Anyone else find automated trade routes unnecessary?

benfp · Oct 27, 2008

Red Adept said:
not to turn this into a griping session about automated trade routes, but my biggest issue with is that although I have my import colonies set to a max 200 (keep 200) for import/export, it will dump the entire wagon load of the good into the city causing overages. Of course, the wagon's left by then, so I can't re-load it to stop the spillage.

You're right. Again, Automated trading is an inefficient algorithm but a necessary evil provided you have a 10+ cities empire and you don't wanna spend 1 minute per city per turn. If you want to work around this problem, do the following:
If a city has a standard warehouse, do not set it to import anything automatically.
If a city has a bigger warehouse (200 normal, 600 marathon), set it to import/export at 100 (on normal, 300 on marathon).
If a city has the biggest warehouse possible (300 normal, 900 marathon):
- If you use Dale PatchMod which counts Warehouse trading as Trading (and thereby affects Europe prices), set it at import/export at 200/600 resp.
- If you use Civ4 Col w/out Dale PatchMod, just set it at import.

Red Adept · Oct 27, 2008

benfp said:
You're right. Again, Automated trading is an inefficient algorithm but a necessary evil provided you have a 10+ cities empire and you don't wanna spend 1 minute per city per turn. If you want to work around this problem, do the following:
If a city has a standard warehouse, do not set it to import anything automatically.
If a city has a bigger warehouse (200 normal, 600 marathon), set it to import/export at 100 (on normal, 300 on marathon).
If a city has the biggest warehouse possible (300 normal, 900 marathon):
- If you use Dale PatchMod which counts Warehouse trading as Trading (and thereby affects Europe prices), set it at import/export at 200/600 resp.
- If you use Civ4 Col w/out Dale PatchMod, just set it at import.

I like sprawl, so I tend to have 10+ cities. I only keep 2-3 production cities, and at full burn, they will churn out 45 cigars/coats/textiles per turn and so keeping it at the 100 (haven't gone up to marathon yet) means they'll twiddle their thumbs while waiting, leading to a different type of micro-managing! I've tried lowering it down to 150, but that still means they're dumping 200 furs into the city if I have 146 of them and the wagon is full!

Such is the life in CivLand.

aelf · Oct 27, 2008

Red Adept said:
I like sprawl, so I tend to have 10+ cities. I only keep 2-3 production cities, and at full burn, they will churn out 45 cigars/coats/textiles per turn and so keeping it at the 100 (haven't gone up to marathon yet) means they'll twiddle their thumbs while waiting, leading to a different type of micro-managing! I've tried lowering it down to 150, but that still means they're dumping 200 furs into the city if I have 146 of them and the wagon is full!

Well, that is the price you pay for sprawl, which is unnecessary even for a non-gamey style of play.

So there really isn't a way around the inflexibility of trade routes. Your wagons are likely to be either not carrying the full capacity in each trip or are sitting around waiting to be loaded up with the specific goods they are meant to transport.

In Civ4, letting laziness take over micro is near-heresy :mischief:

I suspect if Colonization develops a base in any way like that of Civ4, we would see a trend of disavowing automated trade routes.

Some people have given examples of high-yield production that seems to cover the potential inefficiency of trade routes. Sure, I think it is possible. But in a typical game, it should still be a relative rarity unless, again, you are going for sprawl, where you have a number of high-yield production lines.

Dom Pedro II · Oct 27, 2008

benfp said:
There should another button next to the button you're describing which won't automate trade but which will let you choose between available trade routes (the ones given your exports and imports parameters in your various cities). This interface sucks tho, because it's not resizable hence in languages w/ long word (like French where Ore is "minerai de fer") you won't be able to read the actual Trade route Destination most often. Also, CIV4 creates N*M trade routes based on the N imports and M exports which makes it very very long to read...

