Trader units (caravans) are all about getting to a market ASAP. So as Roads improve to where a unit expends only 1 MP, 3/4 MP, 1/2 MP, 1/4MP per tile for other units, WHY do Trader units keep on plodding along at one tile per turn?
Kind of irrelevant, because first, the roads remaining were, in fact, the Trader-built roads. Then later, nearly all of the railroad I laid down were on top of those Trader-built roads.
Either way, why would a trader unit, following a Trader-built road, (improved with each era change) continue to plod along at one tile per turn when EVERY other unit follows the same path at a significantly accelerated rate?
You are getting the traderoute benefits each turn, the one turn per tile movement is just a visual indication. You can imagine each turn they do the entire path +1 tile.
Trader units (caravans) are all about getting to a market ASAP. So as Roads improve to where a unit expends only 1 MP, 3/4 MP, 1/2 MP, 1/4MP per tile for other units, WHY do Trader units keep on plodding along at one tile per turn?
Short answer is a trader has no movement points so cannot increase.
Long answer is you have to understand that trader you see plodding along is just a graphical representation of the route although to be fair it can be pillaged. A trade route lasts a set number of turns which does not decrease with road speed so road speed has nothing to do with route completion and therefore the trader does not move fast. To me the visible trader represents the opportunity to pillage the route. Having traders zipping around at 10 tiles per turn may look strange and confusing to work out where the trader is. So i am OK with that part of trade routes... I am not happy with about a dozen other issues with trade routes but lets not tread old ground unnecessarily.
And that is why I preferred the Civ5 system. All units, including traders really used roads. I also liked building roads, making the network efficient. I almost cry when I see the mess traders do in Civ6.
What annoys me about the slow-moving Traders is that they become so easy to run down and pillage. As technology advances, the movement rates of barbarians and enemy units increases. Not so the Traders. If a turn starts with a Trader in sight of a barbarian, that Trader is good as dead.
If a Trader represents the _route_, then the misfortune of ONE caravan wouldn't break the route entirely. Instead of killing the Trader unit entirely, the income from the route for THAT TURN should be lost. The route should continue (and be potentially pillaged again). But to prevent the situation where an enemy unit simply follows a Trader and pillages it turn after turn, once pillaged, the Trader gets kicked back to its nearest trading post.
[Frequently replacing pillaged Trader units gets old really quick.]
Please remember that those trader units/boats actually carry around a lot of merchandise. So technically they should not be able to speed up as much as the military or civilian units of their era. Also I really like the fact that now you have to have a dedicate patrol force and Coast Guard to make sure no one is preying on your traders. Piracy actually can become a theme in Civ 6.
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