Reducing the trade route headache

Chibiabos

Prince
Joined
May 24, 2005
Messages
424
I've completely given up assigning trade routes ... just given up. Here's what I do instead:

I set all resources under the Governor to "export." Lumber, Tools, Weapons and Horses I also set to "Import" and set each to my starting warehouse capacity (300 at the settings I play at). My port closest to Europe I set to import all finished goods, and cities I make into goods producers I set to import the raw materials I'm going to work in them, of course.

I like huge maps and Marathon games, but the trade routes just get unmanageable quickly. By using fully automated Wagon Trains, I don't have to worry so much about it. Its not quite as efficient, and occasionally you run into snafus (like your Wagon trains getting clogged with lumber faster than your cities can use it if you aren't being careful) but overall, I found it to be much less of a headache than the pain-in-the-tail trade route "management."
 
and let us not forget that the micro-managing 40+ wagon trains and sea vessels rapidly chews up all of your patience, the smaller the map the easier it is to manage, but like you I prefer the huge maps and they can go all spaghetti like with supply routes in a very short period of time. Obviously I could solve my issue by playing only smaller maps, but why do they havre a "huge" if they don't want us to play it ??? LOL
 
Nice approach!


But what do you guys do when some idiot declares war on you? For some reason, my entire automated trade network will collapse as soon as there's as much as a single person with a sharp stick on the horizon. I can't order them to go automatic again, need to do it manually or try to make peace as soon as possible. I hate it.
 
This is one aspect that does annoy me. Generally I fight the earlier wars on my terms and away from my home colonies as much as possible and my trade routes are unaffected, but when the REF lands they are all shut down immediately. At that point in the game I want to concentrate on winning the War of Independence, not on micro-managing a chain of wagons. Sure it is more realistic for the automatic routes to be cancelled when enemy units are about - but that certainly does not enhance gameplay.

My suggestion would be for automated wagons to go on a war footing such that they must stop in a colony at the end of each turn and not leave that colony until the coast is clear and they can reach their next destination safely.
 
A more efficient approach that minimizes micromanagement of wagons when you have a LOT of cities: park 1 or preferably 2 wagons in each of your cities, and have a bunch more parked in your main port city. At the beginning of each turn, the AI will give you a warning message if any of your cities is one turn away from overflowing in any goods being stored.

When you get the warning message, load the heaped up goods onto one of your wagons and dispatch it to your port city. Then, dispatch a replacement wagon from your port city to the sending city.

If in the course of cycling through your cities for some other purpose you notice that the city has a wagonload worth of goods piled up, again load 'er up, send 'er out, and send back a replacement wagon.

Requires a lot of wagons, but saves a lot of time.

You can build a lot of wagons while working toward a long-range building goal, such as when you are building an arsenal, which takes over a dozen turns to complete even with three carpenters working in the city. Simply build wagon after wagon, piling up unused production in the build queue, until you get to where you're just 2 turns away from the desired goal, at which point you switch to your arsenal or whatever.
 
OP, I do the same thing except I set things like cotton, tobacco, sugars and ore to both import and export. I only assign trade route to the next closest city, which will also be set to deliver to only the next closest city and on and on until it reaches the manufacturing city.

That way the city farthest wont have wagon that's stuck in travelling for few turns and materials will flow through between cities in rather more streamlined fashion.

In order to do this, it helps to name cities in sequence though. Trade menu gets rather looooong.
 
I like huge maps and Marathon games, but the trade routes just get unmanageable quickly. By using fully automated Wagon Trains, I don't have to worry so much about it. Its not quite as efficient, and occasionally you run into snafus (like your Wagon trains getting clogged with lumber faster than your cities can use it if you aren't being careful) but overall, I found it to be much less of a headache than the pain-in-the-tail trade route "management."

I only recently played my first game of Civ4Colonization (got it off steam's daily deals for a massive discount), and this was my first impression. I hated the original Colonization because micro management became impossible as your colonies grew. The Civ4 version doesn't add a whole lot more to the overall game, imo, and the wagons get a tiny bit easier to manage with the "automate trade routes feature", but managing large colonies is still a daunting task, because the UI is just damn clunky.


I've only really played one game, one strategy / resource management game, where managing transportation was slick, easy, and loads of fun: Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe (OpenTTD), an open source game at openttd.org, heavily modified from the original Transport Tycoon Deluxe from Chris Sawyer. If you're a fan of resource management / "business strategy" games, you might really like it. The UI is slick, it's point and click, and you can simultaneously manage hundreds, if not thousands of transportation routes, all in real time (with a pause feature).

Namely, the one thing it does really well (though with somewhat of a learning curve), is the assigning of transportation routes, setting up feeder services, scheduling pick-up times, allowing you to order trains and buses to sit and wait at a station for a determined amount of time. You can select which goods you want to pick up from one station, and which goods you want to drop off. You can order a vehicle to sit and wait until it is full, or just make it stop there and pick up whatever is at the depot at the time the transport arrives.

