Caravans - from where to where and how?

So I know Science is King. Therefore my focus is on Growth most of the time. But very often I end up in Situations where I have to chose between something like 6 turn Growth, 20 turn Caravan Build time and 12 turn growth, 12 turn Caravan Build time. Depending on what tiles I work. Happens both in Capital and other Cities. (same dilemma while building workers, granary or basically anything)

1. How the hell do I chose ?? Is there a rule of thumb ore something ??? How do you decide what is better ??

2. I know food Caravans are good. Do I send all of them to the capital and leave 2nd, 3rd City small or do I send one to each City ??

3. If I can utilize Cargo Ships I do so, but more often than not one gets razed by Pirates. To prevent that I need a trireme or sometimes even two... But then if I build one preemtive and no costal barb camps are there, I wasted like 7-8 turns building a trireme. How do you handle this problem ??

1. If your civ has no UA or UB that enhances trade routes, I believe that balance is the way to go.

2. Usually I send one food trade route to capital, one food or production to a important city that is facing some difficulty, one to CSs with trade route quest and the rest to cities in other civs that lead the gold income list for trade route (see the trade routes available before sending the caravan/cargo ship).

3. Well, trade route range isn't so extensive at the early eras, so you can avoid barbarian camps on the coast by sending land units to destroy them. This can even help with CSs quests. But if the barbarian camp is in a near island, maybe the trireme is the solution. But it won't be a waste, because you can upgrade it later.

1: It's up to you, personally I go for the routes with the most gold and city that won't be plundered. If religion is really important to the game, I'll keep religious pressure in mind, and make sure to be sending the pressure to the most important places. Keep in mind that some Civ's have unique abilities that incentive you to change your strategy up.

2: I usually don't send them to the capital. My capital is usually alright with food and population, and I like to balance my cities out. If I send food out, I send it out so that a given city won't have an absurd unrealistic wait time for the next citizen.

3: This kind of goes back to #1. What makes it a challenge and a gamble is that cargo ship route with be much more valuable than a caravan route, ceteris paribus, but you have a lot less control over what happens on the high seas, and run the risk of never seeing the ships again. It seems like the pirates are much harder to control than barbarian encampments. Remember, during times of war, enemies are pretty good about hunting down and capturing trade routes.

Think of your trade routes like private industry. As opposed to what the government has control over, you can't really control what happens with private industry, and once you start a route they could be sailing into harm's way and not even care.

Internal caravans: Only build if your capital is inland or else you have insufficient coastal cities to provide enough cargo ships to your capital.

External caravans: Only build if you have no coastal cities OR your biggest coastal city is either very undeveloped (perhaps a new conquest) or very small (perhaps just founded)

The reason is that internal cargo ships provide 2X the food or hammers as caravans and external cargo ships provide 2X the gold that the same route on a caravan would even when both cities are on the same landmass.

On Immortal and below, I find my victory is sped up the most if capital is coastal + I have 3 other coastal cities and my first 3 cargo ships provide food to my capital (at least initially, some grassland bias starts or Petra in the capital starts provide so much food that later on you actually need a hammer cargo ship more than food) and the other 5 are external cargo ships.

Making your capital the biggest by a large margin will make it easier to hand build wonders in the Rean era & later. In addition, for Tradition players, there is half the pop based unhappiness for the capital + extra gold for the capital. For wide players, it's still advantageous for your capital to be much bigger since it's share of city connection income is for every one of your city connections. I don't know the exact number of cities, but after you reach that number of cities, 1 pop growth in the capital boosts gold from city connections more than 1 pop growth in a non capital does.

I actually make Internal food cargo ship a higher priority than work boats going to fish.
External ones though are after the city you intend to run them from has a Harbor. (Gold value is low before then and in addition, you need to clear the barbs from your coast)

For Deity level, it's thought the first route is best off as a science one via any means, and its simply for the Deity level early science boost.

I'm seeing a religious reference, just build the Grand Temple to double your religious pressure from your holy city and choose RT and your own cities will follow your religion without help. Add an Inquisitor or two after you enhance simply to prevent AI's Great Prophets from replacing yours. (Since the AI often tries to start with your capital, they kill the passive sources.)

I try to build caravans/cargos as soon as there are available.
The first two (AH and Sailing) after settlers in my caps. I send them to new cities to make them growth faster, then I reverse them to my capital.
Third (compass or engineering) to my fourth. Next fourth and fifth (banking) to second and third city.
If I have Petra or Colossus, there are for internal trade route. So next one are for capital or cities with observatories. Sometimes for cultural or maritime CS quests.

Exception is for Diety. Early beakers are nice and it ensure me DoF. So, if map tells me to do it, I send caravans to AI.

If I need to protect my cargo, I spend hammers or gold in trireme to secure internal cargo ships.There are my priority, except if I need units (specially archers). After granary, library and shrine you don't really need nothing except science buildings (sometimes coliseums) and units. So caravans and cargo is as important for me as a granary or library.

My basic build queue in my capital is : scout, scout, shrine, worker/granary, caravan, caravan.
If for some reasons, I didn't build caravans or cargo in my capital. In first satellites it's grany, library, archer, caravan, caravan, even if it's 10-12 turns and delay its universities.

