Freights/Caravans and Wonders

[Kessey]

According to most sites, you can use freights and caravans to build your wonders quicker. How do you do this? Do you have to supply specific items to that city or does a new option appear before you send out?

Thanks,

Take care,

Jay

 

[RoboPig]

you make the freight/caravan carry food supplies, when it gets to a city building a wonder, you can either move on, establish a food supply route or add shields to the wonder.

 

[Ace]

The van does not have to be carrying food. It can be carrying a "normal" cargo. When it enters the target city, you get three options: Keep moving, deliver freight, or add to a wonder. Select the third option to add 50 shields to the wonder you are building.

 

[Smash]

This is quite good as you can "pre-build" wonders by storing up camels/freights and you don't have a city tied up for numerous turns building a wonder.

 

[Kessey]

Cool, thanks. I heard you can also do this when researching advances? Is this true?

Thanks again,

Take care,

Jay

 

[ElephantU]

The city has to be building a Wonder before the caravan/freight enters in order to get the extra "add to Wonder" option. Note also that you can switch between Wonders and spaceship parts without losing 50%, so this trick can also be used to help build your spaceship.

The contribution that caravans/freights can make toward research is when trade routes are established. Depending on a set of characteristics (commodity demand, distance between cities, overseas, foreign civ, etc) you get both a one-time "bonus" payment of beakers equal to the gold payment upon delivery, as well as an ongoing trade route between the cities that can add extra trade arrows each turn. Also, the delivery bonus beakers are not halved like city research when you are in a Fundy government. Check the Index of top threads to find one by Samson about Caravan/Freight Delivery Bonus Payments for all the details.

 

[Kessey]

I just got it to work for wonders. Cool, I can't believe I never noticed that before!

Thanks,

Jay

 

[Andu Indorin]

btw, if you have a trade empire fully established, it can be more beneficial to build commodity freight, deliver them to a ripe a market, and then just rush buy the wonder outright after the first few shields have been produced. Indeed, a single freight delivery can often do the trick. And this way, you also add to your scientific research.

 

[Ace]

That works well, too, but a more cost effective way is to deliver the high-paying vans, Than use the coins to rush-buy more vans and put them to use building the wonder. That way, you can have your cake (more coins and beakers from freight) and eat it too (still rush the wonder)!

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

The other benefit is that caravans/freight can be Incrementally Rush Built where a wonder can't. That makes the freight a lot cheaper to Rush Buy than the wonder.

 

[Andu Indorin]

But then again, I find that those IRB'd Freight can also be delivered for still more money and beakers. ... If those ten or so freight were commodities -- instead of food -- and could be delivered to profitable markets on the turn they were produced (as they usually are), then that's just more science and more money to buy other things like Superhighways and Airports and Engineers ... It's just one way to bang out, for example, nine wonders (= 4600 shields) in six turns. That's 19,120g (rush building from scratch); or about say 20-24 freight deliveries versus, say, eighty to ninety food freight deliveries.