New information regarding trade routes

[dashwinner]

I do agree on your other thoughts that the map should play a big role and that the "radius" movement similar to air units may not be the best idea for trade units. I also hope that we will get an "escort" unit button. I wonder how automated the trade routes pathfinding will be and if we can change it (i.e. take the safe route instead of that mountain pass please). Could be a source of annoyance... (especially in wars)

I came on to say this, then saw you wrote it already. Yes, escorts, please.

 

[BSPollux]

Well right now trate routes pay for your expencive road network.

Depending on how and when the new trade routes become available, building roads early could be an economy desaster from now on.

 

[Babri]

Well right now trate routes pay for your expencive road network.

Depending on how and when the new trade routes become available, building roads early could be an economy desaster from now on.

How? As far as we know from screenshots, the old gold bonus from connecting cities still exists. The new trade route system is replacing the gold we used to get from rivers. So it will still be worthwhile to build roads earlier on.

Sent from my HTC One V using Tapatalk 2

 

[BSPollux]

Wait... so we get two diffrent kinds of traderoudsystems? one with tradeunits and one by building roads?

Are you sure?

 

[Browd]

The demo clearly showed the trade route symbol (black triangle with 3 gold dots) underneath the city banners. Implies that "old fashioned" trade routes (roads and harbors) will still play a role, although no telling whether the gold-generation formula and road and harbor maintenance costs will remain the same.

 

[bob massingbird]

will Trade Routes help spread religion in addition to culture and tech? Because that's how Islam spread in Southeast Asia historically.

 

[Stellarnight]

Yes Religious pressure will spread with trade routes

 

[Ikael]

Woa, AussieLurker himself posting on one of my treads, oh, my, welcome! I happen to have a similar view to the one you expressed. I disagree howver, in the too much vulnerable trade routes perception: trade routes are meant to be vulnerable. Trade could be very easily disrupted, hence why it has always been considered to bring peace among states (you need a clear, peaceful path for your traderoutes to profit).

That being said, I am also quite weary of the fact that only internal routes produces food and hammers. This is clearly unrealistic: international trade has been able to fuel growth and industry since ancient times, it wasn't only a matter of trading goods, even if it is always safer to secure food from your own farmlands.

Couple things missing that you could add to first post:

- science trickles thru traderoutes from advanced civs to less advanced ones.

- besides distance, you get extra gold too from cities that have more
"exotic"(different) luxuries than you

Nice catch, thanks! if that's the case, things can get really interesting, but I kinda disagree with science being one sided: the exchange of ideas benefit both advanced and primitive civilizations alike, even if the former are more likely to benefit from it.

No major AI near you isn't the main concern; it's instead what if you start truly isolated (no city states near you either). So far it's looking like if your unlucky to be truly isolated you'll need to restart.

This has never, ever happened to me O_o there's always at least one CS to interact with around. Then again, I rarely play on archipielago maps

I'm not sure your conclusion that domestic trade routes provide a fixed amount of food/production.

Based on the screenshot it is clear that the yield of a domestic caravan is independent of the target city (and thus distance). It could still be a function of the source city. It may depend directly on the hammer/food yield of that city, although that seems unlikely since the hammer and food yields in the shot are the same. More likely is that they are a function of the buildings present in the city. (We already know that foor/production routes require a granary and workshop respectively.)

Thing is, the hammer and food yield of the trade routes are always the same, regardless of the city of destination. It is also worth noting that there doesn't seems to be any obvious kind of correlation with the city of origin either (size? worked farmed tiles?). There could be another non-apparent correlation such as buildings present on the city of origin like granaries or workshops, but then again, it is a bit tad "off" that the same city generates the exactly the same amount of food and production. I would really hope that this would not be the case, and that it would be related to the city's general food and / or hammer output instead.

 

[Dunkah]

Questions I have:

• Can your Caravan Unit be killed?
• Do you have to spend hammers and create new Caravan Units?
• Are they awarded to you after building a new building/ wonder?
• Are they respawned after being killed by barbs, warring Civs?
• Do they require an Open Borders agreement with the Civ you are trading with in order to work?
• What if there are other civs between you and the destination city, do you need Open Borders with them?
• Do you block trade route just by standing on it?

