Trade Route - Questions

btw, what distance do caravans have?

10 hexes without modifiers, I think.

Did anyone test how the roads extend the route? IE does just building one length add? Do you have to place the road towards the city you want to trade with?

I am at work or I would test this. This is needed information with Venice!!

Randall_Flagg said:

Did anyone test how the roads extend the route? IE does just building one length add? Do you have to place the road towards the city you want to trade with?

I am at work or I would test this. This is needed information with Venice!!

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This is actually on a play thru video that was released a day or two before the release of BNW.

And actually, Venice doesn't need this info; they have a coastal bias; and sea routes are worth 2X as much for everything as mere land routes (and start with a longer range)

joncnunn said:

This is actually on a play thru video that was released a day or two before the release of BNW.

And actually, Venice doesn't need this info; they have a coastal bias; and sea routes are worth 2X as much for everything as mere land routes (and start with a longer range)

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Have you played Venice? I am guessing not. Just because you have a coastal bias and 2 x the routes does not mean you will get routes as soons as you get them. You will need to use land routes for a while, or you will squander your advantage. So this is needed information.

No worries, I plan to test this this weekend. I am not sure I trust your assesment on Venice getting added length from the start either. To be fair I just started looking at trade routes last night. But my Venice started with the same length that Byzantium started with.

Been responding in edits, bump

dadam88 said:

So confirmation that ROADS extend TRADE ROUTES

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They do, I've done it in every BNW game I've played so far. You can test this by counting the number of tiles it would take to move from your city to another city, if that number is over 10 and there are no roads/caravansary/other extension tech, you wont be able to create a route. One road tile = two normal tiles in caravan travel distance.

Teholb said:

They do, I've done it in every BNW game I've played so far. You can test this by counting the number of tiles it would take to move from your city to another city, if that number is over 10 and there are no roads/caravansary/other extension tech, you wont be able to create a route. One road tile = two normal tiles in caravan travel distance.

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Does this have to move towards your target, or does 3 road tiles = and extra 6 tiles from that city period?

I believe you will receive the enhanced travel distance regardless of if your road actually touches any city in particular. For example, if you place three tiles of road between two cities 16 tiles apart, I believe you would be able to run a trade route, though I'm not entirely sure on that point as I've never had occasion to do that.

I know that if I build a road out to a cluster of civs, but don't actually touch them with it, they'll still begin sending trade my way as soon as I've built it close enough and they have an opportunity to switch.


I would be seriously disappointed if road tiles had to be associated with specific cities to get the distance bonus for routes.


Edit:
Also, I've noticed that a caravan wont utilize a road you just built in their pathfinding if either a) it is less efficient for it to travel along (meaning you made too many turns), or B) the caravan route hasn't been recycled for its next 30-turns. They do not auto-update their pathing, however they will follow the exact path of the road (provided it's efficient) once their next opportunity to change the route comes up.

I do not understand why the developer simply didn’t make caravans use the same rules when utilizing roads, as other units.

On that note! I’m also disappointed that the developer didn’t get creative with train tracks. Trains were a major trade boom during the early industrial era. I think a new special trade unit should have been created just for that purpose or at the very least a bonus to trade income from cities connected by rail.

Does anyone know the exact formula on how income from trade routes depends on distance, gold production in each city, gold producing buildings in each city, and other factors?

How exactly do the Harbor and Caravanserai work for my trade routes and for other players' trade routes to my city?

VainoValkea said:

In theory, yes, but those buggers like having pikemen or something else on the way. That's why I don't bother.

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That's rarely a decisive issue. If you you just wait one ore two turns with your worker they'll always eventually move off the way!

SamBC said:

The extension usually happens more incidentally, like making it possible for your best trading city to reach cities that would otherwise only be in range of a frontier city.

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This is a solid strategy. I always take Commerce, so it's an easy decision to me, but yeah. Building a trade road, which later becomes an "I'm invading you now" road that allows massive blitzkrieg tactics, is the key to diplomatic and military domination of your local continent. I could gush on and on about how much I love BNW for this kind of upgrade to the soft power one can exert. It's so much more fun than mass-bribing CS or steamrolling the militarily lacklustre AI.

so it seems caravans consider travel distance not plot distance. and because their speed is 1 tile per turn, they ignore terrain cost as far theres no roads (they still can make 2 tiles per turn by moving along roads). so roads can increase caravans distance up to two times, given they're built towards the destination city.

i also read if cities are on the same river, trade revenue is increased by 25%

What I have been finding with +4 food domestic trade routes is that the city receiving the food is too reliant on the trade route; in other words, if you later end that +4 food route, the city will begin to starve.

Can someone confirm this for me?

So, is it true that you need to build the necessary food buildings or build farms so that the city can maintain the artificially-inflated population, should you choose to end the food trade route?

This is not the case with the production ones, which is why I like them better (especially for wonder rush).