How do you use trade routes?

How do you use trade routes?

  • Find the highest gold return, rinse and repeat!

    Votes: 46 35.1%

  • I only trade with City-States

    Votes: 1 0.8%

  • Gold is transitory! Take my religious icons and live forever!

    Votes: 2 1.5%

  • I mostly use internal trade routes.

    Votes: 11 8.4%

  • I opt for a hybrid approach.

    Votes: 70 53.4%

  • Trade is for the weak!

    Votes: 1 0.8%
  • Total voters
    131
D

Dentalfury

Warlord
Joined
Feb 7, 2011
Messages
219
Location
Chicago
Hey All!
I was kinda curious about how most people implement their trade routes. By this I mean do you...

Use them exclusively to trade with other Civ's for the most gold?

Use them for CS's to screw over Civ's and gain influence?

Use them to spread religion over long distances?

Or use them to amp up your food/production instead?

I thought that most people would just find the highest gold return and go from there but I read a few posts on the forums here that surprised me so I thought i'd take a poll to gauge how people typically make use of them.
 
I prefer to play with 4 very high pop cities so I use a few to spam food or hammers between cities and the rest for gold.

IMHO you need both internal growth supoprt and external gold generation.
 
I use them for food as much as I can. Production if I'm rushing a wonder or if there's an international project, or a really high food but low hammer city. I only go to other civs if I feel the need for extra money or if I'm going for a cultural victory and my tourism is at a meaningful level to bother with a trade route modifier against high culture civs. Spreading religion is a secondary concern for me, really, and never the primary reason why I'd instigate a trade route. If the opportunity arises I'll happily make a trade route with a CS with a quest, but that's only if it's a CS I want and I don't need the trade route in my actual cities.
 
If I have spare trade routes, highest gold is usually my pick, but to be honest you should always adopt a hybrid approach.

Founded new cities? Get them up to strength with food routes.
International Project or contested Wonder? Ship a production route.
Got the Level 3 Freedom Tenet for City State influence? Roll out the merchant fleet and laugh your way to the top of the
UN.
 
Uberfrog said:
If I have spare trade routes, highest gold is usually my pick, but to be honest you should always adopt a hybrid approach.

Founded new cities? Get them up to strength with food routes.
International Project or contested Wonder? Ship a production route.
Got the Level 3 Freedom Tenet for City State influence? Roll out the merchant fleet and laugh your way to the top of the
UN.
Click to expand...

The hybrid approach is typically what I shoot for. I only trade with CS's if they have a quest, and I only use food routes for new colonies to catch them up with the rest of my empire. I almost never use production routes though.

I have read on here that some people also prefer, once you have at least 2 routes, to have 1 dedicated to food for your capital for the rest of the game. Poor man's Hanging Garden?

Also, @mrwho, I totally forgot about the tourism implications of trade routes and the modifiers it has on other Civ's. In fact most of the BNW games i've won so far have been via culture and i've always made sure to have at least 1 trade route to all other Civ's to maximize this.
 
All internal (food) routes at the start of the game, then I switch to external routes to get my tourism up (and generate gold for buying city states) sometime later in the medieval or renaissance eras.
 
Usually most of my trade routes are aimed at gold generation, but I try to stagger them so that I'm never far away from one or two expiring - that way I can easily use it to divert food or production to a city if I need to, or connect to a City-State for a quest. To be honest, I never think about religious spread, but early game I might prioritise trading with people who I can get a trickle back of science from.
 
Dentalfury said:
Poor man's Hanging Garden?
Click to expand...
Trade routes are much better. Cheaper, more food, faster to build, no chance of losing out on the wonder to another civ. Plus they scale, one extra food every era. And you can run more than one to your capital.
 
Is there any point in playing trade routes defensively. For example forgoing the highest gold paying route because it gives that civ too much science and instead picking a route that pays less but doesn't give as much to the other civ. I've selected TR's solely on what's in it for me and haven't paid much attention to what I'm giving away, but am starting to wonder if selecting TR's defensively has any merit.
 
