Do trade routes need an overhaul?

[RealHuhn]

We all know that in R&F trade routes are a lot more scarce but also more powerful. I do like the balance!

But they still use the same horrific algorithms like they did in vanilla. Did you know that on standard speed, a trade route needs a minimum of 21 turns to be completed?
In vanilla this wasn't a big issue because you could simply rush to commercial hubs and spam some more traders to be more flexible.
In R&F however you can't do that. The market takes forever to build. This severely limits our options to boost new cities in the early game because you can only boost ONE city and then forget about it for the next 21 turns.

21 turns if you are lucky by the way!!! Look at this guide on how the length of trade routes is calculated. I assume that this guide is still up to date?
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/trade-routes-guide.25529/#q8

On standard speed, if travel distance is 10 tiles, the trade route needs 40 turns to be completed!!! If it's 11 tiles away it only needs 21 turns again. Why? Because reasons!

Honestly, this is just bad. The only way we can boost new cities now is Magnus and we all know how that worked out for the balance of the game ...

So I'd say make trade routes more flexible again by reducing the amount of time it takes to complete a trade route, bring back the auto renew feature and please fix the UI already! All the numbers about travel distance in the trade route overview are basically irrelevant information (see guide).

 

[Tech Osen]

I really don't understand why we aren't allowed to interrupt a trade route at any moment.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I was under the impression you get the yields from the trade route immediately. So you don't get anything until it finishes, or what?

 

[Liufeng]

I was under the impression you get the yields from the trade route immediately. So you don't get anything until it finishes, or what?

I think the yields are won immediately, but while they are creating the road, you can't send somewhere else. When build many cities, you want them connected with roads to increase the spped of your units. You can also send them to an opponent civ to move your army more easily. But you're very limited by the fact that once a trader has been sent, he won't be back until it finishes its job, and that can take a while ...

 

[blackbutterfly]

IMO they severely nerfed trade cos of Emergencies. (To balance the pots of gold). But Emergencies need better balance regardless.

Traders are the only way to make roads so this is a huge impact on larger maps making those civs who field cavalries much stronger/OP. E.g Mongolia, Scythia, Arabia, Sumer, India, Russia.

 

[Disgustipated]

Roads suck with 1 upt anyways. They are okay if you are just send a lone unit cross country. But send your entire army cross country and you get an L.A. Style traffic jam. Your only choice is to move on open roadless terrain to move your army.

I'm fine with trade routes, I just want to build my own roads sometimes (but I'm still okay with trade routes making roads too). Engineers should be upped to build 20 roads not 2.

 

[Arent11]

We all know that in R&F trade routes are a lot more scarce but also more powerful. I do like the balance!

But they still use the same horrific algorithms like they did in vanilla. Did you know that on standard speed, a trade route needs a minimum of 21 turns to be completed?
In vanilla this wasn't a big issue because you could simply rush to commercial hubs and spam some more traders to be more flexible.
In R&F however you can't do that. The market takes forever to build. This severely limits our options to boost new cities in the early game because you can only boost ONE city and then forget about it for the next 21 turns.

21 turns if you are lucky by the way!!! Look at this guide on how the length of trade routes is calculated. I assume that this guide is still up to date?
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/trade-routes-guide.25529/#q8

On standard speed, if travel distance is 10 tiles, the trade route needs 40 turns to be completed!!! If it's 12 tiles away it only needs 21 turns again. Why? Because reasons!

Honestly, this is just bad. The only way we can boost new cities now is Magnus and we all know how that worked out for the balance of the game ...

So I'd say make trade routes more flexible again by reducing the length and please fix the UI already! All the numbers in the trade route overview are basically irrelevant information.

Just give me a passive "trade capacity" per city that goes up with rivers, roads, harbors, commercial hubs, markets etc. Then have some background algorithm that computes distance & size of nearby cities, open borders, blockades etc. and chokes out a certain gold, faith, culture & science number generated from trade.

 

[Victoria]

The reason they have a timer on them is because

They create trading posts (on completion)
They get CS quests (on start)
They are a way to pave a road to your enemy.
They please another civ diplomatically (on start)

For that small window of time when you could interrupt them abuses were happening, I was abusing them too and so I would not want to see that back.
40 turns is crazy though. I see 0 reason that once a trader has traversed the distance both ways the route finishes, and they should travel 2 tiles per turn at sea.
The issue comes when you are making a trade route 40 tiles long using existing trade routes, that would mean 80 turns to complete which is maybe why they placed a limit.
I never looked at trading routes because someone already had.... the OP suggests there was s a change in completion time that is inconsistent.... is that correct?

Regardless, with the delay in getting them I do feel that 40 turns is excessive.

