sea and land trade routes

[Melchizedek]

I really like the BNW expansion, but one thing still baffles me and I haven't heard any explanation for it. Why are sea trade routes SO MUCH better than land ones? I can see the argument that they're more risky to build, but I don't get the 100% bonus. It is so over the top that when I build Petra, I'm usually annoyed by the free caravan.

 

[Syailendra]

sea is the cheapest moda of transport, even in the modern era, it really is uncomparably cheap when the goods is need to be sent by a long distance. I really can't see why the caravans have to have a same yield as a cargo ship.

 

[Myomoto]

Sea trade routes should probably be better than land trade routes because they are generally harder to defend, but I feel like they are very far from balanced as the game currently is. Either make a separate cap for land and sea trade routes, or maybe tone down the bonus on sea routes a bit. As it is, land routes seem almost like a waste.

I would also like to see land routes get a bonus if the two cities are connected with roads, that way it would make sense to have roads to other Civ's cities during time of peace (also the city state quest requesting a road would make sense!). I never liked how road/railroad systems always seems to stay in bubbles inside each Civ's borders. In the real world having infrastructure that connects to other countries is an important aspect of any kind of trade.

 

[Scarpa]

It is so over the top that when I build Petra, I'm usually annoyed by the free caravan.

I'm guessing you know this already but you can immediately sell that caravan and build a cargo ship to utilize that trade route slot.

 

[joncnunn]

I'm thinking the reason ocean routes are so over powered is that the developers and/or testors played a lot more on pangena and/or huge maps than other maps.

A coastal route involving both cities on the same landmass isn't 2X as difficult to defend as a land route between the same pair of cities. I'm thinking at a minimum the 2X bonuses should only apply if the cities are on different land masses.

 

[Derpy Hooves]

As someone who often plays with no barbarians to cut down on the tedium (and help the AI out a bit) it's even more idiotic, there is literally no reason to have caravans unless you don't have enough coastal cities to ferry food to the capital from.

 

[Melchizedek]

The thing that bothers me the most is that a lot of SPs apply to your capitol, so you need a coastal capitol to create a really good economy. Even if you build coastal cities, your landlocked capitol still suffers. I think they should either reduce the sea bonus to something less than 100%, or at least provide more options for wonders and social policies to boost land routes. A non-coastal capitol should not make you groan on turn 1.

 

[Camillo]

I don't get it. I thougt that actually caravans are better because you can build caravansary and get higher trade route benefit. I built cargo ship once but the revenue was smaller than a caravan with caravansary in a city... Why do you say that cargo ships are better?

 

[Arcaian]

I don't get it. I thougt that actually caravans are better because you can build caravansary and get higher trade route benefit. I built cargo ship once but the revenue was smaller than a caravan with caravansary in a city... Why do you say that cargo ships are better?

They get double the gold. Build a harbour in your coastal cities, it is equal to a caravansary in your land-based buildings. On top of that a food cargo ship delivers double the food that a food caravan does.

 

[Autoclave]

non-coastal cities don't have access to see trade routes, but they have something to compensate this, they have more useful tiles in their working distance. If you have a coastal city, chances are that at least 1/4 of tiles are quite useless to you. So sea trade routes are there to compensate this for you.

 

[phillipwyllie]

I think it's traditionally those civilizations who were able to trade overseas were the richest.

 

[GIO888]

Sea trade is cheaper and usually safer. I think Firaxis got this one spot on!

Plus, haven't you noticed those pesky barbarians cause merry hell with sea trade routes when they get Caravels? its like the golden age of piracy out there!

Actually makes Privateers worth the cost......

I love it!

 

[Shimmler]

Its cheaper to transpoort cargo oversea, and one ship can move much more cargo than any caravan.

 

[Stellarnight]

I think it is also important to take into context the difference between GnK and BNW. In GnK, coastal starts were really really bad. Most people settled in-land and never touched the Maritime and Naval Technologies because there was no need to.

