Why City Connections are not intuitive

[Riconatic]

How would I make these two connected to other towns/cities? They are already part trade network. According to TCS ui mod maker trade connections and settlement connections are even different thing. As these towns can push resources to others.

Inland town is totally surrounded by AIs so land connection impossible.
Seaside town has port, railroad station and quay. Other towns and cities have ports, railroads and stuf.

 

[Elhoim]

Sigh, this is broken beyond belief. Roma doesn't connect with Patavium (even though the road goes there from a previously razed settlement) and I have no way to connect it with a merchant.

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At least on era change when the cities are imported into the new module the connections are remade and this was fixed.

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

had that last night. ant - exp broke a buncha connections, including the 2 towns I founded close to Rome.
exp - modern and they all connected again.

Could it be just a Rome/Charlemagne bug?

 

[Elhoim]

had that last night. ant - exp broke a buncha connections, including the 2 towns I founded close to Rome.
exp - modern and they all connected again.

Could it be just a Rome/Charlemagne bug?

Nah, it's just a mess on how this system works and is updated. When an age changes a map is remade, so some broken connections can get fixed, and some that were well become broken.

 

[MasterPaw]

just experienced the road breaking on new ages ,quite disturbing, especially as it can prevent you from assigning resources for some reason not explained well, and the rail ways dont form (not that they look good/visible once formed anyway because of quarters)

 

[Elhoim]

just experienced the road breaking on new ages ,quite disturbing, especially as it can prevent you from assigning resources for some reason not explained well, and the rail ways dont form (not that they look good/visible once formed anyway because of quarters)

Yeah, rails are quite broken visually, with rails outside city borders being created at era start, before any tech, pieces randomly appearing in incorrect places, and even when they form they don't look good due to the turn table decision.

 

[Vincent_lacruz]

Another issue:

- In order to connect cities on the coast, the city center must be next to the coast. For example, this city doesn't connect with Rome even though Rome has a fishing quay.

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- BUT if they are on the coast, they connect with all coastal cities even if they are in a lake!

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I'm amazed at how many issues a CRUCIAL system like this one has. And given Firaxis track record I don't know how much they will fix it, and it's something out of the scope of mods.

Are both Rome and Mahendraparvata on the same continent? Because apparently in the wiki you need both to be coastal AND on the same continent (wich is rather odd choice, I must say...)...

 

[Elhoim]

Are both Rome and Mahendraparvata on the same continent? Because apparently in the wiki you need both to be coastal AND on the same continent (wich is rather odd choice, I must say...)...

Yes, they are.

 

[tman2000]

Having it effectively one large network (as long as each part has a road or coastal/port) connection would make far more sense and have far less micro weirdness.

I think city connections should be based on distance and whether they are connected at all to other cities. I also think you should be able to customize where town yields go, with an idea that there's a cap on percent that can go a certain distance. So, some towns are two far to send yields, some are close enough to send 0-100% of yields, and some cap out at 10%, 20% to maybe like 50% and then it's just 50% or 100%.

I also think factory buff yields should be splittable. For instance if you have 6 oranges in factory town, you can send half the naval production buff to one place and half to another.

 

[tman2000]

Yeah, it does, and if there's no city connected the food goes to waste (the town doesn't grow when specialized).

Jeez it would be nice to have this indicated if so. You can only tell if a city is receiving food, not necessarily if a town is sending AFAIK.

I had a town once that a merchant couldn't connect to my network, then I built an improvement that was adjacent to a road and it connected. That, I think, was just poor programming hitting the ceiling.

 

[Elhoim]

Jeez it would be nice to have this indicated if so. You can only tell if a city is receiving food, not necessarily if a town is sending AFAIK.

Yeah, you can see it in towns after you exit the city screen and enter again. The game is lacking a lot of instant interface updates.

 

[Taefin]

I also think factory buff yields should be splittable. For instance if you have 6 oranges in factory town, you can send half the naval production buff to one place and half to another.

It was kindly pointed out to me that factory resources effects are global.

 

[Krikkit1]

I also think factory buff yields should be splittable. For instance if you have 6 oranges in factory town, you can send half the naval production buff to one place and half to another.

Why would you split it? every city gets the full bonus.

 

[ProMeTheus112]

The complexity of the connections system is just so discordant with the general trend of simplification. I agree it should be a single network, and a city center should not need to be coastal.

I think notably if the single network approach was done, then the town specialization for "hub towns" would have to be tweaked which matters for influence generation. Because any town of your network would then be generating as many influence as the others, and incidentaly a lot of influence as well (?)

 

[UWHabs]

I think notably if the single network approach was done, then the town specialization for "hub towns" would have to be tweaked which matters for influence generation. Because any town of your network would then be generating as many influence as the others, and incidentaly a lot of influence as well (?)

I mean, if you changed it, Hub Town would certainly switch to just being "number of connected settlements within X tiles" or something.

