[R&F] Attracting traders as a strategy

[ShallowSeas]

Watching the latest live steam I noticed that Reyna the Financier (a governor) has the ability to generate gold from trade routes that pass through her city and I was wondering how easy it would be to take advantage of this.

The tricky thing would be getting the Ais to send all of their trade routes to one city. I've never noticed lots of AI traders going to one city in particular. Its possible that I am just not all that observant, but there seems to be a limit on how attractive you can make a city as a trading destination. From what I can tell, yields are based entirely on districts, so one city with a commercial hub is as good as another city with a commercial hub.

I have no idea how strong trade alliances will be or if the devss are adding any new features that will intertwine with this mechanic, but I really hope this mechanic won't end up being filed under “cool, but useless” .

I really hope the devs do something with the concept of attracting foreign traders, because a few tweaks could make the trade system a lot more interesting and enhance diplomacy. In the current system I hardly notice or care about AI traders unless I am at war and looking for free gold. Similarly, I never care about alienating or even attacking a civ that I have a lot of trade routes to, because odds are the yields I get from routes to their civ aren't any better than I would get from another civ.

On the other hand, imagine a game, where you are trying to make one of your cities the premiere trading hub on the continent, but are facing such stiff competition from an AI city that you decide to invade and devastate it, so that you can control all the trade or imagine intervening to protect a valuable trading partner from a hostile civ.

I think that I will try and see how easy it is to attract traders in vanilla. Reading the wiki, I have noticed that there are two great merchants who provide “+2 gold for both cities” when an AI makes a traderoute, so I will start a game as Egypt and try out a diplomatic trade domination style, to see if such a thing is even possible. 2 food and 4 gold bonus should make my cities attractive from a trading point of view, but the AI is pretty dumb so who knows.

 

[Depravo]

Totally. The trade system is miles ahead of where it used to be, but even now it's all about volume - there's no sense of competition.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

3 gold per trade route doesn't make a lot sense. This governor's main ability I think is to buy spaceports. The ability to buy spaceports is really awesome.

 

[MooFreaky]

I agree that this should be a thing. Perhaps the city with the most developed commercial district within X tiles of the trade route must be passed through? And gets a bonus for doing so. Make it so that only foreign trade routes and cities affect this, otherwise it's would be extra annoying (even if it has historical merit).
So if you want to send a trade route way out to London, but to get there you had to go through unoccupied territory and within 5-10? tiles of Rome, which has a dominant commercial district, thus you have to divert through Rome. This gives the Romans gold and/or other benefits regardless of whether you want it to.
It could be the more powerful your commercial district the further away you can divert trade routes from.

Trade has been soooooooooooooooooo important to history but it has never been represented well in any game. It is the reason that cities like Rome was founded where it was (right on the North/South trade route in Italy), that Carthage became so powerful and why Rome & Carthage became bitter enemies. This type of thing was repeated all over the world, and it deserves mechanics to at least show something of this.

 

[Thormodr]

I’d love to see trade expanded upon. Making scads of $$$ has always been my favourite thing to do in Civ games.

 

[Depravo]

Of course the fact that in this game the initiative in trade is 100% in the hands of the player doesn't help.

 

[MooFreaky]

But if you make it more desirable to trade then it would help.
I'd like to see it that you can only get the full benefits of traded luxuaries if you have a trade route, whereas you only get 50% if you don't have an active one.
And make it the more nations that a trade route goes through the more benefits you get, to show that you are bringing in vastly goods from multiple places along the way.

Right now I just have no incentive to trade outside of my own empire (other than very rare occasions) as I have plenty of gold, get more industry and food (which means even more industry and gold for my empire in the long run).

 

[bbbt]

Watching the latest live steam I noticed that Reyna the Financier (a governor) has the ability to generate gold from trade routes that pass through her city and I was wondering how easy it would be to take advantage of this.

The tricky thing would be getting the Ais to send all of their trade routes to one city. I've never noticed lots of AI traders going to one city in particular. Its possible that I am just not all that observant, but there seems to be a limit on how attractive you can make a city as a trading destination. From what I can tell, yields are based entirely on districts, so one city with a commercial hub is as good as another city with a commercial hub.

