Anyone else think trade routes are a bit too good?

[SupremacyKing2]

I have no issue with trade routes in Civ:BE. I like that trade routes are per city instead of per civ. I don't think they are OP. In my first game, I had some internal routes that yielded a lot and some that yielded little. I had one route that gave nothing while some only give production. I like that internal trade routes are so important. Just a different system than civ5. Personally, it never made sense to me that there were so few trade routes in civ5 considering how important they were in real history.

 

[Acken]

now I see where the complaints are coming from, from those who are all about the numbers...

Nobody is forcing you to build cities in bad locations just to get the trade routes... That is your choice to do that, and if it is not fun for you, then don't settle cities in bad locations...

Only settle them in strategic locations, and stop spamming cities, to break the game, and then complain it is over powered..

I find the current 3 routes very fun in both of my games. But I also don't just settle cities 4 hexs away from each other to spam as many cities as possible...

No I don't play for fastest win times. I know some of you enjoy that, and try to find every exploit their is to accomplish that, and with that in mind, you want the programmers to stop you from using those techniques...

the numbers do make sense in a real world setting... large cities have more goods and services shipped in than they produce, and those goods and services do not reduce the food and production available to the cities shipping the goods. If those other cities where not shipping the goods, they would just go to waste.

Small cities also grow via trade, and shipping of goods in. Florida's population would die if it were not for trade. NOrth Dakota would not be growing if it were not for trade.

I know I will loose this fight with all you number crunchers, and it will be nerfed, so that people can finish a game in just a couple of hours, but I will continue to say for me, I like the trade system, as is.

First let me be clear. When I said "something that makes some actual sense in the numbers used", I wasn't referring to the real world at all. I meant numbers that make sense relative to the other numbers the game uses. I could not care less about real world example to justify a video game mechanic. This isn't a real world simulation and doesn't try to be.

As for asking people to not play well because if they do it breaks the game, to each his own. I find that argument rather silly but if that's how you like your strategy games then fine by me.

Nonetheless I'll still complain the numbers makes 0 sense relative to each others and completely destroy the care a player must have toward city placement, buildings choices and more. Even if you make only a handful of cities, these points are still true, it's too easy to make all buildings, trade routes are still the most important thing and besides hooking strategic resources, city placement is irrelevant. Not caring for stuff diminishes the strategical part of the game, the same way Civ5 destroys the strategical aspect of Social Policies by making 2 much more powerful than the rest.

And I like my strategy games to have strategy in them.

But I'm not burrying the game. Also this is only 1.0 so I was aware we would get an unpolished product. But in order to raise awareness of what is going wrong (in my opinion) I'll state my opinion on it. What angers me is that players have raised concerns since the first stream of the game. And any competent tester caring for balance would have spotted the issue right away.

PS: And playing wide or not, trade route request spam is still annoying.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

They could solve the trade route problem very easily by saying the max input/output from a city for any given resource is no more than twice the city size. No planting a city, buying a trade depot, shipping a couple convoys there from cities that have already built them, and insta-getting a rapidly growing city along with +8 gold and +8 science (or whatever) across two routes.

Food cargo routes in Civ V were broken, but nothing quite on this level, and there are so many more of them!

As far as the constant clicking to send 'em places -- it got annoying but on the other hand, it's maybe 5-10 seconds a turn, at best. Solvable by putting the previous route at the top for an easy auto-reclick.

Still don't get the formula they use for trade route yield ... anyone come up with specific #s yet?

And yeah, I have no idea how this got past playtesting. MadDjinn, what's up with all this?!?!?!

 

[TLHeart]

Acken,

there was a change to trade routes between the two builds we saw in the lets play streams...

I also like strategy in my games... and I do find there to be strategy in BE.

Balance is a subjective issue. Are we talking balance for MP or Single player?

I want a hard game against the AI, not a cake walk. I have NOT had a cake walk yet, and I am playing soyuz.

I can see where the delta values between the cities can use some work... to reduce the amount of trade for internal routes.

I will even concede to the elimination of the 3rd route from the autoplant.

do Need some major rework to the UI for trade routes... being able to sort by the delta values when assigning the trade route. Having the previous route as the first choice regardless of sort, and not needing to go to each individual city screen to see if that city needs another trade unit, and we can presently build more trade units than we can use.

