though, like if you have a trade route active for 10 turns, it becomes better, then 25 turns, etc. It would also replace the "complete 1 route" objective for stations to upgrade.

I'll just quote myself because I posted about the topic in the modding forum a few hours ago:

Tomice said:

I wanted to return to the topic of overnerfing TR's.

I fully agree that they are OP at the moment. They are so strong that they turn other gameplay elements irrelevant. That's a fact. As is their annoyingness (mostly a fault of the UI).

But taking a large hammer and and nerfing them into oblivion is not the right way. I doubt the current power of TR's is a mistake in the eyes of the devs. The didn't underestimate the yields so much that they need a 83% nerf - They are not as incompetent I am very sure the high importance of manually established trade is a core gameplay element of BE. They had this idea for BNW, and it turned out well. The dev's realized the potential and wanted to expand on it.

Let's look at the (theoretical) advantages of TR's:

• They are an active gameplay element involving lots of choices
• They are high risk, high reward
• They help new cities founded in midgame to catch up (they would always stay irrelevant otherwise)
• Their partial collaps in wartime represents the vulnerability of a developed society
• They intensify the relevance of allies and good diplo relations
• They give more relevance to aliens/barbarians
• Naval trade routes make having a navy relevant
• External TR counter tendencies to turtle (we need patrols in the wilderness)
• TR protection gives a purpose to our army in peacetime
• They help to connect cities in gameplay terms (the civ series always had this problem that cities felt isolated. In some iterations there was almost no way for your almighty empire to help a single small city get up and running. Your chance to get a wonder often only depended on the strenght of individual cities, not your empire as a whole).

And this is why TR's currently fail to fulfill the above in BE:

• The risk and the need for protection can easily be eliminated within the first 100 turns (US fence!!!)
• The choices we have to make are instransparent and lack logic (bad yield formula, no official explanations)
• The yield of TR's doesn't depend on diplo relations, wasting the chance to make them relevant
• The AI is not competitive or smart enough to make the vulnerability of TR's matter
• They have no real, transparent relation to the state of our empire (they at least don't feel connected to city yields)
• They don't serve to distribute our empires power, they create yields out of thin air instead
• The yield formula is intransparent and full of oddities (e.g. zero yield TR's)
• Much of their strenght comes from the right quest decisions
• Only the quantity of TR's matter, there is no good way to increase their quality

So IMHO, we need to improve them along the following lines:

1. Rework the US fence quest to give them back some vulnerabilty and to reintroduce risk vs. reward choices (no total immunity)
2. Relate their yields better to the yields of the involved cities (see my earlier suggestion about a %-based yield bonus)
3. Give them clearly understandable, reliable yield mechanics
4. Reduce the overwhelming importance of autoplants (and their quest)
5. Make the number and quality of trade routes more influenceable by skilled players.
6. (Increase competitiveness of the AI)
7. (Improve the UI)

The last points are in brackets because modders have limited inflluence on this, we have to hope for official patches to fix those items completely.

I'm convinced we don't need to overnerf them if we can make them fulfill their promises. The most important change would be a yield formula that forces you to have powerful, well-improved cities for your TR to be profitable. Their current disconnection from tile Yields and good city management is their principal fault.

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And here is my suggestion for improvement:

Tomice said:

What about this very simple rule:
When an internal TR is established, each city gets 10% of the food and production the other city has.

This would accomplish the following things:

• Reliable, relatively constant, easy-to-understand yields
• No weird "zero-yield" TR's
• Easy balance by changing the percent value
• No difference in TR direction - less micromanagement
• No overpowered yields created out of thin air
• Small cities would profit more than larger ones (more realism)

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TLDR: Trade route yields need to be directly dependent on the actual yields of our cities. This way, they could never exceed our other yields and make them irrelevant.

I don't agree with all of Tomice's reasons but his solution is a good one. I'd add a hardcap on that base yield and add an extra yield based on the home city's specialists. That way we can tie more game systems together while adding some depth and decisions to the trade system by letting us customize the yields.

Also even with the heavy nerfs in the balance mods that single trade route is still stronger than some of the affinity buildings that eat strategic resources.