What is the best option for the Trade Policy World Congress options?

[Oddible]

The Trade Policy options in the World Congress either having you pick someone to get a free trade route while everyone else gets +4 gold sending routes to that person, or cancels and embargos trade routes. I get using the embargo. My question is, if the situation doesn't demand targetting player with embargos, what is the best option for option A?

Should I vote for myself netting me a free trade route and lots of friends? or should I pick the person whom I have an Alliance with and have several trade routes with anyway? Or is there a third option I'm not thinking of?

 

[newbie2]

I always go for A because I find its the way the AI usually votes and I'm a peacefull player So i rarely want to embargo. I also doubt the effectivness giving it's AI and it will just cheat gold out of thin air anyway probably

I would say there is no clearcut answer, cause i can think of two instances immediately that require a different approach:

a) you're in a dark age and want to use the isolationism policy to boost internal production --> choose yourself
b) you run democracy or have the reform the coinage dedication--> choose an ally, preferably the one with economic alliance

 

[Archon_Wing]

The AI puts like no effort into it, so I just vote for myself with a few votes. It's unlikely taking a trade route away from some one is going to help you that much.

 

[Linklite]

In my opinion:

• The embargo is pointless. It takes away one Civ's trade, but that's only one of however many, and doesn't do much for them. Unless they're human and ahead in a victory.
• Giving it to someone else is only of use if you have several trade routes with them. If you only have one or two, you're better off with you're own trade route.
• If you're Cleo, you get stuff for having them send traders to you, so double the benefits.
• I almost always vote to have the route for myself- I get a trader in advance and I generally get more out of it.

 

[reddishrecue]

In my opinion:

• The embargo is pointless. It takes away one Civ's trade, but that's only one of however many, and doesn't do much for them. Unless they're human and ahead in a victory.
• Giving it to someone else is only of use if you have several trade routes with them. If you only have one or two, you're better off with you're own trade route.
• If you're Cleo, you get stuff for having them send traders to you, so double the benefits.
• I almost always vote to have the route for myself- I get a trader in advance and I generally get more out of it.

Yeah, same here but you never know, if you've been really bad and piled up a lot of grievances with other civs, they might embargo you just like they used to do in civ V.

 

[Ludvig]

I usually put a single vote for myself to get an extra route since that's always pretty useful no matter what victory I'm going after. I usually only route one or two traders to the same player in which case the extra trade route is likely to give me more gold than boosting those two and some games I'm only trading internally so want the extra route and wouldn't gain anything from the other option.

In my experience option A always wins.

 

[Oddible]

So if picking A, do you always pick yourself or do you for instance pick someone you have an alliance with so you can boost your already running routes?

 

[kaspergm]

The AI puts like no effort into it, so I just vote for myself with a few votes. It's unlikely taking a trade route away from some one is going to help you that much.

Hmm I seem to see at least some civs putting heavy votes for themselves on this. Mali and Nubia recently, not sure if it was systematic or just a fluke.

Anyway, I always try to grab the extra route for myself. All else seems suboptimal.