So should your first caravans be for internal or external trade?

elijahfire said:

If you want to become allies with a nearby civ early on then external, if you get a workshop or granary up early then internal.

Click to expand...

There's a diplomatic modifier? I can't see it in the 'green list'.

For me, it totally depends on what leader I'm playing, what victory condition I want to try for, where I am on the map, locations of barbarians, and the food / gold status of my civilization. Unfortunately not a simple answer but when I do my first few caravans those are the things I take into consideration.

The great thing about CivV is that you can play it in many different ways. The only right answer to the question
"how to best use your first caravan?"
is
"it depends on your situation and your plans".

Are you in negative gold income or do you really need money for something (for example to buy a settler)? Trade with a city state.
Did some city state ask you to make a trade route and would it be usefull for you to get more influence with it? Trade with the city state.
Are you behind your enemy in science? Trade with him, you can profit from it.
Is it possible to create a food caravan between your cities and do you want to get more people or do you just have problems with food tiles around your city? Trade food.

(You probably won't have a workshop yet, so you first caravan won't be a production one. But later it can be a huge help if you are building a lot of wonders in your capital, you can send up to 3 production caravans/ships there.)

TomKQT said:

(You probably won't have a workshop yet, so you first caravan won't be a production one.)

Click to expand...

Now you've got me thinking about ways to grab workshops early and use them to snap up Wonders - who says Rome wasn't built in a day? I bet Italy could get some mileage out of other cities shipping production to Rome - Rome snaps up new buildings, making them cheaper everywhere else.

Thuellai said:

Now you've got me thinking about ways to grab workshops early and use them to snap up Wonders - who says Rome wasn't built in a day? I bet Italy could get some mileage out of other cities shipping production to Rome - Rome snaps up new buildings, making them cheaper everywhere else.

Click to expand...

That's probably overkill. With all of the buildings you build in Rome and all of the investment you put into it the production becomes so extreme that you'll be building new buildings faster than you can tech to them. Now if you send production from Rome to your other cities that's a lot of bang for your UA.

Of course if you want to be historically accurate you can send food from your cities to Rome, I had a lot of fun with Rome being a super-capital, despite being a liberty wide empire.