Eventual trade route change

[Bezurn]

Auto-renewing would not be a good idea, as often the trade value for external trade routes fluctuates and there are often better deals you can get, even when trading within the same faction. Auto renewal may alleviate the micromanagement, but you'd lose out on better deals in the long run.

I'd much prefer a better way to sort through trade routes and assign them from the trade overview screen. Curently the yields are all lumped into one column. Moving them to seperate columns and making them sortable by highest would be most helpful. Being able to assign any trade unit waiting for orders would be the cherry on the top.

 

[InfinityV]

Just create a trade route interface where I can choose whether to let trade routes autorenew, or allow me to change them every 20 turns.

Trade routes are really not that broken, it's the passive single player AI that is broken. In multiplayer, I once used a single marine to plunder 4 trade routes in one turn = 400 energy thank you very much. Now let me snowball off that extra energy by instant buying more units while you suddenly lose hammers, food, beakers, and energy per turn.

 

[player1 fanatic]

Auto-renewing would not be a good idea, as often the trade value for external trade routes fluctuates and there are often better deals you can get, even when trading within the same faction. Auto renewal may alleviate the micromanagement, but you'd lose out on better deals in the long run.

I disagree.

They should auto-renew, with notification on turn that it happen, and that any autorenewed routes can be canceled at any moment. So if you want to micromanage, you are fine, just cancel them the moment they are autorenewed.

This is, if I remember, how diplomacy deals also worked in Civ4. Right?

 

[sprang]

TR yield still needs looking at even with 1 per city, 2 at the capital. Even at one per city it's the first thing you build or buy currently. Doesn't matter what kind of game or victory you're after, the trade depot comes first.

Agree about 1TR-per-Depot. If the Palace gets a single extra TR, then the Trade Depot can be moved to later in the tech web because you can always start with a station route or pump up your first outpost.

Making the depot more expensive is a good option for subsequent cities. Or making it impossible to rush-buy. Increasing the cost on the convoys themselves won't help much because they can be re-based from high production cities.

There may not be code for improvements to allow ONLY foreign TR or ONLY internal TR. But there is clearly a way for TR bonuses to be applied to those different categories, so the workaround is just to super-nerf all TR, then give narrow bonuses in piecemeal fashion, whether tech or quests. You could even keep 2TR in the Depot, allowing more specialization. Your science city builds improvements that give +2 to foreign TR. Production city gets +1 for internal TR.

 

[bhavv]

How about ...

Internal trade route yields reduced by 50%

Autoplant quest options - choose +25% food or production from internal trade routes.

 

[Janskey]

If there would be only 1 TR per depot, the autoplant quest could give 1 extra trade route (not per city) vs. maybe 2 energy/autoplant.

 

[Hakan-i Cihan]

Additionally to the the suggested changes: limit the internal trade routes that a city can send or receive to 1 or 2 per city, depending on other changes.
For the management of trade routes, there should be a specific window for it in which you can manage all trade routes.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Cap receiveing routes at one for cities without a Trade Depot and to for cities with a depot and cap yields to 3 food and 3 production without interdependence network and buildings buffs.
Give one outgoing trade route for Capital (three for Hutama).
One trade route from Trade Depot.
Change Autoplant effect to one trade route and Autoplant quest to + one production for internal or plus 2 energy for external routes.

 

[Haggbart]

- Drop to 1 route/city
- Change autoplant quest. Could give some other bonus. Might give a %-buff to either internal/external routes (that could be the quest decision) if the original yield is nerfed.
- Reduce yields of both internal and external routes.
-If possible, split production and food into seperate routes
- Introduce health from trade routes (there could be stations with medical expertice)
- Make station trading profitable, a maxed station should be a desirable trading partner.
- Diplomatic action if someone tries to take out a station you are trading with.

 

[Mustakrakish]

The most logical easy solution is, as many say, one trade route per city and reducing it's OP yield and removing auto plant route, like in "Weaker trade" mod. I would also add that auto renew option is a must for those who don't want to bother manually reassigning them.

BUT re-rolling to BNW model with certain amount of trade routes per empire, no matter in which city, is what I'd prefer. With faction abilities, wonders, techs, quests etc. adding a few. Even one TR per city is still incentive to spam cities. And if they are so weak, there's no incentive to spam cities (which is good), then they become an inconvenience, spamming, clattering your map, it's just not a pretty sight, I hate those boats and trucks.

AND

If right now having 4 cities with 8 trade routes is a mess, reducing trade routes to 1 per city > 8 cities is STILL a mess. So it needs a more conclusive solution. So BNW model WITH AUTOMATION option is what I prefer.

I'd also suggest canning convoy and vessel units all together. It's such a meta mechanic (if I'm using this term correctly here), their existence is just weird for me. Just leave the actual path / trade route (the moving arrows) and that's it. Whenever hostile unit is on the path, they're leeching that trade routes GPT that turn (with science, food, production converting to gold), simple! AND makes for an interesting mechanic! If your trade routes are disrupted by aliens in that dark region, go investigate and clear the path! I sure would LOVE that!

