Protecting trade routes

[MarshalN]

How do you guys protect your trade routes, especially sea trade routes?

I find it almost impossible to keep those from being plundered, especially later in the game when you have ocean going vessels. Enemy ships just pop out of the blue and poof, your trade ship is gone. Unless you have an armada that covers everything, or you micromanage and keep tracking the trade ships (even that's not foolproof) you are fresh out of luck. In a protracted war with an opponent who still had a navy (or some CS allies with random caravels) I can sometimes lose 4-5 cargo ships that way, especially if they declared.

Perhaps there needs to be a convoy option?

 

[Maxym]

Scout ahead and maintain a large navy, it's worth the investment. All you need is three galleases and two privateers as your seed navy. Upgrade this to frigates and with that force get a bigger navy 5-8 frigates and as many privateers as you can. Then when they upgrade to destroyers you can capture as man enemy subs as you want.
You might need to start a war to get that bigger navy if one is not conveniently underway.

Send trade routes to places you can protect, even if it brings in few less gpt.

 

[DemonMaster]

Many times attacks on cargo ships comes from specific areas or islands. These "Horn of Africa" land areas can be patrolled to attack the "pirate" early.

Edit: Or of course take the barbs out if you have the resources to send land units (unless you want to settle the area).

 

[fotonut]

I wish you could cancel trade routes at any time, both for protection when things go south and also as a way to reassign.

 

[OnceAKing]

I like that its really difficult to protect Naval trade routes from other Civs. It's a trade off to war. You have to really do the math and understand if you have enough income to lose a few routes.

Also one way I protect them is to actively hunt there navy out and also attack their nearby port cities. So now they have to send their navy my way to protect their cities rather then attack my routes. Often that keeps them off my back

 

[Riderforlife13]

I was preparing for war with an enemy and several turns before I declared I tracked 3 of his sea trade routes to plunder them. I have 3 destroyers ready right next to them and I declare war, go to plunder the routes and the trade ships are gone. I guess I really don't know how that works and need to do some more research on how trade routes work.

 

[Maxym]

I was preparing for war with an enemy and several turns before I declared I tracked 3 of his sea trade routes to plunder them. I have 3 destroyers ready right next to them and I declare war, go to plunder the routes and the trade ships are gone. I guess I really don't know how that works and need to do some more research on how trade routes work.

Yes trade routes are broken when you declare war, and units disappear if the routes were with you or your allies. If not you can find the ships and plunder them by moving a unit on top of them and selection appropriate command from unit menu.

 

[Vriesea]

I place my navy vessel at the junction of several trade routes. Especially those close to areas that could possibly be under attack. Covers several trade routes with only one navy vessel. Place in wait mode until an enemy appears. Usually works most of the time. - vriesea

 

[reddishrecue]

Protecting naval trade routes is a lot more complicated than protecting land trade routes because they're farther distance and barbs can hide easier in the big ocean than on land. One way to make sure that barbs don't get your trade routes in the ocean is by destroying local barb famps that are in different islands so that they don't make any ships. Keeping naval ships near the sea route to protect the route is another way to make sure barbs don't plunder the sea route.

 

[redwings1340]

For barbarians, I generally just make sure somebody has line of sight of the entire trade route at all times, or later hope that barbarians have been taken care of by the computers. In a war, I generally try to send trade routes away from enemy cities if possible. If you're in a naval war against a costal empire on another continent, you might want to build caravans to temporarily replace the lost costal revenue or use short internal trade routes that you can protect. Late game it's pretty easy to replenish trade routes, so be prepared to lose them if you declare war.

 

[bigkeno]

I wish you could cancel trade routes at any time, both for protection when things go south and also as a way to reassign.

^This.

 

[ShunNakamura]

You really should be able to assign a military unit to guard them. This wouldn't be perfect since the military unit couldn't offensively engage without leaving the trader vulnerable(so a ranged barb ship could take pot shots at your units). However, if a pop up occurred telling you, you could either unguard the trader and use the military unit to kill the harasser or send in support.

Of course the catch here is that you would need to use fast units. It wouldn't work if your guard couldn't keep up(or maybe the guard slows down the trader and causes a loss in trade route value).

 

[kingofsealand]

eehhh when i go to war I fully expect to go from all trade routes used to 0 used in 1 turn. Unless im starting some little war with someone i never trade with it is likely to mean that most of my trade ships will be wiped out. But by the time im ready to make this war the trade ships take a mere turn of production to replace so i really dont care I can just make more after I get a peace treaty.

On that note the AI is hapless at defending their own trade routes. If you declare war you can make waaayyyyy more money blockading your enemies port cities and plundering 200 gold per cargo ship than you ever would have from plundering the actual cities. Figure out some tile that ALL of your enemies ships have to pass through to reach their destinations and just park there, i did this with a Portuguese nau and despite the chinese having 5 frigates and 3 privateers sitting nearby blasting away at a CS not a single one of them came to challenge my Nau which plundered well over 1000 gold just sitting in one sea tile between two islands for like 10 turns. And the really dumb thing is rather than realize that your not moving and they need to kill you, the AI will simply build more trade ships and send them headfirst into my unit. So easy to exploit them for money this way

 

[MarshalN]

I'm not talking about barbs - barbs are easy, mostly. AI DOWing you is usually the problem, especially late game when routes last forever and you can't change anything. And like someone pointed out, why do you lose all the trade units if the partner declares on you?

 

[Talcove]

Whenever I go to war I reassign my trade routes to the safest route with the most profit. If I have a choice between a trade route which gives me 30 gold, but goes close to enemy territory, and a trade route that gives me 20 gold, and doesn't go near enemy territory, then I will take the 20 gold.