Food & Production internal Trade Routes

[BossArky]

Hi all,

Two questions on internal food/production trade routes.

1) Does the sending city loose the amount of food / production it sends to the receiving city? I would assume this would be the logical outcome... as you are sending it away to the receiving city. However I don't think this is the case in the game based upon my observations.

2) What strategies do you follow with your food/production trade routes? Capital sends to new cities to get them up and running quickly? Or... you get the new smaller cities to send to the capital to build a larger central hub there?

Thanks for any input.

 

[Wild_Woojsha]

1. No, surprisingly, the food and hammers are magicked into existence from thin air.
2. The best bet is to get them up as soon as possible, first going to the capital and then focus-firing on whichever city needs to catch up the most. Food is always better than hammers in the first 100 turns, after that its usually better to send the routes out to the highest bidder. Hammer routes are a case-by-case decision, usually food is better because more population means more hammers, and more food makes more hammers, etc. etc. etc.

 

[Aea]

I prefer a slightly different strategy where I typically send a food caravan to my expansions first, and then once they've grown (may renew once) back to the Capital or whichever city I think would benefit most. Capital IMHO grows fast enough and there's no reason to be sending them there early unless you're going to be focusing on wonder construction.

 

[beetle]

The best bet is to get them up as soon as possible, first going to the capital and then focus-firing on whichever city needs to catch up the most.

Okay, but how fast is ASAP anyway? I usually only have a granary in one expo before NC, so I can only start on food caravans to cap until well after that. It feels too late, but I have not been able to figure out how to accelerate that bit.

 

[inthesomeday]

A food route to a new city early in its foundation, IE the turn it's built, allows it to work better tiles and get infrastructure up better. Good liberty builds include prioritizing techs with extra trade routes attached to maximize science output early against fast growth tradition cities. Petra expands are made possible by internal routes, and food routes in the early game are crucial for science. I prioritize caravans to libraries in my capitals usually, because the science return ends up being greater.

 

[MechMedic130]

I typically start a new city out with a food trade route to get it growing fast as possible, then I rotate them based on current need. I especially like to have lots of hammer trade routes going when the World Fair or International Games are going on since you're really racing. I play Tall though, and internal trade routes work better in Tall games since you can keep internal trade routes going and still have a few external for Gold also.

Venice with two puppets with each city throwing a trade route out to the other can make a triangle of growth and production like crazy, especially if they're coastal and you can use ships instead of caravans. I've gotten Venice jacked out of control like that.

 

[Primacide]

This is more about play style I think than any hard rule. But for what it's worth, I don't send food to expos - I send a worker. I just don't settle in spots that can't grow well on their own. I do ship food to the capital from nearly every expo that I plant, because once you get surplus food up above 60 or so, your cap will grow every two to three turns and every other aspect of your game gets amazing (science, production, etc.). Obviously, I play tradition, so an OP capital is important.

The trickiest part for me, like Beetle, is timing when to push out the trade units. They are expensive in the early game and I constantly underestimate how important they are. High level players seem to forgo a granary and build an early caravan instead.

 

[Aea]

But you need a Granary to send Food...

 

[danaphanous]

you should be building granaries in every city quickly anyway. It's at least a +2 food and often more, every city will enjoy it and it's cheap to build and maintain.

As for the OP question:
I usually send the first food route back to my capital. The reason being my capital has the best science, GP tiles, national college, and thus gets about double the science benefit for growing fast. The food routes help it to work specialists as well so I can generate loads of great people. Also having one gigantic city makes building wonders easier and lets me know exactly where the enemy spies will be stealing so I can level up my own killing them.

If growth is especially slow I may send another food route from the capital and take turns on the other cities but usually I'm using it for gold and spreading my religion and using the gold to buy buildings in the slow cities.

Production routes are typically not worth it early game because growing fast gives you more of everything. Late-game if my cities are relatively production poor I may boost one of them with a production route as well. I did this on my Venice game where I had an especially terrible production start along with planting 3 GE's to increase production. It was the only way to overcome the handicap and not suck all game with only one hill, one forest, and the rest of terrain grassland.