Jeckel's new Trade Routes Interface mod makes things a bit better. Additionally, I added goods groups to my mod, so all the trade routes are organized first by good groups (i.e. Raw Materials, Processed Goods, Construction Materials, etc.) and then by good within those categories. The categories are moddable as well, so if you think my grouping of the goods sucks, you can simply change it.

player1 fanatic · Oct 28, 2008

benfp said:
I agree. The more cities you get, the worse the algorithm get. There is no centralized thinking in this algorithm. I played a game where I ended founding a bit more than 100 colonies and it was a complete disaster: Most of the wagons ended empty or circling around towns idling.

Still, it does its job great, if having 3-5 cities per diffierent islands/continents. Also, it's really a must to have at least 1 free wagon train per land, in cases you need to do something manually (transport tools/muskets, solve critical overflow, etc...)

Imagawa99 · Oct 28, 2008

aelf said:
If you move a wagon-load of tobacco to the cigar factory each time, you need to make way fewer trips.

yes thats true but if you build a wagon and let the game do it for you it will make a trip every turn and you dont ever have to think about it again
Now i think this is very dependant on what game speed you play on, personally i play marathon because i think the others are too fast and marathon seems to be closest to the pace of the original, but it takes 1 carpenter in a lumber mill (from memory) 8 turns to make a wagon, 2 carpenters 5 turns and 3 carpenters 3 turns, not exactly a massive investment is it? as far as efficiency goes, yes its awful but consider that by mid game you usually have so much of every basic good its more about moving it where you want it quickly than about accounting for every single unit. If your getting over-spill its not really a huge deal because its just being converted into income anyway once you have your warehouse expansion up.

Could you be super efficient by manually making every single movement of your wagons by hand? yes probably, but do you really want to? i feel the answer has to be "no not really".

UWHabs · Oct 28, 2008

Imagawa99 said:
yes thats true but if you build a wagon and let the game do it for you it will make a trip every turn and you dont ever have to think about it again
Now i think this is very dependant on what game speed you play on, personally i play marathon because i think the others are too fast and marathon seems to be closest to the pace of the original, but it takes 1 carpenter in a lumber mill (from memory) 8 turns to make a wagon, 2 carpenters 5 turns and 3 carpenters 3 turns, not exactly a massive investment is it? as far as efficiency goes, yes its awful but consider that by mid game you usually have so much of every basic good its more about moving it where you want it quickly than about accounting for every single unit. If your getting over-spill its not really a huge deal because its just being converted into income anyway once you have your warehouse expansion up.

Could you be super efficient by manually making every single movement of your wagons by hand? yes probably, but do you really want to? i feel the answer has to be "no not really".

Especially if you're talking about good like Cotton or Tobacco. Most of it in my game later on got sold off by the warehouse expansion, so I ended up getting 50%, minus my 40 or so percent tax rate, of a good at about 3 or 4. So, you spoil 5 cotton by having automatic trade routes. That's a waste of about 6 gold. Sure, multiply by a few resources, and you may lose 10 gold a turn, but at most you'll run this inefficiency for like 50-100 turns, and it's not that big of a deal. If you manage it right (knowing which towns make what, and properly accounting for excess, as well as having a couple wagons on standby to adjust for everything), it's not too complicated, and sure saves time loading and moving all your wagons up individually (never mind the fact that if I do everything manually, I always have a couple towns which I forget about).

DonaldAtHome · Oct 28, 2008

Well don't I feel sheepish. When you have a ship or wagon selected there is a trade button that looks the same as the "automate worker" button. When I looked at that button my brain never interpreted it to mean "automate DOCK worker", but that is what it turns out to be. THAT makes trade easier.

Anyone else find automated trade routes unnecessary?

benfp

Chieftain

Red Adept

Warlord

aelf

Ashen One

Dom Pedro II

Modder For Life

player1 fanatic

Fanatic

Imagawa99

Chieftain

UWHabs

Deity

DonaldAtHome

Chieftain

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