Stations? What gives?

[greggbert]

The manual is extremely vague about stations, they are said to be similar to city states, but city states gave you tons of reasons to vie for their affection. Stations... well it seems not so much.

1) Do you even "compete" for stations? On Turn (somewhere between 1 and 20) of my game I encountered a station and set a trade route to it. On turn 200 another appeared and I sent a trade route to it from another city. So am I competing against other civs? Was I just lucky that I didn't have to do some contest or soothing to get the route? Are all the other civs prevented from using it? Who knows. The manual doesn't say.

2) The manual does not say that there are any limits to trading with a station, but I find that once I set up a trade route from one of my cities to a station, after that my other cities cannot. IS that by design? Is that documented anywhere? What gives?

3) I have never gotten the slightest inkling about who the stations leaders are or if they even know who I am. Do they just sit there and accept the first trade route then ban all others? Why is the manual so vague about how these things work?

 

[Xenotitan]

You encountered a station on turn 1? I didn't think that was possible. There are some stations that spawn around turn 10 for affinity quests. Other than that, the first stations spawn at turn 30 with the charter quest.

1) Multiple civs can have trade routes to the same station

2) It is by design that the same civ can't have multiple cities trading with the same station

EDIT:

If Far Base One, Fort Barca, or Camp Cascade spawn near you around the time you'd expect an affinity quest but you don't get an affinity quest, then you have a hidden affinity quest that will become visible when you send a trade route to one of those stations.

 

[greggbert]

So basically there is no "competition" for station affection except among your own cities, since only one of your cities can connect to the station? And the only thing the stations do is accept one trade route from each player and give him/her a defined bonus forever? Err. That seems kind a pointless.

 

[docbud]

^^I was under the impression that only one faction can trade with that particular station.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

So basically there is no "competition" for station affection except among your own cities, since only one of your cities can connect to the station? And the only thing the stations do is accept one trade route from each player and give him/her a defined bonus forever? Err. That seems kind a pointless.

Well you can get food, production, energy, science, and culture from stations. If that's pointless then so are cities because that's what they give you too.

 

[Xenotitan]

^^I was under the impression that only one faction can trade with that particular station.

This is not the case.

 

[Zenstrive]

You can boost your civ early with 10 cultures from one of the station (Lalabela or something?)
that will definitely boost your civ's virtues and hence your cultures fast!
With the new trade routes system after patch, I only has internal and stations trade routes!

 

[Gamewizard]

Lalibella is my favorite station. Culture is hard to get early game, so Lalibella really helps push out those early virtues and get new cities to expand their territory.

 

[docbud]

This is not the case.

I could have sworn that is what is says when setting up a trade route. And I had read this (top of page):

http://civilizationbeyondearth.gamepedia.com/Stations

EDIT: But other google searches say one city per faction.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Well, the patch did make trading with stations much more valuable than before. Pre-patch, I rarely traded with stations because their yields were much smaller than the yields I could get from an internal route. Now, thanks to the trade route nerf, the yields are much more comparable with internal routes. In most of my games, I actually pick trading with a station over an internal route. Especially, if I am lucky to be close to stet mining. The production bonus to my capital is great in the early game.

 

[Xenotitan]

I think an internal route can match Stet mining for production. Stet mining yields 8 production instead of the usual 10 for yield total.

 

[MechMedic130]

What aggravates me about stations is that enemy Civ's can attack them with almost no repercussions. You can't swear to protect them or even demand other civs stop attacking one when they start, and half the time you don't even notice that they did so until it's already wiped out and all of a sudden your trade route is no longer available.

Stations definitely need some more purpose in this game, they feel completely underutilized. One of my biggest frustrations in this game as somebody who used to love to play Venice and have a big happy family of City-State allies.

 

[NukeAJS]

Palatine or Lalibela on a coast, next to your capital, early in the game is a significant boost. Stet Mining can also be really nice early game.

 

[Halbbruder]

The hidden affinity quest is awesome, mainly because you can complete it entirely on the same turn. No matter what affinity I choose, I always return the refugees. You gain 2 free soldier units from the respective station.

Stations become really epic with alternative markets. If you keep the stations alive and encourage them to stay with trade routes, eventually each station will give you 18+ energy per turn. So if you have 6 stations to access, that's over 100 energy per turn already.

Other than that, they're great for early development in different ways. You could get a rapid science boost from Banu Musa, a rapid culture boost from Palatine or Lalibela, a rapid food boost from omikane or a rapid production boost from Stet Mining. However, since you cannot control where they spawn, they really do make or break your early game, while alternative markets turns their benefits into mid-late game.