How can the Malakim connect to other nations ?

[Hansebenger]

Hi,
I would like to know how I can connect the Malakim to other nations.
they cannot build roads so there has to be something other. I even have a road on a desert tile in my territory, which is connected to the Illians, though I cannot trade resources or have trade routes to them.
I have to be missing something since there even is a unique building which provides more foreign trade route yield. Can you help me with what I'm missing ?

 

[Sephi]

For Malakim trade over deserts works like trade over coast/ocean for all civs. Maybe the game didn't update the plotgroups because of a strange reason.

 

[Hansebenger]

Yeah some turns later (Maybe with Fishing Tech) I got trade routes to all other nations

 

[Singularity]

A slightly related question regarding Malakim and trade.

Is there a future tech that allow you to gain resources that fall between cities workable tiles? Or will you be forced to build overlapping cities due to the "Enables trade on desert" by default from Children of the Desert tech. We've all but abandoned trying to play as Malakim in our MP games with the difficulty in hooking up resources. IMO it should be "Enables trade on desert within your cultural borders" and not "Enables trade on desert within your cities workable tiles".

 

[tesb]

afaik it already works like you want, all resources inside your culture (and on desert) are linked to your economy. the malakim treat desert like roads, so if there is desert on the resources they are linked. i never encountered that i have to work them when i played the malakim.

 

[Singularity]

afaik it already works like you want, all resources inside your culture (and on desert) are linked to your economy. the malakim treat desert like roads, so if there is desert on the resources they are linked. i never encountered that i have to work them when i played the malakim.

In our last game my friend never got the copper that was mined inside his culture, and similarly we've had the same happen in previous games when we've tried playing as the Malakim. But just to be sure I'm going to try a quick solo game to test this.

 

[Singularity]

@ tesb

You are correct! All desert tiles regardless if it is in a workable tile or not will be connected to your cities as long as it is in your culture. I don't know where we had this occur, but I can speculate that it either was on a floodplain tile(since that never converts to desert and doesnt count as a desert tile in terms of the Children of the desert tech) or simply in an older patch version of WM after they changed the Malakim.

Sorry for the pointless posts.

In that game I also discovered that the malakim adepts can't cast spring anymore on desert tiles, I guess that's to avoid getting the floodplain/hills next to rivers(bonus food) with the old "spring/schorch cheese"(also works wonders in forcing floodplains as any of the other civs on a rivertile ) and to not break the above feature of the malakim. You can get the spell, but it's greyed out on your interface.

 

[Gaminic]

It's quite difficult to connect resources early on though. I've finally got a solid Malakim start up and running and I'm enjoying them a lot, but it was rather annoying not being able to connect Copper to my cities as my only nearby copper source was on the first Plains/Grasslands tile next to the desert regions... I got lucky when the desert auto-expanded there, but it still seems like a fishy mechanic.

Also, for multi-move units, Desert is still far inferior to roads in terms of movement. Similarly, I can't seem to get any foreign trade, since the non-malakim AI generally doesn't settle near deserts. That's pretty harsh for a trade-dependent Civ! I've finally unlocked my juicy +100% foreign trade yield building, but it's completely useless.

[edit]

Just realized I completely failed to read. Will get coast trade unlocked asap!

 

[Gaminic]

Any chance we could get a looser rounding system? Considering trade generaly doesn't go far beyond 4~6/route, the rounding down system is really harsh. One of my cities has x.92 food, x.80 hammers and x.60 commerce (not exact numbers; just know that all three are much closer to x+1 than to x) which inevitably gets rounded down. Same goes for all the -10% effects from Civics, which (especially at lower levels) have a much larger effect than you'd think. Generating two hammers/turn means actually 1 hammer per turn for early Warriors due to the -10% and rounding down. The -10% food (which applies before unhealthiness, I guess?) usually takes a whole food off as well, while the opposites (+10%) barely have any effect at all.

If you keep in mind that most pre-percent numbers are aggregated numbers from several sources, I don't really see how rounding instead of flooring would be abusable or "too much of a boost"...