Anyone else think trade routes are a bit too good?

[HecatesLover]

I have some agreement with Lordrune. Especially since the stronger end of an internal trade route is to the city the route is being sent to. This allows creation of an extreme super-city that can pump out expensive units in a single turn and expensive buildings in record time. The weight needs to be either balanced or the stronger end on the sending city. This way any single city can only have 3 boosted input routes.

Even with the above change though I still feel the top yields from trade routes are a little too high. It is putting too much resource generation in a single game system.

 

[Ikael]

Well, the current mechanic of internal trade routes seems comically overpowered since both cities (origin and destination cities) gets food and production bonuses that seems to scale up indefinetely. Energy might be important, but come on, popullation and production does turn into energy in the end, and the amount of science generated by external trade routes is ridiculous if they keep it on Civ V levels.

There are 4 ways that I can think of in order to balance this:

- Put a hard limit on internal trade routes. Perhaps just one per city would suffice. Simple and straightfoward, but perhaps a bit tad too limiting

- Make external trade routes the main source of science for the empires. This is a quite risky gambling, game balance-wise, but it could add some interesting costs to waginng war and enacting trade embargos

- Make internal trade routes give you a health penalty that would grow exponentially with each additional internal trade route rather than linearly. That could be a cool way to integrate two game mechanics while giving use to that seemingly excessive amount of health. Not to mention that it has some degree of logic behind it (diseases spreading faster due to commerce with no internal frontiers and health controls) and that it would force you to choose the flavour of your empire: do I have huge unhealthy metropolis sustained by internal trade routes, or smaller, albeit open to the world and healthy cities?

- Make the internal trade route bonuses stop growing at a certain point by basing its output on the improvements / resources under control of the city. Rather than making them dependant on the food and production generated by the city per se (which makes it for an nasty game breaking self-replicating cycle), base the amount of internal trade route bonuse dependant not on the city per se, but rather on the terrain / improvements under its control. For example: internal trade routes gives +1 food per plantation and chitin resource on the city, and +1 production per quarry and petrol resource. This way your internal trade routes will be able to develope their output, but only up to a certain point limited by their extension.

 

[Gort]

So again I ask. What is internal trade routes better than?

Better than the other food and production options you can get for 60 hammers.

Better than the AI gives them credit for - they clearly weren't being used well by the AI in MadDjinn's PAC game as he was able to focus on them heavily and steamroll the AI opposition who weren't focusing in the same manner.

Better than the quests involving them intend - see the Autoplant quest where you can pick +1 energy per Autoplant or a whole extra trade route.

If there was a 60-hammer building that got you 8 food and 15 production you'd cry foul - that's what I was doing when I made this thread.

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All that said, it has apparently already been nerfed (see TLHeart's posts in this thread) so it may no longer be an issue.

 

[aguliondew]

People stated that the build Maddjinn was using was an old build during his PAC game, so the balance issues people had with trade routes would have been fixed awhile ago. I keep thinking that trade route made your city give X and get Y instead of both sides profiting from it.

 

[HecatesLover]

If they were nerfed they weren't nerfed much Gort. On the MadDjinn Kavitha stream he was getting 8+ science and energy from individual international trade routes.

 

[Gort]

It was really the internal ones MadDjinn was exploiting in the PAC game - he only used as many external ones as he really needed to balance the budget.

The balancing factor to external trade is that you're enriching one of your opponents at the same time as you enrich yourself. Internal trade has no such balancing factor, so it's power is more concerning.

 

[Galgus]

One of the big problems in Civ 5 was how important some buildings were and how ignorable or downright unadvisable others could be.

I'm really hoping we don't see a mandatory expand, get trade infrastucture, profit build show up.

Since they seem to be per city, I'd like trade routes to feel like an option rather than a mandatory path to build first - and trade routes in BNW were quite mandatory till you hit the cap.
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Also, the trade-off between internal and external trade routes never felt clear or satisfying.

Internal trade routes almost always seemed better in the long term to complete a wonder or raise population.

External trade routes only really felt relevant if one needed gobs of gold to buy and maintain relations with city-states, and in the long term internal trade routes could lead to more gold anyway.

So the trade-off always felt flawed to me to begin with, though the additional option of Outpost trading might at least be a viable alternative to internal routes.

 

[aguliondew]

I think trade routes are a way to keep the total amount of turns to win down to a same level as civ 5. Think about it takes longer to build a settler and create a city. They claim civ:BE should take the same amount of time to win as civ 5. Trade routes are the way that they have done that it seems.

 

[Acken]

They could also make trade routes cost more the more you have.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

They could make trade units non-transferrable (each city must build its own trade units.)
Increasing the investment needed (and making it more manageable)

 

[Haggbart]

It was really the internal ones MadDjinn was exploiting in the PAC game - he only used as many external ones as he really needed to balance the budget.

The balancing factor to external trade is that you're enriching one of your opponents at the same time as you enrich yourself. Internal trade has no such balancing factor, so it's power is more concerning.