I'd assume that 'pass through' means literally that - i.e. even if a trader goes through the city she's in en route to another city, you get the gold (not that they have to have a trade route directly with that city). Unfortunately the semi-random way the game does roads with traders makes this unpredictable, but I'd assume this would be as much about geographical placement as well to a large degree.

 

[ShallowSeas]

So, I started my game as Egypt, attempting to make extra money by attracting trade and it did not go all that well.

The first problem was that for whatever reason the game skipped over five great merchants, so I missed the two that were required for my strategy to have any hope of working. I'm not sure if this was a result of a bug or a feature, but it really pissed me off. I invested in early commercial hubs when the other civs had none at all and I didn't really get much of a reward. In fact, it felt more like getting punished, as instead of getting the great merchants I wanted, I got to spend 70 turns recruiting a merchant I didn't want, a renaissance merchant in 400BC, it makes no sense.

The second problem probably should have been obvious to me from the beginning, the AI doesn't like to invest in commercial hubs or traders. So despite being allied with four different civs, I received only two foreign traders, both from city states, which means that I was earning a grand total of 4 extra gold per turn from Cleopatra's LA.

This is actually a shame, because it was actually pretty fun to play a diplomacy focused trading civ, it was fun in spite how sub optimal it is.

It seems that unless the expansion changes the way the AI plays or changes certain mechanics this governor ability that I've been wondering about will be firmly in the “cool, but worthless” category.

I think the trade system need an overhaul. My idea would be to completely change how the trade yields are calculated. Instead of being a flat amount based on the number and type of districts in the destination city it would instead be based on the production and number of resources at the destination, subject to modifiers.

Basically the base value of a trade route would equal the sum of a production bonus and a resource bonus. The production bonus would be a percentage of the city's unmodified production, say 20%. The resource bonus would be a flat bonus for each resource worked by the city, say +2 for luxury and strategic bonuses and +1 for bonus resources. So a city with base production of 30, 3 luxuries and two bonuses improved, would have a base value of 14 gold per turn.

In my system the purpose of the commercial hub and its buildings (besides increasing trade route capacity) would be to provide percentage based modifiers to incoming trade routes. Obviously, each level of building would provide a larger modifier and there would be other modifiers as well depending on such factors as whether or not the commercial hub is on a river, whether or not there is a harbor in the city, what level the roads are (ancient, classical, industrial, modern) and whether or not the destination civ is at war (this would obviously be a negative modifier).

This system makes sense if you think about it. Production and resources represent the goods available in the city and the modifiers represent how easy it is to do business there.

Overall I feel like this would make sending trade routes more interesting, but the real change would be that the owner of the destination city would receive a chunk of the yields, perhaps about half.

The gameplay benefits would be huge. No longer would getting rich be about who has the most cities and the most traders, but who has the best cities. It would be satisfying to try and grow a legendary trading city on par with Florence or Constantinople. Tall would be viable again without hurting wide playstyles.

Sorry for the long and messy post, but I seem to be developing an obsession with the trading system. I guess I'm becoming a real Civ Fanatic.

 

[Staal]

The first problem was that for whatever reason the game skipped over five great merchants, so I missed the two that were required for my strategy to have any hope of working. I'm not sure if this was a result of a bug or a feature, but it really pissed me off.

I think when you moved onto the next era the unclaimed great people from the previous era become unavailable. Or maybe it was when more than half of the Civs have moved on.

 

[Victoria]

Trade has been soooooooooooooooooo important to history but it has never been represented well in any game

I remember playing a board game years ago that was purely trade based, It was near perfect, I loved it because while you had a map and was a European trader you really had no home country.

Right now I just have no incentive to trade outside of my own empire

Right now I have little encentive to trade inside my empire.... seems we are opposed. External trade routes r o c k.

 

[tedhebert]

Right now I just have no incentive to trade outside of my own empire (other than very rare occasions) .

Right now I have little encentive to trade inside my empire.... seems we are opposed. External trade routes r o c k.

Funny thing this... I'm right in the middle of you guys... I usually go internal routes only early to mid game because the food bonuses for city growth is just much better than the gold, and then everything flips over at
a certain point where the gold just becomes too tempting, the food is less important as the original cities have reached maturity, and I want to start generating tourism... then I go all external !!!

