agaro
Warlord
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2010
- Messages
- 138
Wagon Train Routing using shuttle based approach
After trying lots of things I have had a breakthrough in how I move resources. This is based on the following facts:
1. Goods routing and vehicle routing are two very different things.
2. There are two ways to automate transport - one is counterproductive (automate transport unit button), one is helpful (assign trade route button). The automated transport unit wagons are dumb and unpredictable they often carry one small piece of resource, over long distances, and many units seem to have the same low priority move order while more important orders are neglected. However, the multi-good trade route wagon is smart and predictable it always picks up 2 loads if possible and will always choose the 2 highest total economic value loads available to be picked up on that route.
3. It is possible to automatically combine loads, but quite difficult to automate splitting of loads. People talk about a spoke and hub approach this works on the incoming side, but you cannot have spoked distribution outwards from a city in this game.
4. Loading / unloading / transhipping and combining loads of goods are costless and timeless in this game, so you can take advantage of that.
5. Fewer in number but more efficient wagons, operating only over defined short distances on the same roads, are much easier to protect. It is also easier to manage the overall speed and capacity on that route. If you improve the road speed or wagon capacity on a route it benefits all the goods that travel along that route. For example, if you are using less wagons, and only on defined routes, it is easier to get them all roaded (if thats a word?).
6. It is possible for most of your cities and routes to still function fully even in war-time because only a few cities / wagon routes will be effected by a local battle. If you use short haul shuttle wagons most of them never know there is a siege a couple of cities away.
I had this breakthrough after one game where as a trial I decided from the start to only use my wagon trains as single stage shuttles, operating between two adjacent cities only, but each wagon had to carry all the different goods that needed to move between those cities. I decided to try this because it is more reflective of the real world and nothing else had worked well. Up until this stage I had been using goods based wagon trains i.e. they would go long distances carrying a specific good as far as it needs to go. I would end up with a confusing spiders web of goods based wagon train routes and I think most of you readers do as well. Another good to be moved no problem just add another wagon train!
After learning how to defeat REF, I don't bother to fight independence wars any more. I find it more interesting to build my empire and eventually defeat all the other powers - who by that stage are quite strong - and take over their cites and incorporate them into my network. But the challenge for me is to do it without letting these wars impact my cities or automated supply lines in any way, this means keeping all enemy units at least 2 or 3 squares away from my supply routes and cities. I try to coexist with Natives for as long as possible - again protecting my supply lines even when Natives declare war on me.
Strangely, the thing that was the biggest pain about this game - wagon train routing - has become the biggest joy for me. The game I play now on the highest levels is about building up a big network of cities and supply routes and fighting to protect them and keep them operating under fairly regular attack, while taking over everyone else. I believe my supply lines are my biggest strategic advantage in my bid for world domination. They give me a network of cities that is efficient, durable and adaptable.
Anyway - here is how you use automated wagon trains / caravels / merchantmen efficiently...
1. Think of each transport unit as having the haulage contract between only two close cities. They carry lots of different goods but only between their two cities. You automate this with the import/export screen and assign trade route button.
2. Goods often need to travel further than one city but they are transhipped at each city and reloaded automatically by the next wagon train / caravel. Even early in the game where I may have one wagon train serving 3 cities in the chain I still set it up to I/E the goods at the middle city. Later on I put a new wagon on one of the legs, and remove some of the xs from the first wagon so it only operates on one leg now.
3. Using the wagon trains as short range shuttles makes them much more efficient - the number of empty spaces travelling per turn is much less. You will also find they make good choices. They always fill up 2 bays if possible and pick the 2 highest value loads. The instances of wasted return journeys is much less than with other ways of operating.
4. You have raw materials flowing to manufacturing cities, manufacturing goods flowing to one big export port, and tools / guns / horses flowing out back the other way so the return trips are not wasted. Various goods chains intersect and the loads get bigger as they move from city to city. Each good may travel on 4 or 5 different transport units and triple in size before it gets to its destination.
5. Because the wagon train only operates between 2 cities - it is worth building a road for that train. Goods move quickly and efficiently from city to city. Even though it may not be the most direct overall route - transhipped goods still often end up at their final destination quicker than if they had gone cross country using a single specific manual wagon train if you consider the time in the return journey as well.
6. I try to make and keep at least one empty wagon train in each city for emergency storage or for emergency shipments. I usually get to a point where one city that doesn't produce tools and can't support a big population, has everything it needs and just makes wagon trains for all the cities.
