Is there anyway to attract trade routes or is it just random ?

alciefrederic

Chieftain
Joined
Jul 23, 2014
Messages
10
Title says it all. Context: Deity diff.

Also what to do if WLTK quests require an unobtainable resource ? Just give up ?
 
Not sure about trade routes, but what do you mean by unobtainable? It doesn't have to be your resource, you can trade for it and it still counts.
 
Unobtainable as in no civs have it available for trade + no known city states have it. Isn't this situation common enough to not require any further justification ? Because it happens to me a lot. I play on Deity, I know at least certain things please why all these questions ?
 
Trade routes: You can make your cities more attractive with markets, banks, east india etc, the AI will usually send them to the most lucrative target.

Resources: Wait until somebody has it available. If that is never: Bad luck, nothing you can do about it (except maybe settle an own city that accesses it)
 
Unobtainable as in no civs have it available for trade + no known city states have it. Isn't this situation common enough to not require any further justification ? Because it happens to me a lot. I play on Deity, I know at least certain things please why all these questions ?

I've honestly never run across that situation. There's always been someone who had the resource in my games. It might not always be tradeable (someone else already traded for it), but it's never just not been there. Apparently it's not common enough, my apologies.
 
Trading your spare luxuries for the AI luxuries: You have to wait for the AI to hook up its spare luxuries and then for any trade it made with another AI to expire. Best to check every single turn.

AI establishing trade routes with you: It mostly cares about maxing out income to itself. (Except that it wastes slots on caravans even when it's on a coastal city going to a coastal city so a cargo ship would have provided more income) But if it hates you then it will reroute all existing trade routes it has with you away as soon as they expire.
 
Also what to do if WLTK quests require an unobtainable resource ? Just give up ?

Yep, I do.

But first check every turn for like 30 turns if it shows up for trade, check the map if any AI even has it.

There is sometimes another dilemma - spend 1000 gold to ally CS to get a resource or spend that gold somewhere else :D
 
I've honestly never run across that situation. There's always been someone who had the resource in my games. It might not always be tradeable (someone else already traded for it), but it's never just not been there. Apparently it's not common enough, my apologies.

I've had this happen a number of times. Usually it is a sea luxury, like crab, pearls or whales. You can sometimes explore the map and find out where the resource is and decide if it is worth settling for it or just letting it go.

I've considered building a settler to settle it for 1 turn, enough to get the bonus, then sell the city to another civ, but the time I decided to see how that would turn out, I couldn't plant the city due to being too close to other cities.
 
Trade route value is 5% of the gpt of the two cities plus whatever bonuses you get from buildings.

So basically the better the GPT of the city, the more trade routes it will attract.
 
I've often noticed that the AIs will send trade routes to cities that are closer to them even if they aren't the best positioned, I.e no rivers. So I'm not quite sure what influences their decisions.
Sometimes the best thing to do is make sure you place one of your early cities where it can be easily accessed by trade routes and see where the AIs are sending most of their trade routes.
Often its better to build the East India Company in whatever city seems to get the most caravans rather then in a city that hasn't attracted many caravans in attempt to force the AI to use that city...
Not necessarily sure why that is but that what I've noticed.
 
Trade routes also get a bonus from different resources (bonus included, IIRC) between the two cities. So cities with a greter diversity of resources will be more attractive than others.
 
I suspect (but cant prove) the AI also values Science from trade routes. At Diety this is no doubt less of an issue because you may well be playing catch up most of the time. So its Gold they value.

As for the un-obtainable resource, sometimes you just have to live without the WLTKD.
I have seen this a few times and its extra irritating when CS quests are also for the same resource. I have also seen almost every CS in the game want me to connect Porcelain to my network, but none of the CS in game had it! Maddening.

As mentioned already it might be worth a 1-turn settle-and-sell just to get the ball rolling, but thats awfully expensive by itself.
 
Top Bottom