Caravans

Why am I only able to send a caravan to one of four city states that I have a path to on land? I don't understand why the others aren't showing up on my list to establish a trade route.

Am I missing something?

also, my only option is to send food to my other city. IF I send food to my other city (in this case 4 food) is that 4 less food in for the city the caravan is coming from?

1. Caravans have a range of I think 10 hexes from the destination city, though the range may be different, I'm not sure

2. No food is taken from the sending city, it appears out of nowhere, but a quick pointer: always send food to cities with all of your trade routes from the ancient through roughly industrial, because the growth is super significant early game; growth equals science and science is king. Into the industrial city growth sort of tapers off, and then you should start sending production to low hammer expands.

Also questions like these can be answered in the quick questions and answers thread, on the top of the forum page

Caravans initially have a range of only 10 tiles. Building a caravansarai extends that by 50%

Later techs (can't remember what they are) extend the range further.

Road segments also increase caravan range (even if the road only extends part of the way).

Thanks for all the info! I tried the quick question threads but man they are over 270 pages of random thoughts, it's a mess.

On the food to city strategy I have a question. If I have four cities, do you send three caravans of food to your capital once from each of the others until industrial? I always use my caravans for loot, wonder if I have been doing this wrong the whole time which is why I struggle on immortal and am stuck on emperor.

Thanks again!

maddskillz said:

Thanks for all the info! I tried the quick question threads but man they are over 270 pages of random thoughts, it's a mess.

On the food to city strategy I have a question. If I have four cities, do you send three caravans of food to your capital once from each of the others until industrial? I always use my caravans for loot, wonder if I have been doing this wrong the whole time which is why I struggle on immortal and am stuck on emperor.

Thanks again!

Click to expand...

Yes, food is king, especially in your capital (and doubly so if you're playing tradition).

More food = more citizens. More citizens = more hammers, culture, science, gold.

Food is the gateway to everything. There are times when you might not be making enough money, so it's fine to complete CS quests for trade routes, or send that cargo ship to Marrakech for 30gpt, but for the most part, success comes in this game from growing, as fast as your happiness will allow.

That last part is important - you need happiness to support more cities. If you grow aggressively, you will need to find more happiness faster. Circuses and Colosseums, Stone Works, and Mercantile CS's are going to need to be prioritized. I don't build any of that kinda stuff if my happiness is above 10, but if it starts dropping into single digits, it's time to rectify the situation soon, or you won't be growing, and that defeats the whole purpose of the food caravans.

I have to say I generally find it more useful to get gpt from my trade routes and cultivate city-states for the food and also getting happiness from them. Sure sometimes if my capital is in a really bad location I'll send it food but usually I find the buying power of gold more useful. Of course if playing Venice you can do both. Note that patronage helps a lot in this strategy.

I've never had a game when the gold was more valuable, purchasing strategies don't really become valid until autocracy and any other time the gold to hammer ratio is too horrendous for me to be interested. Growth means literally everything, the two important things, science and production, are completely reliant on food. Gold is just something you have to not let dip below zero or it'll affect your science.

inthesomeday said:

I've never had a game when the gold was more valuable, purchasing strategies don't really become valid until autocracy and any other time the gold to hammer ratio is too horrendous for me to be interested. Growth means literally everything, the two important things, science and production, are completely reliant on food. Gold is just something you have to not let dip below zero or it'll affect your science.

Click to expand...

But if you have good gold you can buy an army or navy while concentrating on building support buildings (if you have really good production then yes you may not need the gold to buy units). Also it makes it easy to keep city-state allies.

I never understand why some people don't seem to know what to do with gold. Of course I'm only interested in military conquest so I don't ever have to worry about science victory as I'm done with the game long before someone could do it.

If you go patronage it isn't long before your science will catch up as long as you ally with a bunch of city-states (even at Deity)...or think of it as leveraging the city-state populations for your science so you don't have to have the biggest most populous cities on the planet.

darkskies said:

But if you have good gold you can buy an army or navy while concentrating on building support buildings (if you have really good production then yes you may not need the gold to buy units). Also it makes it easy to keep city-state allies.