7. For things like guns, tools, horses, lumber, and ore I use the floats (export more than) to fill up warehouse in each city to a certain point then excess moves onto next city. As you pull out goods in each city for use they are automatically replaced by next wagon train. This is the only automatic way to split loads in this game. I grew up on an irrigated farm and this approach reminds me of the way we would use sluice gates to regulate flows and fill up sections of channel to allow each part of the farm to be irrigated.
8. Eventually the system is fully primed and reaches equilibrium - what you are making is in balance with the time taken to tranship it to where it is needed before supplies run out. This happens fairly quickly and you can adjust it by changing professions at each city - to produce more or less of a specific good, or by putting the floats up or down. If there is a bottleneck this is usually because two cities are further apart than the others, or two long goods routes intersect at one city. The solution is to put two wagon trains on the export side of the problem city. It is better to counter-cycle these so set up the new one when the existing one gets to its destination, otherwise they can travel together with one wagon being empty some of the time.
9. If you have roads, Lewis and Clark, and cities 3 or 4 squares apart it is possible for every wagon train to move 4 different loads between its 2 cities EVERY TURN(!). This is far beyond what you will achieve using other approaches.
10. You can include islands in your chain by having a caravel or merchantman shuttle operating the same way. However, you will need a frigate standing near the route to keep Privateers away. Unexpectedly I often use small islands to make horses from all those fish as you don't need anything else. You dont need to develop or fortify the Island much because Indians never attack islands (Sid must have used up all his war canoes in Pirates). Then I ship the horses back into the main flow chains. If the island is 3 squares from mainland (for caravel), or 4 (for merchantman), it is possible to never have the ship exposed to Privateers, because it is always in one port or the other.
11. Eventually I start to pull out wagon loads of guns, tools, horses at each city for emergency use. For example, war or if I make Ship of The Line somewhere. If the flow of guns or tools suddenly drops (such as I make SOTL) I just pull some of these back into the flow at any location.
12. If it is convenient I sometimes close the loop - bring the excess tools, guns back into the initial manufacturing city so they can go around again topping up each city as they go.
13. There are two technical problems with this approach:
First: Later in the game there are lots of cities and import export commands. Finding the boxes you want to x on the menu of available trade routes can be a bit of a chore. It helps to name your cities in a way that each name is easy to recognize just scanning down the long list and that you know where each city fits into your chain. Fortunately you can rename your cities and all the wagon train instructions will update to the new name. As the list gets longer I temporarily rename the cities I want to adjust by putting 4 numbers in front of their names (e.g. 1111cityname, 2222city name etc.). Then I can quickly find all the shipments possible between just those numbered cities. Once I am sure the wagon is working I remove the numbers again from the city name. The numbering also makes it easy to remember the direction that the goods are supposed to be moving. Because I use so much I/E goods can often travel either way on a leg so it helps to have the numbering option as a clue to the direction of flow for each good. Once I had 3 wagon trains on a problem short 3-square leg before I realised that the second wagon was picking up the cotton and taking it back to the farm.
Second - if any enemy unit comes close to one of your wagon trains the wagon train drops its bundle and forgets its automated instructions. This means you have to re-automate which is a pain as discussed above. I would prefer if I had the option to instruct each of my wagon trains to keep running even in war-time. I'm usually able to protect most of them and even if I lose a few they are easily replaced.
14. Forget spoke and hub. Think about goods flow chains, with lots of short transhipments via various individual shuttle wagons. Remember goods routing is different from vehicle routing.
15. Never manually load anything into a wagon train showing the automated wheel icon, this will make it forget its instructions. Never double click on an automated wagon train this will also make it forget its instructions. If you want to know what a particular wagon train is doing - use one click on it, then hit the assign trade route button and its instructions will come up. You can also name each wagon train to indicate its Route so you know what it is supposed to be doing. You do this via the bar at the top of the status box (in lower right corner of screen) [thanks to Dalgo for that tip].
16. While this article is about transport units, what is really being created is a large linked warehouse of moving goods a big sushi train if you like. Each good sits in a city, and grows, until it becomes one of the two highest value items at that city and then it moves quickly to the next city. This is completely predictable and follows regular patterns so it is also much easier to manage. After a little while it becomes easy to understand how it is all working and when you have to intervene manually.
17. I manage the overall flow of goods. I rarely manually load or unload a wagon any more, maybe one every five turns and likely that is sliding something into or out of a storage wagon train, rather than a trip. Later in the game I might have a goods based wagon jumping a few cities (usually for fur which I tend to buy from Natives) because the interim cities havent been set up to handle it and I cant be bothered, but otherwise I try to incorporate each new need into the existing wagon system. This might sound onerous but I am sure I am spending less time on wagon trains than I ever did before (and it is certainly less frustrating).
