Anyone else think trade routes are a bit too good?

[Camikaze]

Yes, trade vessels and convoys are units. However, you don't control them like regular units - you select the city you're sending them to from a menu, and they'll automatically make their own way there. If you have 3 trade routes per city, and 8 cities, this will mean you're setting a new trade route about once per turn.

 

[TLHeart]

People, question from some ignorant person here, do trade routes work as in Civ2, meaning you need to send caravans to establish them? I hated that MM festival.

must build trade depot in city, then that city has 2 trade routes, that you assign to a destination.... every 25 turns you get to reassign...

so if logistics is not your thing, and running your economy, then the trade routes will be a dispointment for you.

Me I love the trade routes

 

[ThERat]

thanks for the explanation. I just fear the AI won't be able to handle this well. They never do handle such stuff well.

 

[aguliondew]

From the play throughs I have watched the AI has issues with workers and trade routes. The AI does not get enough of either.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Verdict after 100 turns of my first game: Traderoutes are horribly imbalanced - almost close to breaking the game. I just spammed cities at minimum range as PAC and a significant amount of my city yields was from trade routes. They should have used a global limit or at least reduce the numbers to 1 per city (and no extra via quests). Also: I spend as more time for organizing and reassigning those trade convoys than improving my tiles. Bah.

 

[Gort]

Yeah, there are definitely too many. Three per city is crazy.

 

[Jimbo30]

I've resolved to not use ITR's at all if I can help it, only stations and foreign. I really hope they don't hang about in fixing this.

 

[m15a]

People, question from some ignorant person here, do trade routes work as in Civ2, meaning you need to send caravans to establish them? I hated that MM festival.

Trade routes don't quite work like caravans in Civ 2. You build a caravan once, but it can keep a trade route going indefinitely.

I think Civ 2 was totally different? Can't really remember. All I can remember is caravans were *totally* broken in Civ 2.

 

[ThERat]

Well caravans in Civ2 would give you a particular trade route indefinitely too. You would have to add more for better cities etc. The real broken part was wonder spamming via caravans.

Well, if I read carefully here, I guess the new system is broken too. Not that nobody could see it coming

 

[Selereth]

Hopefully the nerf doesn't take all winter to arrive in that case.

 

[TLHeart]

don't like the trade routes, then don't take the quest decision that adds another route, take the passive production...

yes the game plays differently, and that is a good thing.

 

[Potenzo]

Hopefully the nerf doesn't take all winter to arrive in that case.

And once again let us give praise to Firaxis for mod support.

How does "trade route gives " sound to you? (i.e. -1 per trade route built)

 

[Selereth]

And once again let us give praise to Firaxis for mod support.

How does "trade route gives " sound to you? (i.e. -1 per trade route built)

Hmm, not bad, but I also don't mind the idea of a global trade route cap, similar to what we had in Civ 5. It would retain the usefulness of trade routes but prevent the player from exploiting them.

As it is I don't know if -1 Health is a strong enough deterrence to trade routes since with a wide empire it's easy to build enough health buildings to most likely offset that disadvantage.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

And once again let us give praise to Firaxis for mod support.

How does "trade route gives " sound to you? (i.e. -1 per trade route built)

Pointless unless you significantly increase health penalties. I just finished my game with 16 cities and more than 250 health.

 

[Gort]

don't like the trade routes, then don't take the quest decision that adds another route, take the passive production...

yes the game plays differently, and that is a good thing.

I'd be a moron to pick +1 energy per Autoplant over a trade route that gives tons of whatever I want (food/production/energy/science). It should actually be a choice. Right now it's a choice with only one worthwhile option, which is no choice at all.

 

[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.

Turns out the AI doesn't follow the obvious strategy of maxing out internal routes ASAP and is a pushover as a result.

 

[Jimbo30]

ITR's are laughably OP but to be honest all trade routes are I believe. They need to be nerfed to 2 per city max and the building prerequisite brought back (workshop etc to move production). As it stands you get way more production from a trade route than you do from the best production wonder? This is utterly ridiculous, I have no idea how they could have thought this was near balanced.

 

[Acken]

I vote for 1 max, now I'll carefully weight if I want production or gold and pay more attention to where I put my cities.

The major issue the game has right now is that trade route VALUE is simply too high. It's higher than in BNW while the game clearly wants to use small increments and techs that take a while to research. End game buildings give between 2 and 5 of a yield while trade routes can go in the 15. Like how a 1500h wonder can give you 9prod while a 1turn trade route 10 ? You have a ton of small buildings giving +1 science here and there... and then you make a trade route for +10science AND +10gold.

Total non-sense. And it's been a month non-players have foreseen the issue.

At least I guess in MP it's going to be a pillage-fest.

 

[Jimbo30]

Yup I agree, 1 per city is good and that will also keep Polystralia's ability relevant.

 

[Cannes]

This is the reason that I haven't pre-ordered the game, and may well not get it at all. As much as I'm intrigued by the affinity mechanic, satellites, the new setting, and other things, it feels like a step backward, in that small and tall empires are now of questionable viability. Simply by making the number of trade routes proportional to the width of your empire instead of simply fixed, they've arbitrarily knocked out my favourite way of playing Civ and insisted I play a style that necessarily requires more spam and more micro, at least at any significant difficulty setting.

I know people will pooh pooh what I'm saying, and that's fine, people are entitled to do that, the reasons that any person might not want to play a game aren't universally applicable after all. But I'd just comment that it's very unusual for me to feel this concerned about a mechanic in new game in a franchise. Most of the time I can see some positives, even in controversial design changes. This time, I can only see negatives and I don't understand why they had to go down this path

You won't buy the game over a small balance issue that can and will be easily fixed by modders in a short period of time?
I guess I know which affinity you will go for should I ever meet you in a multiplayergame...