Change in BTS foreign trade routes?

[Thronsen]

Was just playing another game of BTS and noticed that none of my non costal cities had any foreign trade routes. All were trading with my own cities for 1 coin a turn. Even one of my costal cities only had 1 foreign route of 4 total, the rest domestic. This is of course with the Free Market civic, and reasonably late in the game (world all mapped out, etc), and on a continent with 3 other Civs with whom I am in close contact.

I just recently patched up to the latest official and Bhurics patch. Has it always been like this and I never noticed it, or is it something new. I could have sworn I had foreign trade routes in land based cities in other games.

Thanks.

 

[oranges]

If you have have open borders with someone, something strange is happening is none of your cities have foreign trade routes. Nothing has changed about forming them since vanilla CIV4, the only change I'm aware of was made in the latest(?) patch to make custom houses work for all foreign routes, not just intercontinental (which has not been changed in the pedia)

 

[Welnic]

What are the other civs running? If they are mostly running Mercantilism then you aren't actually trading with a lot of civs, and their good cities are just trading with your good cities.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The mercantile civic screws trade routes. If you're running it you can't have non-vassal foreign trade routes (you obviously weren't). If the AIs run it you can't trade with them.

Try to bribe them to free market. Also, try to get at least 4 of your cities on other islands/continents, which adds strong value to even your domestic trade routes (domestic cities can have unlimited trade routes, and intercontinental+harbor+customs house isn't shabby even with them).

Also, in BTS the AI doesn't get its cities as massive as quickly, which weakens the TRE unless you use customs houses with intercontinental trade.

 

[Tatran]

Maybe there's some fog or a barb galley is blocking your trade routes.

Btw, trade routes are broken according to the population IMHO.
Owner gets 5% for every population while the other side gets the city size
population when the trade routes are calculated.
So, you're fooling yourself trying to get more out of a trade route by population.

 

[Iranon]

That's what one would expect if your trade partners are smaller in size effective size than yourself (discount civs in Mercantilism, blockaded cities etc).

The game will pick the most profitable setup of foreign cities to trade with; if your coastal cities profit from trade enhancements like the Great Lighthouse, harbours etc they will get the slots, leaving the inland cities with domestic trade.