18. Using this approach it is possible to quickly detour all your goods around a besieged city while you deal with the battle. Simply create a new dummy settlement in a safe area assign your two wagons to head there away from the war zone, and tranship everything there, then rejoin back into the main flow at a safe city downstream. Once your victory is complete you can just re-route back through the original city. This is where the numbering system described in point 13 helps. It isnt even a big deal to insert a new city between 2 existing cities.
19. Once the underlying infrastructure of wagon trains is in place you have a moving warehouse of goods supplying all your cities without much attention from you. Because all the cities are linked, you have lots of options to solve any short term problem. For example if a city suddenly runs out of timber, you can lower the float in the upstream city to release 50 units and solve the immediate need, but put an extra lumberjack in a city 6 legs away as a longer term solution. One of the benefits is that the whole system is predictable and follows the same patterns. You can look at any city and know how long until the goods will move based on their economic value (no.units x unit value) compared to the other goods arriving in that city. The adjustments you make to fix problems tend to balance the system overall so that eventually it all moves towards equilibrium which means less work for you.
20. I think everyone understands the use of specialized cities. However, Ive noticed that over time my cities become less specialized. Once the cities become linked in my system they become more of a common entity. Where I create any extra resource or manufacturing isnt all that important because the underlying infrastructure is in place to quickly move it to where it needs to go. Of course I try to use specialists and more productive plants wherever possible, but sometimes I just do things where there is spare food.
When I started I got lots of useful information from this forum - but there was never anything that useful about wagon train management. So I am happy I can put something back.
I still have vivid memories of a game I played where I just kept making wagon trains and automating them (automate unit button) hoping that if I made enough they would sort it out. I ended up with lots of long convoys of 10 to 20 wagon trains each carrying 5 units of some resource heading cross country from one end of the map to the other trying to fill the same move order that must have reached the top of some internal queue. In the meantime all my warehouses overflowed. The funniest thing was the loud humming noise when I would press Ctrl + A and all my (200?) useless automated wagon trains would move at the same time, sending every bird in the new world into the air at once. My recommendation would be to use the gift or skull destroy buttons on a wagon train before using the automated transport item button.
Hope this helps.
Happy to hear any feedback or issues you have with this approach so post below.
Cheers, Agaro
After trying lots of things I have had a breakthrough in how I move resources. This is based on the following facts:
1. Goods routing and vehicle routing are two very different things.
2. There are two ways to automate transport - one is counterproductive (automate transport unit button), one is helpful (assign trade route button). The automated transport unit wagons are dumb and unpredictable they often carry one small piece of resource, over long distances, and many units seem to have the same low priority move order while more important orders are neglected. However, the multi-good trade route wagon is smart and predictable it always picks up 2 loads if possible and will always choose the 2 highest total economic value loads available to be picked up on that route.
3. It is possible to automatically combine loads, but quite difficult to automate splitting of loads. People talk about a spoke and hub approach this works on the incoming side, but you cannot have spoked distribution outwards from a city in this game.
4. Loading / unloading / transhipping and combining loads of goods are costless and timeless in this game, so you can take advantage of that.
5. Fewer in number but more efficient wagons, operating only over defined short distances on the same roads, are much easier to protect. It is also easier to manage the overall speed and capacity on that route. If you improve the road speed or wagon capacity on a route it benefits all the goods that travel along that route. For example, if you are using less wagons, and only on defined routes, it is easier to get them all roaded (if thats a word?).
6. It is possible for most of your cities and routes to still function fully even in war-time because only a few cities / wagon routes will be effected by a local battle. If you use short haul shuttle wagons most of them never know there is a siege a couple of cities away.
I had this breakthrough after one game where as a trial I decided from the start to only use my wagon trains as single stage shuttles, operating between two adjacent cities only, but each wagon had to carry all the different goods that needed to move between those cities. I decided to try this because it is more reflective of the real world and nothing else had worked well. Up until this stage I had been using goods based wagon trains i.e. they would go long distances carrying a specific good as far as it needs to go. I would end up with a confusing spiders web of goods based wagon train routes and I think most of you readers do as well. Another good to be moved no problem just add another wagon train!
After learning how to defeat REF, I don't bother to fight independence wars any more. I find it more interesting to build my empire and eventually defeat all the other powers - who by that stage are quite strong - and take over their cites and incorporate them into my network. But the challenge for me is to do it without letting these wars impact my cities or automated supply lines in any way, this means keeping all enemy units at least 2 or 3 squares away from my supply routes and cities. I try to coexist with Natives for as long as possible - again protecting my supply lines even when Natives declare war on me.
