Gyra Solune
King
- Joined
- Jul 1, 2013
- Messages
- 942
So yes, the new system of trade routes is very nice, but I feel there's a few aspects it's a bit lacking on at the moment, and mechanics that would make it much more fleshed out.
-The "route" part of it being emphasized, namely, the interface being less like selecting from a list and deciding what money you get, and more in terms of selecting the trade unit and setting out a course based on its range. This would allow you to actually determine where your trade route passes through, and be able to modify the pathing so that you don't have cargo ships passing through city-states or civs that might opt to declare war on you, or, optionally, determining what cities you do indeed want it to pass through for certain, which brings me to the next point...
-Profit from being in a location that trade routes pass through. I'm surprised this isn't already a factor, given that historically it's been a pretty huge deal. Cities like Venice and Constantinople have historically profited immensely from being on strategic locations that allowed for trade between larger cities. So if a trade route passes through a city, that city should specifically get a little bit of income based on the trade route's net gold for both sides, maybe 5 or 10%. So if say there's a trade route from Gao to Madrid where Songhai and Spain both make 25 GPT off it, and it passes through Ulundi, the Zulu would make maybe 3 to 5 GPT from that. It would emphasize cities being placed in strategic locations along where the game's gold is flowing through, and help to establish more meaningful and consistent trade networks.
-Multi-city trade routes. This sorta ties into the above points, but basically, if you so choose, you can use your trade unit's pathway to specifically hit a multitude of cities and divvy up the profit from each. So if you want to establish a trade route to Istanbul, and there's three high-profit German cities the route could pass through, you could specifically designate the trade route to stop and trade a share of its goods with each of those German cities. That means you'd only get 25% of the income from Istanbul itself, but could potentially get more than Istanbul could offer in total by stopping by those German cities, especially in terms of Science and religious pressure bonuses, which would be somewhat less divided up.
-Trade route embarkation. This would mean a system less based on a solid matter of Caravans and Cargo Ships, and more flexible, where you could send land trade routes through other port cities to convert that route into a sea trade route, or vice versa. This would emphasize port cities being used as centers of shipping and processing, and allow greater options based on what is surely a possibility. Even if your capital of Washington is totally landlocked, you should be able to use the profitable resources and your port city of New York to send a trade route across the sea to Paris or so, and use that to bring greater income than if you had just sent it directly from New York.
-Mixed internal and external trade routes. Basically, using the example above, you could have the option of using New York simply as an embarkation port, OR you could use the multi-city route option to do a sort of mixed trade route. You'd only end up getting half of the gold from Paris, but you could choose to give 50% of the food or production from a typical internal trade route to grow New York. This would allow the option of growing those vital port cities into high-pop and high-production cities while retaining their importance as centers of economic trade.
-Trade route profitability is increased if a road connects those cities. This seems like common sense, really. Your trade routes should be faster and more effective if they actually have a route to follow. This would encourage international connection of roadways, instead of having them largely limited to your own cities, and also make it worthwhile to potentially keep CS road connections when they ask for it, instead of immediately removing the road once you get the influence, which just seems silly.
-Railroad connections make trade routes more profitable. Seems like a no-brainer, really.
-Tourism from trade routes shouldn't be a direct 25% modifier, but rather, be based on the tourism and culture of the cities it's between. A little trade route between Pyongyang and Yakutsk should not mean that the tourism of Seoul is flooding the people of Moscow. This just seems like common sense.
-Speaking of which, railroad connections should have an amplified effect on that very tourism bonus along a trade route. Really, railroads need to be a bigger deal. Historically they were HUGE, like, responsible for a lot of advanced processes, but all they do in-game is purely industrial applications, completely ignoring the high level of travel to and from many places. Hell, the Hotel should be in the Railroad tech as it practically states in the civilopedia itself. Really, just, railroad connections should make those trade routes super profitable with increased science, food/production, religious pressure, tourism, I guess maybe even Culture as Morocco, yes.
-Number of cities has an impact on trade routes, without some sort of total hard cap on trade networks regardless of if you have 4 cities or 40. I've gone the full way and suggested a system where assigning trade routes has a system more like Great Works, where Harbors and Caravansaries have Trade Route slots, and Petra/the Colossus/Commerce finisher/Exploration finishers add to those slots, and individual cities can only base so many trade routes out of them, but you can actually expand your trade network by founding more cities. But in lieu of that, even something as simple as having 1 additional global trade route for each city owned, and those tech-associated trade routes being changed to make those trade routes have more range and profitability would be nice. It just completely baffles me that you can have 50 cities covering every square inch of a continent, and your trade network is smaller than a tiny 1-city civ because they built the Colossus and Petra early on. The thing is, let's be honest, having a massive empire is worthless in this game right now. Owning an entire continent is likely to severely cripple your capacity for growth and technological progress. But having trade routes more dependent on number of cites would be the very solution for this. It would be something you could take action to do. Passive modifiers making wide empires more powerful isn't the solution, because passive modifiers are boring. The trade route system allows for you to take active modifiers on the growth and prosperity of your empire. This way, it's less "You cannot found 50 cities" or "Sure, you can found 50 cities", but more "If you are smart with your trade network and settle a strategically useful bit of land, a 50th city will be both possible and profitable". As it stands, a city-state is likely to be dozens of times richer than a civilization that covers an entire continent, and that seems just totally backwards. Would that make wide empires too good? ...Yes, if you're willing to put the work in, and that's entirely the point. That's the 2nd X in 4X: expand. There should be viable profits from expanding, but right now cities are practically a liability if you have too much, and you have no option to make them worthwhile. This is that option. A well-planned trade network, especially with all these aforementioned expansions in place, should have the capacity to make a 50-city massive empire into an immensely powerful nation, like it has since basically the dawn of mankind.
