Transport Networks Defined

[Cabbagemeister]

In the diplo screen, The numbers by the AI's resources are "extras." But the numbers by your resources are the true number you have (i.e. 1=no extras). This is confusing, but I prefer that I gain the ability to trade away my only resource if I really need to. Say all my cities had theaters, and I knew that a dye would give me +2 happy faces (1 for the dye, one for the theater+dye bonus). It would definitely be worth trading my only silk for someone else's extra dye.

[Tennyson]

Being able to trade away your only copy of a resource is probably a necessary UI feature; lumping it in with your other resources without some kind of differentiation is bad.

I would either italicize them, or use (0) to indicate that it's not an extra and sync it up with the enemy's trade screen. Probably both.

[Dr,ape]

You resource available for trading in the Diplomacy screen is different from that of Civ3, and is misleading. It is a minor issue, but it did contribute to my mistake of trading away my only source of horse to a 3rd party for 1 gold/turn, when I was in the middle of a war with somebody, thus taking away my ability to build knights for many turns (and the Knight was supposed to be my new weapon that would've made some real difference on the battlefield!!!)

horse(1) = the only horse you've got. don't make that same mistake (until the devs decide to change this behaviour)

[Eric Snyder]

I'm not certain this is true. I had a game where I built one city on a horse resource, and had another connected and pastured; in trading with AIs, only one horse asset was listed.

Well, I had tested it with wine. I went back and tested it with horses and the city did get the resource. I do not know why your game had only one horse.

[Tennyson]

Was it a non-capital city that settled on the horse square?

[Eric Snyder]

Yes, it was a non-capitol city in my test.

[Tennyson]

Cool. I don't know what happened either then.

[Eric Snyder]

Originally posted by Falconer999
In my last game, I think I noticed a little discrepancy with the AI and the way resources work. I had cows in a tile adjacent to my city and had a worker doing auto tile improvements and then auto trade improvements.

The worker built a pasture on the cow tile, but did not build a road. It did build roads to a mine and a beaver camp 1 square out from the city.

After the worker had 'finished' doing everything it could, it went back to the city and just sat there. It never went out and built a road to connect the cows. I did not get any benefit from the cows. I manually made the worker build a road on the cow tile and received the benefit.

Does the AI think that tiles adjacent to a city are connected even though they aren't?

I just placed a city beside corn. The corn was not on a coastal square. I ordered my worker to auto build trade network. It built a farm and a road on the corn.

I then started over doing what you did(auto-improvement then auto-trade). Again it built a farm and a road on the corn. I don't know why yours did not.

[Eric Snyder]

I have completely updated the top post with new info, and feed back from others in this thread. I believe that it is pretty definitive now. Enjoy!

[Theseus]

Excellent basic info, well communicated. Thank you.

[pakto]

bit of a dummy here, only been playing for 1 week.

So just to clarify, to trade resource from one city to another all I need is to build a road, correct???

To trade it with another civ, all I need is to build a road from that city directly, or indirctly via another city, to ANY city of the other civ, correct?? (does it have to be between the two capital cities instead?)

Normally, the max I can trade from each city is 2 resources. Correct?

How do I dictate that I prefer to trade with foreign civ instead of internally? I assume I can get more money that way.

Sometimes when I hit the "auto trade network" the worker would just sit there and do nothing..... why?

Thanks!!!

[Quillan]

Road or river, or a combination thereof. Example: one city has copper. You run a road from that city to a nearby river. Farther down the same river, you have another road running to your capital. You'll have copper in your capital. It will also trade by sea through your borders, outside your borders only along the coast once you get Sailing, and by sea outside everyone elses borders once you get Astronomy.

To trade with another civ, your two capitals must be connected by a trade network. Assuming you get sailing in the early going, generally you'll be trading with coastal civs first, because building roads to another civ takes time and you have to protect the workers from barbarians.

You don't dictate where the city trades. That's automatic.

[MojoJojoUK]

Thanks for this, I've just started to play this game and I was a bit confued about why I sometimes needed to connect resources with roads and sometimes I didn't. I realise now it was rivers doing the work for me.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by pakto
bit of a dummy here, only been playing for 1 week.

So just to clarify, to trade resource from one city to another all I need is to build a road, correct???

To trade it with another civ, all I need is to build a road from that city directly, or indirctly via another city, to ANY city of the other civ, correct?? (does it have to be between the two capital cities instead?)

Normally, the max I can trade from each city is 2 resources. Correct?

How do I dictate that I prefer to trade with foreign civ instead of internally? I assume I can get more money that way.

Sometimes when I hit the "auto trade network" the worker would just sit there and do nothing..... why?

Thanks!!!

For any of your cities to have access and benefits of a resource, the resource must be linked to THAT city (and the resource must be improved too).

To trade with an AI, there must be a link from the resource to your capital and another from your capital to the AI’s capital.

Btw, the benefits that you get from access to a resource is either happiness, health, the ability to build certain units (eg chariots need horses) or bonuses to certain builds (stone gives +100% bonus to pyramids). You get that for all the cities linked to the resource but do not trade the resource among cities for gold.

City trade income is completely different

[pakto]

so how can I increase my City Trade Income??? Often I only see 2 other cities trading with each city. Yet I know it is possible to trade with more. I really would like to know how I can increase my chances of trading with a foreign city. ie. so the income isn't a case of left hand giving to the right.

Thanks.