 

[Calouste]

Questions I have:

• Can your Caravan Unit be killed?
• Do you have to spend hammers and create new Caravan Units?
• Are they awarded to you after building a new building/ wonder?
• Are they respawned after being killed by barbs, warring Civs?
• Do they require an Open Borders agreement with the Civ you are trading with in order to work?
• What if there are other civs between you and the destination city, do you need Open Borders with them?
• Do you block trade route just by standing on it?

AFAIK:
Yes.
Yes.
No.
No, you have to build a new one.
No, Caravans are available with Animal Husbandry, Open Border far later.
No.
No, trade units are a new unit type, different from civilians and military. Probably you could block it with another trade unit, but that would hardly be cost effective (I don't think you can build more trade units than you have trade routes, so you'd miss out on a trade route to block another civ's one).

 

[AriochIV]

Wait... so we get two diffrent kinds of traderoudsystems? one with tradeunits and one by building roads? Are you sure?

Pretty sure, and this is why the new trade routes are conspicuously named "International" Trade Routes.

 

[BSPollux]

"The demo clearly showed the trade route symbol (black triangle with 3 gold dots) underneath the city banners. Implies that "old fashioned" trade routes (roads and harbors) will still play a role..."

Erm... that icon could have been reused for the new traderoutes? If they replaced the old ones then it seems normal to do so.

"Pretty sure, and this is why the new trade routes are conspicuously named "International" Trade Routes. "

I thought that 'international' and 'national' describes if its a food&prod lione between your citys or a cash line with a foreigner?

 

[Bonci]

I surely hope that trade units will have unlimited stacking.

 

[Sporally]

Thanks to the latest batch of freshly baked PAX screenshots, we got to get a better picture of the new trade route mechanics.

I know it's a bit off topic, but is that a new barbarian unit in picture 6? Looks a bit like a jungle unit - maybe ranged with throwing axes as the icon shows.

- Caravans will have a fixed number of movements (radious) that might increase with technologies / wonders / SP / UA, etc (10 seems to be the initial lenght)

...

- Since caravans seems to have a fixed amount of radious, do that means that terrain and roads won't make a difference regarding land routes? This seems like a major mistake to me, city placement and natural isolation / communication must have a major role into trade (fluvial trade network, rocky mountains isolating regions, etc)

Do we know about this "fixed movement" and where do you get 10 movements from? I've noticed in the video that a caravan moved just 2 tiles even though they were on a road, meaning that either they only have 1 movement point per turn or they ignore roads. I guess this is a (camel) caravan restriction - at least that's my best guess looking at it from a realistic point of view. Why would a trade unit be any slower than any other unit from a realistic point of view?

- I don't like the fact that there's a fixed amount of food and production that internal trade routes provides. Industrial centers ought to supply more hammers than breadbaskets, so to speak

I guess this was supposed to show that there's a limit to caravans capacity I bet you can't deliver more than 4 hammers if you don't produce those 4 hammers (if that ever happens with a workshop). Thereby, it's not about the city's production but the limit in capacity. Maybe you can have two trade units moving stuff from the same city to the other. On the other hand a new city could soon become too powerful if you gave it like 30 hammers for 10 turns. Afterall, every beginning is difficult

... I also hope that we will get an "escort" unit button. I wonder how automated the trade routes pathfinding will be and if we can change it (i.e. take the safe route instead of that mountain pass please). Could be a source of annoyance... (especially in wars)

Interesting thoughts! I thought about the escort aswell when watching the trade ships next to the two frigates when we say the demo video. Change of the path would be a great idea changing the about of gold yield for indirect path choosing.

This is where I think the designers need to be most flexible. What a trade route-internal or international-generates should be entirely based on what the 2 trading cities generate-in surplus of their opposite number. So if city A generates more food than city B, then City A will trade food to city B, perhaps in return for City B's surplus production. I do agree, though, that whatever other yields a trade route generates, it definitely needs to generate gold, & much more gold than would be yielded from an internal trade route (at least base, distance obviously would play a factor for offshore colonies).

I like the idea of "taking something back". When you transport food from A to B, you should be able to choose if you want to take production back to A from B. Even better - continue to C to gain gold (foreign city) and gold when going back to A. Of course this would limit the food transport further, so you have to estimate if you need food transported the most or if you can live with this limit. Scrambled for Africa makes my point. Weapon to Africa --> slaves to America --> rum and tobacco to Europe.



