No way to defend sea trade routes

Chilly5 - Why didn't you destroy the Greeks before they threatened your ports? A reserve navy guarding your ports would have alerted you to the sneak attack, right?

A few things to note here:

• If you go to war with someone with whom you have an active trade route, that route (and the unit associated with it) will be immediately destroyed. Always make sure to check active trade routes before declaring war if possible.
• Trade units will always follow their prescribed trade path, and if there are any enemy units in that trade path when the unit passes over the enemy unit's hex, the trade route will be automatically plundered (note that you can take advantage of this when plundering trade routes yourself).
• Trying to escort individual units is not effective. The best way to protect your trade is to protect the route itself: Station units along the route, and be ready to attack any aggressors that come near.

I've almost lost my last Portugal game because I was at war with Siam and he sent swarms of embarked workers and missionaries to kill my cargo ships.
And it actually worked. My Naus needed 3 attacks before one worker went down.

This is beyond stupid. An embarked civilian unit shouldn't be able to plunder trade roudes.

Dux1 said:

A few things to note here:

• If you go to war with someone with whom you have an active trade route, that route (and the unit associated with it) will be immediately destroyed. Always make sure to check active trade routes before declaring war if possible.
• Trade units will always follow their prescribed trade path, and if there are any enemy units in that trade path when the unit passes over the enemy unit's hex, the trade route will be automatically plundered (note that you can take advantage of this when plundering trade routes yourself).
• Trying to escort individual units is not effective. The best way to protect your trade is to protect the route itself: Station units along the route, and be ready to attack any aggressors that come near.

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This is sound and thoughtful advice. Many of the posts in this thread are knee-jerk reactions to not fully understanding the new mechanics and the best ways to counter new threats. You absolutely cannot play BNW the way you played G&K or Vanilla before it. Firaxis will inevitably develop a patch to balance the game mechanics based on fan and testers' experiences, but learning to deal with the new mechanics will help immeasurably with whatever the patched, balanced system looks like. Excellent post Dux1.

Some interesting opinions in this thread, my 2ps:

1. It *is* annoying that trade routes are instantly destroyed if you get DoWed. There's virtually nothing you can do to prevent it, particularly if you're back-stabbed. Maybe not such a big deal later in the game but mighty annoying earlier on.

2. It's also annoying that barbs can destroy trade routes, you effectively have a 10+ tile length 'unit' which can be hard (and very tedious) to patrol.

3. However I agree with the sentiments that we should have to work for the benefits of trade routes.

An alternative to the escort idea that a few people have suggested: perhaps trade routes could be 'degraded' rather than completely destroyed by pillaging?

i.e. rather than thinking of caravans and cargo ships as 'units' treat them as 'routes' comprised of multiple virtual caravans/ships that follow the route. If it is pillaged you lose some or all of the income, but the 'unit' itself is not necessarily completely destroyed but instead is damaged. The route cannot be restarted or reallocated until it has 'healed' which would have to take some time, but not as long as building a new route.

Routes that survive pillaging from a DoWing civ would have to be reallocated once they recover.

Bonus idea: Maybe caravans/cargos could be upgradeable increasing their 'strength' over the various eras, e.g. an ancient era trade route pillaged by a battleship would be completed destroyed, whereas a route attacked by a contemporary unit might be 50% damaged?

This would have the following impacts:

- the valuable investment in the route is not completely destroyed by something that is often beyond the players control, so we'll have less rage-quitting

- there is still the cost-risk balance of setting up the route vs barbs and (potentially) enemy civs.

- players can still use sentries to help protect routes if they want to (perhaps friendly units on the route would mitigate the 'damage' done to the route if it's pillaged?)

A few posters have used the analogy of the British East India company, to follow that analogy: we could have a route to the west indies which might get pillaged by pirates resulting is a considerable loss of income, some of the individual virtual ships that comprise that route would be destroyed or damaged and have to be repaired or replaced, but the route itself remains.

Thoughts? Has some merit? Rubbish idea?

- stride

Protecting a 45 tiles-long trade route is impossible. I've tried it and a hostile CS caravel sneaks in and gets it every time.

If anything changes it should be something like -- pillaging the trade route gives you gold and makes the trade route less valuable (until reassigned). Can only be done once a turn per route. Pillaging the actual unit destroys the unit, gives even more gold, and immediately ends the route -- obviously.

When a DoW happens, all trade routes between the belligerents are immediately recalled to their home cities and may be reassigned next turn.

Trade routes would still be vulnerable but it's less of an all-or-nothing gambit. Protecting a 10 tile land route is possible. Protecting a 45 tile sea route is impossible. Someone said this before, it's like protecting a 45 tile-long worker unit. That's not fun. This is a game, but trade routes just don't work like that anyways. You don't see Somali pirates plundering gold from where a freighter passed through three days ago ... It's just silly.

