(7-25a) Carthage Gets More Trade Routes

[pineappledan]

It sounds like you're just considering adding the cargo ships on settle with no trade cap increase. That sounds much more interesting.

If your UA gives you trade units with no slots then if you max your slots before settling you can go over your cap limit. You would have a minigame with Carthage where you're constantly trying to expand while also trying to guard your cargo ships (and they are ALL naval cargo ships) as much as possible.
So you have this push/pull of trying to get as much space as you can while also making sure your shipping lanes are completely safe, because your UA pushes you over trade cap once they are gone they are gone.

Morocco just pee'd himself a little.

 

[Rekk]

It sounds like you're just considering adding the cargo ships on settle with no trade cap increase.

That is indeed the current addendum.

while also making sure your shipping lanes are completely safe

There's also something more insular we could do like activating the dll code for Internal Gold Trade Routes. These look to work exactly like International Trade routes, but between your own cities. This of course would still end up being less money than sending them to neighbouring civilizations (your cities are generally much closer to each other than they are to foreign cities, especially in the water), but it does give you a fallback to make money while next to a particularly hostile neighbour (and even pushes an avenue into considering the Order ideology).

Hokath's concern over a bad war destroying your UA is valid, though, and the AI is going to be particularly prone to falling over.

 

[usadefcon1]

Free Cargo Ship from Staring a Golden Age

This sounds about right.

 

[pineappledan]

Hokath's concern over a bad war destroying your UA is valid, though, and the AI is going to be particularly prone to falling over.

I would re-ad the +2 cargo slots as a small cushion/failsafe

I wouldn't be too concerned over it though, it's a clear risk-reward playstyle and it's an actual gameplay strat that would define a run more than the current early gold followed by just coasting

Between your proposal and my proposal we have 2 reworks for Carthage:

• One that tries to stretch the instant gold throughout the game by tying it to luxuries
• One that tries to save the on-settle bonus by turning it into trade routes

 

[Rekk]

I would re-ad the +2 cargo slots as a small cushion/failsafe

One that tries to stretch the instant gold throughout the game by tying it to luxuries, and another that tries to save the settling bonus by turning it into trade routes.

Addendum:
- removed bonus trade routes
- reduced bonus purchase XP
- removed resource diversity from UA and put a weakened version on the UNW
- UNW gains 3 trade routes and 3 cargo ships.

it's a clear risk-reward playstyle

It's also nice in that save-scumming is quite a bit harder because there's not much you can do if you let your trade routes out of your reach and it gets pillaged somewhere that takes 5+ turns to get to.

 

[pineappledan]

I would still stipulate non-capital cities only for the UA
The free cargo ship on t1 is too weird. It could end up sitting there a long time.

 

[rkkn]

I think it would be fun trying to find a coastal city state so that you can put your t1 cargo ship to use as soon as possible

 

[pineappledan]

It certainly is an interesting paradigm shift to have a civ that is entirely designed around Outpacing the trade cap, and trade cap is more Insurance than an actual economic bonus.

 

[Stalker0]

you your saying that carthage still gets a ridiculous, crazy amounts of TRs, or it would still respect the cap?

 

[rkkn]

it can still get biggish, but it's a lower number
gaining trade routes from techs and such would not increase the number of trade routes as long as you're already over the cap

but if you have 10 coastal cities in medieval era, you built the UB, and 2 trade routes got pillaged at some point, you'd have 11 trade routes.
Under the first draft you'd have 16 trade routes if you've researched Compass, + another 1 or 2 if you built one of the wonders.

 

[Rekk]

you your saying that carthage still gets a ridiculous, crazy amounts of TRs, or it would still respect the cap?

They can have as many trade routes as they have settled cities (+3 more), until the routes start getting pillaged.

 

[Rekk]

Ugh, I just realized that the diversity modifier on the UNW isn't global.

 

[azum4roll]

It's intended to be local, since it's inherited from the EIC.

 

[Rekk]

Yeah, screw that noise, it's going back on the UA. It's not worth making another column and all of the associated functions to put a global version on the building.

 

[pineappledan]

Or just drop it entirely. The UA doesn’t need it IMO

 

[Stalker0]

They can have as many trade routes as they have settled cities (+3 more), until the routes start getting pillaged.

yeah I really don't like that. You are still getting the crazy amount of TRs, but only if you don't get into any wars? No other civ's UA is that brittle, where some pillages can completely turn it off for the rest of the game.

 

[azum4roll]

Or just drop it entirely. The UA doesn’t need it IMO

It's unique, and hasn't been working for years so they deserve to have it now.

 

[pineappledan]

It’s unique, insofar as no other civ has that identical bonus, but it’s not Unique in any other respect.

At the end of the day it’s just more On a mechanic that already gives. It changes absolutely nothing about what you were going to do before, other than make ETRs better than ITRs.

 

[azum4roll]

It's not +50% from TR. You're still rewarded for sending trade routes from cities with lots of different resources. Maybe you should actively settle one such city?

 

[Rekk]

I agree. To make the most out of it, you need to settle cities with high resource density, which creates some tension compared to just settling as many cities as you can. In addition, it focuses you outward, making it more difficult to protect your trade routes. Finally, it gives you a fallback when your trade routes start getting pillaged. Hopefully, you managed to get a good return on your bonus routes by that point.

Tempted to piggy-back off of Spain's code and allow it on conquer as well, instead of forcing raze-resettle gameplay.