Stalker0 said:
Your point is fair...is the 1 TR per city too much of a change?
I can only answer from my current experience playing with a mod to give me 1 TR per city. In general, I still find trade to be a big part of the game. I still think about them, I still build them early when a city is founded, it still hurts when they are pillaged. I feel like even with this nerf they are a key, core part of the game...one I cannot ignore. But on the other hand it allows other aspects of the game to come to the surface. The +2 science buildings matter a lot more when I don't get 10 science from a trade route.
Yeah, but the problem I spot here is the 10 science from a TR. Not the fact, that there are too many TRs.
I like how you compare a TR to a building and I think this could be the key to balance TRs, without reducing their numbers.
Assume for a while, that the
ratio costs/yields of TRs are comparable to a building.
The big difference would be then the higher risk of a TR compared to a building (destroying a building is very hard. Destroying a TR is very easy, if done correctly). The upside compensating for this higher risk, is the flexibility you get from a TR. You are able to change it to your needs every 20(?) rounds. A thing, which you can't perform with a building.
Basically, if a TR is capable of producing 10 Science, when it should also cost an amount of hammers/gold comparable to five +2-science buildings. Applied that directly makes the vessels way too expensive in early-game of course. But, if you nerf the Science yield - to say 6 Science - and increase the production cost of the vessel or the unlocking building correspondingly it could work.
EDIT: On the topic of trade routes:
I believe fewer, stronger trade routes is far far more interesting and balanced than many weaker ones. (This is all in comparison to vanilla's many very strong ones.)
If we give trade routes heavily nerfed yields while increasing their number, it becomes far less important in choosing where to send them, but more notably it makes defending them irrelevant. It's no problem if a tiny percentage of your city's trade is knocked off.
I never wanted
more trade routes. I want them to be unaltered from vanilla BE. A very good reason to leave them unaltered is, that a couple of other game-elements rely on the number of TRs. Changing the amount of TRs, needs a change on all of those as well... which in the end might result in more changes needed...
In my opinion there are a lot of ways to balance TRs. A few have been proposed in this thread already (not only by me). Changing the amount of TRs is only one way to do it - but it is very invasive.
If you nerf the TRs by increasing their maintenance/production costs it will not be "no problem" to loose them, even if their loss will not directly impact your income drastically. It will be something you want to care about, since you have
invested into those TRs: You have spent several turns on building them, in which you could have build for example a specialist building and go more heavy on specialists instead. Similarly if the unlocking building costs you - let's say 4 - energy per round, you might quickly make deficit, if your TRs get pillaged.
Compare this to the case of one or two powerful trade routes: If one gets pillaged, you'll be in a much trickier situation. Incidentally this has a knock-on effect making dealing with Aliens more interesting and valuable - knowing that getting a trade route knocked out later on down the line may cripple a city, is it worth killing those few aliens early in the game?
I see your point in that only a few powerful trade routes are representing the higher-risk-higher-yield thing.
However, for me that makes TRs a no-brainer.
There is no reason not to build them. I would be stupid not to do, since they give me a nice income for almost no investment (the amount of hammers/maintenance). So, if one gets pillaged I can immediately rebuild and send them somewhere else. There will always be another open route for me, which is only slightly worse.
So, the impact of a pillaged trade-route is the following: It delays whatever I am currently building in the corresponding city by 1-2 turns - or it costs me 310 Energy to repurchase the unit.
There is no choice
not to use TRs.
Btw: The alien-argument can't hold, since using the hypersonic-fence-quest makes your TRs immune to aliens anyways.
Compare this now to a (tall - how do you build tall, without many TRs?) empire, which is heavily invested in TRs. And I mean by invested, that it takes a
considerable amount of time to build up your fleet of traders. Suddenly loosing 30 % of your fleet, since an AI cuts you off, is not so fun anymore. You will not repurchase that in 1-3 turns. It will take you more like 20+ turns. 20+ turns - in which you have only 70% of your economy - spending your time to get on your feet again.
That gives you a choice! Do you want to take that risk? Or do you leave TRs mostly aside and focus your time and hammers into specialists and tiles?