Playing indonesia on tiny islands, and i have discovered the use of food boosts early game. But yeah, still hybrid
 
It's situational, depending on your objectives and your terrain.

For example, if you're going for a strong religion game as Arabia, trade routes to foreign countries are often very useful.

Food based sea/production routes are probably the most efficient in general.

Also, the higher the difficulty, getting science from your trade routes is quite strong.
 
Depends. Mostly they will be used for gold. I was questioning how useful Internal routes were, then I got two city sites: one with a lot of food and little production, and the opposite. They're also useful for CS Influence. I'd like to see the science boost, as soon as the other empires build a city close enough. Can't wait to try out Treaty Organization.
 
I go wherever the cash is. However, I do worry about this reliance in case of war, so do try to keep an internal revenue going.
 
HiroProtagonist said:
Is there any point in playing trade routes defensively. For example forgoing the highest gold paying route because it gives that civ too much science and instead picking a route that pays less but doesn't give as much to the other civ. I've selected TR's solely on what's in it for me and haven't paid much attention to what I'm giving away, but am starting to wonder if selecting TR's defensively has any merit.
Click to expand...

Well, if your trade route is giving a civ lots of science it means that they are several techs behind, so not much of a threat anyway.
 
It is so situational I didn't vote. Some games I need the highest gold yield just to get by although my preference is to use the slightly lower yield routes that give the AI far less in return; I'll happily take 4 less gpt if it means they get 10 less. Some games I've gone all in on city state trading which often leads to votes for CS embargoes. And other games I rely heavily on internal routes to aid wonder popping and satellite growth.
 
There are a few things I consider when I send a trade route between cities and it does influence where they end up going. Typically, I consider internal trade-routes fairly straightforward and they'll usually be sent out for one of the following reasons:
  • Sending food to a new city to catch them up with your other cities.
  • Sending production to a city that is undertaking a big project (wonders/military focus)
  • Spreading religious pressure to a city that is competing with a neighbor's religion.
  • Doing any of this because I do not trust the other civs and can deal with less GPT.
For external trade routes, it's a bit more complicated, but the idea is typically the same. I don't always go for the biggest gold gain and prefer to send trade routes out to places that could benefit me the most in other ways. Shooting religious pressure into places you're sure it'll spread is something I prefer to do in most trades. I also prefer to send out routes that are mostly safe from the danger of plunder by warfare or barbarians. If I can have either of those, I'll almost always pick it over something that will offer me more gold. I also like to fulfill city-state requests for a trade route.
 
Hybrid till I get to the tenet called Treaty Organization.

That tenet rocks so hard I never bother with Order or Autocracy any more.
 
I usually have a 50/50 split unless I'm really hurting for gold in the early game or my cities are firmly established in the later game.

I'll trade with cities states on four conditions -- only money trade available and I need gold, I'm Portugal, I have the trade unions tenet in freedom, I'm planning on declaring war on someone that I was/am sending trade routes to.

VERY occasionally, I'll send a trade route during the very early game to a civ for science -- usually when I do something crazy like bee-line math ASAP because I'm Assyria. Also, if I have religious tolerance, I'll send a one-time trade route to a civ whose pantheon I want in my city.

I don't think I've ever sent a trade route to a city with the specific intention of converting it. Although, I haven't played Arabia since BNW ... I guess if you spread the home cities of caravans/cargo chips out, you could send them all to one city and gang up on it to convert it. It'd probably work quite well to send two routes to the same city if that city doesn't already have a religion now that I think about it.

Imma gonna go play Arabia now.
 
Depends. :)
Early game i use them for science, if my base science is still like 20:c5science: every route science is worth all the gold. However it dosnt matter as much late game. I sometimes use internat food routes if i have this hill city, which could be production powerhouse if have more citizens. Other than that i use it mostly with other civs. Sometimes factoring influence, so having at least ome route with each.
 
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