Also, getting all trade routes destroyed from a civilization that you go to war with is just frustrating. Of course there are things you can do to mitigate this, like spreading out your trading partners, but it's still not fun.

EDIT -- oh, and you have to begin your turn on the route. No moving seven tiles and plundering it with your last movement point.

I don't see the problem. Sea routes are historically difficult to patrol and protect from piracy.

But yeah, degrading routes would be better. So would you not losing half a dozen caravans due to just a declaration of war.

EDIT -- oh, and you have to begin your turn on the route. No moving seven tiles and plundering it with your last movement point.

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Why not? You can pillage everything else with your last movement point.

Trying to escort individual units is not effective. The best way to protect your trade is to protect the route itself: Station units along the route, and be ready to attack any aggressors that come near.

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Pretty much this.

I think Shogun Total War 2 had the whole TRADE ROUTE mechanic pretty well thought out. You could never completely wipe out a trade route, but instead, by parking a naval/land unit over the trade route, you could pillage it each turn for gold. The more units on a trade route, the more money for you, and the less for the enemy.

I think this concept is better than BNW, where one military unit completely wipes out a trade route, which doesn't make much sense. Plus, it can lead to wars where you aren't completely fighting to take over enemy cities, but instead, are blockading trade just to get rich.

Chilly5 said:

War is not a viable option any longer.There is literally no incentive for a player to go for war mongering, especially in a water-dominated map.

AI spam ships and manage ships better than a human player can, such that the instant a war is declared, you can expect all of your trade routes to be ripped apart.

You can argue "well historically trade routes were the first to go in a time of war." Yes maybe that's true, but "historically" trade routes were important units to protect for this reason. Given the current game mechanics, I've sat frigates on top of my cargo ships but somehow the enemy still destroy my trade routes. The fact that my cargo ships have no vision also limits my ability to save them or protect them.

Given how exposed trade routes are, especially to an enemy AI's navy, there needs to be some way to defend trade ships. If trade ships don't get the option to flee (like workers do when barbarians come by), then there should at least be an option to attach a military escort over the trade ship to ensure its security.

As it stands right now I can expect 0 income from trade routes the instant a war is declared (particularly crippling as I'm playing Venice). This puts me in a tough corner, since on the world stage in the game I'm playing right now I'm behind technologically, diplomatically, and culturally. Military is the only forte my civ carries right now, but I can't fund a military if England's caravels destroy my trade routes left and right without any way for me to defend them.

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OK. I am in the process of playing an Immortal game, standard everything else, continents map. I am playing Venice. Everyone goes Order and Autocracy. I chose Freedom. Got DoW'd shortly thereafter by two Civs. Lost all of my trade routes. I had about 10. My gold output dropped to about 30+ or -. My happiness had already taken a hit, but it was still around 9 or 10. Took out one civ. The other was on another continent, so it wasn't a big problem. I lost two of my puppets (from the Venice Great Merchant). After the wars, I rebuilt my trade routes, and I am one of the leading civs. It is very workable without trade routes with proper planning.

#1. Dont put all your trade routes in one basket, IE all sea. Even on Archipaelogo maps you can squeeze a few cities next to city states or "friendly" civs. I had 2 caravans that went back and forth the 4 hexes just to ensure I had an easy way to ensure that income. It also boosted religion spreading, and most importantly citystate influence.

#2. Consider putting a naval unit in all your coastal cities. When preparing for war, start placing them so you have vision between your best trading partners and you.

#3. I only traded from my capital with sea routes. Then I formed a vision chain to my allies. I had to do this early to stop barbarians from destroying the routes, also works again DOW.

#4. Internal trade is and really only useful for fast fooding cities or useless continental production to wonder transfers.

Gotta love the internet

Trade routes get pillaged -> war is not viable, let's suggest changes to make the game easier!

I think it's brilliant how trade routes work now. It is possible to protect them by controlling the area. You might loose a few but that is the cost of war.

To every player suggesting game changes: try to learn how to deal with it yourself first, if that fails try to ask others for help but never suggest game changes to fix your problems in your specific game. Think in terms of "how this game works?" instead of "how i think this game should work"

vanzlmalc said:

Gotta love the internet

Trade routes get pillaged -> war is not viable, let's suggest changes to make the game easier!

I think it's brilliant how trade routes work now. It is possible to protect them by controlling the area. You might loose a few but that is the cost of war.

To every player suggesting game changes: try to learn how to deal with it yourself first, if that fails try to ask others for help but never suggest game changes to fix your problems in your specific game. Think in terms of "how this game works?" instead of "how i think this game should work"

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I don't know to which proposals you are refering to - but increasing the acessibility and usability in a game is not a bad thing to do. Suggesting those things neither.

Sure, if something is not optimal, you can come to terms with with it or even finde workarounds. But wouldn't it be nice to find a way to make things better?

as Ottomans, I put a few ships to every trade routes. my trade routes are so safe.

