Anyone else think trade routes are a bit too good?

[Joneill]

It doesn't matter that some internal TR options will flatline. Because, just move to the good ones - the game puts no real cost on this, so you are guaranteed enough good internal TR options to make their performance virtually optimal all the time.

Unless the good routes aren't going to cities you actually want to push, in which case external routes might be better. To be honest, in the latest stream from Maddjinn, most internal trade routes didn't look that great in yield anymore (and that's with +50% for being sea-based).

 

[KrikkitTwo]

It would REALLY help if they had a tooltip.
Right now trade routes are this massive part of your economy, and there is no useful information on what it is based on.

 

[GhostSalsa]

Unless the good routes aren't going to cities you actually want to push, in which case external routes might be better. To be honest, in the latest stream from Maddjinn, most internal trade routes didn't look that great in yield anymore (and that's with +50% for being sea-based).

The internal yields can look less sexy until you just envision them as a sum. Oh, ok, 12 hammers - more than all of my advanced space factory buildings put together - resume route.

Also, we can presume that in the build we are watching on the Kavithan LP, internal TRs will be what they are on any difficulty level, but external TRs will look more shabby on lower difficulty levels, especially the science yield. Though one does have to wonder what the point of playing less than Apollo level would be until TR spam is fixed, we can assume that the external TR yields only look semi-competitive-ish right now because of the difficulty level.

 

[Arkangelus]

It just seems, from a flavour and balance standpoint, that having trade routes being SO key in a game about colonising and taming a strange world seems... off. Not to mention the yields being worth so much more than any of the much more expensive buildings.

Honestly, if the yields were HALVED, and you only got max one route per city, then they would still be well worth investing in. That'd seem to say that their current form is way too much.

 

[Strategist83]

5 pages about this...

There isn't much to be discussed. Those of you playing V on a higher level know trade routes are borderline broken. They provide a much better return-on-investment than anything else you can buy, it's not even comparable.

The alarming thing about this is that in appears that with BE - and even after slightly nerfing trade routes with the recent build we've seen in MadDjinn's Kavithan LP - have, if anything, become even stronger than they were in V. Also, you can now build many more trade units than in V.

Did you even hear Mad's own comment on trade routes during one of the KT Let's Play episodes? "Always build the trade building and trade units first thing in a city... always". This is of course the logical conclusion to when something has a much better return-on-investment than any other option. So, what he's saying (and what is obvious to anyone with game knowledge watching the videos) is that there is a cookie-cutter 'strategy' to follow for each city's development. This is really bad.

I just don't understand it. The Firaxians are not idiots when it comes to balance, quite on the contrary. Their balancing of the buildings relative to each other have been good through the iterations of the series. However, trade routes are out of whack with everything else. It appears that instead of recognizing this, the developers are only further exasperating the issue.

Trade has historically played a vital role in the development of human civilization, yes. However, it seems since they came up with the idea of trade routes with BNW, the developers have gone plain bonanza about it to the point that it is so powerful it does not reflect the role trade has held in real life. The game should not be about covering the whole map in trade route spam, but that is indeed the type of gameplay what we've seen of pre-release BE is shaping up to become.

 

[Haggbart]

5 pages about this...

There isn't much to be discussed. Those of you playing V on a higher level know trade routes are borderline broken. They provide a much better return-on-investment than anything else you can buy, it's not even comparable.

The alarming thing about this is that in appears that with BE - and even after slightly nerfing trade routes with the recent build we've seen in MadDjinn's Kavithan LP - have, if anything, become even stronger than they were in V. Also, you can now build many more trade units than in V.

Did you even hear Mad's own comment on trade routes during one of the KT Let's Play episodes? "Always build the trade building and trade units first thing in a city... always". This is of course the logical conclusion to when something has a much better return-on-investment than any other option. So, what he's saying (and what is obvious to anyone with game knowledge watching the videos) is that there is a cookie-cutter 'strategy' to follow for each city's development. This is really bad.

I just don't understand it. The Firaxians are not idiots when it comes to balance, quite on the contrary. Their balancing of the buildings relative to each other have been good through the iterations of the series. However, trade routes are out of whack with everything else. It appears that instead of recognizing this, the developers are only further exasperating the issue.

