Caravan and Caravansary

Acken said:

Both cities always get some gold. With in 99% of cases your city getting the bigger number.

< is your city
> is target city

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ok thanks. I may have been looking at it the wrong way.

beetle said:

Building EIC in your holy city also helps spread your religion, which is very nice for Tithe founder benefit.

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I had never considered this idea. By attracting the AI to your cap, you can cause them to convert themselves, or at least get a serious jump on the process. I've noticed on emperor at least, if you take the time to build the EIC, the game does respond by sending you trade routes. Don't know if there's code to encourage it, but I definitely notice an uptick in routes sent to my city. With a grand temple and or religious texts to up the pressure, you could really do some passive conversion.

"Herpes has spread to Atillas Court."

Where access for coastal routes exists, the advantages of land trade is that it can be defended from barbarians by the same army you've got defending your workers and keeping Attila at bay, and that it has a smaller startup cost.

Coastal trade costs more to protect and costs more to get back online. It also tends to cluster into highways that AI pathfinding also likes, meaning that the Ottoman navy just stole 600G whilst driving you to -20GPT. The extra 4GPT is not without risk.

Conversely, if you are on the warpath and burning everything that's not a capital, the vast open space you'll create for Barbarian spawns makes coastal trade safer (assuming you're keeping an eye on rival navies).

Browd said:

+12 pressure (doubled pressure from Grand Temple in your holy city) to a foreign city will only have a meaningful impact on the number of followers in that city if you are otherwise pressuring that city from other sources.

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You make a fine point, as I have tried (but failed) to fulfill CS conversion quests via RT buffed trade routes.

OTOH, I have had my EIC city a few times lose its religion. So even if there is no extra benefit from Tithe, I think it can be helpful, defensively, for EIC to be built in your Holy City.

Primacide said:

...if you take the time to build the EIC, the game does respond by sending you trade routes. Don't know if there's code to encourage it, but I definitely notice an uptick in routes sent to my city.

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EIC is working as designed. It&#8217;s only function is to make the city attractive to other civs. The AIs look for cities that get the most gold for their trade routes.

Also helps with spreading Religions I believe, but yeah naval trade routes are better which seems accurate if you look at history or even present day.

kaspergm said:

I stand by my point that Caravansary is waste of hammers in non-capital city

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It is a waste of hammers for any city that is not running land trade routes outside of your empire. But I would argue that even for a single use (say, to fulfill a quest from a land-locked CS) it is worth the hammers.

feldmarshall said:

I normally left it unbuilt, together with anti-spy buildings in non-capital city.

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The caravansary is unusual in that it is the only building that is useless most of the time for most of your cities. By skipping anti-spy buildings, you are missing out on the NIA NW, which is quite nice. And the AI will steal from your non-capital city.

cararvans yes if you're land locked, caravansary almost always no...

also I don't know why but for some reason the AIs tend to shy away from my EIC city instead, has anyone else experienced this as well? I didn't change my behavior and the diplo ties were still friendly.

While some may argue the worth of that "semi-useless" building, the Caravansary; Ryika's mod "Caravansary Trade Routes"; allows for HUGE, wide Pangea spanning Empires, and provides the means, in extra TRs, for the needed cash flow to maintain the required momentum for world Conquest .

TRs are an assignable asset, as monetary 'bullets', to be held in hand, or to be targeted from city-of-origin to Wherever WE choose to trade with; be it cargo ships or Caravans, to fill Our coffers as best WE can .

Having the ability to do both internal AND external TRs gives US a way to 'forward settle' Courthouses and other Buildings WE need, Barracks, Armories, etc., with CASH, FOOD, and HAMMERS; into newly acquired cities .

WE, of the Traveling Hoard, are proud sponsors of Saint Ryika's Shirne of the Hotfooted Pony Bar & Grill, which is in all of Our cities . Franchise deals ARE negotiable, and welcomed .

I suppose if you build a road connecting a border city to a neighbour's border city that in turn has a capital connection, you'll probably get more range for a Silk Road type affair? Especially with Machinery.

It's a situational pick for me. Obviously build if I have a good landlocked trading city, which is usually my capital, or if I have a very distant trading partner whom I cannot reach with any of my cities except for one (considering I play Huge maps almost all the time, this is actually a pretty common occurence for me). Otherwise, I'll just set my production to Wealth or Research if there really isn't any other use for my hammers.