Early Trade Routes

adwcta · Jul 9, 2013

oopsy poopsy said:
You can do this? What are the limits and costs? You don't know how long I have wanted the ability to move some food around. Agrarian cities fueling industrial powerhouses with pop should be an essential game mechanic of Civ IMO. I'd like to be able to manage pop a bit too (move it around, with limitations of course), but food is basically the same thing, just a bit more mming.

There are no limits (well, distance, but unless you're settling in far places, shouldn't be an issue for your first expansion).

The cost is high. It's more hammers than building a worker, so it'll hurt your ability to build other early game stuff like wonders. The food is free, it's not lost in the capital. Frankly, none of the early trade route bonuses are actually worth the production cost of the caravan. Early caravan would be very situational.

KrikkitTwo · Jul 9, 2013

oopsy poopsy said:
Thanks.

Is it 3 max or is there a different limit? If limited, does it scale with age/tech? You can also build more 'vans than routes though right? So you're not foregoing a trade route to use it for food shipping?

updated
Cost includes 1 route... so that extra food costs gold
and it is limited based on era

chazzycat · Jul 9, 2013

KrikkitTwo said:
*must be built in 2nd city if you want to boost the capital.

Are you sure about that? I noticed there is a "relocate" command (or something like that, I forget the actual name) that lets you choose a new host city for trade ships. So you can crank them all out from your capital, I think.

MrL567 · Jul 9, 2013

The canvarsary makes trade routes on land worth more and go farther, once you get those up, then you start actually getting a bit of gold.

KrikkitTwo · Jul 9, 2013

chazzycat said:
Are you sure about that? I noticed there is a "relocate" command (or something like that, I forget the actual name) that lets you choose a new host city for trade ships. So you can crank them all out from your capital, I think.

The caravan can be built anywhere... the Granary must be built in the second city if you want to boost the capital.

MonorailCat · Jul 9, 2013

Can you seend multiple Traderoutes to the same City? So you can have +6 Food with two traderoutes?

KrikkitTwo · Jul 9, 2013

MonorailCat said:
Can you seend multiple Traderoutes to the same City? So you can have +6 Food with two traderoutes?

Yup..(although they would need to be from 2 separate cities)

So if you have 2 cities, you can only have 1 trade route
A<->B choose whichever way

if you have 3 cities you can have 3
A<->B
B<->C
A<->C

(so you could pump a city up +6)

damnyankees · Jul 9, 2013

MonorailCat said:
Can you seend multiple Traderoutes to the same City? So you can have +6 Food with two traderoutes?

Yes. The only limitation there is you can't send multiple trade routes from the same city to another same city. So if you have 3 cities, A, B and C, both A and B can both send C food, A can send food to B and C, but A can't send two trade routes to C.

chazzycat · Jul 9, 2013

KrikkitTwo said:
The caravan can be built anywhere... the Granary must be built in the second city if you want to boost the capital.

gotcha...thanks for clarifying

MonorailCat · Jul 9, 2013

Sounds good if, for example, you have to built a city bordering a warmongering Civ up quickly. Send in a food and hammer caravan ..
I wonder if the AI can use that in a way that makes sense. Probably not ;>

Gali · Jul 9, 2013

Speaking of barb relevance. They now have horsemen, swordsman, handaxe etc. Horsemen barbs are really annoying in a good way. One of the most rage inducing moments so far is when a random barb pike jumped into the water and pillaged a trade route. Another time I had a small inland sea where all my trade routes all. It was almost completely settled and had Ai navy in it, still got a random barb trireme pillage. never trust the ai to patrol for you.

You can't leave open space unpatrolled if you want to run trade routes anywhere near it.

RealHuhn · Jul 9, 2013

MonorailCat said:
Sounds good if, for example, you have to built a city bordering a warmongering Civ up quickly. Send in a food and hammer caravan ..
I wonder if the AI can use that in a way that makes sense. Probably not ;>

From what I've seen so far, trade routes last for 30 turns and can't be interrupted though.

So you can't send some food for a few turns and then go back to a gold route.

Although I think many people underestimate the power of these food routes. The Hanging gardens wonder gives what? +5 food? Early trade routes are almost as good and even better in later eras.

Yig · Jul 9, 2013

Ogrelord said:
Barbs also, sent their units if their camps are empty. So if you clear a defending barb unit with an archer, and there is a horseman barb near by... that horseman will either go in and defend the camp if you have a another nearby unit. Or will take out the archer if it can kill it in one shot.

If this is true then its a indirect buff to Germany. This would allow them to have more choice over what units they want to try and take from the barbs by luring specific ones back into their camps.

Lyoncet · Jul 9, 2013

RealHuhn said:
From what I've seen so far, trade routes last for 30 turns and can't be interrupted though.

So you can't send some food for a few turns and then go back to a gold route.

I seem to recall having heard a developer or reviewer saying you can prematurely cancel trade routes. But I can't provide a source on that. Can anyone confirm/deny?

SamBC · Jul 9, 2013

Lyoncet said:
I seem to recall having heard a developer or reviewer saying you can prematurely cancel trade routes. But I can't provide a source on that. Can anyone confirm/deny?

A previewer, I think. It's not true. You can't cancel at will.

SammyKhalifa · Jul 9, 2013

Maybe someone who has actually played the game (unlike me) can better explain this to me, because I'm still having problems imagining it. Do you have to have a military guy on every space on the route to fully protect it? I guess I was assuming you could automate escorts, which clearly isn't the case.

ahawk · Jul 9, 2013

Personally, early sea trade routes are way, way better than land ones. They move faster, generate more gold, and all you really need is a ship or two to scout out any coastal barb encampments for your land units to clear. With land trade routes, the added time of building a caravansary somewhat offsets the ability to not need naval units to cover the route.

chazzycat · Jul 9, 2013

SammyKhalifa said:
Maybe someone who has actually played the game (unlike me) can better explain this to me, because I'm still having problems imagining it. Do you have to have a military guy on every space on the route to fully protect it? I guess I was assuming you could automate escorts, which clearly isn't the case.

No, I don't think having a military unit on every space would be cost effective, and isn't necessary. Basically you have to proactively clear barb camps, and watch the shallow water approaches.

Calouste · Jul 9, 2013

In the early stages, the bulk of the trade route gold is based on resource diversity. So it's better to get your luxuries and strategic resources online first (and hope that the AI does the same in the mean time). The best way to address the barbarian threat is to actively clear out encampments, and the Honor opener is very useful there. But once you get that sorted, a sea trade route is about as strong as a wonder. I was playing with Venice and I was raking in 100+ :c5gold:

per turn in the Middle Ages. And with Venice you want the Colossus, the Venice UA doubles the trade route from the Colossus as well.

_hero_ · Jul 9, 2013

This indirectly makes honor a better policy. Seeing when barb camps spawn and going after them is going to make it FAR easier to keep your trade routes alive.

Early Trade Routes

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Immortal

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Warlord

Immortal

Chieftain

Immortal

Warlord

Deity

Chieftain

Prince

Emperor

Chieftain

Emperor

Emperor

Deity

King

Deity

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