[Vanilla] Trade Routes Guide

[astog]

astog submitted a new resource:

Trade Routes Guide - Guide to traders, trade routes, and other related information.

Trade Route Guide
"That’s the positive aspect of trade I suppose. The world gets stirred up together" – Isabel Hoving
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Introduction

Traders, and trade routes have been critical part of civilization games, and with the release of Civ 6, there is some confusion and misinformation out there. That is why I...

Read more about this resource...

 

[mice]

Good write up ,thank you .

When you declare war your trade routes are terminated, but are your traders killed ?

I could test it , but I'm sure you know the answer

 

[Emi999]

One thing I don't get: is the number of turns/trips important for anything? My understanding is that the bonuses you get from the trade are valid since the trader starts its route, for esch turn. So the number of turns/trips to complete the route is only meaningful to know how much time I have to wait before I can issue a new command to the trader. It doesn't seem a vital information.

 

[Kabba QuzAi]

Wow, not only you made that increadible mod and now you also gift us with this guide!

I just think you could give more emphasys to your mod link
Thanks again mate!



Maybe add a Topic about mods or "enhancements"
So you can have a link from the Topic list ^__--

 

[KrikkitTwo]

A few additional sources of trade routes

Civic: Foreign Trade ..1 (or 1 base, or 1 from Palace not sure)
A number of Great Merchants provide +1 trade route.

(also it would be good to collect the data on yields into one place....although district yields are currently bugged with double yields if the district has a UD form)

 

[JorshRod]

Could you address the other benefits of trade routes? In the trade route list screen it shows that you can activate an intelligence bonus and tourism bonus by having a trade route with a civ, but in my testing this does not work as I've never seen the bonus icon for either lit up on that screen. Is this part of the interface broken or is there some other prerequisite to getting the 25% tourism and intelligence level bonuses?

 

[Turf1228]

Great write-up.

Although it is basic, I would add the differences in yields between domestic and internation trade routes, i.e. domestic gets you food/cogs/gold, whereas international get you more gold and faith/culture/science.

 

[Soella]

Could you address the other benefits of trade routes? In the trade route list screen it shows that you can activate an intelligence bonus and tourism bonus by having a trade route with a civ, but in my testing this does not work as I've never seen the bonus icon for either lit up on that screen. Is this part of the interface broken or is there some other prerequisite to getting the 25% tourism and intelligence level bonuses?

You can see tourism benefit on the culture victory screen: tip on the number of tourists from the country shows you if you have +25% due to trade route.
Intelligence benefit is shown in the diplomacy screen, check your level of access.

 

[Sogno di Volare]

TY!

Honestly I thought the trading post message was just sort of a "trade route done you get to reassign it now" message. I had no idea it extended the possible range farther. I figured techs and etc did that over time...

Granted just naturally with new cities I tended to create them anyway.

 

[Ryika]

Not that it really matters much though, which is a shame.

Internal Trade Routes are just better for most of the game, and External Trade Routes don't really make that much use of Trading Posts which is such a cool, yet almost meaningless concept. Extra Gold from Trading Post just isn't much, and because of how Trade Route Yields are generated any big city will basically generate similar yields. The investment cost of having to create trade routes to a number of small cities to create a line of trading posts that allows you to access that other big city at the other end of the world to then just generate a few extra Gold is just way too high.

But I'm reasonably confident that they'll make the system work better in the future, I really want to see the idea of expanding your reach and with it your trade route yields further and further as the game progresses - it certainly sounds a lot more interesting than just picking the highest production cities in your own empire.

 

[Sogno di Volare]

Not that it really matters much though, which is a shame.

Internal Trade Routes are just better for most of the game, and External Trade Routes don't really make that much use of Trading Posts which is such a cool, yet almost meaningless concept. Extra Gold from Trading Post just isn't much, and because of how Trade Route Yields are generated any big city will basically generate similar yields. The investment cost of having to create trade routes to a number of small cities to create a line of trading posts that allows you to access that other big city at the other end of the world to then just generate a few extra Gold is just way too high.

But I'm reasonably confident that they'll make the system work better in the future, I really want to see the idea of expanding your reach and with it your trade route yields further and further as the game progresses - it certainly sounds a lot more interesting than just picking the highest production cities in your own empire.

I tend to boost some small cities anyway to some extent with a trade route to start... just for roads and a production boost to start so I'm not sure the trade off for a trading post is that big a deal... but then again I'm not so much using that feature as it just happens naturally.

Granted if you're focusing those routes on one super city or core cities then yeah not so much worth extending a route to the edges for what seems to be a difficult amount of time to determine.

 

[astog]

A few additional sources of trade routes

Civic: Foreign Trade ..1 (or 1 base, or 1 from Palace not sure)
A number of Great Merchants provide +1 trade route.

(also it would be good to collect the data on yields into one place....although district yields are currently bugged with double yields if the district has a UD form)

Completely missed them, thanks for telling me. Added Great Merchants.