Most of all, the UI is damn near perfect for a game of its type. Instead of looking at a massive list of every city and possible transportation stop every time you want to make a change to the unit's orders, you just select your unit, open its routing orders, and point and click from one stop to the next. You then select each stop and decide whether to pick up, drop off, whether to wait until full or not, or whether to just drive on straight through using the stop just as a waypoint.

TL;DR: Simply put, I think someone ought to make a mod for Colonization that implements these features directly over from OpenTTD, tweaked to adapt it for Colonization's needs.

Any idea if the UI can be heavily modified and a lot of coding can be done for modding this game? Is there only a native scripting language or something more universal? I'd love to try my hand at it, even if it is just to make my life easier and to make this game stress free and busywork-free (for once).
 
After the following version of my mod, I will work on management of trade routes. I would like to know, if you could show me some examples of the management system of Transport Tycoon Deluxe (some screenshots would be better :p).
Then, you could also make a diagram that explain us how this system could operate in Civ IV Colonization.
I still have a lot of work with the following version, I ask your indulgence ;).
 
After the following version of my mod, I will work on management of trade routes. I would like to know, if you could show me some examples of the management system of Transport Tycoon Deluxe (some screenshots would be better :p).
Then, you could also make a diagram that explain us how this system could operate in Civ IV Colonization.
I still have a lot of work with the following version, I ask your indulgence ;).

The easiest way to convey the information would be to simply ask that you give OpenTTD a try for a day or so:

http://www.openttd.org/en/

It takes a bit of learning to get up and running - and yes, the game is quite dated and the graphics are ported more or less straight from the version that came out in the 90's.


Opening a transport route is as simple as the following:
1) Buy a train and attach cargo containers to the train to carry 1, 2, or more cargo types.
OR
Buy a car, ship, or plane, and outfit the vehicle to carry the desired cargo.

2) Open the vehicle's GoTo (orders) window by clicking a Yellow Arrow.

3) Click two different stations, first the source, then the destination.

4) If desired, the vehicle to wait for a full load at the source, and then unload the entire cargo at the destination (cargo is unloaded and exchanged for money at the destination by default - if you want to unload cargo at a station that does not accept the cargo type normally, then you need to use the Unload command).

Moreover, the game has built in management features that enable you to access a vehicle's commands, regardless of where it is on the map, by simply clicking on it via a list of all vehicles that are owned by you.

I'll include a diagram in the following post
 
So essentially it's point and click to determine the source and destination for the goods.

- On a mini window, you can click on the name of the source city to show a checkboxed list of the goods available for export and import. You select the goods you want to export.
- On the same window, you can click the name of the destination city, to show another checkboxed list of goods available for export and import for that city. You then select which goods you want to drop off at the destination.
- You can add another set of orders, if desired, to load more goods at the destination city, and return them to the source city. After the entire orders queue has been run-through, the Wagon will start orders at the start of the list.

So an orders windows might look like this:
1) GoTo -Isabella- and wait for FULL LOAD *Ore and Food*
2) GoTo -Santo Domingo- and UNLOAD *Ore and Food*
3) GoTo -Santo Domingo- and FULL LOAD *Tools and Sugar*
4) GoTo -Isabella- and UNLOAD *Tools and Sugar*

The game also has a lot of time saving features - for example it allows you to Copy orders from one vehicle to another by simply CTRL+clicking on another vehicle while you have your orders window open.

Below is a screenshot (sad diagram) from CivColIV, and a screenshot from OpenTTD with the orders window up (with sad graphics)


 
Now, I have a better idea of what you want.
But with your system, we can't manage city stocks.
For example, if we want to leave 50 foods in the source destination or if we want to have 75 max of tools in an other colony.
If we want that the wagon waits that all resources are loaded.(I just saw that you had it already mentioned :rolleyes:)
It could be a great project! :p I don't know if i will be able to do it, but i will try to realize it.
 
Now, I have a better idea of what you want.
But with your system, we can't manage city stocks.
For example, if we want to leave 50 foods in the source destination or if we want to have 75 max of tools in an other colony.
If we want that the wagon waits that all resources are loaded.(I just saw that you had it already mentioned :rolleyes:)
It could be a great project! :p I don't know if i will be able to do it, but i will try to realize it.

Well I think you could adapt the system to account for leaving a desired stock of any given good.

I don't know what the code infrastructure looks like, and what classes and functions and libraries you have to call on, I'm guessing you could do something to ensure that the amount loaded into the wagon takes into account the amount you want to leave behind.

You could make the wagon wait until it is full, but also make sure that the wagon leaves the desired amount in the city's stores during each turn.

Again, I wish I had more knowledge of what the code looks like, but I haven't the time right now to give it a healthy shot, since I'm working more than full time.
 
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