I never understand why some people don't seem to know what to do with gold. Of course I'm only interested in military conquest so I don't ever have to worry about science victory as I'm done with the game long before someone could do it.

If you go patronage it isn't long before your science will catch up as long as you ally with a bunch of city-states (even at Deity)...or think of it as leveraging the city-state populations for your science so you don't have to have the biggest most populous cities on the planet.

Click to expand...

The flaw in your comparison is the gold vs the food at the early stage of the game.

When you get your first caravan out, you can either use it for 4 food or 4-5 gold. That's a no brainer man. You can't tell me you're working that silk plantation early in the game because you value gold over a farm. Early growth is so much more important than a few extra GPT.

If you were getting 30 gpt, you'd have a point, but you're not. You're literally trading 1 food for 1 gold, and NO ONE makes that trade on a tile, so why would you make that trade on a caravan?

Chum said:

The flaw in your comparison is the gold vs the food at the early stage of the game.

When you get your first caravan out, you can either use it for 4 food or 4-5 gold. That's a no brainer man. You can't tell me you're working that silk plantation early in the game because you value gold over a farm. Early growth is so much more important than a few extra GPT.

If you were getting 30 gpt, you'd have a point, but you're not. You're literally trading 1 food for 1 gold, and NO ONE makes that trade on a tile, so why would you make that trade on a caravan?

Click to expand...

Ok I think the point is getting lost and circumstances may dictate different responses e.g. if a city has good food/growth anyway the extra food is not going to make a huge difference and if you can get a food producing city-state or two it will make even less difference. If you have good gold early fine you can grow your city. I usually go Liberty because I want the production and other things so my first trade route is going to go to gold to keep me out of the red. Anyway I almost always win my games at immortal and deity so my strategy works just fine. Also don't over look the science you can get from these early trade routes, often I'll be getting science and gold.

Then you're playing liberty very differently from me! Internal trade routes are extremely crucial for optimal liberty play, you should get your gold off city connections and mineral mines. Raw science points in the mid classical are fine but more important is getting sustainable cities.

inthesomeday said:

Then you're playing liberty very differently from me! Internal trade routes are extremely crucial for optimal liberty play, you should get your gold off city connections and mineral mines. Raw science points in the mid classical are fine but more important is getting sustainable cities.

Click to expand...

This is my point there isn't just one way to good science and a win. My system works quite well, again there are other routes to science than large populations.

darkskies said:

This is my point there isn't just one way to good science and a win. My system works quite well, again there are other routes to science than large populations.

Click to expand...

But here's the thing. You only get science from trade routes under 2 conditions:
First, You have reached a level of Tourism influence over the other civ to give you bonus science per turn (SPT) from trade routes. This won't happen for some time, and by the time it does it's a fairly small amount of science considering what you're empire is making by itself at that time. That is, unless you're pursuing CV in which case you should be gaining 3-4 SPT from trade routes due to this. CV makes this more worth while.

Second way is; the civ you're trading with knows X technologies that you don't so you get X SPT from those trade routes.

Since you're arguing that the science you get from trade routes makes up for the science you could be getting from population if you had fed your cities your problem arises when you start to eclipse the other civ in techs. Eventually you'll know more techs than the other civs so you won't be getting SPT from trade routes. It's at that point that the civ that did early food routes starts to eclipse you. They're still getting the science benefits from those early routes because population is permanent (with a few exceptions) and that SPT from trade routes tends to taper off.


Now there is something to be said about not using ALL of your trade routes for food when playing Liberty. Since you have more unhappiness due to cities you may not want to grow all of your cities to massive metropolises, but a few food routes will definitely help you more with SPT in the long run, than running exclusively money routes to other civs.

With that said, I'm not saying your style of play is wrong, I'm just trying to point something out to you that maybe you didn't consider before.