Biggest Caravan payoff?

[Valen]

Another possibility just occurred to me. Could your trade partner have switched government? The downshift from republic to monarchy results in a dramatic drop in caravan payoff. It also means you need to watch out for a sneak attack.

 

[ApolloAndy]

I think it was from government switch. It's back up again to being profitable, but now my caravans keep getting intercepted by a different enemy. Oh well.

Is enemy tech random like wonders?

 

[Valen]

The timing of enemy tech is not random. They earn their tech just like we do.
Which discovery they make is random, very similar to the results you get when you open a goodie hut and get science. An enemy discovery can be changed by reloading and running the same city check again.
Usually, they will be strongly biased toward one or two discoveries and of course, you will eventually reach a point where all possible discoveries except railroad have been made and it becomes inevitable.

 

[Whelkman]

It's been a while, but you can derail their mid-term target tech by randomizing leaders, right?

 

[Valen]

Randomizing can influence whether the leaders tend to go militaristic or civilized in their research, but there is still the possibility of any available tech each time they make a discovery. Having an embassy and using reload gives you absolute control of their research.

 

[jpciv]

By snagging the horses square, I have forced one Babylonian worker to the ocean, increasing the trade just enough to finally break the 400 barrier. This is with Babylon at population 19.
Caravans are going through a boom-bust cycle right now.
When Babylon puts all its people to work, you see the result in the attachment. Caravans get 401 gold, but the city is in disorder, so this will not last.
When Babylon creates an entertainer to regain order, it invariablly comes from an ocean square cutting their base trade by 4 points. That drops caravan value to 389.
To fix the cut in food and trade, they will put the entertainer back and the cycle repeats.
Babylon could break the cycle by building a colosseum, but the AI doesn't seem to be programmed for that.

Congrats for topping 400!

Purely as an academic exercise to see what might happen, why not use TerraForm to give Babylon a Coliseum (and then a Cathedral, Marketplace, Bank?) and re-run the caravan arrival?

Wonder what the theoretical maximum is? Probably need 17 grassland and 4 fishes, all irrigated and RR'd, to get the max combo of city size and trade...

 

[Valen]

Theoretical limit for these two cities is 406 (my estimation).
A 20th Babylonian citizen would occupy the horses square (the only square they do not occupy when I'm getting 401) adding 2 trade points to the city. In general, 2 trades = 5 gold per caravan at this distance. More population, bank, Babylonian trade routes have no influence.

With other trade routes, more is possible. Babylon is rather close to the equator to be at a maximum distance from anything. Its advantage is that gold square and all the ocean it can reach. Brandenburg is the best I could do for Babylon trade because of its distance, but it has two arctic squares that contribute no trade. If only those were ocean ...

 

[jpciv]

OK, Valen, here's a challenge for you!

I built the attached map to test the differences beyween short- and long-distance arrivals, but something went wrong

It has 7 cities, each maxed out at 42, each at peace with ALL the others, each at Democratic, and NO wonders built at all.

Even though I optimized the map for what I believe should be the maximum size/trade combination, the best arrival I had was Washington at 124 - nowhere near what you're getting.

What's going on here? Is it dependent on overall civ size or something, rather than just the city-pair?

Thx!

 

[MountainMn10]

OK, Valen, here's a challenge for you!

I built the attached map to test the differences beyween short- and long-distance arrivals, but something went wrong

It has 7 cities, each maxed out at 42, each at peace with ALL the others, each at Democratic, and NO wonders built at all.

Even though I optimized the map for what I believe should be the maximum size/trade combination, the best arrival I had was Washington at 124 - nowhere near what you're getting.

What's going on here? Is it dependent on overall civ size or something, rather than just the city-pair?

Thx!

If you take away railroad and flight from the Americans the bonus goes up to 279.

It is not city size or civilization size. It is the amount of trade the city produces locally. If you change the Fish to Gold and wait a turn for the trade to be recalculated the bonus goes to 413. Take Electricity away from everyone and give yourself the Colossus and it goes to 519.

 

[Valen]

I don't have TerraForm to duplicate MountainMn10's tests, but his numbers check out. Railroad and flight cut caravan payoff to 44% of its value.
As MountainMn10 says, caravan bonus is a combination of total trade of the 2 cities and the distance between them. Both Rome and Washington have way too many grassland squares. As far as trade is concerned, ocean squares are twice as valuable. Gold mines are 5 times as valuable.