 

[Acken]

They could solve the trade route problem very easily by saying the max input/output from a city for any given resource is no more than twice the city size. No planting a city, buying a trade depot, shipping a couple convoys there from cities that have already built them, and insta-getting a rapidly growing city along with +8 gold and +8 science (or whatever) across two routes.

Food cargo routes in Civ V were broken, but nothing quite on this level, and there are so many more of them!

As far as the constant clicking to send 'em places -- it got annoying but on the other hand, it's maybe 5-10 seconds a turn, at best. Solvable by putting the previous route at the top for an easy auto-reclick.

Still don't get the formula they use for trade route yield ... anyone come up with specific #s yet?

And yeah, I have no idea how this got past playtesting. MadDjinn, what's up with all this?!?!?!

Yeah I guess something that is a function of pop is possible.
I still think they should start to reduce the total numbers since it would kill two birds with one stone: the annoyance of having to reassign so many and the power of it.
Once numbers are reduced we'll see if the value also has to be fixed.

 

[Acken]

Acken,

there was a change to trade routes between the two builds we saw in the lets play streams...

I also like strategy in my games... and I do find there to be strategy in BE.

Balance is a subjective issue. Are we talking balance for MP or Single player?

I want a hard game against the AI, not a cake walk. I have NOT had a cake walk yet, and I am playing soyuz.

I can see where the delta values between the cities can use some work... to reduce the amount of trade for internal routes.

I will even concede to the elimination of the 3rd route from the autoplant.

do Need some major rework to the UI for trade routes... being able to sort by the delta values when assigning the trade route. Having the previous route as the first choice regardless of sort, and not needing to go to each individual city screen to see if that city needs another trade unit, and we can presently build more trade units than we can use.

Yes thankfully it was at least changed once, before it would have been even worse Especially with Polystralia old UA.

But I'm not basing my opinion on LP if that's your point.

I'm talking about SP.

Also to be fair I don't think it's the only problem, if going wide was harder or toned down it would also help. It's just a combination of easy expansion with so much return on expanding that is the issue.

 

[elprofesor]

I think that, for starters, internal trade routes should count for both cities involved, so that you actually have a reason to send trade routes to other players.

 

[Acken]

You already have a reason to send routes to other players. Science and gold. The yield isn't bad.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

You already have a reason to send routes to other players. Science and gold. The yield isn't bad.

Yeah -- I was not playing optimally by any means but I was shocked to find that my science total went up about 15% after sending a trade route from a 1-pop city to an AI city (+7 science and I think my total was 40 or so at the time).

Internal routes are great. And external routes are great.

I don't know that this counts as 'broken' if everyone (including the AI) does it, but perhaps. It is, as Acken suggests, not super interesting but on the other hand, it's not a big deal to me that small cities can grow very fast, it's kind of nice.

 

[TLHeart]

Yes thankfully it was at least changed once, before it would have been even worse Especially with Polystralia old UA.

But I'm not basing my opinion on LP if that's your point.

I'm talking about SP.

Also to be fair I don't think it's the only problem, if going wide was harder or toned down it would also help. It's just a combination of easy expansion with so much return on expanding that is the issue.

so it is the combinations of trade route and expansion not being limited... I just hope that it does not return to BNW, where expansion was so severely penalized. I like the concept, of trade being the driving force of your empire, and providing more support to the cities, than the city can by itself.

 

[bhavv]

Guys I took the +1 energy for Autoplants and not the +1 trade route.

- Ralph Wiggum.

 

[Haggbart]

so it is the combinations of trade route and expansion not being limited... I just hope that it does not return to BNW, where expansion was so severely penalized. I like the concept, of trade being the driving force of your empire, and providing more support to the cities, than the city can by itself.

Nobody said anything about returning to BNW. The problem is not that going wide is viable or even desirable. It's that trade routes are so powerful that nothing else really matters. And obviously the AI can't use them as well as the human player, so in addition to making city placement, buildings and wonders almost meaningless, they make the game way too easy.

 

[Acken]

so it is the combinations of trade route and expansion not being limited... I just hope that it does not return to BNW, where expansion was so severely penalized. I like the concept, of trade being the driving force of your empire, and providing more support to the cities, than the city can by itself.

