Simplify Trade Route Micro

pirsq

Chieftain
Joined
Apr 6, 2011
Messages
88
Trade routes are an awesome new addition to the game. Unfortunately, the interface doesn't seem to be ideal.

When you get your first trade route, it's awesome. Click to rebase, click to start trading, and bam, your income just went up. Great.

Once you start having a few of them, it gets a bit confusing. Which trade routes are coming out of this city again? And how about my other cities? Which ones did I build caravansaries in? Do I need to save this caravan since I'm about to plop down a new city in 10 turns and I want to supply it with food?

The problem isn't that the player has to make these decisions - obviously, that's the whole point of a strategy game. The problem is that the player is forced to remake the same decisions every few turns, when most of the time the choice is going to be "keep doing the same thing".

Towards the end of the game, it gets much worse. You have many more trade routes, and a HUGE list of cities to pick from that don't seem to be sorted in any way. Half the time you're just scrolling around trying to find the one that says "previous route".

Suggestions:
  1. At the very least, sort the list of cities. Sort by gold, sort by name, sort by civ, anything would be good. Better yet, have multiple sorting options.
  2. Trade routes should keep going until broken or cancelled by the player. Cancellation shouldn't be immediate, but takes effect the next time the caravan reaches its home city. This makes a lot more sense than "caravan reporting, I've just made 4 trips back and forth to the same city, but now I'm awaiting orders again because it seems like it's been a while and I want you to click on me again".
 
You can sort trade routes by cities or gold input/output/production/science/pressure/food in the trade routes tab.

Also, them taking 30 turns to finish stops you having to check every if another route comes up making more money than the ones you have but is regular enough for you to change them when you want.
 
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