On top of what MountainMn10 did in Rome, you could give Washington more ocean and gold to push caravan payoff even higher then 519.

You are pretty close to the maximum possible distance, plenty more than you would see on a random map, so there is not much more you can do for distance (except move Washington 3 squares to the right).

 

[Urtica dioica]

I hope I did these calculations right... If you want to use TerraForm to max trade (with sustainable food), the correct balance seems to be 4 Golds, 8 Grasslands, and 9 Oceans. With complete improvements, this should get 41 food (enough to support a size 20 city). It should get a base trade of 92, or 121 with Colossus.

 

[MountainMn10]

I believe Urtica is correct in his calculations. I built this and got 121 trade in Rome and 92 in Washington. After reducing the city size to 20 they had 1 extra food. So the cities will toggle between 20 and 21. City improvements except for the Colossus do not matter. They do not change the amount of base trade.

In trying this I messed up and added too many oceans to Rome. I got the trade for Rome up to 124 and Washington to 90. The bonus was 597.

I tried again with the correct number of oceans. I reduced the city size to 21. Rome went into civil disorder and my nuclear power plant exploded.
Tried again. Reduced city size to 20. Deleted the nuke plant. Bumped luxuries to 100%. The bonus was 594.

Look like the highest possible trade bonus is 594.

You can't move them any farther apart without losing the gold.


Note: I did this with my map editor and Civ Win. I can import Civ Dos files into Civ Win. The trade calculations are the same in both Civ Dos and Civ Win.

 

[jpciv]

There is (perhaps) one way to get them another couple of squares apart, and keep the max gold for trade - by changing the 01 to 1F value for the special resource in TerraForm, it moves them around on the map. Not sure if any of the values will enable a further distance though.

Pretty cool that Valen was able to get as far as he did in a normal game, considering the (theoretical limit) is approximately 600.

 

[enneagon]

I'm not rely sure, that was same 15yrs ago, but once I get 640+ and more in trade between 25+ level city's.

Yes, in heavily hacked game.

 

[Valen]

It appears I was a little off on my previous estimate of the best possible caravan payoff from the Brandenburg-Babylon route. Now that Babylon has finally grown large to occupy its entire 21 squares, the caravan value has climbed to 418.
I think there is more going on here than the pure trade formula ((Distance + 10) * (Your Trade + Their Trade) / 24) given in Rome on 640K a Day. When Babylon built additional phalanxes to defend the city, the trade value went up (could be coincidence).
For the record, beefing up defense in Brandenburg had no effect.

 

[MaxWar]

This is just crazy

 

[Urtica dioica]

I wrote a program to help me analyze the special resource patterns. As a result, now I can say for sure what the greatest possible distance is between cities with 4 specials in their fat crosses. The coordinates are (lat, long) with (0, 0) in the top-left. They are NOT (x, y). Keep in mind that a diagonal square counts as 1.5 squares distance.

Distance Seed Coord1  Coord2
60.0     0    (4, 11) (44, 51)
60.0     0    (4, 28) (44, 68)
60.0     1    (4, 8)  (44, 48)
60.0     2    (4, 35) (44, 75)
60.0     3    (4, 15) (44, 55)
60.0     3    (4, 32) (44, 72)
60.0     4    (4, 12) (44, 52)
60.0     6    (4, 19) (44, 59)
60.0     6    (4, 36) (44, 76)
60.0     7    (4, 16) (44, 56)
60.0     9    (4, 23) (44, 63)
60.0     a    (4, 3)  (44, 43)
60.0     a    (4, 20) (44, 60)
60.0     c    (4, 27) (44, 67)
60.0     d    (4, 7)  (44, 47)
60.0     d    (4, 24) (44, 64)
60.0     e    (4, 4)  (44, 44)
60.0     f    (4, 31) (44, 71)
59.5     1    (4, 72) (44, 31)
59.5     2    (4, 52) (44, 11)
59.5     4    (4, 76) (44, 35)
59.5     5    (4, 56) (44, 15)
59.5     8    (4, 60) (44, 19)
59.5     b    (4, 64) (44, 23)
59.5     c    (4, 44) (44, 3)
59.5     e    (4, 68) (44, 27)
59.5     f    (4, 48) (44, 7)
58.5     0    (7, 44) (44, 4)
58.5     1    (7, 71) (44, 31)
58.5     2    (7, 51) (44, 11)
58.5     2    (7, 68) (44, 28)
58.5     3    (7, 48) (44, 8)
58.5     4    (7, 75) (44, 35)
58.5     5    (7, 55) (44, 15)
58.5     5    (7, 72) (44, 32)
58.5     6    (7, 52) (44, 12)
58.5     8    (7, 59) (44, 19)
58.5     8    (7, 76) (44, 36)
58.5     9    (7, 56) (44, 16)
58.5     b    (7, 63) (44, 23)
58.5     c    (7, 43) (44, 3)
58.5     c    (7, 60) (44, 20)
58.5     e    (7, 67) (44, 27)
58.5     f    (7, 47) (44, 7)
58.5     f    (7, 64) (44, 24)

