What happens to your extra trade route if you lose Colossus/Petra?

[fyar]

Let's say you have a 8 out of 8 possible trade routes running, but then you lose the Colossus (through warfare, trade deal, whatever). Suppose also that none of your 8 trade routes came from that city, so in principle, all 8 trade routes should still be functional. But now you're only supposed to have 7. What happens to your 8 trade routes now? I can think of four feasible scenarios:

1. One of them randomly and abruptly disappears.
2. You get to illegally keep your 8, and can continue to play with 8 trade routes for as long as those 8 exist, but if one of them gets plundered or something, you don't get to rebuild it.
3. All of your current trade routes operate until their normal end, but then as soon as the next trade route finishes, you're unable to renew it. Your cargo ship just sits in port unable to connect a trade route because you've filled your quota. You'd have to either disband this useless cargo ship or keep pressing space bar until you recapture the Colossus or discover Penicillin or something to get another trade route.
4. The game crashes because it can't handle 8>7, and poor programming.

I'm hoping for #3. The reason I ask is because I've thought about modding new civs, and one idea I had was a UA which gives a free extra trade route and cargo ship to both civs when you declare friendship. But I was thinking about the consequences of this when the friendship expires. (Of course you can renew, but even if both sides accept the renewal, there's that one turn when you're not friends.)

 

[Browd]

Same issue would arise if you lost your Petra city.

Can't say either has ever happened to me (or that we've had this question before), but it's easy enough to test. Save a game where you have Petra or Colossus and have maxed out your trade routes. Sell your Petra/Colossus city to a random AI, advance one turn and note what happens to your trade routes. (Of course, you would then reload your save from before the city sale and play on as usual, with your Petra/Colossus city intact.)

I suspect one of your TRs will randomly disappear, but if you choose to test it, please report back.

 

[shaglio]

3. All of your current trade routes operate until their normal end, but then as soon as the next trade route finishes, you're unable to renew it. Your cargo ship just sits in port unable to connect a trade route because you've filled your quota. You'd have to either disband this useless cargo ship or keep pressing space bar until you recapture the Colossus or discover Penicillin or something to get another trade route.

I don't know the answer to your question, but I do know that Cargo Ships and Caravans can be "sentried" like other units (the little icon with the ZZZ on it). No need to keep hitting the spacebar unless you're afraid you'll forget about the unit.

 

[Der_Zorn_gottes]

There is option 5:
The extra trade route is not tied to owning the wonder, but to completing it. So nothing would change if you lose it.

 

[Chum]

There is option 5:
The extra trade route is not tied to owning the wonder, but to completing it. So nothing would change if you lose it.

It's tied to the owner. You can capture petra and you will get an extra trade route.

 

[fyar]

Thanks Browd, I posted here because I tried to find such a save, but it took some effort. I rarely build Colossus (it's a good wonder, just not on my normal tech path). When I build Petra, it's usually in my capital, which can't be traded. So I had to look through my domination games for one where I was using all my trade routes, but most of the time, one had gotten plundered, or I don't have enough trade partners to use them all, or something.

I did eventually find one, though. And it just so happened that I had the good fortune of having a trade route expire in 2 turns. So I sold the Colossus, waited two turns, and... the answer was #2. It displayed "9/8" for my trade routes, but since I already had 9, even after the next one expired, I was able to renew it.

I sort of wonder if that makes the UA I had imagined overpowered then. My hope was that the free extra trade route would last only as long as the DoF.

 

[joncnunn]

Basically in this situation you get to keep the extra route until someone pillages one of your units.
Or if you reach a tech that increases your allowed number, you won't be able to construct a new one because the tech has simply changes your status from being over the limit to at the limit.

 

[inthesomeday]

I sort of wonder if that makes the UA I had imagined overpowered then. My hope was that the free extra trade route would last only as long as the DoF.

You could make it so rather than spawning in a normal trade unit it spawns one that is automatically deleted at the end of a declaration of friendship, however long it is.

Either way it's a very OP UA though, it sets up for just ridiculously enormous cities.

 

[fyar]

You could make it so rather than spawning in a normal trade unit it spawns one that is automatically deleted at the end of a declaration of friendship, however long it is.

Either way it's a very OP UA though, it sets up for just ridiculously enormous cities.

Automatically deleting it at the end of the DoF sounds like a challenge. You'd have to keep track of which cargo ship was the free one, and that does not seem trivial.

I don't imagine it being too OP. Without having tested it out in gameplay yet obviously, how would you rate it with the UAs of, say... Poland, Korea, or Babylon? Or vs. another DoF-related UA in Sweden? How about vs. the other trade-focused civs like Portugal, Morocco, and Venice?

It may be better than Sweden, and maybe the best trade-focused civ, but none of the other trade-focused civs are that strong anyway. It's still far behind the top tier UAs like Poland, Korea, or Babylon I think.