Even with a nerf to trade routes I dont see 4 cities bnw coming back as long as trade still scale with empire size. That is a fine idea but they just went nuts.

What made wide so hard in BNW would still not be there: national wonders and hard to come happiness.

I still wish for a harsher health system because I think that with biowells health is easy to manage. I would even be in favor of biowells to be more accessible (closer to center) if that meant a more careful aproach to health.

In summary, I'd like a slower expansion game (more careful aproach to it) but not necessarily limited, more importance given to land and buildings in relation to trade routes yields and some sort of diminishing return the wider you get.

 

[Aeson]

I think the balance between slow/tall expansion and fast/short is actually quite good. I've played a -300 Health game, a +50 (and greater) Health game, and one where I vacillated most of the game between +/- 19. All three on Apollo, all three within about 10 turns on the (complete) Domination time. (Yes, this planet is mine. Even if I'm going to Transcend. Get off my planet first )

For what it's worth, the +50 health (which grew to +300 by the end) was the game I finished the tech tree completely (and had Xeno Titans, ANGELs, and LEV Destroyers all fighting hand in hand ... trying to catch up with the Redeemers/LEV Tanks), though it was the slowest Domination by about 10 turns.

 

[Aeson]

I would say that if they can fix the AI to present a challenge, it will favor the high Health approach. Because it can get to fully upgraded units and/or the peaceful victory conditions faster.

 

[Stalker0]

I tried my last game with that wonderful mod that is already up to limit trade routes.

1 route per city
-25% yields to all but stations
No autoplant +1 route.


What a difference! Trade is still a strong aspect, but no where near as crazy. I still get my trade up first for each city, but the rest of the city building and placement matters a lot more.

It doesn't fix everything, but its a great start.

 

[Acken]

I think the balance between slow/tall expansion and fast/short is actually quite good. I've played a -300 Health game, a +50 (and greater) Health game, and one where I vacillated most of the game between +/- 19. All three on Apollo, all three within about 10 turns on the (complete) Domination time. (Yes, this planet is mine. Even if I'm going to Transcend. Get off my planet first )

For what it's worth, the +50 health (which grew to +300 by the end) was the game I finished the tech tree completely (and had Xeno Titans, ANGELs, and LEV Destroyers all fighting hand in hand ... trying to catch up with the Redeemers/LEV Tanks), though it was the slowest Domination by about 10 turns.

I guess we'll have to start these appollo challenges to see where things are. Can't play for the next week though

 

[Ryoga]

I tried my last game with that wonderful mod that is already up to limit trade routes.

1 route per city
-25% yields to all but stations
No autoplant +1 route.


What a difference! Trade is still a strong aspect, but no where near as crazy. I still get my trade up first for each city, but the rest of the city building and placement matters a lot more.

It doesn't fix everything, but its a great start.

Seems like a must have mod, if anything for the fact that you don't need to spend hours managing trade routes anymore with that.

But I don't like the fact that it removes the immunity vs aliens option.

 

[Matthew.]

After playing some more:

1. Remove/change the quest. There is no reason to give +1 routes, especially when it completely trumps the other choice.

2. Simply halving the current number, or the yield, would probably be good enough. If it were 1 trade route per city, you'd have to make the choice between boosting up a new city or giving up the gold/science. If it were just smaller yields, there would be more flexibility, but similar results to cutting down to 1 route per.

3. I don't particularly mind higher yields than building improvements, as it is all the same in the end. Either you get a bulk amount from buildings and a minor amount from trade, or vice versa. The one difference is that trade routes are nearly "instant", while stacking building improvements (even with trade routes) takes time. But considering we now need outposts before cities, and taking point #2 (dropping a trade route or reducing yields), it would essentially equal out.

All in all, I don't think they are as big of a problem as this 11 page thread makes it appear. Drop down to 1 trade route per city with no +1 quest, and while they would still be great for adding a base amount of raw stats to a city, it wouldn't completely overshadow other parts of the game. Although the tedium of reassigning every 20 turns should be reworked.

 

[Kutuzov]

I'd agree that it would be better to change Autoplant's quest to generate either +1 energy or +1 production, or to add one or both modifiers to the value of trade routes originating from your city.