A "protect trade route" option that attaches your ship to the caravan/cargo ship would indeed be a cool feature. As it is you can micro an aweful lot to protect your trade routes effectively - but should that really be the case? I don't think so.

First game as Venice, I was swimming in Gold with my maritimes routes. Then the Ottomans declared war on me and destroyed almost all my routes. I only had two frigates ready at this time..
I know now maritime trade is possible if you have a decent navy to protect it, it seems very relistic to me.

attorneyatlol said:

The issue would be when you have a ship escorting your cargo ship and the cargo ship moves onto a tile with another ship on it already. Also, since you can establish trade routes into other civs without open borders, your ship won't always be able to follow your cargo ship.

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Right, that would be a problem. What I would love instead, is a choice between two (maybe more?) types of cargo ships. Normal ones, that are the cheapest. And armored ones, which have a certain amount of hp and attack values. They cannot attack, only strike back when attacked. Make it so, that at least they cannot be taken instantly by any low hp attacker, but are still vulnerable. So they could survive one attack and mybe run out of sight for the second attack.
They would work exactly as normal cargos as in being "inmaterial" to other units. They'd have to be quite a bit more expensive though, to represent its value for the gold income.


Well, actually I really like how much you have to protect your cargo ships, especially on archipelago maps. I would prefer however to know where my cargo ships are, instead of protecting all of the route. I'd need a ridiculous navy to control that much sea area, which I cannot afford, because my trade routes are pillaged all the time. ARGH! I definitively got into a circle of in this one!

Acidrain said:

To pillage a trade route, one has to move their unit to the same tile as caravan/cargo ship, then pillage trade route button appears on the unit command menu.)

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I've also found that simply ending your turn with a unit on the ship/caravan or in a tile where the ship/caravan will cross on the next turn will pillage the enemy route.

Long sea routes should be perilous. Keep in mind multiple caravans/cargo ships can be sent to the same city/CS as long as their originate from different home cities. So pick a local destination and send a ship from several of your cities. Sure, gold will decrease form your less developed cities, but it keeps your cargo ships closer to home.

Ok, now that i've played brave new world for few months.

I've lost maybe 20ish cargo ships at most and less than 5 caravans over many many playthroughs.

Barbarians is utterly trivial, only real threats to my ships is enemy civs.

I'm just too good at selecting correct partners to trade to and selecting them because i know the trade route is reasonably safe.

And in other situations, I have deployed whole warfleets and swatted every single barbarian ships before opening up trade with a new CIV partner. Its insanely profitable for me to do so because I always fill out honor

And occasionally there is excellent islands located in midway points and such, they tend to make for incredible naval ports.

I never patrol, I just fortify my ships in specific locations on map and then unleash them when I suspect a barbarian uprising or war happens.

I play on huge maps.

My internal economy is always strong, I build markets and banks and city connections yo.

I never use land trade because they suck compared to sea trade. If I use them its because I have no choice otherwise.

Pre renaissance trade routes is ridiculously carebear mode to defend with, most of the routes will be coastal only. If you can't keep coast protected, you're not ready to trade on the high seas.

And my barbarians is set to raging, i've yet to have a single luxury pillaged. Only random farms.

Let's say you control this huge channel of water, but you see a uncolonized island at end of both channels? What are you doing, go put a citadel there or colonize them and you got a great strategic place to park ur fleets at, barbarians cannot sneak in without your permission.

Then again, something like this is already a old hat to me, I've been doing stuff like this for long long long time now, I never neglect the power projection that navy can give me since civ 3. xD

jaldaen said:

Yeah, it would be nice to set a naval unit to "escort" the cargo ship. The only thing I've been able to think of is counting the moves the cargo ship makes and make sure you have one ship parked at each "waypoint" for the cargo ship. Although at that point you're probably losing money on very long trade routes.

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FYI: I'm pretty sure Trade units make their moves at the start of turns, not at the end. If you camp a military unit on top of a trade unit on your turn, it will be protected during other players' turns and will not move again until the start of your next turn.

Knut_Are_M said:

I would not recommend international trade With anyone that can potentionally backstab you. All trade caravans going to that civ is immidiatly destroyed upon war declaration.
I would only recommend internal trade, much safer and gives you a huge production and growth.

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So, never trade with Catherine of Russia. Got it!

I also like the escort idea but the best ways to guard sea trade routes pre-renaissance are by having land units reveal land next to the sea trade route to ensure that no barb encampments spawn between you and your trading partner. After astronomy, just look at the journey of the cargo ships. If there are any uninhabited islands nearby, do not establish the trade route. If at war with another civ, make sure you have a navy.

As for potential treachery, still send 1 trade route to the untrustworthy AI's capitol. It might actually relieve the tensions. You sometimes receive DoF's after sending a trade route to someone.