Trade routes and import/export

[gilfan]

I was looking in the domestic advisor, and saw a tab for trade routes, implying you can automate these somehow. I know how to automate import/export from one city to another with wagon trains... what exactly are trade routes and how do I set them up?

 

[Refar]

Set one city to import stuff, another one to export the same stuff. A new action button will appear on your Wagons (similar to automate one), where you can assign this Wagon to a route.

 

[gilfan]

Thanks for the answer, but that's import/export... I know how to do that. There's a different tab for "trade routes" in the domestic advisor, suggesting they are not the same. What are they, and how specifically do I set them up?

 

[Refar]

The import/export are your trade routes.
The Domestic Advisor screen will just let you have a "at one glance" overview of the trade routes defined / transports assigned to them.
There is no other trade route functionality.

Edit: To be more precise - Import/Export will let you designate goods for Import/Export, but nothing will happen untill you assign a transport to actually carry these designated goods, at which point it will become a active trade route.

 

[Sciguy001]

Whenever I automate the wagon trains, they seem to just sleep in teh location they are in instead of doing anything.

 

[Refar]

There are 2 ways to aoutomate them - just click "Automate" - works ...uhm... bad... The other is what we are talking above. It works. And of course the Wagon assigned to a route will not do nothing when the goods is need to transport are not there.

 

[gilfan]

Whenever I automate the wagon trains, they seem to just sleep in teh location they are in instead of doing anything.

Look at page 44-48 of the manual. It tells you how to set up cities to automatically import/export goods

 

[Sciguy001]

OK I tried in and it worked. It saves a lot of time not having to move wagon trains back and forth betweeen cities.


Oh yeah, and on the city screen where you choose to import and export goods, what does the changable number mean? Is it the number of that good that is going to be exported, or something else?

 

[Supr49er]

Those numbers are how you can set max/min numbers of goods for the city.

Welcome to the Forums Sciguy001.

 

[Sciguy001]

Thank you, Super49er. That seems like it could be useful when expotring food so that the starving city that recieving the food doesn't get too much and get a free citizen (Happened to me many times)

 

[benfp]

Thank you, Super49er. That seems like it could be useful when expotring food so that the starving city that recieving the food doesn't get too much and get a free citizen (Happened to me many times)

Beware of what limits you set as the automatic algorithm doesn't really behave as one could expect AFAIR.
Indeed, an automatic wagon bringing 100 wood to a city which has 299 wood with settings Import/Export@300 will still unload the 100 wood, making it 399.

 

[Refar]

The limit only applies to export (how much to keep).

But you are right - they will offload stuff even over the Warehouse space limit.