Trade Routes worth it before Ultra Sonic Fence

[liquid_mage]

I'm starting to think it's not worth starting trade routes until you have the Ultra Sonic Fence to protect them. Every time I start them early game before I have the quest from Ultra Sonic Fence that protects them they get killed by aliens. And early game production is so important. Do you guys start trade routes before they are protected?

 

[ggmoyang]

Most of time internal trade route is safe, so yes.

Researching Ecology/Building US Fence/Waiting for quest... is too much time.

 

[bruntfca]

I'm starting to think it's not worth starting trade routes until you have the Ultra Sonic Fence to protect them. Every time I start them early game before I have the quest from Ultra Sonic Fence that protects them they get killed by aliens. And early game production is so important. Do you guys start trade routes before they are protected?

The fence is a noob trap. If you manage fog of war well, you can easily keep aliens at bay. Just don't send suicide trades half way across the map at the start of the game. By turn 80 aliens are less of a problem anyway.

Just ignore that stupid worm, all it does is troll the outside of you base, develop another hex until it leaves. You will save a ton of time and hammers not building the fence.

 

[Forbiddentwo]

It really depends. You could just make it a priority to snuff out the alien nests and not need to bother with the fences at all.

 

[Chaleb]

Build Fence when you have nothing else to build. Most of your cities should be close enough anyway that aliens won't attack, but ensuring your trade routes is good when you want to trade far away with other Civs.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

If you go with optimal settling strategy (= minimum distance and as many as possible) you should have no problem with alien incursions for internal trade routes. External ones can be a bit tricky if they pass near wildlands.

 

[metagross]

Problem is that Coastal routes are much better than Inland routes but also much harder to defend against Aliens. I can imagine not building UF if I am landlocked but for coastal starts it's a must for me.

 

[terraslayer]

That depends on where your routes are going. Since I almost always use external trade routes, I usually beeline to ecology at start of game, and build the fence fast. Usually for internal routes, the fence is not needed, unless your cities are spread apart, and even then, you could just place a soldier in between your cities where the route is going.

If you did not start your game with Pioneering already researched, then it's probably not worth using external trade routes, and probably a fence is not needed. In my most recent games, I start with pioneering, rush ecology as my first tech while I build a trade port, and only build trade vessels/convoys after I already built the fence (unless I Get 2nd city early, in which case I build a trade to it before finishing fence). So all in all, with all that, you could start using external trades as early as around turns 30 - 40s if all goes well.

 

[m15a]

Yeah, it depends. Start with the safe routes, which are probably internal ones over land that don't have to snake around to avoid miasma. Eventually, you'll want to be free to use various types of routes, so I don't see how building fences is a noob trap in every game, or even most. Surely, you wouldn't want to actually protect your routes with units when you can protect them all for the cost of 1 building and 1 energy per turn.

 

[alpaca]

The fence is a noob trap. If you manage fog of war well, you can easily keep aliens at bay. Just don't send suicide trades half way across the map at the start of the game. By turn 80 aliens are less of a problem anyway.

Just ignore that stupid worm, all it does is troll the outside of you base, develop another hex until it leaves. You will save a ton of time and hammers not building the fence.

Oh, come on. Noob trap? Really? A single fence for 400 gold that might allow you to hook up international trade routes that easily yield something like 7 energy/6 science?

Sure, sometimes you won't need it, but in most games it can be a life-saver

 

[player1 fanatic]

In my first game I took range upgrade for fence.
And guess what, no problem with routes in late game. Nor internal routes in early game.

In fact, trader upgraded fence us only important for early exteranal routes, while in that game it was more helpful to keep aliens 3 tiles at bay and prevent worms from destroying my improvements.

 

[Ryika]

Trade routes that leave your borders are never a 100% save between turn 20 and turn X when you have the fence-quest - because siege worms can spawn just in front of them and eat them, even if you did your best to zone out all the other aliens.

I think that's a reasonable risk to take though, if the target is near enough.

 

[alpaca]

Trade routes that leave your borders are never a 100% save between turn 20 and turn X when you have the fence-quest - because siege worms can spawn just in front of them and eat them, even if you did your best to zone out all the other aliens.

I think that's a reasonable risk to take though, if the target is near enough.

The main problem for me are naval trade routes. They are eaten by sea dragons most of the time and policing them costs definitely more than the one fence.

 

[player1 fanatic]

They are less issue then you think. In fact longer routes are safer since there is only single ship per route, so less chance for ship to be exactly where naval beasts are.

Land routes on the other hand that go straight through nest area are big no no.

 

[Ryika]

TIn fact longer routes are safer since there is only single ship per route, so less chance for ship to be exactly where naval beasts are.

No, that's a false conclusion. The longer the route, the more tiles it has to travel in unsafe waters, so overall a trade route becomes more dangerous the longer it is. Yes, a specific unit is less likely to catch it, but the likelihood (I think that's the first time I EVER used this word.. it looks really weird.) of other creatures eating it on the same route increases.

That is especially true for land-traderoutes, where non-neutral territory is pretty much "save" as long as your trade partner is not an alien-hugger and you can zone out and kill non-massive aliens on a short route relatively early in the game. Less so with naval trade routes because naval aliens don't really seem to care that much about borders and early naval domination with weak level 1 ships is a huge investment, but still relevant because you can shoot naval units when they come close to your cities and the trade route itself will, if the number of hexes the trade route has in total is even, be completely save for 1 turn every time it enters a city.

 

[jshelr]

Since a "build cities on the coast" and "set up 3 trade routes each" strategy is enough to win the game at the moment, yes an early fence is a great idea. I suspect trade routes will be downgraded in a patch soon.

 

[sherbz]

I dont build the fence unless i absolutely have to (usually when my base is 3 tiles away from an alien base). But even then its not overly necessary. As others have said just be careful about where you send your convoys. Sea trade routes are a bit more problematic with sea dragons. Try and find the most direct route to another city that you can. That way you avoid the more dangerous costal ways.

 

[Mysticforce]

The opportunity cost for 1 fence is less than 2 trade convoys. If you think you are going to lose 2 or more trade convoys to aliens throughout the entire game, build it. Otherwise don't bother with it.

A few hundred energy is nothing on any difficulty.

 

[Adino]

I build my first fence as my next production in my capital after it available. Those sea dragons and krakens love to eat my trade convoys and I just cant kill the dang things for quite some time. Plus even once I can they still swim up to my shore all the time, they die quick but they exist and could eat. One fence is worth the research and science cost. In my mind there are 4 essential techs in the game, Pionering (colonists and trade depots) , Planetary Survey (to embark), Ecology (for the Fence) and Robotics (for auto.) With these alone you can win the game easily with many, many tech paths. The fence is soo amazing but I will start my network if its not available yet, trade ships are worth rolling the dice.