 

[Ornen]

my understanding is that food connection never crosses continents? if so, that feels very arbitrary. most of Rome’s food came from North Africa…

 

[Leyrann]

I am unable to make a connection between Coosa and Tikal, a town and city that are 7 tiles apart shortest route, and no way they are more than 10 tiles apart with the shortest route that avoids cliffs.

This leaves me with no ability to send food from Coosa anywhere, despite it being directly contiguous with my empire.

 

[Vincent_lacruz]

I am unable to make a connection between Coosa and Tikal, a town and city that are 7 tiles apart shortest route, and no way they are more than 10 tiles apart with the shortest route that avoids cliffs.

This leaves me with no ability to send food from Coosa anywhere, despite it being directly contiguous with my empire.

View attachment 720728

Your marchant seems to have the possibility to link Coosa to another colony (the icon on the right of "move" and left of "create trade route"). That tends to be the case with conquered cities that were not linked to yours at conception.

Unfortunately that option is not always available, and I really can't see why....

 

[Evolena]

The rules are very obscures.
Here's the minimap for reference:

Here are all Settlements and their connections (checked by setting all Towns to Hub to count the number of connections from the Influence gained, and then converting them all one by one to Cities on a couple of reload to check where the food goes), at the start of Modern Era:

Red and purple continents are Distant Land, and Everwyk is a Treasure Island.

Roads:

• Capua does not have a road to Roma because it was founded after Patavium, and Patavium is nearer, so yep, space your Towns if you want a direct road to the capital.
• After some digging in old saves, Ravenna is connected to Aquilea because it was founded before Ostia, and they are 10 tiles apart. The foundation of Ostia afterwards on the existing road still connected it to the 2 others.
• There is a visual road between Aquilea and Parsa, but that does not transfer to an actual connection.
  • Capua - Parsa started as a Trade Route before I conquered the latter.
  • At the foundation of Aquilea, the road to Capua was initially more in the middle (it followed a minor river).
  • The roads in the area have changed with the Exploration era transition: maybe the 2 roads in T-shape have been changed to a ▼-shape, but with still only the original 2 connections.
• Samarkand was the last one added to my empire in Antiquity, from IP integration. It created a road to Ravenna, even though it has a naval connection to Ostia.
• Hastinges and Chereburghs are separated by a Coastal bay (with a Fishing Quay connecting the two sides) and a range of Mountains, still it's only a 19 tile distance to make the detour and the Modern age Land Route range is 20.
  • However the distance is 21 if also avoiding passing through the AI Settlement on the other side of the Mountains.
• Colcester and Chereburgh could have a naval connection, but for whatever reason a road has been built when I've founded Colcestre after Chereburgh (same as with the road from Samarkand?).

Space your Towns if you want a direct road to the Capital instead of between the 2 Towns, and if you want 2 Towns in the same direction feeding one City at one end, found the middle one last.

Naval:

• Same continent naval connections are OK, whatever the distance it seems (Aquilea - Roma is 45 tiles), but it needs the Town to be directly on the Coast or the Navigable River (no Fishing Quay required).
  • Near the Coast with a Coastal district does not work (Patavium).
  • On a Navigable River but with another Town in-between does not work (Parsa).
• Some times, there is a naval connection between continents (Samarkand - Chereburgh, Cusa - Everwyk, Everwyk - Fécamps, Cusa - Hastinges), and sometimes... just no (Samarkand - Aquilea, Cusa - Fécamps, Everwyk - Hastinges), even so the distance is not an issue?
  • I mean, Samarkand - Chereburgh, that's 30 tiles, but Bayeux is nearer (even when going to the next side of the island where the Fishing Quay is, if that's the factor) and on the same continent as Chereburgh but is not connected to Samarkand while Chereburgh is?
  • Aquilea is on a Navigable River, but does not have a Fishing Quay. But building one doesn't change anything, it still is connected to Roma (same continent) but not Samarkand (nearer).

Aquilea and Cusa have 5 connections, maybe there is a limit here? But that doesn't explain Everwyk - Hastinges...
Maybe there can only be one trans-continental naval connection.

[Edit]

Spoiler Capua - Aquilea - Parsa before and after the Exploration transition :

 

[Leyrann]

Your marchant seems to have the possibility to link Coosa to another colony (the icon on the right of "move" and left of "create trade route"). That tends to be the case with conquered cities that were not linked to yours at conception.

Yup, only place I could connect it to was a town further to the west.

Which is of course not very useful as towns can't connect to other towns.

I decided to just let Coosa keep growing by itself instead. I intend to turn it into a city to make use of the natural wonder yields, but it's more expensive to do so in this Age because it's a conquered settlement, and my financial situation doesn't really allow for excesses like that - I was down all the way to +1 gold per turn at the start of the (plague) crisis. So instead I'll upgrade it at the start of the next Age.