Even in the Kavitha-game the internal trade routes are pretty impressive. In turn 100 one of the internal routes available yielded a total of 14 production and 3 food for the two cities. I saw one international giving 11 gold and 11 science, but in that case of course the other part recieved quite a lot too (5/5 or 6/6 i think).

 

[Lord Shadow]

Why does everyone seem to think trade routes are overpowered as opposed to working as intended?

I mean, they don't work quite like in Civ5, sure, but clearly they're necessary to stay in the green and remain productive and competitive across the board. They're not an exploitable bonus the AI is unaware of nor anything like that: the AI factions seem to make use of trade just as much. And on the whole, they don't enable any civ to blitz through the tech web in any way.

So really, I see no major issue. Just a system that works differently from its previous incarnation, but still balanced in its own way.

 

[TLHeart]

I find the current trade routes very good...
Internal, food and production, limited to 3 per city, with no mirror routes allowed.
external, science and energy, limited to 3 per city.

It is a trade off, do you want food and production that benefits 2 cities?
or,
do you want science and energy that benefits all of your cities, and gives a diplomatic benefit, and science and energy to the other faction?

Very balanced IMHO.

 

[Gort]

Why does everyone seem to think trade routes are overpowered as opposed to working as intended?

I mean, they don't work quite like in Civ5, sure, but clearly they're necessary to stay in the green and remain productive and competitive across the board. They're not an exploitable bonus the AI is unaware of nor anything like that: the AI factions seem to make use of trade just as much. And on the whole, they don't enable any civ to blitz through the tech web in any way.

So really, I see no major issue. Just a system that works differently from its previous incarnation, but still balanced in its own way.

You saw the MadDjinn game he won on Deity by doing little BUT building internal trade routes, right?

 

[ggmoyang]

Trade routes are working as intended, right. But this means only wide play is optimal.

In civ 5 national wonders and tradition made tall play is the optimal play.

 

[TLHeart]

You saw the MadDjinn game he won on Deity by doing little BUT building internal trade routes, right?

and that has been changed totally, in the current build.... has no factor in the game today. and he never won that game, just stopped playing.

 

[Gort]

and that has been changed totally, in the current build.... has no factor in the game today. and he never won that game, just stopped playing.

Look up a few posts to Haggbart's posts. 14 production and 3 food from one trade route hardly sounds like "changed totally".

Plus MadDjinn was well on the road to victory in that game, having completely eliminated a major opponent and taken all his stuff.

 

[GhostSalsa]

Why does everyone seem to think trade routes are overpowered as opposed to working as intended?

Because why even bother setting building and unit costs at a certain scale and then introducing an element that immediately reduces them? Just reduce building and growth-to-next-pop costs and take out internal trade routes and be done with it. It's literally the same effect.

A production generator that pays itself back in ~10 turns is completely broken. Factories (360 hammer cost!) in CiV don't add more than 9 hammers per turn in most cities when you build them so they take 40 turns to go green. If production building yield-cost ratios haven't changed much in BE, that's about what internal TRs in BE should take - because you're still getting the steamroll effects in the weaker target cities anywayy

In CiV the problem (lack of real choice) with internal TRs was that sending food was almost always better than hammers. But the scale of either yield was on point relative to what else trade routes could do. Combining yields types isn't a bad fix - but the total amount of dots should still be on the same scale.

 

[TLHeart]

Look up a few posts to Haggbart's posts. 14 production and 3 food from one trade route hardly sounds like "changed totally".

Plus MadDjinn was well on the road to victory in that game, having completely eliminated a major opponent and taken all his stuff.

no more mirrored routes, as in the game you are referencing, and combat strenghts have changed also... throw that game away.

14 production, and 3 food, nothing wrong with that.... and that value changes as each city grows and changes, The more similar two cities are, the less value to the trade route... they are NOT static like they were in Civ V.

This is NOT civ V.

 

[TLHeart]

Because why even bother setting building and unit costs at a certain scale and then introducing an element that immediately reduces them? Just reduce building and growth-to-next-pop costs and take out internal trade routes and be done with it. It's literally the same effect.

A production generator that pays itself back in ~10 turns is completely broken. Factories (360 hammer cost!) in CiV don't add more than 9 hammers per turn in most cities when you build them so they take 40 turns to go green. If production building yield-cost ratios haven't changed much in BE, that's about what internal TRs in BE should take - because you're still getting the steamroll effects in the weaker target cities anywayy

In CiV the problem (lack of real choice) with internal TRs was that sending food was almost always better than hammers. But the scale of either yield was on point relative to what else trade routes could do. Combining yields types isn't a bad fix - but the total amount of dots should still be on the same scale.

this is NOT civ V...

the trade route provides food and hammers to both cities, based upon the differences between the cities... the more similar the cities are, the less valuable the trade route is, for internal trade routes. It can actually become a trade route that provides NOTHING to both cities.