Early game trade (and in general)

[Ayt]

I've admittedly been play Civ4 since it came out and I can beat all the way up to Monarch, but I don't really understand trade.

Early on, my cities trade domestically as long as they are connected, correct? Do I need open boarders to trade with other civs? Do I need sailing to trade with other civs along a water route? Do I need to have explored their territory to get the best trade routes? Should I make road connections to other civs, or is it automatic unlike civ 3 where you needed to make sure you had a road connection.

Lots of questions I know, but any help here would be appreciated. It would bother me if I wasn't fully taking advantage of early trade since it can be such a big deal. I tend to not do a ton of exploring of foreign territory and I'm almost always late in building some ships to explore local coastal areas. Am I really missing out here?

 

[Tatran]

I've admittedly been play Civ4 since it came out and I can beat all the way up to Monarch, but I don't really understand trade.

Versus

Early on, my cities trade domestically as long as they are connected, correct? Do I need open boarders to trade with other civs? Do I need sailing to trade with other civs along a water route? Do I need to have explored their territory to get the best trade routes? Should I make road connections to other civs, or is it automatic unlike civ 3 where you needed to make sure you had a road connection.

Lots of questions I know, but any help here would be appreciated. It would bother me if I wasn't fully taking advantage of early trade since it can be such a big deal. I tend to not do a ton of exploring of foreign territory and I'm almost always late in building some ships to explore local coastal areas. Am I really missing out here?

 

[Ayt]

I don't see the issue. I just hadn't looked into it as deeply as I would have liked until now. I hadn't broken out BTS in about a year and was playing today and realized I might as well ask.

Its not like its hard to beat the game up to monarch even if you don't fully understand all the things going on. If you have something to add, please do. If not, well, I don't know what your problem is.

If you really want to get down to it, my main questions are whether I need road connections to other civs and if I need to fully explore their land and coastal areas or if you can still trade with cities even if they aren't part of your known map.

Is there a guide somewhere that breaks down specifically how trade works?

 

[NKVD]

me too i've been playing at civ since it came about about a game per week and i dont really know the answer to any question asked there

 

[Ayt]

Well, I searched around a bit and found this which explains trade.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=165632&highlight=trade+routes

Exploration of the map is important, as you can only have trade routes with cities that are visible to you.
(The city itself doesn’t have to be visible, but its cultural boundaries and a route to the city must be.)
• Trade routes require a corresponding physical route to another city. You can connect to other cities
either by road (enabled by The Wheel) or water (river or coast, enabled by Sailing; or ocean, enabled
by Astronomy).
• Open Borders agreements (enabled by Writing) are also required to enable trade routes

According to this I've really been missing out by not taking advantage of open boarders as soon as possible, not making sure I have a road connection to other civs, not sending scouts into opponent territory, and not making a point to quickly build some sort of ship to do some coastal exploring.

 

[Polobo]

In BtS I would suggest using an early workboat to do coast exploring. Once barb galleys start showing up you're likely to lose your galley anyway so try to do as much as possible as early as possible. That said, you can explore your entire coast with land units; just can't fully explore offshore islands and whether they lead somewhere else.

I see a lot of people shunning open borders but merely having them really poses no advantage to the AI early on; and you can also close borders later. If you do so without being asked I am pretty sure you don't even get diplo-penalized.

Not sure if the Sisutil's article mentioned it but having a domestic off-shore city early on is a real boon as basically your first trade route is floored at 2 commerce / turn. Having a second offshore domestic city is useful for when you get currency. Beyond that is has limited usefulness unless you are going to run mercantile for a large portion of the game.

 

[Ayt]

Thanks. I don't fully understand your point about a second domestic offshore city. Is it useful because trade overseas is worth more and currency (IIRC) gives an extra trade route? Do you mean offshore as in on an island or something?

Another question in case anyone knows. If I have an inland city and a coastal city and no land routes to any other civs, can my inland city trade through my coastal city to another civs city or can I merely trade from inland to my coastal with only my coastal being able to trade with another civs coastal. Hopefully that makes sense.

The best way to put that I guess is to say we both have two cities with our capitals being landlocked while we both also have coastal cities with the coastal connection being the only one (no roads connecting our civs). Can our two capitals trade via the coastal route?

 

[Dhaulagiri]

The answer to both your questions is yes. If you want to know specifics of why, can't help you there.

 

[Bostock]

I see a lot of people shunning open borders but merely having them really poses no advantage to the AI early on; and you can also close borders later. If you do so without being asked I am pretty sure you don't even get diplo-penalized.

Finally another fan of open borders! I was starting to feel so lonely on here...

 

[Ayt]

The answer to both your questions is yes. If you want to know specifics of why, can't help you there.

Thanks. I figured it worked that way, but one never knows if what seems like common sense is actually in the game.

 

[Dirk1302]

There maybe a few exceptions (they have astro you don't for instance) but generally it's really advisable to open borders with every civ you meet.

Do I need open boarders to trade with other civs?

yes

Do I need sailing to trade with other civs along a water route?

yes

Do I need to have explored their territory to get the best trade routes?