Trade has historically played a vital role in the development of human civilization, yes. However, it seems since they came up with the idea of trade routes with BNW, the developers have gone plain bonanza about it to the point that it is so powerful it does not reflect the role trade has held in real life. The game should not be about covering the whole map in trade route spam, but that is indeed the type of gameplay what we've seen of pre-release BE is shaping up to become.

Agreed. The one huge difference between BNW and BE however, is that the trade routes provide another (not needed) incentive to build more cities just to get another 2-3 trade routes. It's so OP that you can safely almost neglect city placement, resource access and which buildings to build as long as you get your trade routes up first thing.

I do think trade is more important than most realize also for the exchange and development of ideas (can recommand Matt Ridley's awesome book "The Rational Optimist" on this), but this does not mean it should be as important in the game. Every new city SHOULD present a strategic choice based on terrain, resources and how you want that city specialized - for now the only good choice is between internal and external trade routes based on if you need prod/food or energy/science.

Whatever they do to fix it, the yield should be much less, so you can at least compare it to other investments (buildings, wonders etc.). Now it's a no-brainer.

 

[Joneill]

So, what he's saying (and what is obvious to anyone with game knowledge watching the videos) is that there is a cookie-cutter 'strategy' to follow for each city's development. This is really bad.

It's a cookie-cutter strategy in the same sense that getting a worker to a new city to improve the tiles is. It enables the use of a major game mechanic, after all. Once the trade routes are available, there's plenty of choice in build order, imo.

 

[Galgus]

It's a cookie-cutter strategy in the same sense that getting a worker to a new city to improve the tiles is. It enables the use of a major game mechanic, after all. Once the trade routes are available, there's plenty of choice in build order, imo.

With workers, you need far fewer before you no longer need to worry about more beyond replacement.

With trade routes, its a required build every new city that adds little of interest to the game.

Taking the worker example, there is far more variance and decision making to be had in tiles than trade routes.

 

[Haggbart]

It's a cookie-cutter strategy in the same sense that getting a worker to a new city to improve the tiles is. It enables the use of a major game mechanic, after all. Once the trade routes are available, there's plenty of choice in build order, imo.

It's not quite the same.

With workers you can always argue if you want a building first (in CiV, in some cases you would profit with building granary or monument before worker),how many you need pr city, which tiles will you develop first, which improvements will you chose, which techs will you research to make certain improvements available or better, when will you build roads, when will you disband idle workers etc. There is no standard answer here that you can use on ALL cities and through the whole game.

With trade routes, you basically will have as many as possible active at all times possible. The only choice is picking the best yield every time. Also defending the trade route (as with the worker). There is little strategy or trade-off beyond this.

 

[Joneill]

Well, my point was, they could have just given every city its trade routes from the start, but instead decided to have them enabled by a building. The BE economy seems to be built around the use of trade routes, so there's little point in comparing that building with others and hoping for it to be just one of many choices. In that way, trade routes are similar to improving tiles - there is no alternative, it's one of the basic systems of how you develop your civilization.

 

[Gort]

My main worry is that the AI won't follow the obvious strategy of maxing out internal routes ASAP and will be a pushover as a result.

 

[indzasa]

I suggest to change trade routes amount per city as following:

• has an outpost grown to a city - it has no trade route slots;
• +1 trade route slot after city has trade depot building;
• +1 trade route slot after city reaches 5 (or 6 or even more) population;

Autoplant building quest can have an option to give trade route slot, but only for cities with at least 10 population (and an autoplant building of course )

So, total of 3 trade route slots per city max, but only in cities with 10 pop and an autoplant.

 

[Lord Shadow]

Trade routes were also a no-brainer in BNW, but I'm seeing the problem with Beyond Earth trading now, which is primarily in relation to buildings and practically everything which yields anything. So far it doesn't seem the AI's mishandling its trade routes (though I've only watched half of the KP playthrough), but then MD's playing on Apollo and that presumably grants the other factions hefty bonuses. Hard to tell if there's all that much economic mismanagement.

All in all, this won't be easy to balance: you can't cut down trade yields without adjusting a sizeable amount of other things, which is necessary so that you aren't crippled in the absence of all-powerful routes.

I hope they manage to square it away a reasonable extent for release, at least.

