The East India Company

Maybe this is just me but I seem to notice that anytime I build an East India Company, then the AI civs seem to stop sending trade routes to that city?

Is there a possibility that the AI chooses a trade route that minimizes the amount of gold you get out of the exchange?
I tend to notice the same thing with the Colossus too. I've had it before and I never seem to get one trade route. Although I admit this can be related to where your city is placed and how easily other Civs can reach it with trade routes. If your city is remote than good luck in getting a single trade route...

Yet, the number of times I've seen my crappy new size 1 or 2 city with no connected resources or market get a trade route from the AI while my bigger cities with all the financial infrastructure seem to miss out.

Does anyone else experience this? But I've learned one thing, if you want to attract lots of trade routes than play a wide Civ. I just played a Pangaea map that had a real snaking geography and I had my cities scattered everywhere so they were close to nearly every Civ. From the mid game onwards I was making at least 40 gold per turn from trade routes. It also helped I guess that 2/3rds of the citystates had been conquered by Shaka and Atilla.

Redaxe said:

Maybe this is just me but I seem to notice that anytime I build an East India Company, then the AI civs seem to stop sending trade routes to that city?

Is there a possibility that the AI chooses a trade route that minimizes the amount of gold you get out of the exchange?
I tend to notice the same thing with the Colossus too. I've had it before and I never seem to get one trade route. Although I admit this can be related to where your city is placed and how easily other Civs can reach it with trade routes. If your city is remote than good luck in getting a single trade route...

Yet, the number of times I've seen my crappy new size 1 or 2 city with no connected resources or market get a trade route from the AI while my bigger cities with all the financial infrastructure seem to miss out.

Does anyone else experience this? But I've learned one thing, if you want to attract lots of trade routes than play a wide Civ. I just played a Pangaea map that had a real snaking geography and I had my cities scattered everywhere so they were close to nearly every Civ. From the mid game onwards I was making at least 40 gold per turn from trade routes. It also helped I guess that 2/3rds of the citystates had been conquered by Shaka and Atilla.

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You should always focus and rely on your own trades (I think) since you have more control.

Also, do you ever choose the "Gold Delta" sorting option when sending routes?

I wouldn't be surprised if they did do that, since i do that myself, I always try to maximize the gold I WILL be getting rather than focusing on the gold THEY will be getting.

So if I choose between a +6 gold to me and +1 gold to them and +7 gold to me, and +5 gold to them, I'm likely to choose the 6/1 one.

TheKingOfBigOz said:

You should always focus and rely on your own trades (I think) since you have more control.

Also, do you ever choose the "Gold Delta" sorting option when sending routes?

I wouldn't be surprised if they did do that, since i do that myself, I always try to maximize the gold I WILL be getting rather than focusing on the gold THEY will be getting.

So if I choose between a +6 gold to me and +1 gold to them and +7 gold to me, and +5 gold to them, I'm likely to choose the 6/1 one.

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I do occasionally but it depends if I like the Civ or not. If I see them as a threat I will try to avoid sending them routes or as you say look for low gold delta.
If I think they need help and I want to use them as a diversion for nearby warmongers than usually I will try to give them the most 'Gold Delta'
But if other Civs sends trade routes to you based on low gold delta (i.e. they want the most gold while giving the least) then that does have ramifications for choosing how you value certain wonders and buildings.
Obviously it really devalues the Colossus and East India Company and it means you should avoid putting those in cities that have for instance lot of luxury and strategic resources...... I'm just interested to know if others have noticed this as well.

Okay - this brings up something I have never even thought about before. How can you check which cities of yours have (international) trade routes, and from whom?

comatosedragon said:

Okay - this brings up something I have never even thought about before. How can you check which cities of yours have (international) trade routes, and from whom?

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Hover over the trade routes icon on the main screen (the one that shows how many trade routes you have and are using). At the bottom of the tooltip is a list of the trade routes established to and from your cities (e.g. Marrakesh to Jakarta). This includes both your trade routes and those established by other civs.

comatosedragon said:

Okay - this brings up something I have never even thought about before. How can you check which cities of yours have (international) trade routes, and from whom?

Click to expand...

There's a tab for that in the trade routes interface.

@Topic: Mhh... interesting observation. Will pay attention to that in my next few games.

TheKingOfBigOz said:

You should always focus and rely on your own trades (I think) since you have more control.

Also, do you ever choose the "Gold Delta" sorting option when sending routes?

I wouldn't be surprised if they did do that, since i do that myself, I always try to maximize the gold I WILL be getting rather than focusing on the gold THEY will be getting.

So if I choose between a +6 gold to me and +1 gold to them and +7 gold to me, and +5 gold to them, I'm likely to choose the 6/1 one.

