Guarding trade caravans - weak?

Just had a situation where I'd sent my caravan to a neighbour but ran into a barb warrior. Had a spearman in the area close enough to land on the caravan and attack the barb. Didn't kill the barb but wounded it and finished turn on the caravan. Hit next turn and the caravan drives into the barb - trade route plundered.

Considering how expensive caravans are in the early game in terms of build time and avoiding -ve gpt it seems kinda weak to me that you can't defend them short of having a whole bunch of units to hand (more -ve gpt) and it only takes a barb with one hit point just to happen to survive on a tile in the caravans path for it to be destroyed.

Thoughts?

The inability to escort caravans or cargo ships is an annoying flaw in the game. Two solutions seem obvious. Either we should be allowed to assign units which will automatically guard the caravan/cargo ship for the duration of the route. Or movement of the caravan/cargo ship should come after movement of the barbarians, so we can position our military units in a way which protects the traders.

You should take the safety of the route into acount when planing a trade route, not just max yield.
I find it fun and realistic that some trade routes cant be easely defended, since many of the real world cities were founded or prospered by keeping trade routes through their lands safe.

Also in terms of imersion, trade routes dont represent one group of caravans but a steady flow of them so actualy protecting all the caravans is near to imposible.

In life caravans can have a light military suport but they cant help agains a larger group of barbarians and when other merchans hear that their colleagues left their lifes and more importantly (to the merchants) assets in some godforsacen land they'd be pretty reluctant to risk the same.

Therefore you actualy protect routes by keeping an eye on the suroundings and intercept posible threats before they come in the range to disrupt trade.

Before you can do that try to find another option.

householder said:

Or movement of the caravan/cargo ship should come after movement of the barbarians, so we can position our military units in a way which protects the traders.

Click to expand...

That's the way it works right now, your Caravans and Cargo Ships move after Barbarians, right before your turns starts. And if they move into/through Barbarian/enemy unit, whole Trade route automatically gets plundered.

Alatan said:

You should take the safety of the route into acount when planing a trade route, not just max yield.
I find it fun and realistic that some trade routes cant be easely defended, since many of the real world cities were founded or prospered by keeping trade routes through their lands safe.

Also in terms of imersion, trade routes dont represent one group of caravans but a steady flow of them so actualy protecting all the caravans is near to imposible.

In life caravans can have a light military suport but they cant help agains a larger group of barbarians and when other merchans hear that their colleagues left their lifes and more importantly (to the merchants) assets in some godforsacen land they'd be pretty reluctant to risk the same.

Therefore you actualy protect routes by keeping an eye on the suroundings and intercept posible threats before they come in the range to disrupt trade.

Before you can do that try to find another option.

Click to expand...

If the routes are representation of a steady stream though then pillage should not result in the complete loss of the unit. Maybe send it back to the origination city and a suitable amount of "cool down" time before you can send it out again

That's a tough break man. I'd be raging too. Losing an early game trade route is brutal.

I lean on horses & scouts a lot more now in BNW. If your scout can get to 3/4/5('Murica!) sight, they are phenomenal for keeping vision on the route and keeping camps from spawning nearby. Roads work in a pinch if you don't have horses, but they cost a lot more. But they also give you some measure of control for where the caravans will go, which can make protecting everything MUCH simpler.

From a balance standpoint, it may be a little too expensive in game terms to adequately protect all your trade routes, and the caravans themselves might be a little too expensive in terms of initial hammer cost, especially early game. There are a lot of trade routes to escort and unit maintenance is far too high to have 2 horses/frigates guarding each run.

Great ideas on both sides of the issue

Early game, it is really hard to protect external trade routes, and if there are any barbarians they will go for it. I've kind of started to play by the philosophy: if I send a trade route through territory that isn't visible by any major empire or city state, it's going to be pillaged. Therefore, if I want to send an external trade route, either I send a scout to make sure the route is visible (to block barbarian spawning) and all nearby barbarian are destroyed.

If you can't do that, then go internal. Internal trade routes are pretty good on their own right, and are far easier to protect.

The higher the difficulty the safer the route. On Immortal, the AI will usually have the Barbs mostly knocked down by ~T75. Any long route before that that does not have a unit on alert with line of sight will probably get nuked. Very early external TR's are a risky venture on Immortal and below, the beakers are not that great and the hammers lost on a pillaged route would have been better spent on a worker upgrading a lux for sale.

You cannot even reliably protect internal trade routes. You should be able to halt a route, leaving the unit on its present tile, at the cost of losing a turn of gold. That way your military can defend the caravan or ship until it is safe to proceed.

Or to make this even more realistic, you have to pay maintenance costs for the trade route unit even though it isn't producing cash, while halted.

Alatan said:

You should take the safety of the route into acount when planing a trade route, not just max yield.
I find it fun and realistic that some trade routes cant be easely defended, since many of the real world cities were founded or prospered by keeping trade routes through their lands safe.

Also in terms of imersion, trade routes dont represent one group of caravans but a steady flow of them so actualy protecting all the caravans is near to imposible.

In life caravans can have a light military suport but they cant help agains a larger group of barbarians and when other merchans hear that their colleagues left their lifes and more importantly (to the merchants) assets in some godforsacen land they'd be pretty reluctant to risk the same.

Therefore you actualy protect routes by keeping an eye on the suroundings and intercept posible threats before they come in the range to disrupt trade.

Before you can do that try to find another option.

Click to expand...

I agree-- it's the historical immersion that makes trade routes both fun and challenging! For instance, the Silk Road would often be inoperable for years, sometimes decades at a time, because of the constant threat of nomadic bandits in the remote deserts and mountains of Central Asia. It was only after careful planning and investment in caravanaries, forts, and military patrols/expeditions would the route thrive at any given point in history, when investors in a trade expedition would feel secure that their investment was relatively safer.

That is the point of losing a caravan route after a route plunder: if you're going to traverse through dangerous, sparsely inhabited territory, potentially filled with barbaric thieves, you assume the risk of losing your initial investment (first caravan unit), as well as having to rebuild investor confidence in the route's reliability to turn a profit (hence, the long period building second caravan unit). After a route plunder, traders are naturally going to be skiddish about sending out their camels again right away!

It's the result of trade routes that I now use forts not only to defend borders but also to protect trade routes if I have a lengthy distance between destinations. Once, when playing China, I had a few trade routes that went through twenty+ tiles of deserts and narrow mountain passes, and surrounded by belligerant neighbors. It was pretty awesome to build up a network of forts and citadels to protect the (very profitable) routes, just like the Silk Road. Fun, fun.

Maybe rebuilding caravans and cargo ships should be cheaper? It is awfully frustrating to have to build another from scratch after losing it in an annoying way.

That's one good reason to stay with internal routes(food) in the beginning. It's also stronger excepted for deity. But a deity the AI will clean barbs for you too.

if you dont like losing caravans, dont build them, or guard better
i think current system is good as it is