When do you build trading posts?

[danaphanous]

I find myself hardly ever building trading posts with the exception of on jungles since the synergy of science/gold from economics and university is too strong to give up.

I just can't justify giving up the production and food bonuses from the other improvements. Fast growth means better science, and more useable tiles, and I'd much rather have a mine with production bonus than 2 gold. I can get gold in many ways including selling stuff to the AI whereas my cities are often in need of extra production.

Does anyone find them more useful and build them? I see the AI spamming them around and it does give them more gold to play with, however, I know it must nerf their growth to do that. I notice that policies in commerce and rationalism directly boost the output of trading posts and that gets further multiplied by the buildings you build later in the game so I was wondering if it could be a nice play if you didn't want a city to grow too fast (flat grassland maybe) due to happiness problems but needed a gold city. I would certainly buy a lot more buildings if I could but my gold midgame is usually pretty low due to expansion and all maintenance costs of my wide play. Iv'e never built a city like that and usually try to keep everything growing instead though. My gold usually improves after industrial due to all the new buildings and tenets.

 

[SULOMON]

I only build trading posts on Jungle, might be worth it to build trading posts on forest as Iroquois.

 

[darkskies]

Well I mostly build them in pupated cities. And of course on tundra which is not next to water. And jungle as you say. Usually by the time I can get them gpt is not an issue though occasionally it is. There is that social policy too that gives you science for them but I'm usually done with the game before going there or have my factories up.

 

[danaphanous]

Ah yes, I forgot about it since usually I keep the forests, but yeah I build them on tundra too since they are unfarmeable. That or plop a GP I don't need down on it to improve yields. I rarely work them though as the return is poor enough a specialist is nearly always better.

 

[Sclb]

You can also build on hills without resources near the end of game when you finished building all the necessary buildings.

 

[Primacide]

I'm with you here. The early game requires food, and by the mid game a measly +2 gold per turn is really insignificant. I even build farms for my puppets as well, since having a stagnated puppet city stuck at 5 pop on turn 250 is just lame. Trading posts on jungle tiles is quite good, however.

I hate doing the civ iv to civ v comparisons (there are like three threads in the top 20 right now complaining about the differences) but I must say that trading posts in civ iv were much more fun. That being said, I like that the game shifted away from getting gold from your dirt and made it more of a function of diplomacy and interconnected cities. It does a good job mimicking taking raw materials and developing an economic infrastructure from them.

 

[vadalaz]

For fast Freedom SVs, trading posts are very helpful as they provide a significant gold and science boost. You want all of your citizens to be working either specialist slots or trading posts in the end. The cities might starve for some turns but the game should end before you lose population.

For any VC, trading posts eventually become the best tile improvement for hills, the only problem is that it's usually really late in the game when that happens and you need both Mercantilism and Big Ben.

A mined hill:
(2 production base yield + 1 Mine + 1 Chemistry) * (100% + 20% Golden Age + 10% Workshop + 10% Factory + 10% Windmill) = 4 * 150% = 6 per turn

A trading post hill:
(2 production base yield) * 150% + (1 gold Trading Post + 1 Economics + 1 Golden Age) * (100% + 25% Market + 25% Bank + 25% Stock Exchange) = 3 + 5.25 (+1 Free Thought)

With Big Ben and Mercantilism, a research lab costs 810 gold or 500 hammers if you hard-build it, so each hammer is worth 1.62 gold for a late game building. Using this rate to convert the above yields to gold, a mined hill is worth 9.72 gpt, a trading post is worth 10.11 gpt + 1 bpt with Free thought. Trading post is the winner here, but it takes a really long time to get there. Earlier buildings have worse conversion rates too.

It's important to note that gold is more flexible than hammers though. You can buy anything you want in any city, while production is always tied to just one city. Gold is also useful for other things such as trade, RAs and CSs. On the other hand, you can't buy wonders.

Some policies make TPs even more powerful, e.g. the Autocracy unit purchasing tenet or Commerce finisher.

 

[Autocrat777]

I build a mix of farms and trading posts in puppets. Other than that I rarely build them, I would rather grow my cities.

 

[cazaderonus]

Unless specific conditions, on jungles only.

 

[danaphanous]

that's interesting vadalaz. How do those calculations change without a golden age, I notice you include the multiplier.

 

[fyar]

For any VC, trading posts eventually become the best tile improvement for hills, the only problem is that it's usually really late in the game when that happens and you need both Mercantilism and Big Ben.

