how do you assign your routes?

[Esperr]

Im curious what the consensus is on how to assign routes, currently every city of mine sens there first route back to the capitol while the second goes for money. But ive heard others say they send routes from the capitol to new cities to boost them. Im not sure which is optimal.

 

[Bezurn]

I do like you, and have most send to the capital to boost it up population and production wise. The second I either send internationally or a few cities are used to boost up new land and help out cities that have poor growth or production.

And for the third... well that's just imba.

 

[CraziFuzzy]

The fact that the number of trade routes is limited by city, to me, this implies that the capital's routes should be used to boost outposts, and early cities, until those cities get their own Trade Depot. Then have the cities send convoys/vessels to the capital, and when you have quite a few routes available, send them between each other (works best if you have differences in the cities base yields).

My theoretical ideas, that I have NOT tested yet:
If you try to work your cities in a circle (capital in center, and six suburbs around it), then try to focus three of the suburbs on food, and three on production. Then, you can create a trade web, where each food center trades with each production center. This ensures large delta in each direction on every route, and maximizes the amount of 'free' (meaning not generated by tiles or people) yield you are getting.

 

[r0ck]

capital -> city stateposts -> 3 dif competitor civs (for diplo bonus)
others -> capital -> second specialized city -> city statepost -> dif competitor civs if not maxed in the previous categories.