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

The value of a trade route depend on how many districts a city have so to make a city valuable you want it to have as many districts as possible.

I think they should make population and building increase trade route value as well.

 

[Victoria]

Funny thing this... I'm right in the middle of you guys... I usually go internal routes only early to mid game because the food bonuses for city growth is just much better than the gold, and then everything flips over at
a certain point where the gold just becomes too tempting, the food is less important as the original cities have reached maturity, and I want to start generating tourism... then I go all external !!!

Yes food growth is an underrated thing, it is a question of workable tiles, I tend to have that first builder sort 3 tiles out in my capital them tend to wait for Feudalism as there is so much else to build like armies, monuments and traders.
Growing pop too fast early can be a pain but also if you are on plains without wheat it can be handy.
Early culture and gold are really what rocks for me.

 

[agonistes]

Even if I get all of the right great people, its hard to encourage the ai to send traders to my designated 'commercial port' city.

Yes food growth is an underrated thing.

This is why I stress the importance of religion. "Feed the World." Try it.

Don't try it then neglect to build shrines/temples. Prioritize them.

 

[ShallowSeas]

I think when you moved onto the next era the unclaimed great people from the previous era become unavailable. Or maybe it was when more than half of the Civs have moved on.

the weird thing is that it skipped all the way from a classical great merchant to the second renaissance merchant and I don't even think anyone had reached the renaissance yet.

 

[Kyro]

It would be great if that could work...imagine Zhang Qian, Marco Polo, Raja Todar Mal, John D. Rockefeller and Great Zimbabwe all in that 1 City attracting traders from cities everywhere.

Except all that is meaningless because it is far more profitable to take those cities than to attract traders from them.

 

[Jackanape]

I'm still put off by the road building function of traders. While it makes a certain amount of sense that the first roads were based on trade, there's no reason builders can't build roads as well. The engineer is an expensive alternative that is only applicable in specific instances. Not to mention it comes along way to late, and on the wrong track...

I find that, especially in games I want to play peacefully, that I MUST have a viable road system within my empire for defensive purposes, especially if in higher levels. The current system of linking roads to trade not only hampers this, but trade as a whole.

The loss of roads as a movement system may be the one thing about VI that breaks the game...and it clearly impedes with thoughtful trade, as the number one concern--for me at least--is creating a solid infrastructure within my empire. It leaves me not wanting external trade at all, short of planned invasion routes.

That all said I like your thoughts re: trade in Civ VI, and would love to see it expanded upon...

 

[clapyourhands]

In addition to buffing external trade routes and providing some sort of benefit to the recipient city, I think it would also help to separate internal and external trade route limits. It makes sense that internal ones help with production and growth while external ones provide gold but when you're min-maxing yields you almost always choose one overwhelmingly over the other. Real empires utilized both internal and external trade (well, most of them). If external trade routes are just that, external, then they're no longer competing with internal routes. Combining that with recipient cities receiving something from trade and creating ideal trade hubs is now a legitimate strategy. If every civ has X external trade routes that must go to other civs, and the civ receiving them gets benefits, it'd be a great benefit to not only reap yields from multiple routes but also hold indirect power by controlling a good chunk of their economies. It could be something simple, like "at most 2/3s of your trade routes can be either external or internal", so that every civ with at least 3 trade routes has at least 1 external-only route you could compete for. The civ would still want to send it, since otherwise they'd just be one route behind everyone else (unless they had enough trade routes so that 2/3s of their capacity is about how many everyone else has), so the question becomes where to send it.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Yes food growth is an underrated thing, it is a question of workable tiles, I tend to have that first builder sort 3 tiles out in my capital them tend to wait for Feudalism as there is so much else to build like armies, monuments and traders.
Growing pop too fast early can be a pain but also if you are on plains without wheat it can be handy.
Early culture and gold are really what rocks for me.

Not only the first builder is important, all you early population shall work on improved tiles. which means you probably built 3~4 early builders before feudalism.

But I dislike the feudalism worker flow, I mainly build builder from overflows in early games...