New Trade Route System

[kingchris20]

The new trade routes looked very cool. After you've built your caravan or cargo ship and are ready to send them off to a City-State or other Civilization, or to one of your own cities, a marked path lights up showing you the route it will take, you select which place you want to send them and go off on an automated path back and forth for 30 turns collecting gold from City-States, gold, religious pressure, and beakers from other Civilizations, or transporting production, food, or religious pressure to any of your other cities.

They do not have unlimited range. Caravans may only travel up to 10 plots away in the beginning of the game, while Cargo Ships may only travel up to 45 plots away in the beggining of the game. The farther away the destination, the more lucartive/dangerous your trade route becomes (because they are actual units on the map, they are susceptible to being captured/destoryed.

Trade routes can become blocked or destroyed by enemy units, so you must protect your trade route.

You can send a caravan and a cargo ship to the same city.

Trade route info is found next to the gold icon on the info bar. (attached screenshot via Jabberwockxeno)

Trade Units have a pentagon shaped Icon

Trade route GPT is affected by the destination city's local resources compared to your own, and the type of buildings you have in your cities, such as the market; which would increase the amount of gold you receive from trade routes.



Please add more info or correct me if I'm wrong and I will update it to this OP

 

[MaximusK]

More screenies at flickr, access original file: http://www.flickr.com/photos/josiahkeen/sets/72157633069474841/

 

[Calouste]

Also at the bottom it shows that you can have trade routes with City State's.

 

[Gali]

It was very interesting that you can create trade routes with city-states. That was a necessary system to avoid being easily locked out with no or hostile neighbors. I was annoyed the trade units are actually on the map, they might easily get blocked. Lack of gold from internal trade routes was a rather annoying feature though.

Sea routes are far more lucrative than land routes as well. Something that is very historical and gives a great incentive to gain a coastal site or two. It might make the optics line more valuable as well which would be a wonderful balance update as well.

 

[Barathor]

Also, for those that missed the stream, I believe they mentioned something about you getting larger trade bonuses if you're trading with a city with unique resources compared to your own. So, for other civs, I guess it would be the city that's actually working those resources. And it looked like it doesn't only apply to luxuries, I think I saw the icon for iron there.

I didn't see anything on the screen, though, that displayed any information on "leaked" tech, religion, culture, or whatever. Perhaps that information is meant to be more opague and hidden to the player.

 

[comatosedragon]

It reminds me of the trade system in Galactic Civillizations 2. It looks awesome! I can't wait!

 

[Calouste]

Note that it mentions the range for a Caravan: 10 plots.

 

[smallfish]

Tourism - "25% bonus for Open Borders with France"

 

[_ViKinG_]

how many plots was the cargo ship?

 

[HaloCapella]

nice, +4 food or production should be valuable enough from producing a caravan to a city state. also, with major civs, +2 gold with another city is a nice amount almost like a marketplace. unless those buildings are going to be changed.

 

[Camikaze]

When they were selecting the cargo ship route, the tooltip suggested that there is a 2x modifier for sea routes (and Ed Beach said the same thing in less precise terms). The production/food values also were much higher.

 

[MaximusK]

Here is the screenshot of the cargo ship. 45 plot range.

 

[Calouste]

That's 1400 AD, I guess it has got some enhancements over the years and that 45 is not the starting value. Looks like there is a Frigate there, which would mean they have Navigation, and I'd suspect that that tech results in a decent increase in trade route length.

 

[MaximusK]

That's 1400 AD, I guess it has got some enhancements over the years and that 45 is not the starting value. Looks like there is a Frigate there, which would mean they have Navigation, and I'd suspect that that tech results in a decent increase in trade route length.

There were also GDRs and EXCOM paratroopers in this game. This was just created for the demo not played through.

 

[PhilBowles]

Also at the bottom it shows that you can have trade routes with City State's.

This is very welcome; hopefully this will also replace the 'build a road to us' quest with 'open a trade route with us'.

 

[Nouco]

Will roads affect how much gold you get for a trade route?

 

[anandus]

Note that it mentions the range for a Caravan: 10 plots.

Indeed, but Zanzibar is also an option for Lodz and I think (but am not sure) that's more than 10 tiles?

 

[marekb]

Indeed, but Zanzibar is also an option for Lodz and I think (but am not sure) that's more than 10 tiles?

The distance is about 12-13 if I am counting correctly. But very likely roads tiles can be counted as 1/2 or 1/3 and then Zanzibar is certainly in the distance 10 from Lodz.

 

[joncnunn]

My list of questions:

How many hammers will each trade unit cost?

What happens if you had a trade route with a city state or enemy AI; and they DOW you? (Do you now have an open unit available or is it lost [and you need to build a new unit to replace])

Once you establish a trade route, can you change it? (Say changing internal to external if you discovered a new city state after having established the internal route.)

Internal routes: Is this food or hammers "for free" or is it subtracting them from one city and adding to the other?

(I guess we can probably assume that sea routes have to stay on the coast until you have Astronomy / afterwords can cross into ocean but is that confirmed?)

Is it possible to establish both a land route and a sea route to the same target city? (Coastal city state on your land mass)

As a side note with the other changes: The truly bad start in BNW is now the isolated start with few luxuries with neither city states nor other AIs within sight of your starting land mass instead of the no-river with few luxuries in G&K.

 

[Louis XXIV]

If roads extend the range of trade routes, that'll be quite good. It might even suggest that gold from intraempire trade networks were removed (however, given that there was still the symbol for trade network, I would suggest that they are still in).

One thing that I found amusing. It's a small nitpicky thing, though. He got more gold from Ur than he did from Zanzibar. Now it's possible resources were part of the reason, I wonder if the greater travel distance is the reason instead. Normally, this would make sense (greater distance, more exotic). The only problem is Ur wasn't a greater distance in absolute terms, it was only a greater distance by sea. Since they set up the land route, you could see that it's probably the closest city-state to the empire as a whole.