Internal trade yields absurd but helpful?!

[Ryika]

Imagine the citizen in new city face when they saw caravan of cargo truck from Capital, instead of coming to help them, they come to take their resource.

That's actually what many cities in history started as... as "outpost" or as colony to get the resources of that area to the already established cities. Before the population boom started there probably wasn't a single city that was founded just to "be a new city". So why would people found new cities in BE? Probably for the same reasons - to get the resources. And suddenly seeing internal trade routes as that "backflow" makes total sense.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Doesn't correspond too well with the mechanic of population working tiles, though.

I mean, TR in CIV5 were already a bit odd, but there it was sorta abstracted as a national capacity, while CIV:BE clearly models it as a per-city thing.

 

[Gort]

Yeah, I don't really get the internal trade route mechanic either. It exists, you can torture logic to explain why it might work the way it does, but I don't get what having it actually adds to the game. In Civ 5 trade routes were mostly used to pump up your capital or to kickstart new cities.

In BE, they're just this sort of weird extra production thing. Externals work as a way to leech science and energy from more productive neighbours - a kind of "rubber-banding" mechanic. I don't really see what internals are for that couldn't be rolled into the existing "city connection" and "tile yield" mechanics.

 

[Ryika]

Doesn't correspond too well with the mechanic of population working tiles, though.

That's true of course, but imho that's really a general "problem" with Civ5/BE - the mechanics don't really work that well together to give an abstract but "solid" representation that is logical. While population growth is somewhat exponential per population (as proven by how Civ5 handles the "population"-part of the leaderboard) each pop still needs exactly the same amount of food - and somehow there are policies that make specialists "eat less". All nice gameplay elements but if you try to form a "complete picture" you'll find that that's an impossible thing to do.

It exists, you can torture logic to explain why it might work the way it does, but I don't get what having it actually adds to the game. In Civ 5 trade routes were mostly used to pump up your capital or to kickstart new cities.

That's true of course. While the change has certainly "solved" part of the mass-expansion problem internal trade routes now feel rather limited in what you can do with them and don't really help where you want them to help but instead just help those cities that are already powerhouses.

 

[FreedomFighter]

I captured an enemy city with 11 population. The entire city tile filled with hammer. The trade caravan that i sent it back to capital, somehow, end up boost capital 8 foods XD

 

[Minor Annoyance]

I've come to terms with the idea that energy to buy buildings is the way we are to jump start a new city rather than trade routes. You can often get good income from external routes from a new city, although not really enough to significantly speed up your buying, so it can help pay for it's own stuff a little.

The big gains to other cities from new cities still bothers me though, so here's my plan.
Cap the gain another city can get based on their population and what the other city's land can produce.

Add up the food and production yields for every tile a city can work. Divide that by the number of tiles it can work to get the average food and production per tile. Multiply those two numbers by the half the opposite city's population and that's the cap of what they can get from the city.
A city surrounded by plains would give a max of 1 food and production per 2 population of the other city. Having resources there or getting workers out to improve tiles would raise that cap.
It's basically simulating if some of the population from one city trucked out to another and worked their tiles. Instead of simulating nothing.
Half population might be too low though. In my last game I had population problems for a long time, 6 to 8, so that seems low at first but other colonies didn't and had 18 to 22 where it wouldn't be much at all.

 

[FreedomFighter]

Kinda abuse the system a bit when i keeping low pop city, and let every other big one send their caravan to it. Just keep it sit there, stagnate the food.

 

[erkanus]

Kinda abuse the system a bit when i keeping low pop city, and let every other big one send their caravan to it. Just keep it sit there, stagnate the food.

Does not that effect your science and culture negatively? by having a 1 pop city you are increasing tech and virtue costs, right? can all those trade routes compensate this loss?

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Does not that effect your science and culture negatively? by having a 1 pop city you are increasing tech and virtue costs, right? can all those trade routes compensate this loss?

It's just the one city.

 

[Aimeryan]

I think I would prefer for internal trade routes:

• Each city has an 'excess goods' it can trade (say 10% of that city's production/food).
• An internal trade route takes that excess to the other city.
• If more than one internal city is being traded with, divide appropriately.

Simple to do, easy to understand, non-abusive (you don't multiply the resources one city is able to 'give' via sending more and more trade routes to it, like you do at the moment).