Strangely, the thing that was the biggest pain about this game - wagon train routing - has become the biggest joy for me. The game I play now on the highest levels is about building up a big network of cities and supply routes and fighting to protect them and keep them operating under fairly regular attack, while taking over everyone else. I believe my supply lines are my biggest strategic advantage in my bid for world domination. They give me a network of cities that is efficient, durable and adaptable.
Anyway - here is how you use automated wagon trains / caravels / merchantmen efficiently...
1. Think of each transport unit as having the haulage contract between only two close cities. They carry lots of different goods but only between their two cities. You automate this with the import/export screen and assign trade route button.
2. Goods often need to travel further than one city but they are transhipped at each city and reloaded automatically by the next wagon train / caravel. Even early in the game where I may have one wagon train serving 3 cities in the chain I still set it up to I/E the goods at the middle city. Later on I put a new wagon on one of the legs, and remove some of the xs from the first wagon so it only operates on one leg now.
3. Using the wagon trains as short range shuttles makes them much more efficient - the number of empty spaces travelling per turn is much less. You will also find they make good choices. They always fill up 2 bays if possible and pick the 2 highest value loads. The instances of wasted return journeys is much less than with other ways of operating.
4. You have raw materials flowing to manufacturing cities, manufacturing goods flowing to one big export port, and tools / guns / horses flowing out back the other way so the return trips are not wasted. Various goods chains intersect and the loads get bigger as they move from city to city. Each good may travel on 4 or 5 different transport units and triple in size before it gets to its destination.
5. Because the wagon train only operates between 2 cities - it is worth building a road for that train. Goods move quickly and efficiently from city to city. Even though it may not be the most direct overall route - transhipped goods still often end up at their final destination quicker than if they had gone cross country using a single specific manual wagon train if you consider the time in the return journey as well.
6. I try to make and keep at least one empty wagon train in each city for emergency storage or for emergency shipments. I usually get to a point where one city that doesn't produce tools and can't support a big population, has everything it needs and just makes wagon trains for all the cities.
7. For things like guns, tools, horses, lumber, and ore I use the floats (export more than) to fill up warehouse in each city to a certain point then excess moves onto next city. As you pull out goods in each city for use they are automatically replaced by next wagon train. This is the only automatic way to split loads in this game. I grew up on an irrigated farm and this approach reminds me of the way we would use sluice gates to regulate flows and fill up sections of channel to allow each part of the farm to be irrigated.
8. Eventually the system is fully primed and reaches equilibrium - what you are making is in balance with the time taken to tranship it to where it is needed before supplies run out. This happens fairly quickly and you can adjust it by changing professions at each city - to produce more or less of a specific good, or by putting the floats up or down. If there is a bottleneck this is usually because two cities are further apart than the others, or two long goods routes intersect at one city. The solution is to put two wagon trains on the export side of the problem city. It is better to counter-cycle these so set up the new one when the existing one gets to its destination, otherwise they can travel together with one wagon being empty some of the time.
9. If you have roads, Lewis and Clark, and cities 3 or 4 squares apart it is possible for every wagon train to move 4 different loads between its 2 cities EVERY TURN(!). This is far beyond what you will achieve using other approaches.
10. You can include islands in your chain by having a caravel or merchantman shuttle operating the same way. However, you will need a frigate standing near the route to keep Privateers away. Unexpectedly I often use small islands to make horses from all those fish as you don't need anything else. You dont need to develop or fortify the Island much because Indians never attack islands (Sid must have used up all his war canoes in Pirates). Then I ship the horses back into the main flow chains. If the island is 3 squares from mainland (for caravel), or 4 (for merchantman), it is possible to never have the ship exposed to Privateers, because it is always in one port or the other.
11. Eventually I start to pull out wagon loads of guns, tools, horses at each city for emergency use. For example, war or if I make Ship of The Line somewhere. If the flow of guns or tools suddenly drops (such as I make SOTL) I just pull some of these back into the flow at any location.
12. If it is convenient I sometimes close the loop - bring the excess tools, guns back into the initial manufacturing city so they can go around again topping up each city as they go.
