let players adjust which tiles trade routes use (for nice road layouts)

[Kaloyan]

For me designing road layouts in Civ 5 was really fun and I miss that. I don't like how sometimes trade routes will go all over the place in Civ 6, making a mess of the road network. Sometimes they look really bad and don't make sense. I'd like to be able to choose which tiles a trader goes over to make roads.

I could picture on the trade route selection page, being able to click the tiles you want to use, or clicking arrows along the route to change the used tiles. Then with future routes they could prioritize the use of existing roads. As long as you use the same amount of tiles as the auto generated route I think it would be fine.

 

[Ciarson]

i have a few things against current trade system.

1) Trade road are too long. since we now have a system that use "trading post" as relay for trade road i believe the trade road should be shorter and use that system more.

2) Trade road seem to use a city as relay without having a "trading post". like having an AI land trade unit going to one of your cities with harbour to then turn into a naval trade unit and expand their trade road without having to establish a trading post in that city first

3) trade road length are different on land and on sea but with the way they are they hop between land and sea quite often so how is it calculated?

my solution would be:

1) make the land trade route with a length of 8 tile. (the efficient city placement is six tile appart so longest trade route would be 7 tile, if we add a 1 tile deviation we get the 8 tile range alowing to dodge small obstacle but requiring to use another city as relay if the obstacle would be too big.)

2) make sea trade route with a length of 8 tile but multiplied by those factors : coastal city, harbor, lighthouse, shipyard, naval complex. (witch make a coastal city with harbor and lighthouse , with a range of 8 * 3 so 24 water tile. much better than land trade based on length but easier to pillage as well.)


NB: Kaloyan's idea is great but would betedious with long trade roads so forcing the roads to be shorter and interconnected would be better but then we would need the Ai to be able to do the same (and it's not a given seeing how they act like now.)

 

[RealAntithesis]

My idea is to have trade routes adjustable using click and drag. Just click somewhere on the trade route when choosing a destination to set an anchor point which you can then move to somewhere you want the route to go.

The road will then be built between the start and end cities using the most efficient route following the set way points.

The downside would be that the route would take longer to run its course, which means the trader would take longer before it is available to create another road if you're trying to build a network (but future traders would use these same roads if they're more or less going the same way).

Maybe limit the maximum number of anchor points and/or the distance they can be moved to stop the player from building all their roads at once.

 

[Kaloyan]

I meant for this to be an option to do only if you wanted to, of course you could just let the default route happen if you don't care. The thing in civ 5 that was fun is that since roads costed money, I liked to create the most efficient road network with the least amount of tiles, and it just looks better then roads going all over the place. I feel like they could force AI/auto route planner to use existing roads if possible.