Trade route strategies

[Empedocles]

Interesting, but do you end up with enough science this way? 1 trade route can make as much science as a smaller city. Without spamming academies, sending 2 trade routes out will probably more than double the science from most of your cities.

I seem to keep up in science, though spamming academies would help. I have a tendency to fall behind in improving the tiles on my satellite cities, since they grow anyway. With +12-15 food from the outgoing trade routes, they usually grow up to size 9 or 10 without any farms or biowells. So that is 9 or 10 base science, and then I build all of the science buildings and have them work some science specialist slots. So, about 20-30 science per satellite.

 

[Roland00]

If I understand correct, Roland00, you have 0 trading with 1 AND 1 trading with 0. You can't do that. If 0 trades with 1, 1 cannot send a mirroring route back to 0.

There is no mirroring. 24 "junction points" (8 Cities, each one can have 3 trade relationships 8*3=24). Now in theory you can do 24 external cities that are not your civ but if you want to keep the trade only internal for the food and hammers then you divide by 2 for the stop and end point is still your civ. 24/2=12

It does not matter if the capital makes the trade convoy or city 1 makes the trade convoy. It does not matter which city it starts up in when I say this. Only 720 production needed at normal speed to max out trade production with 8 cities.

As long as you have an even number of cities greater than 4 you can have every city trading with 3 cities and have no leftovers.

 

[Cromagnus]

There is no mirroring. 24 "junction points" (8 Cities, each one can have 3 trade relationships 8*3=24). Now in theory you can do 24 external cities that are not your civ but if you want to keep the trade only internal for the food and hammers then you divide by 2 for the stop and end point is still your civ. 24/2=12

It does not matter if the capital makes the trade convoy or city 1 makes the trade convoy. It does not matter which city it starts up in when I say this. Only 720 production needed at normal speed to max out trade production with 8 cities.

As long as you have an even number of cities greater than 4 you can have every city trading with 3 cities and have no leftovers.

It takes 7 cities minimum to have all your trade routes internal. At 6 cities, you have 3 leftover.

7 is the magic number because above 7, you cannot have 3 internal routes going to each city. So beyond 7, your TR production & food/city goes down. Furthermore, you reach a point where more external trade routes isn't practical. At say 15 cities, you could have 2 internal trade routes/city and still have 15 external trade routes. You might find it difficult (and boring) to keep 15 trade vessels on the optimum route. From a micro-management standpoint alone, 10 cities (30 TR) is more than I want to deal with.

 

[Fatbear]

Very interesting ideas in this thread!

Just one question: what game difficult level are you talking about?

Also, I'm trying to make big cities and going to the right side as soon as possible on the sciences to develop the genetics branch with its health items. And going on the green group on virtues will get to powerful health options.

I'm playing on massive maps with just 4 civs and its real hard at Vostok level. With standard size and 8 civs its easier.

 

[Cromagnus]

I'm playing Standard/Standard.

 

[ChipB]

7 is the magic number because above 7, you cannot have 3 internal routes going to each city. So beyond 7, your TR production & food/city goes down. Furthermore, you reach a point where more external trade routes isn't practical. At say 15 cities, you could have 2 internal trade routes/city and still have 15 external trade routes. You might find it difficult (and boring) to keep 15 trade vessels on the optimum route. From a micro-management standpoint alone, 10 cities (30 TR) is more than I want to deal with.

That's not true. At any number of cities 7+ you can use all TRs internally giving 3 incoming and 3 outgoing at each city.

The easiest way to think about this is to number all your cities from 1 to N (for example, in the order they are founded). Each city sends its TRs to the next 3 cities in the list. When you get to the end of the list, wrap around to the beginning. 7 cities is the minimum number at which you can wrap around without creating mirrored routes (each city will be sending to the next 3 and receiving from the previous 3 which requires a cycle length of 3+1+1=7), but any number larger than 7 works as well.

