Trade

[Gregski]

What I tend to do with caravans is that all of my trading cities send their caravan to one specific enemy city so that only one enemy city benefits and I get the foreign bonus which doubles the trade bonus. I don't really care about the initial income, the thing that interests me is the trade bonus per turn im the city.

Greg.

 

[starlifter]

by Allan:

...
As for the SSC always picking the BEST three, I have to beg to differ. On many occasions I sent caravans to my SSC, and saw them replace a 16-arrow route with a 13- or 14-arrow one, and overall trade went down--but not too badly. The next one could make it go back up again, too.... Anyone ever observed this phenomena? It DOES happen--I'm trying to figure out how to predict whether it will or not. Anyone?

This happened to my SSC (London) throughout GOTM 7. Since I rely heavily on trade for rapid science and gold, I was quite annoyed. I do not know the pattern for predicting which cities will be thusly affected.

As for London, the route affected was always the third route. The most recently delivered freight/caravan would be the 3rd trade route. I "lost" several very valuable overseas routes in the early/mid part of the game because of this.

The way trade is "supposed" to work is this: at the instant of delivery, the home and destination cities each look at their own existing routes. If the new route is more valuable, it is kept. If not, it is discarded, never to be resurrected. One city may keep the route, while the other discards it.

BTW, if the partner trade city is destroyed, the trade route is lost, and will not be replaced until you deliver another freight.