13. There are two technical problems with this approach:
First: Later in the game there are lots of cities and import export commands. Finding the boxes you want to x on the menu of available trade routes can be a bit of a chore. It helps to name your cities in a way that each name is easy to recognize just scanning down the long list and that you know where each city fits into your chain. Fortunately you can rename your cities and all the wagon train instructions will update to the new name. As the list gets longer I temporarily rename the cities I want to adjust by putting 4 numbers in front of their names (e.g. 1111cityname, 2222city name etc.). Then I can quickly find all the shipments possible between just those numbered cities. Once I am sure the wagon is working I remove the numbers again from the city name. The numbering also makes it easy to remember the direction that the goods are supposed to be moving. Because I use so much I/E goods can often travel either way on a leg so it helps to have the numbering option as a clue to the direction of flow for each good. Once I had 3 wagon trains on a problem short 3-square leg before I realised that the second wagon was picking up the cotton and taking it back to the farm.
Second - if any enemy unit comes close to one of your wagon trains the wagon train drops its bundle and forgets its automated instructions. This means you have to re-automate which is a pain as discussed above. I would prefer if I had the option to instruct each of my wagon trains to keep running even in war-time. I'm usually able to protect most of them and even if I lose a few they are easily replaced.
14. Forget spoke and hub. Think about goods flow chains, with lots of short transhipments via various individual shuttle wagons. Remember goods routing is different from vehicle routing.
15. Never manually load anything into a wagon train showing the automated wheel icon, this will make it forget its instructions. Never double click on an automated wagon train this will also make it forget its instructions. If you want to know what a particular wagon train is doing - use one click on it, then hit the assign trade route button and its instructions will come up. You can also name each wagon train to indicate its Route so you know what it is supposed to be doing. You do this via the bar at the top of the status box (in lower right corner of screen) [thanks to Dalgo for that tip].
16. While this article is about transport units, what is really being created is a large linked warehouse of moving goods a big sushi train if you like. Each good sits in a city, and grows, until it becomes one of the two highest value items at that city and then it moves quickly to the next city. This is completely predictable and follows regular patterns so it is also much easier to manage. After a little while it becomes easy to understand how it is all working and when you have to intervene manually.
17. I manage the overall flow of goods. I rarely manually load or unload a wagon any more, maybe one every five turns and likely that is sliding something into or out of a storage wagon train, rather than a trip. Later in the game I might have a goods based wagon jumping a few cities (usually for fur which I tend to buy from Natives) because the interim cities havent been set up to handle it and I cant be bothered, but otherwise I try to incorporate each new need into the existing wagon system. This might sound onerous but I am sure I am spending less time on wagon trains than I ever did before (and it is certainly less frustrating).
18. Using this approach it is possible to quickly detour all your goods around a besieged city while you deal with the battle. Simply create a new dummy settlement in a safe area assign your two wagons to head there away from the war zone, and tranship everything there, then rejoin back into the main flow at a safe city downstream. Once your victory is complete you can just re-route back through the original city. This is where the numbering system described in point 13 helps. It isnt even a big deal to insert a new city between 2 existing cities.
19. Once the underlying infrastructure of wagon trains is in place you have a moving warehouse of goods supplying all your cities without much attention from you. Because all the cities are linked, you have lots of options to solve any short term problem. For example if a city suddenly runs out of timber, you can lower the float in the upstream city to release 50 units and solve the immediate need, but put an extra lumberjack in a city 6 legs away as a longer term solution. One of the benefits is that the whole system is predictable and follows the same patterns. You can look at any city and know how long until the goods will move based on their economic value (no.units x unit value) compared to the other goods arriving in that city. The adjustments you make to fix problems tend to balance the system overall so that eventually it all moves towards equilibrium which means less work for you.
20. I think everyone understands the use of specialized cities. However, Ive noticed that over time my cities become less specialized. Once the cities become linked in my system they become more of a common entity. Where I create any extra resource or manufacturing isnt all that important because the underlying infrastructure is in place to quickly move it to where it needs to go. Of course I try to use specialists and more productive plants wherever possible, but sometimes I just do things where there is spare food.
When I started I got lots of useful information from this forum - but there was never anything that useful about wagon train management. So I am happy I can put something back.
I still have vivid memories of a game I played where I just kept making wagon trains and automating them (automate unit button) hoping that if I made enough they would sort it out. I ended up with lots of long convoys of 10 to 20 wagon trains each carrying 5 units of some resource heading cross country from one end of the map to the other trying to fill the same move order that must have reached the top of some internal queue. In the meantime all my warehouses overflowed. The funniest thing was the loud humming noise when I would press Ctrl + A and all my (200?) useless automated wagon trains would move at the same time, sending every bird in the new world into the air at once. My recommendation would be to use the gift or skull destroy buttons on a wagon train before using the automated transport item button.
Hope this helps.
Happy to hear any feedback or issues you have with this approach so post below.
Cheers, Agaro
![[party]](/images/smilies/partytime.gif "Party [party]")