One thing I don't get: is the number of turns/trips important for anything? My understanding is that the bonuses you get from the trade are valid since the trader starts its route, for esch turn. So the number of turns/trips to complete the route is only meaningful to know how much time I have to wait before I can issue a new command to the trader. It doesn't seem a vital information.

Trips to complete is what I call, a tooltip variable. It does not need to be in the forefront of the UI, but when provided through tooltips adds context and reasoning to why the turns were high/low etc. As you said, it does not affect gameplay, but removes the ambiguity on why the turns taken are what they are.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Not that it really matters much though, which is a shame.

Internal Trade Routes are just better for most of the game, and External Trade Routes don't really make that much use of Trading Posts which is such a cool, yet almost meaningless concept. Extra Gold from Trading Post just isn't much, and because of how Trade Route Yields are generated any big city will basically generate similar yields. The investment cost of having to create trade routes to a number of small cities to create a line of trading posts that allows you to access that other big city at the other end of the world to then just generate a few extra Gold is just way too high.

But I'm reasonably confident that they'll make the system work better in the future, I really want to see the idea of expanding your reach and with it your trade route yields further and further as the game progresses - it certainly sounds a lot more interesting than just picking the highest production cities in your own empire.

Well Internal trade routes are better because their yield is bugged
(up to 3 extra food and 2 extra production bugged)

Not sure about the same bug for foreign routes...haven't seen any testing (but it would be up to 1 extra faith, 1 extra culture, 1 extra production, 3 extra gold, 1 extra food)

 

[Mr_Happy]

Great Info! Interesting how the number of trips gets calculated and can turn extremely short trade routes into bigger time investments then longer ones,

Something I've been finding frustrating is the inability to control the paths trade routes use. If I want to maximize trade post bonuses I'd want my trade routes to go through as many cities as possible, but as far as I can tell it only tries to go through the cities which it absolutely needs to extend its range to reach the desired destination. I saw scenarios where it won't even take a 1 tile detour which annoyed me!

Did you find any way to influence trade route paths within the 15 tile range to get this sort of route: A => B:8 tiles => C:15 tiles. Could it be that even if it happens to go through city B in this case, since it doesn't need to "refuel" it doesn't even count the trade post?

 

[Hans Lemurson]

From what I saw of your "Trade Route Completion Time" graphs, I would phrase the rule as this:

A Trade route on [Normal] speed will always take at least [24] turns. If the trader returns to the home city before [24] turns has passed, it will take another trip.

 

[OneLeggedRhino]

Great guide, thanks for creating it!

Question for you: There's sometimes a mysterious +2 faith for a route, when the only source of faith I know about is +1 for a Holy Site in the destination city. Do you know other sources of faith? Maybe if the destination city founds a religion?

Thanks!

 

[remconius]

Excellent guide and very useful!

Something I am also interested in is the trade route yield and how it can be influenced. Not sure if you figured that part out yet.

Another few things apart from roads that are key to trade routes:

• A trade route is a source of intelligence, so having one to each other civ gives a lot of information, even if the yield is lower than a city state for example.
• A trade route is also key for tourism as it gives a 100% boost per civ.
• A trade route gives positive modifier for relationships with other civs (I think...).

 

[Markus5]

I'm just playing my first game and I didn't pay close enough attention to all the YouTube games. (Quill18: you're great.) Excuse my ignorance.
What happens to the trader when the route completes?

 

[astog]

Could you address the other benefits of trade routes? In the trade route list screen it shows that you can activate an intelligence bonus and tourism bonus by having a trade route with a civ, but in my testing this does not work as I've never seen the bonus icon for either lit up on that screen. Is this part of the interface broken or is there some other prerequisite to getting the 25% tourism and intelligence level bonuses?

Added them to guide. But need to verify if the benefits are active before the route completes.

Great guide, thanks for creating it!

Question for you: There's sometimes a mysterious +2 faith for a route, when the only source of faith I know about is +1 for a Holy Site in the destination city. Do you know other sources of faith? Maybe if the destination city founds a religion?

Thanks!

Something I am also interested in is the trade route yield and how it can be influenced. Not sure if you figured that part out yet.

I am currently testing this, and building a list of things that affect the trade route yields. The bugs don't help, and I don't want to post incorrect information. Hopefully, Firaxis patches things quickly.

 

[astog]

Great Info! Interesting how the number of trips gets calculated and can turn extremely short trade routes into bigger time investments then longer ones,

Something I've been finding frustrating is the inability to control the paths trade routes use. If I want to maximize trade post bonuses I'd want my trade routes to go through as many cities as possible, but as far as I can tell it only tries to go through the cities which it absolutely needs to extend its range to reach the desired destination. I saw scenarios where it won't even take a 1 tile detour which annoyed me!

Did you find any way to influence trade route paths within the 15 tile range to get this sort of route: A => B:8 tiles => C:15 tiles. Could it be that even if it happens to go through city B in this case, since it doesn't need to "refuel" it doesn't even count the trade post?

I don't think you can influence the path it takes. Within the game code all you pass is the coordinates of the origin and destination city, and the game decides the path.