 

[Cedbird77]

I think the yields are won immediately, but while they are creating the road, you can't send somewhere else. When build many cities, you want them connected with roads to increase the spped of your units. You can also send them to an opponent civ to move your army more easily. But you're very limited by the fact that once a trader has been sent, he won't be back until it finishes its job, and that can take a while ...

I get your point. But I think this adds realism. Back in the day... When roads were not commonplace and trade just begun. It took tome to build the infrastructure.

Still today in rurual areas and developing nations it is the same

 

[Cedbird77]

I would like to see the destination city get gold too. Like in Civ 5. This gives you and incentive to both build your city up for trade and not to go to war with trading partners

 

[Bojevus]

The crazy thing is how little it resembles trade in real life.

Like, cities at crossroads should get big gold bonuses, as should port cities through which many traders travel. And trade should absolutely benefit the parties on both ends of the trade route. One of things I loved about the world congress mechanic was how powerful embargoes could be.

And traders themselves should - at a minimum - be able to route around hostile cities and territory.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Why can't trade routes auto renew? It seems like pointless micro to make the player manually renew trade routes constantly. Even with auto renew, players could still change trade routes if they want to with a limit on how many turns before they are allowed to change it again, to prevent abuse. But this would reduce the silly micro.

 

[RealHuhn]

The reason they have a timer on them is because

They create trading posts (on completion)
They get CS quests (on start)
They are a way to pave a road to your enemy.
They please another civ diplomatically (on start)

For that small window of time when you could interrupt them abuses were happening, I was abusing them too and so I would not want to see that back.
40 turns is crazy though. I see 0 reason that once a trader has traversed the distance both ways the route finishes, and they should travel 2 tiles per turn at sea.
The issue comes when you are making a trade route 40 tiles long using existing trade routes, that would mean 80 turns to complete which is maybe why they placed a limit.
I never looked at trading routes because someone already had.... the OP suggests there was s a change in completion time that is inconsistent.... is that correct?

Regardless, with the delay in getting them I do feel that 40 turns is excessive.

Is there even a limit? I've downloaded the mod Better Trade Screen and I see durations of almost 100 turns on standard speed, standard map size. I haven't played enough turns to actually verify whether this is true or not but if it is, this just shows how "broken" it is.
The inconsistencies are definitely there. A closer travel distance doesn't necessarily mean that the trade route is completed faster.

 

[Disgustipated]

You could always go to war to reset your trade routes , but unless you are Mongolia you won't get the trading posts.

Like I said above, give us better ability to make our own roads and the need to shorten trade route duration isn't necessary. One thing I love about my current Rome game is I don't need to make a crappy trade route just to make a road.

 

[blackbutterfly]

Why can't trade routes auto renew?

In Beyond Earth they had a checkbox to allow it to automatically auto-renew. Also you had a trade overview screen where you could check/uncheck auto renewal on trade routes.

How did Firaxis take a step backwards with Civ VI?!

 

[Bro]

I really don't understand why we aren't allowed to interrupt a trade route at any moment.

You can somewhat cancel them by sending traders to the civ you want to attack in the near future(10ish turns). The traders return to the city they were starting from when you dow.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

In Beyond Earth they had a checkbox to allow it to automatically auto-renew. Also you had a trade overview screen where you could check/uncheck auto renewal on trade routes.

I know. I want that for civ6.

 

[acluewithout]

I love the whole trade route capacity thing, I love how roads are generated via trade, I love how trade interacts with tourism, diplomacy and religion, and I (mostly) love how yields work for domestic and international routes.

But I’m not a huge fan of having actual trader units or how reading posts work. I think that would work better if it was more abstracted.

 

[RealHuhn]

I feel like we all talk about something else in this thread. What the hell.

My main point was:
Doesn't anyone of you miss the ability to boost new cities via trade routes like in vanilla? Right now you only have one internal trade route for quite some time without any way to interrupt it. It needs a minimum of 21 turns to complete on standard speed, even if the target city is only 4 tiles away. You send it and forget about it for basically the entire expansion phase. No room for any kind of strategy.
In late game there are other issues like for example if you lose an alliance you might be stuck with an almost useless trade route for up to 100 turns. These absurd durations were fine in vanilla because without an auto renew feature and the sheer mass of traders, faster trade routes would have been annoying. But in R&F, it's the complete opposite. I have to wait forever until I can reassign a trader to a more useful trade route because I only have a couple of traders to work with. The balance is completely off in my opinion.

 

[Victoria]

I got it 100%. I agree, in essence R&F has slowed up trade routes for the expansion phase and roads are not being built either. The only point I suspect we differ on is I rarely used internal trade routes for serious games since I worked out they are more valuable either sent to a foe or a CS. I may have learnt wrong but it’s how I see it.