Import/Export UI screwed up?

[erebos]

Am i the only one that has annoying problem in assigning exports and imports. When i set 3 of my cities to export (cotton) and one of them to import (cotton) i can't select any transport (wagon or ship) in the "Trade routes" screen. Only if i remove one of the exports (of cotton) i can select transports, that is very annoying and kind of a game breaker for me.

Can someone confirm this?

Savegame can be downloaded from (click free download):

http://sharingmatrix.com/file/70443/Malte_AD-1618-JanuaryBUGBUGBUG.ColonizationSave

Try to go to "Domestic Advisor" -> "Trade routes" and select any of the wagon trains ... can you select them and assign them?

Erebos

Please could this be moved to the right forum, i am not able to ... posted this in the wrong forum unintentional.

 

[pvt chaos]

I tried it and I also didnt really succeed. I only could select the cotton expres wagon train, assign that one and nothing else, that was it. I must admit its the first time I really look deeper into this screen, so maybe someonelse with more experience knows whats wrong.

 

[tchase5]

I click on the wagon and select "assign trade route" and that works fine, i've never had a problem even with 30 or so trade routes going on.

 

[pvt chaos]

Ok, found it out how it works.

1. Select wagon or ship.
2. Press assign to trade route in the main interface (not the domestic screen)
3. Assign one trade route and press ok.
4. Go to the domestic screen and now you should be able to set all the route's you want for that particular wagon or ship.

So the logic is : assign a wagon to a trade route, after that you can edit at will in the domestic screen.

Hope that helps.

 

[erebos]

@pvt chaos
@tchase5

thx, i will check that, i used to make my trade routes from that scren before. nonetheless i think the screen is not working as intended. i am happy that there is a workaround. thx for testing and confirming.

Erebos

 

[pvt chaos]

No problem, have fun with your cotton expres trade route.

 

[kayapo]

The transport systems is a bit weird. But you might want to play around with just setting your wagons to "Fully Automated" then use the orders in cities to set things up. It is much easier then setting manual routes and it doesn't make you want to kill yourself if a wagon is ever taken out of auto mode (if a wagon is approached by an enemy unit for example or if you click on it by accident)

Instead of just setting your cities to "Export" or just to "Import" enable both and use the "Keep X" number to tweak what you need. If you use it that way you can set the wagons to "Fully Auto" and they will manage things rather well.

 

[pvt chaos]

Or you could use both. Just set the bulk of your wagon trains to automate and assign a few very important trade routes to dedicated wagon trains / ships manually.

 

[krasny]

The whole automated transport system is very labourious, and needs a redesign.

 

[pvt chaos]

Yes, they certainly could have paid more attention to the logistical part of the game.
The most annoying thing is that your wagon train or ship forgets its trade route when its too close to the enemy. And if you didnt gave the wagon train a name it can be hell to figure out what its supposed to do. The domestic screen can be helpful, but later in the game it takes an insane amount of time to open.

 

[obsolete]

The most annoying thing is that your wagon train or ship forgets its trade route when its too close to the enemy.

Ughhhh. No kidding! I get so frustrated I just skip turns and HOPE the enemy kills it!

 

[MasterDinadan]

Yup and sometimes it's possible to set up the imports and exports in such a way that the transports will correctly function on automatic. I've been known to have a city import and export the same good. I was mining ore on another island so I had to export over sea to another city on the west coast, and then that city exported it to a city on the east coast where I would use it. Problem is that because the middle city is importing and exporting the good, if the land transports picks up the ore it doesn't know that it should take it east instead of putting it right back in that city which is apparantly importing it. Similiarly, the sea transport doesn't know that it isn't supposed to sail around the entire continent to deliver to the east coast just because they are importing.

It's really irritating when I have several goods going in a "chain" like this, because every time I set up a transport I have to search for every single good on the path I want. I wish I could just have to take all of the import/export pairs on a pair of cities and tell it to do all of them instead of picking them one at a time... The worst is that the window does not even seem to be sorted in any logical fashion. They are not sorted by resource type, nor origin, nor destination. I'm looking around for a needle in a hay stack.

 

[rabottens]

It strikes me as funny. The man who designed railroad tycoon designed this game. He should have used the same features regarding transport and trade routes. Pick up one location unload reload etc etc etc.

 

[pvt chaos]

Ughhhh. No kidding! I get so frustrated I just skip turns and HOPE the enemy kills it!

Actually there seems to be a strategy where you mass produce wagon trains to distract the REF and use them as bait and cannon fodder.

It strikes me as funny. The man who designed railroad tycoon designed this game. He should have used the same features regarding transport and trade routes.

Yeah, I was also stumbled by this. Im even wondering if he looked at the final product at all, or that his name is just on the box for commercial reasons.
Thats the problem with current game's , its all about fancy graphics and the gameplay come's second or even worse. But it seems most "old' game developers take a wrong turn somewhere. Anybody tried to play Locomotion after being addicted to Transport Tycoon ? Chris Sawyer really got off track there.