resources and trading: a brief insight

OTAKUjbski

TK421
Joined
Mar 4, 2007
Messages
1,511
Location
not at my post
For the longest time, I've been hooking up and trading resources without any real understanding of what was going on.

Oftentimes I would be offered a trade of Rice for Gold and think, "why would I want to give up health for happiness?" Stupid.

Apparently, having more than one resource hooked up in your empire does absolutely nothing for you.

The information I present here is probably nothing new to our more experienced players, but for players like me, this may be an eye-opener. After learning this, I feel I'm able to barter much more beneficial trades (b/c now I know how to tell what I need) and when to decline the not-so-beneficial ones.

Resources need routes.

In addition to adding improvements like Farms and Mines, you must connect improved resources to a city via road or river in order to gain that resources benefits (such as +1:health: from Wheat).

As you can see in this screenshot, Farming and working the tile is not enough:

Spoiler :
1Noroute.jpg

Now that the Farm is connected via road, you can see it in our resources and also that our city now has 6:health:.

2Withroute.jpg



Cities need routes.

Hooking up resources to a city is great and all, but to gain full benefit from a resource, you will also need to connect your cities together.

As you can see in this screenshot, our 2nd city is benefiting from the Corn and Sheep it improved and connected to.

Spoiler :
3Disconnected.jpg

By simply connecting our two cities, you can see now the 2nd city gained +1:health: from Wheat, even though there is only one Wheat in the empire and is nowhere near our 2nd city.

Case in point: One resource benefits your entire connected empire equally.

4Connected.jpg



Sailing.

So I built my third city, but it's completely disconnected and has no resources . By simply discovering Sailing (Enables :trade: on Coast), you'll see my city is now connected to the rest of the empire, even though no roads are near it.

Spoiler :
5Disconnected3rd.jpg

6AddSailing.jpg



Duplicate Resources are for trading.

By Farming the Corn, adding a Pasture to the Sheep and connecting these resources via road to my 3rd city, you would think my total health would go up to 14:health:, right?

Wrong. As you can see, having more than one of a particular resource does not benefit you any more than having just one of that resource.

Case in point: That extra resource is only going to benefit you if you trade it for something you don't already have.

7Duplicate.jpg



Where'd my :hammers: go?

Maybe somebody can answer this one for me, because I'm at a loss. Copper, Stone, Iron, etc. all say '+1:hammers:', but I've never seen them actually go towards base production.

WTH?

8NoHammer.jpg



Well, that pretty much covers it. I hope this helps somebody.
 
the +1 hammer for copper and stone, etc. only counts for the tile with the resource, and only if the tile has the proper improvement. mine for copper, quary for stone and marble. it will increase the hammer output of the tile. but it wont increase youir hammers in your other cities.
 
I noticed that bug years ago. I call it a bug because it always seemed VERY misleading.
 
Nice writeup. Also note that rivers "count" as roads and are even better than roads in that a resource next to a river will not need a road to be built on that resource in order to be connected to your trade network. So you can just mine a hill with gold, and if it's next to a river that leads to your capital, then you get gold as a resource. Later on you will want to railroad that mined gold tile for the production bonus, of course.
 
Back
Top Bottom