Another option with 6+ cities is to exclude the capitol from the list and have each city send a route to the next 2 in the list plus one to the capitol. It takes a ring of 5+ cities to make this work plus your capitol. The capitol can then use its TRs externally for some extra culture/gold and diplo bonus.

 

[tommynt]

pretty much theory only based as having 21 external trades routes very unlicky is gonna happen.

I feel like every city "needs" 2 internal routes to get the basic buildings up quickly, after that there is nothing wrong with a external route to +7+ science routes.

but acting like u dont need these basic buildings is just pathetic, espacially as u need them to get the routes even going

 

[Empedocles]

If you are sending 3 trade routes to each city, they will all grow at approximately the same size, and have about the same amount of hammers and food. This will limit the value of your internal trade routes. Much better to have two types of cities, with the smaller cities only having outgoing routes so that they don't grow too quickly. With the industry virtue and this strategy, even the city sending the route is getting +5/+5 from each route. That is much better than the yield you would get from equal cities. It is also much easier to choose the target for your trade routes, since you can rename your best cities to show up at the top. This also makes health much easier to manage, since your small cities don't grow above the local happiness provided by buildings.


Internal trade routes are so powerful, that it is more beneficial to maximize their output than to grow all of your cities.

 

[Aimeryan]

That's not true. At any number of cities 7+ you can use all TRs internally giving 3 incoming and 3 outgoing at each city.

The easiest way to think about this is to number all your cities from 1 to N (for example, in the order they are founded). Each city sends its TRs to the next 3 cities in the list. When you get to the end of the list, wrap around to the beginning. 7 cities is the minimum number at which you can wrap around without creating mirrored routes (each city will be sending to the next 3 and receiving from the previous 3 which requires a cycle length of 3+1+1=7), but any number larger than 7 works as well.

Another option with 6+ cities is to exclude the capitol from the list and have each city send a route to the next 2 in the list plus one to the capitol. It takes a ring of 5+ cities to make this work plus your capitol. The capitol can then use its TRs externally for some extra culture/gold and diplo bonus.

I believe Cromagnus was talking about every city having exactly 3 incoming trade routes (not merely all trade routes being internal) - could be wrong, though.

 

[ChipB]

I believe Cromagnus was talking about every city having exactly 3 incoming trade routes (not merely all trade routes being internal) - could be wrong, though.

With 7+ cities in the sequence you will always have 3 incoming and 3 outgoing TRs in each city.

 

[Cromagnus]

With 8 cities you have 24 trade routes, but there are 28 possible internal routes. So you have diminishing returns, in the sense that up to 7 cities you were getting more internal routes/city. 7 cities = 3/city, 4 cities = 1.5/city. At 10 cities it's still 3/city even though you have 45 possible internal routes.

tommynt: I do agree new cities need 2 internal routes, but it's viable to go entirely external after that. Perhaps not optimal.

 

[Aimeryan]

With 8 cities you have 24 trade routes, but there are 28 possible internal routes. So you have diminishing returns, in the sense that up to 7 cities you were getting more internal routes/city. 7 cities = 3/city, 4 cities = 1.5/city. At 10 cities it's still 3/city even though you have 45 possible internal routes.

tommynt: I do agree new cities need 2 internal routes, but it's viable to go entirely external after that. Perhaps not optimal.

Ah, so I was wrong. I think the easy to understand version of this (if I am right this time!) is that with 7 cities every city is connected to each other. With 8+ there will be some cities that will not have a connection to every other city.

 

[alpaca]

Maximizing the number of internal trade routes for each city doesn't strike me as a very useful aim. If you look at the mechanics, you get the largest return when you connect cities with a large difference in yields. So ideally, you want to have a food/science city connected with a production city for internal trade routes. For external trade routes, connecting them to production cities makes most sense, but in practice, as long as your cities are small compared to the AI's, it doesn't matter much.

Since science trade routes have huge yields compared to pretty much anything else in the game, maximizing the number of external routes is a better idea than boosting your food and production. I will usually strike a balance and use at least some trade routes for production, but 2 out of my 3 trade routes almost always go outside the colony.