A mined hill:
(2 production base yield + 1 Mine + 1 Chemistry) * (100% + 20% Golden Age + 10% Workshop + 10% Factory + 10% Windmill) = 4 * 150% = 6 per turn

A trading post hill:
(2 production base yield) * 150% + (1 gold Trading Post + 1 Economics + 1 Golden Age) * (100% + 25% Market + 25% Bank + 25% Stock Exchange) = 3 + 5.25 (+1 Free Thought)

With Big Ben and Mercantilism, a research lab costs 810 gold or 500 hammers if you hard-build it, so each hammer is worth 1.62 gold for a late game building. Using this rate to convert the above yields to gold, a mined hill is worth 9.72 gpt, a trading post is worth 10.11 gpt + 1 bpt with Free thought. Trading post is the winner here, but it takes a really long time to get there. Earlier buildings have worse conversion rates too.

It's important to note that gold is more flexible than hammers though. You can buy anything you want in any city, while production is always tied to just one city. Gold is also useful for other things such as trade, RAs and CSs. On the other hand, you can't buy wonders.

Some policies make TPs even more powerful, e.g. the Autocracy unit purchasing tenet or Commerce finisher.

Interesting analysis there. One problem with trading posts though is that they take so long to build. In your cost-benefit analysis, what if you had to spend like 10 turns working a regular hill without any improvements? It probably wouldn't be worth it in the end to build a trading post on top of an already-built mine. But if you have an unimproved hill that late in the game, or a spare one that isn't being worked, that could make sense. I don't go through Commerce nearly as often as others seem to, now you're starting to make me rethink that.

 

[rover6695]

I'm doing a liberity game right now with 8 cities and have been building them on non-river adjacent/non-ocean adjacent desert and flat terrain. I NEED the cash, so I don't see why this is a problem. I take it if doing 4 cities tradition, it is then unnecessary.

 

[vadalaz]

Interesting analysis there. One problem with trading posts though is that they take so long to build. In your cost-benefit analysis, what if you had to spend like 10 turns working a regular hill without any improvements? It probably wouldn't be worth it in the end to build a trading post on top of an already-built mine. But if you have an unimproved hill that late in the game, or a spare one that isn't being worked, that could make sense. I don't go through Commerce nearly as often as others seem to, now you're starting to make me rethink that.

You're right, it's a bad idea to work an unimproved hill for so long. What I'd try to do is assign the citizen from mined hill X to another mined hill Y, and have a worker build a trading post on X. When that's finished, assign the citizen back to the trading post hill X and build a trading post on hill Y. I realize this is not always possible though.

When I play Rationalism/Freedom/Commerce SVs, there's typically a period of time when I'm maximizing growth in all cities by working mostly farms and specialist slots, so that's when I start removing mines and building trading posts instead. It comes after adopting Freedom and getting Universal Suffrage. The happiness boost is enormous, so it allows for a lot more growth than you could afford before. That's also why I like to go Fertilizer after Radio.

World's Fair can get in the way a bit. You want to max out production to secure the win, so I don't remove any mines until the project is finished. Same for wonders, e.g. if I'm planning to build Hubble in my best production city, I won't remove any mines around it.

How do those calculations change without a golden age, I notice you include the multiplier.

Trading posts benefit more from a GA, so without one they do become weaker than mines if you convert the yields to hammers or gold. There's still the science from Free thought, though.

A new citizen provides 2 raw beakers late game (1 base + 0.5 library + 0.5 public school). A trading post can provide 1 beaker, so if you're working 2 trading posts, it's almost as if your city is 1 pop higher than it actually is. So even without a Golden Age I personally consider TPs to be the better improvement.

 

[beetle]

Most of the time I put TP on forested tundra rather than Lumber mill. The lumber mill boosts come eariler, but most games by the time I would be working them, a TP is more yields and a better balance.

 

[danaphanous]

forested tundra is the exact same as every other forest though? So why do you mention it specifically? Do you usually clear the other forests? I usually clear forests on riverbanks but often leave the others if it is mostly flat grassland as the production is horrible otherwise. I will often clear if it will be plains as that +1 production is good and I enjoy 2 food 1 production more than 1 food 2 production most of the game. This works well with the timing of tech boosts to yields as the one that boosts lumber mills is quite late. I can see your rationale to building it on forests you kept though as long as you didn't need the production.

 

[beetle]

forested tundra is the exact same as every other forest though? So why do you mention it specifically? Do you usually clear the other forests?

Yes. You should be chopping just about every tile you can. It is a powerful boost to your early game. With some maps, it is worth an extra worker just for chopping!

After fertilizer, dry grassland and plains farms are okay to work. But dry TP tundra without a forest? Not so much!

 

[danaphanous]

For the most part I agree with you, I just never thought to put trading post on the leftover forests. Could work well if you go rationalism or commerce.

I, however, keep my forests if I anticipate very poor production after their removal. Why would I remove it for maybe 100 early production only to nerf my city by 10-20 production for the rest of the game afterward?

I had a few games where a large city had awful production being in nearly full grassland. Ever since then I leave some forest if I see this scenario as even a few lumber-mill forest tiles can double or triple the available early-game production on such a city that has no hills. Plains is different as it has base production enough.