delivery bonuses

[Peaster]

A thread by samson says the base formula for trade bonuses is

(distance + 10) x (trade arrows of both cities) / 24

I have tried this out a few times in a scenario in cheat mode, and it seems close when I trade with my own cities, producing small bonuses of about 8 gold. But when I trade with an overseas barb city (same game, same turn, only slightly greater distance), I get bonuses of about 250 gold. I don't see why I get such wildly different numbers.

The only important factors I can find are the "overseas" and "foreign" ones, each a multiplicative factor of 2. [I used only demanded goods, mainly hides, in all the tests]. The barb city might have up to 11 arrows, while my two test cities have about 6+3 = 9 together. Does all this seem right? I feel like there must be a factor of about 3 to 4 that I'm missing.

 

[ElephantU]

If you could post a SAV I could explain it to you. Trade between your own cities is halved, and if the trade takes place before the discovery of Invention or Navigation it can be doubled. Demand for the commodity can also be an issue. Later in the game things like SuperHighways and Airports can multiply the bonus too.

 

[Peaster]

Elephant - Thanks! I am interested in trade to understand ST's EC strategy, and because it seems important in the PBEM/scenario game mentioned above, and because I might want to play EL someday. Maybe it was a mistake to start with the scenario, because there are several unknown variables.... I don't know how many arrows the barb city produces, and am not sure whether a special tech I have counts as Invention. Also, I don't think you could use my save without the scenario files, so maybe we should forget the scenario for now. I have just tested the formula in some normal games, and I get results close enough that I'm fairly happy.

But I do have a related question about Hides... if samson's formula for wildcard supply produces a zero remainder, then the wildcard is Hides, right? What does this mean ? Apparently, it does not guarantee that the city will supply Hides (even if it does not demand them either). Is there a way to place a city so that it will definitely produce Hides? Are other commodities more predictable than Hides for some reason?

And returning to ST's strategy.... do you think it would also work without cities that supply Hides? I am just wondering if a ship chain makes sense when the commodities are not re-usable, like Hides are. Am I too obsessed with Hides, here?

 

[ElephantU]

One of my "Tips&Tricks" had to to with siting a city to increase the chance of getting Hides. The value of Hides is that they never get blocked, but the down side is that supply and demand seem to favor small cities early in the game ("caveman thinking"?). Hides does not pay off as well as some other commodities if you can find demand for them. Silk is my favorite for early deliveries, followed by Wine. The number of cities demanding it early on seems greater than Gold, Gems, Spice, and Silver. For the lower payouts Dye and Copper are usually more demanded than Hides, due to a bug in the supply&demand algorithms that favors them (something to do with a road dependency).

Another important trick of early trade is getting embassies or MarcoPolo and trading maps. This reveals the cities location and adds non-capital cities to the Demand list you can access in F5. Once you can see an AI city on the map you can click on it to see what it demands, so see if there is a pattern of similar demand among a group of cities. You are less likely to arrive at their shore and find the demand has disappeared if more than one city in a group was demanding. City demand changes naturally on a 16 turn cycle which is sequenced by order of founding, so they won't all change at the same time. Solo and Zenon are two players who seem to track this closely - which may be part of why they get such great results from micromanaging their trade.

 

[Peaster]

Thanks, E. I read your Tips about a month ago, but wasn't so interested in trade back then. Your Hides tip is useful and has more info than I've seen elsewhere. To get Hides (meaning to supply them, right?), you suggest

-Wildcard CityLocation: X coordinate multiple of 14, Y coordinate
even numbered -Terrain: lots of Forest, Tundra, Glaciers in city
radius -CitySize: 1-2 doubles, greater than 7 halves
-NumberOfTechs: 1-15 quadruples, 16-23 doubles, greater than 48
halves (and kills doubling for CitySize less than 3 too)

If I am reading the ELG correctly, you can also get a wildcard if CityLocation: X coordinate + 7 = multiple of 14, and Y coordinate = odd numbered.

I am still not clear on what happens when samson's formula predicts a wildcard. I think it guarantees the commodity will appear on the city screen supply list - unless it is also on the demand list, or it happens to be Hides. Is that about right?

 

[Conrino]

What about different stuff that is rarer(like uranium)? WHat effect does that have?

 

[Specialist290]

Well, IIRC, I remember that somewhere it states that certain commodities get better "Value Multipliers" or something like that, but I can't remember where I read it or exactly how it goes.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

If a commodity is demanded, the value is multiplied. Some are worth more than others, with Uranium giving an 4x if it is demanded. Check the other trade threads for more details.

 

[sethos]

Trade bonusses also depend from the distance.
Send freights via airports through the world. If possible, send them from the left top corner to the right bottom corner (or left bottom corner to right top corner) of the map.
I once made a bonus of 5060g for one (demanded) freight of oil.