Attacking Trade Routes

[Thunderfall]

This strategy is invented/discovered by Markusf. It's very amazing.


If civ A and Civ B have a trade route between city A and B if you place any kind of unit Anywhere along the optimal path between those 2 cities the trade routes will be cut in half(road railroad bonus's are droped). This means with a size 50 route it will turn into size 25 or less.

How ever if there is another city on the optimal path, it gets a little more complicated. If a rome route is going to babalyon and Veii happens to be in between then only way to interupt that trade route is to put a unit between veii and rome.

A good example of this is if someone has an SSC. you land with 5 engineers and 3 vet alpine troops... Land the ski troops first, fortify on the optimal path... one engineer then builds a fort and the other 4 build a forest on 1 turn... If you send in diplomats on the same turn you can destroy all the improvements in the city... All trade routes to all cities connected to the SSC are cut by 50% by your troops + whatever workers the guy has to take off to keep the SSC from rebelling. Since many people send all trade routes to the SSC, you could cut total output of the civ by at least 50-70%....

This even works with diplomats or caravans!

I'll add this cool tip to the War Academy soon.

 

[starlifter]

Note: What I'm going to discuss will not be applicable for the vast majority of SP games and SP players, and may even be hard to follow at times. In MP games, if your opponent is a SSC/trade builder (or you are), this might be of more help than in SP.

Anywhere along the optimal path between those 2 cities the trade routes will be cut in half(road railroad bonus's are droped).

It is important to note that the route is normally not symmetrical... that is, the PATH that civ II examines for the presence of roads/RRs is usually not the same from A to B as it is from B to A. The route value will indeed be cut, but normally not as dramatically as suggested here. There are other bonuses that should be in effect, in most circumstances, if one is playing trade to this level. Superhighways, freight, and Airports can contribute in this situation, and greatly reduce the impact of trade blocking units (TBUs).

The Civ II program will determine and account for the effect of TBUs instantly, which can then be observed with a spy in the AI city, if you are engaging in a blockade or embargo.

BTW, this will not affect the value of the cargo you deliver to the AI city. The trade route arrows are not used in the computation for either the initial bonus or the route bonus.

How ever if there is another city on the optimal path, it gets a little more complicated. If a rome route is going to babalyon and Veii happens to be in between then only way to interupt that trade route is to put a unit between veii and rome.

Hey, cool! Personally, I did not know that... So I'll presume that to be true, since it never occurred to me to test that case!

A good example of this is if someone has an SSC..

That's a good point for MP... but the presumption si still the trade routes are land based, with highly developed roads and RRs. In reality, a smart human will not establish long-term routes over land anyway. (in most SP games, and I presume in many MP games, too). The overseas trade bonus (both initial and route) is 100%, and does not depend on teh RR advance, much less the food and shields expended by the settlers/engineers to build the RR.. . Grow, and spend the shields in galleons/transports, and get those overseas routes ASAP!

If a person is not using these very advanced trade considerations in the first place, the TBU strategy is actually almost ineffective in practical use, because very few overland routes will have the proper roads/RRs in the first place. The only SP player that I see (in his games) that could regularly be affected (in theory) is Shadowdale, since he likes to make solid Roads/RRs (even my own games are not predicated on the overland bonuses). That means he should get overland bonuses, and therefore could be blocked. Plus, many of his routes are just dumped into the nearest city, so the route woulld be simple for an opponent to determine and block.

Since many people send all trade routes to the SSC, you could cut total output of the civ by at least 50-70%..

Again, in practical use, the drop will not be nearly as dramatic, unless the SSC builder is a village idiot. If the SSC human understands trade bonuses and uses roads/RRs, the person will also understand about the other bonuses, too, and using these will (in some cases) cause a drop of 0.00% when the roads are blocked by TBUs! But... it is theoretically possible to chop the SSC trade value by 50% in a real game. It is highly unlikely the entire civ's trade (in an MP game) can be cut by anything like 50%, however. And in SP against the AI, this is pretty much a waste of effort, though... The AI has neither dense-pack trade routes not SSCs.

Last point for now is that the TBU can and will block any applicable road/RR (overland) initial bonus. In SP games, this means you should control the path if you want your 50% road (or 100% road-RR) bonus. But again, most of your routes will likely be overseas, esp. before RR, so you get the 100% overseas bonus.