All this with auto renew option of course.

 

[zenmaster]

I'm with Infinity V. I don't think trade routes are all that broken. The problems are that humans can use them much better than the AI and that unhealth penalties are too weak to discourage city spamming.

Be careful what you wish for: Supernerfing trade routes will mean MUCH slower growing cities with worker speed rates currently as they are. I can't see the complaining about trade route management when the alternative is more worker micromanagement. I frankly like the way trade routes speed up games.

Mark my words; if trade routes get too drastically cut in effect, there will be infinite whining in other areas as a result. If devs are reading this thread, not all of us think trade routes are terrible as is. Management is really not that bad unless you've spammed double digit cities, which means you should expect some management issues anyway.

I' d rather see a bit more bite to unhealth penalties and increased AI use of trade routes than a drastic reduction/nerf in player routes.

Just my two cents.

 

[Joch]

All good points.

However, placing a cap of one route per City will just encourage players to keep building cities. As a player who prefers "Tall" play, I would rather keep the current per city limit, but place an overall cap on the number of active routes any Faction can have at any one time, i.e. max. of 10-15 active routes.

I would also like to delay the ramp up.

For example, move the Trade Depot/Convoy/Vessel techs farther out in the Tech Web so they become available later.

I would also suggest delaying the "reverse polarity" Quest decision until, for example, you have acquired a total of 3 Affinity points so you spend more time having to worry about Aliens.

 

[Sequitor]

If they reduce trade routes to one per city, will they have to nerf Polystralia's UA? The current double impact is powerful, but tripling would probably be OP.

 

[atc_chief]

I actually like that trade route values change over time. I don't recall that happening in Civ V, or maybe I just wasn't watching as closely.

I would love to see some indication on the trade route interface as to which routes are already in use. It's very frustrating to toggle back and forth between 'outbound' and 'all trade routes' to see which are active when trying to reassign.

 

[Bandobras Took]

I've found that the yields from routes can change drastically over the course of the route. I'm regularly changing routes. What is needed is a Highest Gold, Highest Science, Highest Gold Delta, Highest Science Delta, and Highest Prod/Culture/etc. sorting option. Then it's easy.

Without a doubt; what I meant by my post (and I didn't explicitly say, unfortunately -- sorry) was that we would get a toggle button somewhere in the options for those who don't want to micromanage.

Being able to sort routes would be nice, but I'm less confident in that being done.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

I' d rather see a bit more bite to unhealth penalties and increased AI use of trade routes than a drastic reduction/nerf in player routes.

That, I think, is the other side of the coin. These penalties are far too soft. I would also propose changes to the health/unhealth system also. I don't think you should be able to build new colonists if your are unhealthy for example.

Unhealth should also prevent growth at increasingly steep grades. At 10 unhealth you should be at 0% growth due to deaths superseding births. Alternatively, it could be -1 food per local unhealth. You could establish a safe city or core of cities, but annexed cities and outposts would collapse under the weight of the system.

Anyway, perhaps a thread on that as well... Sorry to divert. I still think routes AND health need revamps which means a slower game, but I'm ok with that.

 

[ZHONN]

I don't really mind the trade route mechanics per se. The game is clearly built for them. I'd love to see somebody play well against Apollo AI without trade routes and no domination or spy coup tactics or such. If they're changed, tech and building costs have to be adjusted as well in my opinion.

What I do hate about the trade routes, is managing them. At least so far 60-80 trade routes have been a clickfest nightmare. I don't know if removing renewal of routes is the option, as as of the moment the yields can change very drastically.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well the worst portion is the micromanagement
(Game balane is just numbers)
So
1. Trade list sortable by yield (from BNW) previous route always on top (new)
2. Reduce number of trade routes

Then for yields...
Right now it supports the Trantor model (all routes from small energy cities stream in to 2-3 mega cities)
If total yield was dependent on sending city yield... It would ne like a choice of having a +%food,production building OR science energy building

 

[Lucius_]

I don't really mind the trade route mechanics per se. The game is clearly built for them. I'd love to see somebody play well against Apollo AI without trade routes and no domination or spy coup tactics or such. If they're changed, tech and building costs have to be adjusted as well in my opinion.

What I do hate about the trade routes, is managing them. At least so far 60-80 trade routes have been a clickfest nightmare. I don't know if removing renewal of routes is the option, as as of the moment the yields can change very drastically.

I agree with this. If you don't have trade routes, everything takes forever to build. Once you have 3 cities with 2 each, everything feels balanced. Once you have 7+ cities and 3 routes each it's facepalm OP.

 

[Lancor]

Maybe internal trade routes should just be a way to transfer some food/hammers from one city to another, rather than creating those things from nowhere. Then it would be more of a situational mechanic for setting up new cities or helping a city that's weak in food or production.

A good point! Transfer might be too harsh though. Maybe only a small or no bonus to food/production in the starting city would be enough.