 

[Hakan-i Cihan]

As long as the AI uses the trade system well I don't see a problem with the trade routes. Yes they are more in quantity and give more yield, but the tile yields are toned down too. Not to mention the increase in tiles without yields (craters, canyons etc.). And there are far less food resources. Trade routes have also their risks, you need to protect them. Since in BE more of the yields come from trade routes than from tiles, you have to think twice before you enter a war. When you are at war the trade routes income could drop a lot (assuming the AI will attack your routes). So it works as an indirect war weariness system. You don't want to be in war if it will affect your trade a lot.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

As long as the AI uses the trade system well I don't see a problem with the trade routes. Yes they are more in quantity and give more yield, but the tile yields are toned down too. Not to mention the increase in tiles without yields (craters, canyons etc.). And there are far less food resources. Trade routes have also their risks, you need to protect them. Since in BE more of the yields come from trade routes than from tiles, you have to think twice before you enter a war. When you are at war the trade routes income could drop a lot (assuming the AI will attack your routes). So it works as an indirect war weariness system. You don't want to be in war if it will affect your trade a lot.

Tile yields have been toned UP

BNW improvements were +1 to +2 (depending on tech)
BE improvements are +1 to+5

 

[Hakan-i Cihan]

Tile yields have been toned UP

BNW improvements were +1 to +2 (depending on tech)
BE improvements are +1 to+5

I was thinking especially about food yields, because farms on fresh water don't give +2 food anymore and far less bonus/luxury resources producing food. (I dont know if there are techs that increase tile yield of farms). This will make the player build more farms initially for growth, so disregarding production improvements a bit more. For production the hills provide now 1 hammer instead of 2 in Civ V. Yes certain improvements have a much higher yield but also an upkeep and needs a longer time to build for worker.

 

[Lord Shadow]

I was thinking especially about food yields, because farms on fresh water don't give +2 food anymore and far less bonus/luxury resources producing food. (I dont know if there are techs that increase tile yield of farms). This will make the player build more farms initially for growth, so disregarding production improvements a bit more. For production the hills provide now 1 hammer instead of 2 in Civ V. Yes certain improvements have a much higher yield but also an upkeep and needs a longer time to build for worker.

Yet generators produce +2 energy. Maybe it was just MadDjinn's playstyle, but I wouldn't like generator spam to become the strategy for tile improvement. Maybe farms and mines should return to +2 yields? I don't know, it seemed like unless there was some resource to harvest, the default choice was plopping down a generator on given tile.

That said, techs boost improvements in all sorts of ways, so there could be a lot more versatility.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Yet generators produce +2 energy. Maybe it was just MadDjinn's playstyle, but I wouldn't like generator spam to become the strategy for tile improvement. Maybe farms and mines should return to +2 yields? I don't know, it seemed like unless there was some resource to harvest, the default choice was plopping down a generator on given tile.

That said, techs boost improvements in all sorts of ways, so there could be a lot more versatility.

Except energy is worth less than food/production/culture/science

Probably at ~ 2:1 ratio or so.

Note the colonists, all +2 (except artists with health and Aristocrats with +3 and health)

So if we value energy at a 2:1

Generators=+1 to +3 output (4 with Wonder)
Farms=+1 to +4.5 output (5.5 with Wonder)
Mines= +1 to +1.5 output (can only be used on hills which have 1 less output)
Terrascapes=+1 to +4 output (6 -2 base -3 maintenance)
Academies/manufacturies*=+2 to +5 output (virtue+tech)

*depending on value of health as an output


of course a lot of those boosts depend on techs you won't necessarily take (unlike in BNW everyone would have Economics, Chemistry and Fertilizer by late game..so all improvements would be boosted)

Generator spam is valid (although it probably needs to be balanced with Manufacturies/Academies/Biowells/Terrascapes to use that energy well)..and you have to pursue the techs for it

Farm+Mine spam is also valid (and you have to pursue the techs for that)


Of course back to the original... it would Really help if they gave a tooltip that gave you any type of a clue what those trade route yields were based on.

 

[Stalker0]

I'll admit my concern on this one. Trade routes seem silly good in terms of strength, they are definately the first tug you get.

The real question is, does it remove city placement choice?

I my choice is 1 city with good lands, or 2 cities with crappy land...do I go for the second option just to get more trade?

 

[Galgus]

I'll admit my concern on this one. Trade routes seem silly good in terms of strength, they are definately the first tug you get.

The real question is, does it remove city placement choice?

I my choice is 1 city with good lands, or 2 cities with crappy land...do I go for the second option just to get more trade?

Only time will tell, but with how things are set up it may be the latter in the long term.