CS traderoutes preferable to civ's?

As a general rule of thumb a trade route to a CS usually gives slightly lower GPT to you compared to a similar city of a major Civ. Additionally, CS trade routes never give science.

Since trade routes also give something back to the destination city, it seems to me that trading with CS is preferable to cities of major civs.

Personally I much rather get 20 GPT with a CS than 27 GPT and some science with a city of a major civ which provides my potential enemy with gold and science.

This is even more true as soon as I have a tech lead over the major civ, which causes me to give the major civ more science than I am getting in return.

Add to this the 4 IPT tenet from Freedom and it seems just more and more preferable to egotistically only trade with CS.

I sometimes even embargo myself in the world council just to deprive other major civs of opportunities to get free money through trade routes with me.

Please tell me how wrong I am and what I am missing out on.

It depends on at least three things:-

1. Difficulty level. Below Immortal, there is zero point sending a caravan to the AI over a CS, some of whom probably have quests for you to do it. Especially on Deity, though, you can get a huge science boost through an early caravan.

2. Victory condition. If you want to win by Culture, then sending a trade route to the AI is a good idea. It will increase your tourism to them. If you are warmongering, you want to send as many as possible to friendly CS instead.

3. Stage of the game. Even with the other two taken into account, you must think how trade routes best benefit you, right at that moment. For me, I follow this rough pattern:-

-Peaceful: 1st caravan & possible 2nd to the AI, thereafter to my own cities for food

-War: 1st, 2nd and maybe 3rd to the AI, thereafter to CS (maybe also keep one for food if capital doesn't have good dirt)

yeah, if your game is Immortal/Deity, the AI won't really get phased by your embargoing because they have a crapton of gold anyway

Also don't forget foreign relations. It seems like sending caravans to AIs help with diplomacy. Not sure as there is no "we share a trade route" green diplo but i often see AIs turning friendly after sending them a Caravan. It can help in different situations. It won't turn Gengis away from your cities of course so if you fear some DoW, it's safer to use internal routes than risk them being pillaged.

Trade routes definitely improve diplo because the AI is earning gold from it.

consentient said:

Trade routes definitely improve diplo because the AI is earning gold from it.

Click to expand...

But keep in mind this is marginal. e.g. If this AI already hates your guts, perhaps from having a different ideology, it won't really help and he'll just auto-pillage your trade route when he DOWs you.

cmdrcool said:

Since trade routes also give something back to the destination city, it seems to me that trading with CS is preferable to cities of major civs.

Click to expand...

Denying the AI your trade routes is self-defeating (similar to how denying lux trades is self-defeating). Assuming a sufficient difficulty level, the player (especially early in the game) needs and benefits much more from the gold and science (and lux trades) than AI does. Relative to the player, the AIs are swimming in gold/science/happiness. The trades are much more important to the player than the AI. So a self-imposed embargo against the AI has huge opportunity cost for player, but trivial (maybe non-existent) impact on the AI.

Yeah, I've seen Pocatello with six figure GPT income. Mental. Imagine how hard Deity would be if they actually spent it.

ive always done a mix. usually the first two to cap and the rest to CS/civs, mostly civs but i do like the CS quests. Cargo Ships fund pretty much everything late game for me. I usually have 7 give or take by end of my games, 2 for food and 5 for gpt. Some of those cargos are 100+gpt late game.

all my ships going for gpt still cant compete with the ai. the sell-gpt-for-lump tactic before dowing doesnt even make a dent with the gold leader.