Trade Route Pillaging

[Freddy's Mouser]

I've recently started up a game on a huge earth map as Britain (Marathon, King), in which my strategy was to play quite like the British Empire was in real life, focusing on trade. I decided to get some sea trade routes up as early as was reasonable to do so, sending one to Copenhagen and the other to Bordeaux. Neither particularly long or fraught with danger I thought. Nevertheless I purchased a few triremes to protect the routes.

Now being so early in the game, barbarians are obviously still rather common, though I felt my routes were fairly well protected; I was wrong. Both trade routes pillaged and the cargo ships lost in the same turn. Despite having two triremes protecting one trade route, I wasn't able to completely destroy a galley in one turn, and my cargo ship is just gone.

I'm wondering if anyone else finds this ridiculously overpowered? It has completely ruined trade routes for me, and I've stopped playing; I'm hoping a mod will come along to address this issue.

While I understand there is a certain realism to this, I think it is completely to the detriment of gameplay, and inconsistent with the rest of the game.

- Workers and Settlers are captured whereas trade units are destroyed. What is the reasoning behind this?
- Trade units are very expensive, especially in the early game. It would be easier to accept if cargo ships cost the same as a work boat.
- Would an option to have a military ship 'Protect' a trade route (it could even be animated as escorting the cargo ship) make sense?

Apologies if this has been discussed but I couldn't find anything in the search function.

 

[chazzycat]

yeah the barb ships are really good at pillaging trade routes. It seems more prudent to wait a bit on those, until the barbs have been cleared up. Land routes are much easier to defend in the early game in my experience so far. And the barb camps will get cleaned up before too long in most standard settings. Huge map might take a little longer.

 

[whiplash27]

The point is that you can plunder trade routes for gold. I would like to have a military protection option. Also if there is a military unit close by, you shouldn't be able to plunder the trade route until the military units are destroyed.