Growing over happy cap for better trade routes?

[Whisker]

Does anyone do this?
In a recent game I had a very food rich capital. So instead of whipping it down as I usually do I let it grow to size 10 to get internal trade route value to 2. This gained me maybe 5 extra commerce for about 20 turns before I gained more external trade routes.
When, if ever would this be beneficial?
Should any city other than capital even be considered? (Maybe food rich island to get value 3 internal routes?)
Just playing with the idea, I could maybe see this useful in isolation or very cramped semi-isolation where number of external routes is limited.

 

[Rusten]

Not really. Every unhappy citizen costs 2 food per turn which amounts to roughly 4 hammers per turn (if in slavery). You're better off splitting the food with other cities than stacking a bunch of unhappy faces.

 

[krikav]

Not really. Every unhappy citizen costs 2 food per turn which amounts to roughly 4 hammers per turn (if in slavery). You're better off splitting the food with other cities than stacking a bunch of unhappy faces.

Wow! Not yesterday we where honored by @Rusten s presence!

 

[AcaMetis]

Something else to consider is that bigger cities cost more maintenance, so overgrowing your capital aside it's questionable whether you're even getting that much net profit. And if you're growing a non-capital city IIRC you're losing out on a +50% bonus on your trade routes, since capital trade routes are worth more.

It's something that works, but in practice I can't imagine any situations where it's worth doing. I guess if you're stacking unhappy citizens in a capital to whip out a critical wonder anyway you might as well try to get some trade route value out of it, maybe?

 

[krikav]

@Whisker You are touching on a important point though, growing large cities do give you other benefits other than just being able to work more tiles.
The extra trade routes help, but also a gargantuan capital makes GMerchant trade missions superb! Why Settle for 1300g when you can get 2900g?

 

[lymond]

Good to see @Rusten in the house.

 

[Whisker]

I did some world builder tests and it seems my memory is failing me.
Growing capital to size 10 does exactly nothing for your trade route values.
Each size after 10 gives +5% bonus to trade route value for that city alone, but not to those connected to it.
Ugh! Case closed, I go hide my head into the sand.

 

[Nick723]

Reading old threads - this was something people were concerned much more about (keeping high population for Trade Route value). There were threads where people would say things like ‘not whipping all cities at once to ensure that trade route values are retained’.

Seems that thinking is outdated?

 

[krikav]

Consider the point when you have carefully teched for a long time, turning the commerce from those cottages, hamlets, villages and traderoutes into lovely teches like rifling+steel.
Well, then you are done with that! What you desperatly need at that point in time is a burst of production.
And when I'm whipping away villages to get cannons with the intent of getting my neighbours land, the least of my concerns is that my traderoutes might decrease abit in value.

 

[Rusten]

Reading old threads - this was something people were concerned much more about (keeping high population for Trade Route value). There were threads where people would say things like ‘not whipping all cities at once to ensure that trade route values are retained’.

Seems that thinking is outdated?

Were you reading pre-BTS threads? Trade routes worked differently then and were more valuable. ToA was one of the top early game wonders in vanilla/warlords.

 

[civac]

That's interesting. Trade routes are pretty strong as is. They were even stronger back in the day?

 

[Rusten]

Double-digit trade routes were not an uncommon sight, IIRC.

 

[Nick723]

Were you reading pre-BTS threads? Trade routes worked differently then and were more valuable. ToA was one of the top early game wonders in vanilla/warlords.

Double-digit trade routes were not an uncommon sight, IIRC.

Yes - that must be it! Certainly the importance given to them in those threads doesn’t tally with my experience or how they work in BTS

 

[Fippy]

In the last sgotm we did think about traderoutes a lot, not sure at which size they start giving more but i remember they get better and better in intervals of 2.
(size 12, 14, 16 etc.)

 

[SillyGoat]

For domestic, overseas trade route the magic numbers (for a city that is far enough away and has no other multipliers) are 14 (+3 Trade route), 18 (+4 Trade route) and 23 (+5 Trade route)
For domestic, same continent trade routes 16 (+2) and 24 (+3) are the magic numbers.

 

[NothingBesideRemains]

One thing that can make this make a bit more sense is:

(a) you have few international trade routes (and thus, most / all of your cities have at least one domestic partner);

(b) you have at least one city on an island off of your main continent (each domestic city can show up in the list of each of your other cities' trade route lists, whereas each foreign city shows up only once across your empire);

and

(c) you have 'many' cities (more = better).

In that case, growing that 1st or 2nd island city past size 10 might give you an extra 1 or 2 commerce in all your other cities. Granted, in such a scenario it may be difficult to get a city past size 10 (limited foreign partners implies pre-astro), so I think this is an ancillory benefit to maybe be aware of, rather than something to direct a strategy towards. For example - pre-astro, 12-pop probably has more value running g scientists than getting 10-20 commerce frome trade routes!

edited to add: if you have GLH, and or Cothons, and or free market, and or Corp, then it may be more likely you have non-foreign traderoutes, and thus this may be more likely to occur.

Cothons / harbours may also make the population bump more impactful, and Burea / slider multipliers would make the resulting commerce more impactful. However, larger cities which might have one or two of these buildings would be the first to grab foreign traderoutes (which are assigned to your cities based purely on size, to my understanding. ie: your largest city, perhaps a nice capital, is assigned the largest, furthest foreign city as a trading partner). So these multipliers are unlikely to impact your domestic traderoute value from a plump island city unless you are running mercantilism or have overbuilt buildings.

 

[Whisker]

To re-iterate from above, I was mistaken. Growing your cities affects only the value of trade routes for that city and has no effect for trade routes in your other cities. Checked this in WB. Growing your capital to 10 has no effect at all. Growing further gives bonus +5% from population for each size beyond 10 (shown at least in BUFFY). Routes in your other cities are unaffected. Same for the island city.
From foreign trade routes we know that size has some effect on the yield, but for domestic routes (at least for my test) the distances and sizes of the cities were so small that the base value remained at 1.

 

[krikav]

The base yield of the traderoutes is dependant on the target city.
A city thats < 10 pop has base yield 1, but a city @ size 12 has a base yield of 1.2, a city at pop20 has a base yield of 2.
Doesn't matter if it's domestic of forreign.


Screenshots:

Spoiler :

Despite having OB with all the other AIs, still a domestic (offshore) city is selected as a traderoute for the capital here, because it's size16 and thus has a large base profit.
1.6 because Munich is size 16.

Base profit 1.8 because Carthage is size 18.

Worldbuilder Carthage to size 28.

And base profit is bumped to 2.8.

 

[civac]

That's not quite right. The base yield is the minimum of size/10 and distance/10, but it cannot be < 1. So a size 12 city only provides 1.2 base yield if it is also 12+ tiles away (by plot distance).

 

[krikav]

Aha!
Plot distance was that weird calculation....
Two plots, (x1, y1) and (x2, y2).
Let dx be abs(x2-x1) and dy abs(y2-y1).

Then plotdistance is max(dx, dy) + min(dx,dy)/2