Transport Networks Defined

[Blake]

esoteric knowledge ftw:




"Open Water" routes can cross diagonally over land.
River systems which share tiles are connected, even if there is no real water connection.

It's the "Dragging the rafts over land" concept, or a bug. Take your pick.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by 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.

The trade income is additional commerce added to cities when they are linked to other cities. Foreign trade routes are more valuable.

Each city starts with one trade route (if it is linked)
With discovery of Currency you get another
If you own the Great Lighthouse, coastal cities get two more
With Corporation you get another (but lose benefits from Great Lighthouse)
Running Free Trade civic gives another.

Not sure about others.

Trade income simply represents additional commerce and is not a case of money transferred from one city to another - gold, in any case is a civ-wide commodity and there is no concept within the game of city gold.

Simplest example is the second city which, when link to your capital, will add one commerce from trade to both cities.

For trade with neighbours, you need an Open Border agreement. You should consider this as a default setting because foreign trade is more valuable the local trade. Your best cities will get the best trade routes and when you have trade routes to all the foreign cities you know of and are linked to, the remaining trade routes will be made up of local trade.

[Quillan]

Building a castle gives a new trade route to the city (only in Warlords, and it's lost with Economics).
Building an airport gives a new trade route.

I think there's at least one more, but I can't remember it right now. Building a harbor is misleading. The description makes it sound like it increases commerce by 50%, but it does not. What it seems to do is make the city 50% more valuable in terms of getting trade routes, so a coastal city with a harbor will have higher value trade routes than a coastal city the same size without a harbor.

[Tau Ceti]

It does both. If you build your first harbour in your best city, you will see that it does indeed increase the value of the trade routes without changing them. But usually it leads to a reshuffling.

The Single Currency UN resolution gives one additional trade route to all cities. The Carthaginian Cothon gives one to a city that builds it.

[pakto]

ok, so if I have all the cities linked to the capital though each other in a single line (for example). And then the capital is linked to a foreign city / capital.

Then if I hit the "auto build trade network" task for a worker, what will the worker actually do?

Often after a few turns I keep finding workers sitting in the city doing nothing, not sure if it is related to this topic or not.

[Diadem]

If you select auto-build trade network for workers they will build improvements over resources and connect them to your cities, and your cities to eachother.

After they have done that, they will start building roads, and railroads later, everywhere in your territory. After they have roaded every single tile, they will idle in your cities.

I often build improvements around my cities and then set my workers on build-trade network. There's no risk of them building the wrong improvements or anything, but they are useful.