FUN FACT: Although latitude 45 is just as far from a pole as latitude 4, latitude 45 can never be the center of a 4-special city.

With 60 as the max distance, and 121 and 92 the max trade values, the caravan payoff is $621. I tried making a bigger total by boosting the distance at the expense of special tiles, but it didn't work. However, every scenario with a distance of 60 uses latitude 4, so there has to be a mountain at latitude 2. In any map the game creates, latitude 2 is 100% ocean, forcing one special to be a fish. This leaves a choice of dropping to distance 58.5, or letting the non-Colossus city drop to 90 trade (1fish 3gold 11ocean 6grass, only 39 food, so unstable at size 20, but you can reach that level for several turns with a Granary). The latter (fishy) option turns out better, with a payoff of $615.

If I used the "Auto bug" Valen described, maybe I could go higher. Without that, I think this is the last word on the maximum caravan payoff.

 

[Urtica dioica]

After figuring out what kind of caravan bonuses you can get on silly, contrived maps, I thought it would be interesting to see what you can get on a real map. I made a program that can read a txt map (like those TerraForm can use), plus a special resource seed, and output the map's best possible caravan bonus.

I used the Earth map, using all 16 seeds.

total seed colossal other    (dist+10)*(T1+T2)/24
447   0    (6, 58)  (45, 16) (58.0+10)*(92+66)/24
447   1    (6, 58)  (45, 16) (58.0+10)*(92+66)/24
448   2    (44, 15) (4, 52)  (58.5+10)*(93+64)/24
447   3    (6, 58)  (45, 16) (58.0+10)*(92+66)/24
447   4    (6, 58)  (45, 16) (58.0+10)*(92+66)/24
464   5    (6, 58)  (45, 16) (58.0+10)*(92+72)/24
464   6    (6, 58)  (45, 16) (58.0+10)*(92+72)/24
464   7    (6, 58)  (45, 16) (58.0+10)*(92+72)/24
464   8    (6, 58)  (45, 16) (58.0+10)*(92+72)/24
465   9    (6, 58)  (44, 15) (56.5+10)*(92+76)/24
464   a    (6, 58)  (45, 16) (58.0+10)*(92+72)/24
464   b    (6, 58)  (45, 16) (58.0+10)*(92+72)/24
479   c    (45, 16) (4, 44)  (55.0+10)*(99+78)/24
464   d    (6, 58)  (45, 16) (58.0+10)*(92+72)/24
465   e    (45, 16) (4, 51)  (58.5+10)*(99+64)/24
464   f    (6, 58)  (45, 16) (58.0+10)*(92+72)/24

I have it set to be super aggressive about maximizing trade values for one-time deliveries, not for stable routes, but it still only allows city sizes reachable by means in the game. For instance, the square (4,44) is part of a two-grassland island north of Russia. With seed c, it gets 4 fishes, enough food to hit size 19. For a maximum payoff, you set all 19 workers to ocean before delivering the caravan. Square (6,58) in northern Russia requires converting 13 forests to plains. Squares (4,51) and (4,52), despite being tundra and arctic, are parts of an optimal trade route on some of the maps, and they use a deer to grow to size, changing it to a horse just before delivering the caravan.

Every one of the seeds gave a route between South America and Russia. Canada is crippled in the boxed Earth map.