[GS] Trading Posts

[acluewithout]

How are Trading Posts meant to work?

Let’s say I have Cities A, B, C and D. A is my Capital, and B is a City I settled. C and D are foreign Cities.

I run a Trade Route from A to B, to grow A and build a road. When the Trade Route completes, I now have a Trading Post in B. The Trading Post will now give me +1 gold for my trade route passes through that city, and will also “reset” or extend the distance my Trader can travel (so allow for longer trade routes).

My assumption is that the Trading Routes are intended to incentivise slowly expanding trade route connections. Eventually creating things like your game’s version of the silk route.

Anyway. Back to the example. So, my Trade Route resets, and now I want my Trade Route to go from A to C. But I really want my route to go via B for that extra sweet gold and to justify using an internal trade route to start out with.

But it never works? All the Trade Routes offered to me from A don’t run through City B. Why is that?

Why doesn’t the game force Traders to go via Trading Posts to maximise yields??

 

[Infixo]

Path finding algorithm in action. It chooses shortest possible path, in terms of movement points. Apparently there is a shorter path from A to C, compared to A-B-C even if A-B is a road.
In other words, trading posts are ignored when creating a path, they only extend the range, so your trader can reach more cities.

 

[acluewithout]

Yes, I agree that’s what’s going on - shortest path wins. But that is stupid, stupid stupid.

 

[Infixo]

Shortest path means lowest cost IRL. If you run a transportation company, do you choose less costly roads or more costly ones?

 

[Sostratus]

The Trading Post will now give me +1 gold for my trade route passes through that city, and will also “reset” or extend the distance my Trader can travel (so allow for longer trade routes).

You only get the +1 gold from TPs in your own cities if you're trajan; otherwise it's just your TPs in foreign cities that give the +1. So in this case you'd get +1 from C but not B if you thread the needle.

 

[criZp]

internal trade posts don't give gold unless you play rome if I remember right

 

[Infixo]

What should be implemented, is a boost to movement points on a tile with trading post. Pretty easy and algorithm would automatically try to go through such cities, ofc in a reasonable range.
It would also solve the problem of parallel roads missing a city by 1 tile.

 

[acluewithout]

You only get the +1 gold from TPs in your own cities if you're trajan; otherwise it's just your TPs in foreign cities that give the +1. So in this case you'd get +1 from C but not B if you thread the needle.

Huh. I did not know that.

So, another reason not to bother with internal trade routes.

 

[Sostratus]

So, another reason TO PLAY GLORIOUS ROME. AVE!

I always have a hard time resisting the extra food/production of domestic routes.
I know int'l routes are great for gold but if i put down CHs in every city to get the routes in the first place, I'm usually not hurting for gold. Unless I'm in an alliance, which I definitely exploit with this new +6/+6 potential from democracy.

 

[acluewithout]

Rome is another Civ I’ll play after the next patch. They have great abilities, but I’ve always avoided them because Legions are too strong. It looks like resources may have nerfed Legions a little, which makes them more attractive to me.