With the power of Cargo Ships, coastal starts are more then encouraged. Since people like to play the historical realism card, this is more realistic as empires and civilizations often prospered due to their cities being along the coast, enabling trade. Plus it promotes naval combat which is often ignored in GnK because there was not much incentive to settle on the coast.(unless you are Carthage)

 

[njmfff]

I don't get it. I thougt that actually caravans are better because you can build caravansary and get higher trade route benefit. I built cargo ship once but the revenue was smaller than a caravan with caravansary in a city... Why do you say that cargo ships are better?

Harbor does the same thing as caravansary for land routes. Cargo ships seem to be lower on gold at first, but as the game progress they give at least twice more gold\food\production then land routes.

but dunno, I think it's balanced, but it could use some tweak. Sea trade routes are harder to defend - less units on sea, longer routes (and until Destroyers\Subs, naval units are kinda slow), and in general, there will be less coastal cities then landlocked cities. They are also easily lost during war, because CS looove to plunder those STR with their stupid caravels\privateers.

Still, just two cargos delivering food to your coastal Capital will make it grow ridiculously fast.

 

[limluigi]

Sea trade was also generally faster especially compared to underdeveloped land. And in Civ V the turns correspond to time, and if sea routes are faster then yields must be better (since they are continuously trading anyway). People used to trade through the sea before even if the land route was incredibly shorter because these land routes were typically unpaved and/or not safe for travelling.

 

[danieladler]

Its good as it is with trade routes. Land routes are only there to give you at least something if you are unfortunate enough not to be able to trade via sea.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Realism reason:
Sea routes cost less...therefore more efficient

Gameplay reason:
Sea routes require a coastal city, which is lousy otherwise.
Sea routes are more vulnerable to pillaging, since they will spend a significant amount of their time in neutral territory (where you have no vision)

 

[Uncle_Joe]

I think it is also important to take into context the difference between GnK and BNW. In GnK, coastal starts were really really bad. Most people settled in-land and never touched the Maritime and Naval Technologies because there was no need to.

With the power of Cargo Ships, coastal starts are more then encouraged. Since people like to play the historical realism card, this is more realistic as empires and civilizations often prospered due to their cities being along the coast, enabling trade. Plus it promotes naval combat which is often ignored in GnK because there was not much incentive to settle on the coast.(unless you are Carthage)

That sounds good in theory (and I'm sure that was the thinking behind it) but it fails in execution in the game IMO. Since you can have ALL of your trade routes from one city if you want, you really only need to have ONE good coastal city in order to enjoy the benefits.

IMO, this is just totally incorrect. If it were like that in reality, predominantly land-locked countries with a limited sea access like Germany and Austria would have been as much of sea-trading powers as England, Italy, Spain etc (which have FAR more coastline and ports).

I thought they should reduces the trade per route from a single city to encourage people to spread the routes out amongst multiple cities. If that were the case, you'd want to have multiple port cities in order to maximize the trade. But sadly, that's just not the case.

As far as defending the trade goes, well, I still think BNW AI is far too peaceful and it's too easy to sit back with 3-4 Tradition mega-cities and coast to victory. I generally need at best just a few ships for anti-piracy and I'm fine for the entire game. I think I can count on one hand the number of overseas routes I've lost in BNW in about a dozen games (King and Emperor so not at the insanely high levels). So sea route vulnerability to me is more or less a non-issue.

I thought they had a golden opportunity with foreign trade to really make the system shine but IMO, it falls short of the mark. It's a good idea that isn't fully developed IMO and the fact that the 'Fall balance patch' has come and gone with no real changes doesn't fill me with hope that they recognize any deficiencies with the current system let alone have any plans to improve it.

 

[Camillo]

IMO, this is just totally incorrect. If it were like that in reality, predominantly land-locked countries with a limited sea access like Germany and Austria would have been as much of sea-trading powers as England, Italy, Spain etc (which have FAR more coastline and ports).

I guess it is not so obvious. For example: if I remember well - Portugal was also queen of the seas while having much shorter coastline compared to Spain or England overall. And what about Holland? Small country with a small coastline but also had strong navy and played important role during colonization period.