Generally no, it depends on the ai, once he has connected his cities and you have a route to one city you'll get routes with the rest. On deity the ai is connected in no time, on lower levels this may take more time and in this case you might profit from more connections to his cities, 0% experience with this but i figure it'll take too much time anyway to connect to each and every city. I would'nt bother about that.

Should I make road connections to other civs, or is it automatic unlike civ 3 where you needed to make sure you had a road connection.

Depends if you have sailing you can often get trade along the coast but not when a barb city is blocking this coast. Also not if neither you nor your future trade partner have ever explored that coast. If you don't have sailing you need a connection to their empire and this is really a priority in this case.

Also make it a priority to connect your own cities asap. Connecting your capital and your second city nets you 2 commerce, no peanuts this stage of the game.

Are you missing out when you don't get trade routes with ais while you could?
Definitely and in a big way.

 

[Bostock]

There maybe a few exceptions (they have astro you don't for instance)

Just to say this explicitly: if one civilization has the technology needed to operate the routes and the other doesn't, then only the one civilization gets the benefit. I am told this applies for river/coastline connections under Sailing as well. In fact, the one-way trade routes at Sailing turn some high-level players off to early trade routes, as they tend to avoid self-teching it in order to maintain their beelines, and avoid trading for it for fear of hitting the "we fear you are becoming too advanced" (i.e. "you are a freakin' tech whore") limit... but on Monarch the latter reason is no real problem and the former isn't quite as critical.

 

[Dirk1302]

Yes it works the same for sailing. But in the early game i can't be bothered too much, the +1 modifier from ob is too important, i don't mind the ais teching a bit faster here, it's often beneficial and the effect is not nearly as pronounced as in the astro case.

 

[Ayt]

Not sure if the Sisutil's article mentioned it but having a domestic off-shore city early on is a real boon as basically your first trade route is floored at 2 commerce / turn. Having a second offshore domestic city is useful for when you get currency. Beyond that is has limited usefulness unless you are going to run mercantile for a large portion of the game.

Could someone clarify what benefit this is. Do you get extra trade if you have a domestic city that is on a different continent or on an island?

I appreciate all the help in this thread, BTW.

 

[Silu]

Mouse over the trade routes in the city screen; you see all the bonuses applied to the route. "Overseas trade" (= trade with a city on a different landmass) is a huge bonus.

 

[madscientist]

Basics as I understand.

First Domestic trade

1) Wheel allows you to build roads. You need a road to conenct 2 land based cities.

2) Sailing. Allows trade amongst coastal cities providing there is NOT and dark area between them. You can also trade via a river.

3) Cities that have cultural overlap do not appear to need a road or need to be coastal to trade.

4) Being on a land locked river than goes to sea allows trade with any city that is coastal or on another river that also goes to the see; provided you have sailing.

Foreign trade: Requires writing for open borders.

Same rules apply but thing to consider

1) A road to the AI is not needed if you have sailing.

2) If you do not have sailing but the AI does, they get the benefit from foreing trade routes but YOU do not even though the open trade route icon is present (those three arrows in a circle). Be shrewd here although still can trade resources.

The only thing I am NOT certain about is wheter religion spread requires trade routes.

 

[Bostock]

AFAIK Religion spread requires only the theoretical capability for trade routes (so open borders are not necessary), and works as if you had Sailing even if you don't. I'm not so clear on how it behaves regarding Astronomy, although I've certainly never had religion spread to an isolated start except when there was some sort of route it could take that didn't require Astronomy.

 

[Dirk1302]

@Madscientist, i'm not 100% sure on all the mechanics, some are quite tricky but,

Domestic:

3) I'm not really sure if this is true, if there is a river through cultural overlapped cities you don't need sailing, you do need it if there's no cultural overlap. But i always thought you'd need a road to connect in the absence of rivers even when the cities do overlap culturally.

Foreign

1) You do need a coastal city yourself in that case or river connection with ai, the coastal or river connected city needs to be connected with your other cities to get full benefit. Watch out for barb cities, they can block coastal trade (and sometimes river trade as well but this is more rare).

Religion can spread without ob as far as i know, probably the chance is bigger with ob but not sure about that. I actually don't know too much about the religion spread mechanic as there's not much i can do about it. Shrine helps btw doubles the spread chance iirc, you know that but maybe the OP doesn't.

 

[Tatran]

The only thing I am NOT certain about is wheter religion spread requires trade routes.

I guess it does.
The founder of Christianity (Charlemagne) must have Sailing and a trade network with Sumeria.

 

[Hsinchu]

Well, I searched around a bit and found this which explains trade.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=165632&highlight=trade+routes



According to this I've really been missing out by not taking advantage of open boarders as soon as possible, not making sure I have a road connection to other civs, not sending scouts into opponent territory, and not making a point to quickly build some sort of ship to do some coastal exploring.

Incidentally, I've also been able to establish trade routes without an Open Borders agreement, but I think it requires that two civilizations have a mutual Open Borders intermediary (and not be at war).