-Cargo ships should have little camel logos on their sides because yesssssss
-The "route" part of it being emphasized, namely, the interface being less like selecting from a list and deciding what money you get, and more in terms of selecting the trade unit and setting out a course based on its range. This would allow you to actually determine where your trade route passes through, and be able to modify the pathing so that you don't have cargo ships passing through city-states or civs that might opt to declare war on you, or, optionally, determining what cities you do indeed want it to pass through for certain, which brings me to the next point...
-Profit from being in a location that trade routes pass through. I'm surprised this isn't already a factor, given that historically it's been a pretty huge deal. Cities like Venice and Constantinople have historically profited immensely from being on strategic locations that allowed for trade between larger cities. So if a trade route passes through a city, that city should specifically get a little bit of income based on the trade route's net gold for both sides, maybe 5 or 10%. So if say there's a trade route from Gao to Madrid where Songhai and Spain both make 25 GPT off it, and it passes through Ulundi, the Zulu would make maybe 3 to 5 GPT from that. It would emphasize cities being placed in strategic locations along where the game's gold is flowing through, and help to establish more meaningful and consistent trade networks.
-Multi-city trade routes. This sorta ties into the above points, but basically, if you so choose, you can use your trade unit's pathway to specifically hit a multitude of cities and divvy up the profit from each. So if you want to establish a trade route to Istanbul, and there's three high-profit German cities the route could pass through, you could specifically designate the trade route to stop and trade a share of its goods with each of those German cities. That means you'd only get 25% of the income from Istanbul itself, but could potentially get more than Istanbul could offer in total by stopping by those German cities, especially in terms of Science and religious pressure bonuses, which would be somewhat less divided up.
-Trade route embarkation. This would mean a system less based on a solid matter of Caravans and Cargo Ships, and more flexible, where you could send land trade routes through other port cities to convert that route into a sea trade route, or vice versa. This would emphasize port cities being used as centers of shipping and processing, and allow greater options based on what is surely a possibility. Even if your capital of Washington is totally landlocked, you should be able to use the profitable resources and your port city of New York to send a trade route across the sea to Paris or so, and use that to bring greater income than if you had just sent it directly from New York.
-Mixed internal and external trade routes. Basically, using the example above, you could have the option of using New York simply as an embarkation port, OR you could use the multi-city route option to do a sort of mixed trade route. You'd only end up getting half of the gold from Paris, but you could choose to give 50% of the food or production from a typical internal trade route to grow New York. This would allow the option of growing those vital port cities into high-pop and high-production cities while retaining their importance as centers of economic trade.
-Trade route profitability is increased if a road connects those cities. This seems like common sense, really. Your trade routes should be faster and more effective if they actually have a route to follow. This would encourage international connection of roadways, instead of having them largely limited to your own cities, and also make it worthwhile to potentially keep CS road connections when they ask for it, instead of immediately removing the road once you get the influence, which just seems silly.
-Railroad connections make trade routes more profitable. Seems like a no-brainer, really.
-Tourism from trade routes shouldn't be a direct 25% modifier, but rather, be based on the tourism and culture of the cities it's between. A little trade route between Pyongyang and Yakutsk should not mean that the tourism of Seoul is flooding the people of Moscow. This just seems like common sense.
-Speaking of which, railroad connections should have an amplified effect on that very tourism bonus along a trade route. Really, railroads need to be a bigger deal. Historically they were HUGE, like, responsible for a lot of advanced processes, but all they do in-game is purely industrial applications, completely ignoring the high level of travel to and from many places. Hell, the Hotel should be in the Railroad tech as it practically states in the civilopedia itself. Really, just, railroad connections should make those trade routes super profitable with increased science, food/production, religious pressure, tourism, I guess maybe even Culture as Morocco, yes.
-Number of cities has an impact on trade routes, without some sort of total hard cap on trade networks regardless of if you have 4 cities or 40. I've gone the full way and suggested a system where assigning trade routes has a system more like Great Works, where Harbors and Caravansaries have Trade Route slots, and Petra/the Colossus/Commerce finisher/Exploration finishers add to those slots, and individual cities can only base so many trade routes out of them, but you can actually expand your trade network by founding more cities. But in lieu of that, even something as simple as having 1 additional global trade route for each city owned, and those tech-associated trade routes being changed to make those trade routes have more range and profitability would be nice. It just completely baffles me that you can have 50 cities covering every square inch of a continent, and your trade network is smaller than a tiny 1-city civ because they built the Colossus and Petra early on. The thing is, let's be honest, having a massive empire is worthless in this game right now. Owning an entire continent is likely to severely cripple your capacity for growth and technological progress. But having trade routes more dependent on number of cites would be the very solution for this. It would be something you could take action to do. Passive modifiers making wide empires more powerful isn't the solution, because passive modifiers are boring. The trade route system allows for you to take active modifiers on the growth and prosperity of your empire. This way, it's less "You cannot found 50 cities" or "Sure, you can found 50 cities", but more "If you are smart with your trade network and settle a strategically useful bit of land, a 50th city will be both possible and profitable". As it stands, a city-state is likely to be dozens of times richer than a civilization that covers an entire continent, and that seems just totally backwards. Would that make wide empires too good? ...Yes, if you're willing to put the work in, and that's entirely the point. That's the 2nd X in 4X: expand. There should be viable profits from expanding, but right now cities are practically a liability if you have too much, and you have no option to make them worthwhile. This is that option. A well-planned trade network, especially with all these aforementioned expansions in place, should have the capacity to make a 50-city massive empire into an immensely powerful nation, like it has since basically the dawn of mankind.
-Cargo ships should have little camel logos on their sides because yesssssss
/turn and Venice 7
