Trade Barriers

[henmike_sigo]

Playing TOT and having a problem with getting trade routes established that give a percentage above 0%. Usually I'm too busy building caravans in the early part of the game for wonders and have had little experience with setting up the network. Have read through some of the threads regarding trade and it seems linking to the capital is one option.
My current game does have a problem of having only 5 cities total on the primary island (itty bitty). Have tried with the cities on the closest mainland and they don't seem to produce anything beyond initial value (ex 8-10 gold for the caravan). Also, am curious if it's just TOT or maybe I've got a bug in mine (have the current patch). Can anybody give me a clue or an opinion?

 

[Supernaut]

Sounds odd - you should be able to get some decent trade routes if you are trading overseas. Are you looking in the right place? If you open the city view of the city that produced the caravan, and look in the top right corner, it will say what trade routes you have and say how many arrows it produces per turn.

The value of trade routes is dependent on the amount of trade each city produces normally and the distance between them, so generally it's best to have them between large cities (not necessarily your capital). It is increased if you trade with other civs, and if the target city demands the product, and by a few other factors. Try setting a route up early in the game and then see how it develops over time - I have noticed with TOT that I have had some routes between my own cities which are worth 0 arrows to start with, but they do get better (12-15 arrows per turn I think is my best)

PS: Get a settler off that island and start colonising another one quick!!

 

[Magnus]

henmike_sigo, sounds like you are setting up the trade routes with yourself? I don't recommend doing that unless your cities are big (over 8) or you have the Colossus Wonder in one of them. Trade with foreign cities and you will gain the extra trade arrows in your cities. So, listen to Supernaut and get off that island!

 

[henmike_sigo]

Been off the island a loooong time now.

What my thought was, is it possible to set up an inner trade network that benefits yourself and not someone else? I ran into the Vikings and Greeks during my exploration and fought it out. Beat both and was trying to create the network to see if it would boost my civ some. I was kinda figuring that it would be real low if it was internal only but even adding just 1 or 2 per city has a pretty huge cumulation after awhile. It was also a toss up whether to continue (getting nada early) or mature the civ by building city improvements (almost instant results). Guess which won? Was wondering if it were just possible though.

 

[Supernaut]

You should be able to get a least a couple of arrows, even trading with yourself, unless your cities are really close together. As you say, the extra one or two can make a big difference over hundreds of years. Can't think what you are doing wrong -just try to go for long trade routes to cities that demand products, and are preferably overseas. (A short oversea route is usually worth more than a long land route)

 

[henmike_sigo]

quote:
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Originally posted by Supernaut:
(A short oversea route is usually worth more than a long land route)
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I'll try the sea routes. Was trying to keep it as economical as possible and it looked like building city improvements were the way to go. Problem I ran into was distance and time didn't make it very useful to establish the trade route when the next wonder was coming up. Deciding to go ahead and form the trade route or add to a wonder. At the time, several key wonders were needing to be built for the next phase into Democracy (JS Bach, Adam Smith, Statue of Liberty, etc). Anybody run into problems like this?

 

[Magnus]

well, you could always get way ahead in science so you can liesurely build those wonders to which you have exclusive rights.

Democracy and republic double trade, so I imagine they would also double the value of trade routes within your own country.

Trading with the Colossus city (even if foreign) is good as well, as THEIR trade is always very nice!

 

[starlifter]

Sustained trade with large overseas foreign cities in a Democracy or low-waste republic will normally generating a lot of trade, esp. if the terrain is roaded and/or has sea squares & specials. Find one or two of those faraway cities and build 10 - 25 ships to move caravans/freight every turn to it. You can get up to about 1,000 gold and 1,000 science for every caravan in the dark ages, and up to about 4,000 with each frieght in late game stages. If you do this consistently and early, your late game stages will be in the 1600's, and your spaceship will often land in the mid-1700's. You will not be able to spend all your money, even when rush-buying everything, and you'll be researching Future Tech #187 when your spaceship lands...

I have never done this at King or Emperor level, and just finished my first Prince game today using this strategy (the GOTM 5). The only level I normally play is Deity, so it might be harder to do this at easier levels, since I assume the AI may not be able to generate huge cities as quickly as it can at Deity....

BTW, I normally wait until the end of conquest to kill off the one or two enemy cities that I have hundreds of trade routes to, because the loss in income and science to my empire is often huge when I take over the city and the trade value of hundreds of routes drop by 50%.

 

[starlifter]

OK, I'll take a few minutes and explain a few basics that you can all look at, and maybe develop your own strategies to exploit.

If you want to compute the value of a trade route yourself, here is how to do it:


Trade = (Source + Destination + 4) / 8

NOTE: Source trade does not include trade from routes. If you have to, then count each trade arrow in the source and destination city that is actually being worked by a citizen.

If both cities are yours, the trade is cut by half (that is why you want foriegn cities to trade with).

If cities are on different continents, you get a 100% increase. If both cities have Airports, a 50% bonus. If the SOURCE city has a superhighway, yet another 50% bonus. A freight unit gives, yes, another 50% bonus.

It is often reported that connecting via a road gives a 50% bonus, and a Railroad gives another 50%. Not true, at least in Civ 2 MPG. No effect that I have ever seen for these 2 things, so don't bother.

Trade bonuses are much more complicated, and I won't explain them all here. The basic formula is:

Base Initial Bonus = ((Distance + 10) * (Source + Destination)) / 24

This is the starting point, so you can see the relative value of distance. Get that distance as great as possible, on a totally different land mass, with a foriegn civilization under Democracy (or Republic), with a large city, and try to fulfill a trade demand if at all possible.

If you are close to discovering Railroad *rush* to deliver all you can before anyone discovers RR. Your bonus will drop markedly (from a 1.0 multiplier to a 0.67 multiplier) for all bonuses after RR. Similarly, after flight, the bonus will drop from 0.67 to 0.33 (that's right... bonuses drop by half after flight). Airports (get Radio quick) do alleviate this somewhat (50% bonus), however.

[This message has been edited by starlifter (edited June 18, 2001).]