 

[Proteus]

Does anyone worry about giving the AI extra science and income?

...

Nope, no problem IMHO ...
each trade route just gives the target faction < 50% of the yield that the trade route gives you.

So, if you divide the trade routes equally among the other 7 factions, each other faction just earns < 1/14 of the amount you get out of your trade routes.

 

[Xenotitan]

For external trade routes, connecting them to production cities makes most sense, but in practice, as long as your cities are small compared to the AI's, it doesn't matter much.

Actually it doesn't matter whether your city is smaller or larger than the AI's, what determines the trade route yield is the difference. If you send a route from your capital to one of the AI's fresh cities you can get a ton of energy and science out.

 

[Cromagnus]

Actually it doesn't matter whether your city is smaller or larger than the AI's, what determines the trade route yield is the difference. If you send a route from your capital to one of the AI's fresh cities you can get a ton of energy and science out.

IMHO this is clearly a bug, and I'm pretty much done with Beyond Earth until they fix it.

 

[Roxlimn]

If you are sending 3 trade routes to each city, they will all grow at approximately the same size, and have about the same amount of hammers and food. This will limit the value of your internal trade routes. Much better to have two types of cities, with the smaller cities only having outgoing routes so that they don't grow too quickly. With the industry virtue and this strategy, even the city sending the route is getting +5/+5 from each route. That is much better than the yield you would get from equal cities. It is also much easier to choose the target for your trade routes, since you can rename your best cities to show up at the top. This also makes health much easier to manage, since your small cities don't grow above the local happiness provided by buildings.


Internal trade routes are so powerful, that it is more beneficial to maximize their output than to grow all of your cities.

3 routes at a difference of 10 hammers each means that equal cities have a deficit of 30 hammers (food not relevant) compared to mismatched, intentionally small cities. I have 0 problems getting cities to have tiles yields with greater than 30 hammers provided that I grow them, in addition to science, culture, and energy outputs.

That's assuming that you're not shifting your routes around. If you're always founding new cities, then you shouldn't have a problem with always having new cities send back powerful internal routes back to your mains, while your secondaries are already grown.

 

[AgentDib]

Remember that the direction matters a lot. I like to send stuff from my smaller cities to my bigger cities to keep up the discrepancy, and then it is easy for my big cities to get maximum science/energy from external trade routes with enemy small cities.

Also, more cities and trade routes are always better than fewer right now. The only trade-off is how many trade routes you are willing to deal with.

 

[Empedocles]

3 routes at a difference of 10 hammers each means that equal cities have a deficit of 30 hammers (food not relevant) compared to mismatched, intentionally small cities. I have 0 problems getting cities to have tiles yields with greater than 30 hammers provided that I grow them, in addition to science, culture, and energy outputs.

That's assuming that you're not shifting your routes around. If you're always founding new cities, then you shouldn't have a problem with always having new cities send back powerful internal routes back to your mains, while your secondaries are already grown.

I'm not sure what you mean. My small cities are still generally size 6-10, but they are working academies and generators instead of the biowells, mines, and terrascapes that my core cities are working. The food difference is actually the more important one to manage, since having more food in your core cities means that you get more food from trade routes. If you can keep your core cities bringing in 30-40 base food from boiwells, they can easily get to +100 food per turn or more thanks to trade routes. With that much food, it is easy for them to grow large enough that they can generate tons of hammers (manufactories can help with this, if you go industry).

Even a well-developed 10-pop city with every building built will be sending tons of food and production to a city like that, if the small city is at 0 net food because it is working academies and generators.

 

[Roxlimn]

Your "small" cities will always be at neutral food. It's unnecessary to keep them small. With such large core cities, the outgoing TRs they wield will be equally powerful as the ones they receive. TRs are not dependent on size whatsoever, only on tile yield. Why not use those to grow your "small" cities to size 16 or more?

A size 16 city working Academies will definitely be stronger than a size 6 one, and the bigger one won't have any more food or hammers than the smaller one. The TRs will be just as strong.