Click to expand...

In this instance you get more gold from the second option (+7 to you and +5 to AI). You both get the raw totals, not the delta. Would not be surprised if AI decides based on Gold Delta however.

Yes, we need an answer to this question. Does the AI try to minimize your gold gain, even at the cost of lessening its own? In my current game, I'm pretty sure Madrid was receiving more than one trade route at the same time from the Netherlands. I think those trade routes stopped after I built the East India Company.

I've only built East India Company once.

Because of that, I can't really say anything. I put it into my only city in eastern half of the world that could reach basically every civ there on huge map. I did get AI sending trade routes to that city.

I think geography was more responsible for that one though. But I did have pretty awesome port. It was only civilized piece of land in large isolated wilderness. Ships didn't have enough range to ignore my city and reach the foreign nations in northern half in the east part of map. And so, my city ended up being the farthest location and I decided to squash all the barbarian encampments on the coast and hunted down all the pirates. Ended up being very profitable city for me.

Even with me being a warmonger lol.

I always build it in all of my games and always in my coastal city with the most production (my capital if my capital is coastal)

If you're not currently maxed out on trade routes, then a cargo ship will take precedence.

I often skip east india since it only has +4 gpt... banking establishments have +3 gold per bank and the +25%. So if you do the math, east India doesn't give off as much as banks. Only good reason to get east india is when you want that extra +1 happiness from universal healthcare in any ideology.

reddishrecue said:

I often skip east india since it only has +4 gpt... banking establishments have +3 gold per bank and the +25%. So if you do the math, east India doesn't give off as much as banks. Only good reason to get east india is when you want that extra +1 happiness from universal healthcare in any ideology.

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It's not quite that simple though. If you have Marketplace, Bank, Stock Exchange and say the Commerce opener or Temple & Theology the gold boost in the city is 100%. So that becomes 8 gold per turn. The more gold per turn a city produces than that also enhances the value of trade routes - both inbound and outbound.

If you spend some time looking at the breakdown of where the gold income is generated from in a trade route you will see that a portion of it comes from the gold output of a city. This is negligible in the early game but it will become more noticeable over time. It's even more noticeable if you have a large capital (say size 40) with the Tradition policy (Monarchy) will give the capital +20 gold. With marketplaces etc you can easily double this gold bonus.
Other policies like Sovereignty (1 gold for each science building) and Merchant Navy (1 gold for each lighthouse, harbor and seaport) are actually a lot more powerful than they look (this goes for Monarchy also) because not only does this gold modify but it also enhances the value of trade routes.
For example if you play a tradition game with a large coastal capital and all your trade routes are external for gold you can see this by picking the commerce opener and you will see that it will generate a gold bonus much larger than the 25% to base yield. And you will also see the value of the trade routes jump as well.
Thus in my opinion Monarchy is the most powerful trade route boosting policy in the game if you're able to feed the capital to get it to an enormous size.

Also the value of the East India Company is that you get 4 gold from each trade route to that city. If you attract just 2 AI trade routes to that city that is a free 8 gold per turn.

But that's a digress, my observations seem to be that the AI doesn't like sending trade routes to your best gold earning cities. I'm interested to know what others have to report. For one thing I've seen a lot of guides and discussions about game aspects like religion, social policies, ideologies etc but there hasn't been a lot of in-depth analysis on trade routes & in particular how Fireaxis has coded the AI to prioritize its Trade routes.

reddishrecue said:

I often skip east india since it only has +4 gpt... banking establishments have +3 gold per bank and the +25%. So if you do the math, east India doesn't give off as much as banks. Only good reason to get east india is when you want that extra +1 happiness from universal healthcare in any ideology.

Click to expand...

Yes, a Bank in your capital is a higher priority than East India.
And several national wonders will also be higher priority.
However, at some point East India will reach the point where it's the best thing the capital can be building.

While using Cargo Ships for trade routes does any one factor in the Religion aspect vs. your own or like above post mentioned you focus more on the gold exchange.

I focus on the gold exchange plus keeping some CS or AI happy especially Venice when they are in the game. Wow that gold is huge from them.

I've built it twice, both times in the modern age, and both times civs that had trades routes with my other nearby cities switched to the east india city soon enough.

The best one of those trade routes was giving me 14 gpt, might have been from the AI's own east india city. Beats a bank any day.

I just think that it's smart to do the East India Company early when you only have a few cities if you plan on getting many more cities and it would be way to hard to get later.

It's good, no doubt about that. Just don't build it too early. It's best to build it when you have hammers to spare unless you REALLY need that extra gpt.

And if you play archipelago and have Exploration opened, East India gets a nice little boost.