If you're not going to an early domination your early growth is your nice ending beakers per turn.

Memoryjar said:

Exception is for Diety. Early beakers are nice and it ensure me DoF. So, if map tells me to do it, I send caravans to AI.

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Actually, the human owned trade route with an AI is NOT a significant factor in either the AIs DOF or DOW decision. If anything, it loves to auto pillage the puny human's trade routes by DOWing them. What is the factor is that the AI generally avoids having trade routes that it originated be auto cut and so will relocate them away from you when stop liking you as soon as they come due.

Going Tradition most the time, I also send a cargo/caravan to my capital from every city I have, followed by sending at least one to my satellite cities. As mentioned by joncnunn, the capital has less unhappiness from a larger population, and gains gold for your population. This allows for more population with your happiness constraints. It also makes your capital capable of building wonders, buildings and more cargo ships and caravans quicker. On top of that, your capital usually has the NC, which benefits from a higher population.

This is something I plan for when building my second/third cities. Generally I get my second city up around the time I get HBR tech, if I can I rush buy Granary in the second city and start a caravan in the Capital's build queue. This is assuming I have a decent start and that I haven't had to rush Archers for an early DoW.

EDIT: It's ok to use caravans at first and then later disband it and upgrade it to a cargo ship if you need to.

Yeah barbs are a problem on the high sea's. I'm playing a scrambled maps "Small Continents plus" - actually a very interesting map so I'm glad I bought the new dlc. Anyway there is a bit of a archipalaego to my West (my capital is on the Coast). Barb camps gradually spawned all over it an they took control of the water ways so many of my cargo ships had to sit in the capital.
Originally I could control the seas with 1 or 2 triremes but it got to a point where it became ridiculous - One turn I had 3 barb galleys enter my waters. I couldn't risk losing the trade routes England had sent to me or sending my own off to get plundered.
I had to build a navy of about 5 triremes, comp bowmen and scouts to clear the islands which turned out harder than I thought as barb galleas's and caravels started spawning every few turns.
So short of the story is that cargo ships are better but they come at the cost of needing to control the seas so you need to get a trireme or two to prevent barbs from getting to your trade routes.


If your sending caravans to other Civs try to have a city with access to a good number of unique luxury and strategic resources that your trading partner does not have. And try to get a marketplace and Caravansary if you can. A marketplace and river access will help to encourage other Civs to send their caravans to your city and bring you extra gold and science. If you mouse over the trade route icon on the top of the ui you will see information about any trade routes the AIs have established with you.

Personally I hate the internal route over land, but I understand why people use it. 4 food or production feels very lame to me compared to sea routes. They really should have added a bonus to internal routes for using rivers or at least if the route is travelling downstream on the river (after all external land routes get +25% on a river). Think about it, before the advent of steam engines rivers were the most efficient means of moving goods, and in many cases they still are.
Even the Romans were able to float a giant Egyptian Obelisk down the river Nile to the Port at Alexandria to be shipped to the Hippodrome at Constantinople.
My point is rivers should count for something in internal trade routes even if it is just in the direction towards the sea.

You can KO Naval Barbs with your Ranged if you are patient..Though I would not run Cargo Ships at all until you lull them in. They tend to run from a City's Ranged, but not from an Archers... At least my experience... It requires an archer to KO them. Eventually the AI kills all Barb Ships.

I recently played a game both as Babylon and Germany. Both I ran nothing but land based Caravan, first game I became #1 in Science from the Population/Tradition/RA % increase by Rationalism Social Policy and Order GS increase... Second I was a little tired and lazy in my development with Babylon which is a better Civ. Especially on Deity and eventually Germany built a Rocket and well is on her way to Space 3 or 4 ahead of everyone else and I am just about to enter the Information Age.

Trade Routes are opportunistic, if you need the happiness/science/hammers/food for a situation, you need it. Though generally when I am really doing well I am running only Food at first and Hammers perhaps to a Science city...so I can pump out Monster Science as early as possible... Also the gold you get from Trade is nice early, really nice, you can build some buildings and get out a library or two then Oxford early, forgo early development possibly...if your long plan is high pop...

Luven said:

So I know Science is King. Therefore my focus is on Growth most of the time. But very often I end up in Situations where I have to chose between something like 6 turn Growth, 20 turn Caravan Build time and 12 turn growth, 12 turn Caravan Build time. Depending on what tiles I work. Happens both in Capital and other Cities. (same dilemma while building workers, granary or basically anything)

1. How the hell do I chose ?? Is there a rule of thumb ore something ??? How do you decide what is better ??

2. I know food Caravans are good. Do I send all of them to the capital and leave 2nd, 3rd City small or do I send one to each City ??

3. If I can utilize Cargo Ships I do so, but more often than not one gets razed by Pirates. To prevent that I need a trireme or sometimes even two... But then if I build one preemtive and no costal barb camps are there, I wasted like 7-8 turns building a trireme. How do you handle this problem ??

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1. Balance your production. Stay at a growth you feel is reasonable (usually below 10turns) and/or a reasonable production time.

2. Capital and high production/low food satelites are the priority. Also if you make late cities for them to catch up.

3. Make triremes. It shouldn't take long for a capital to make a trireme. It also doesn't cost a lot of money.