My thoughts:

1) Did we just loose the number one reason for building a city at a river tile? Besides defence when attacked from across river and the fact that you loose movement when crossing, which of course isn't a benefit, there's no point in building next to a river. All of a sudden, Hamburg looses its historical imporance if this was real world Only if there will be a unit that somehow moves along the river tiles and into the ocean, but I doubt that since that would demand trade units to move between two tiles.

2) The game devs have always tried to enhance the advantage of using ships and thereby making the ocean civs better. I know it doesn't change that much, but this is yet another reason for building a city new to the ocean, and i like that... and if you get the escort function, then there definately will be a lot more sea going wars. Afterall WWII was a taking into the sea for reasons to break the supply chains. Sending (not trading) food and production to allies could also be a good idea - think US/UK collaboration in WWII. I know it won't be the best feature ever seen in Civ, but in some cases you may want to restict a big civ from gaining more ground without going to war with him before you're ready. Big alliances could balance the game when someone gets too big to be stopped single handily



And a question: Do we know if you get the trade units or if you have to build them? Whichever we assume I was wondering if you could choose all of your trade units to be seagoing / landgoing or if you could only build so and so of each type of trade units? If you are free to choose (once you have the technology of course) there will be yet another reason to choose water happy civs.

 

[AriochIV]

Erm... that icon could have been reused for the new traderoutes? If they replaced the old ones then it seems normal to do so.

No. In the PAX video, the old trade route icon appears in all the connected Polish cities (except the capital Warsaw) before any of the new International Trade Routes are set up, and Warsaw still doesn't have the icon even after a sea route is established from that city. And in these two screenshots you can see that Nineveh and Sao Paolo have International Trade Routes (the dotted line overlays on the map) but no old Trade Route icons.

I thought that 'international' and 'national' describes if its a food&prod lione between your citys or a cash line with a foreigner?

"International" describes the new system. The "International Trade Routes" interface includes both foreign and domestic routes.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Actually, one of the few *good* things Civ2 did in relation to caravans was the ability to ascribe a resource for the caravan to trade. Now, since Civ2 we've gained the ability to trade luxury & strategic resources via diplomacy (which is great), but I think it would be awesome if a city could ascribe a bonus resource to a caravan or cargo ship. It wouldn't be essential, but might boost the value of the trade route & possibly provide food or production to the city you're trading to in the process.

So, as an example, if a city has copper, cows & stone in its city radius, then you might be able to assign this resource to the trade caravan you're building. A copper or stone caravan might provide +3 hammers to the trading city, whereas a cow caravan might provide +2 food & +1 hammers. Even if this could be done as a mod I'd be happy ;-).

Aussie.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Woa, AussieLurker himself posting on one of my treads, oh, my, welcome! I happen to have a similar view to the one you expressed. I disagree howver, in the too much vulnerable trade routes perception: trade routes are meant to be vulnerable. Trade could be very easily disrupted, hence why it has always been considered to bring peace among states (you need a clear, peaceful path for your traderoutes to profit).

As others have indicated-if it's possible to auto-assign some kind of escort, then that would be sufficient to assuage my concerns in this regard-or if, at the least, a trade route wasn't an auto-kill like it is with workers & settlers ;-).

Aussie.

 

[s0nny80y]

With all this talk of expanded economy, still no peek at new cottage designs...

 

[Bechhold]

What we really need to know now is if Privateers are actually Privateers in the literal sense and how they operated in IV.

 

[Sporally]

Actually, one of the few *good* things Civ2 did in relation to caravans was the ability to ascribe a resource for the caravan to trade. Now, since Civ2 we've gained the ability to trade luxury & strategic resources via diplomacy (which is great), but I think it would be awesome if a city could ascribe a bonus resource to a caravan or cargo ship. It wouldn't be essential, but might boost the value of the trade route & possibly provide food or production to the city you're trading to in the process.

So, as an example, if a city has copper, cows & stone in its city radius, then you might be able to assign this resource to the trade caravan you're building. A copper or stone caravan might provide +3 hammers to the trading city, whereas a cow caravan might provide +2 food & +1 hammers. Even if this could be done as a mod I'd be happy ;-).

Aussie.

I like the idea! If I remember correctly, the resources in Civ2 had some importance other than the two cities trading had to have different resources.

In case the chose to have the ability to transport and sell bonus resources like bananas or stone in a foreign city, I would demand it to cost you the food/hammers to make the big difference between bonus and luxury resources.