a review of the most underappreciated building of CIV: the harbor

[Arrian]

This is making my head spin. I'll just stick with: harbors good, if you have potential foreign trading partners.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Arrian
This is making my head spin. I'll just stick with: harbors good, if you have potential foreign trading partners.

-Arrian

Try this rule of thumb:

Harbors are always good for your commerce situation, but small cities that want to 'steal' some trade from larger (foreign) cities should prioritise a harbor even more.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Blake, I thought before that trade goes in pairs: if Rome is trading to Athens, Athens also trades to Rome. No matter how many other cities are present. Lately, however, I think it would be to hard to program, and might have some negative effects in-game. Have you seen anything about that?

DeepO

[khearn]

I'm not 100% certain, but I think in my last game, while I was isolated on a continent, I had more cities with trade route connected to my capital than I had trade routes in my capital. That is, I think I had 4 cities saying they were trading with Moscow, but Moscow only had 3 trade routes on its city screen. This would mean that trade routes aren't always paired.

I'll have to look tonight at a save from this period to make sure.

Can't you look into other cities using WorldBuilder? If so, this should be very easy to confirm one way or the other.

Keith, at work so he can't try stuff out. :-P

[Blake]

Originally posted by DeepO
Blake, I thought before that trade goes in pairs: if Rome is trading to Athens, Athens also trades to Rome. No matter how many other cities are present. Lately, however, I think it would be to hard to program, and might have some negative effects in-game. Have you seen anything about that?

DeepO

It's certainly not that way. Merc alone should prove that heheh. But the other factor is the Romans can't have multiple cities trading with Athens, but Athens can be trading with multiple roman cities.

Distance:
I think Distance is a factor in the value of trade routes, but I'm pretty sure it would be distance to your capital, not the actual city. This would be to keep the Big O complexity down. But city size has the largest effect for sure.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Blake
Distance:
I think Distance is a factor in the value of trade routes, but I'm pretty sure it would be distance to your capital, not the actual city. This would be to keep the Big O complexity down. But city size has the largest effect for sure.

Interesting... all your cities in the empire would be getting the same trade-bonus to a certain foreign city, so to speak.

Would it be dependent on the distance between capitals? It might give another reason to move your capital, BTW.

DeepO

[Lord Civ]

The trade war

The way I see it, is that there is a continuing "trade war" going on with the AI civ's for the best trade routes available. Needless to say that you win this war with lot’s of (early?) harbors in nearly all your coastel cities (focus more on coastal cities if you're not allready doing so).

When you manage to grab the best trade routes, the AI civ's don't have them and will in my experience on monarch nearly all switch to mercantilism at some point.

I have seen this happen for the third time now in my 3 last monarch games. This makes sense from their point of view of course.

However this has no negative influence on your trade income! It would even be logical that this has a positive influence on your trade income, strange though that I haven’t noticed that yet!

When the AI civ’s all switch to mercantilism, you should have the game in your pocket IMHO. Because you should be able to build up a technological advantage with your far superior trade income, of course this means a peaceful game for some time since you need open borders agreements.

But I could be wrong, have any of you experienced this? All other civ’s switching to mercantilism leaving you all the best trade routes and an relatively "easy" win.

Lord Civ

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Lord Civ
When you manage to grab the best trade routes, the AI civ's don't have them and will in my experience on monarch nearly all switch to mercantilism at some point.

I have seen this happen for the third time now in my 3 last monarch games. This makes sense from their point of view of course.

I'm not sure... I mean, I've seen switches to merc very often, but there is something else at play: because of cottage spam, the AIs have procentually less income coming from trade. And they have less production. They need the priests, more then they need more commerce...

They do seem to take into account how much a civic is gaining them, but I don't know if this is done by simply adding up everything and knowing the rules perfectly. It could also be some hard coded thing which might need a bit more tweaking.

However this has no negative influence on your trade income! It would even be logical that this has a positive influence on your trade income, strange though that I haven’t noticed that yet!

No, like Blake showed: mercantilism will only close off the trade from somebody, not to somebody.

But I could be wrong, have any of you experienced this? All other civ’s switching to mercantilism leaving you all the best trade routes and an relatively "easy" win.

Lord Civ

well, yes, but I've also noticed something else.

In my last few games, I've switched to emperor to get more of a challenge (monarch is gone ). However, I've been unlucky in starting pos: nice land, but separated to all AIs by ocean. Before Astronomy, this means that building harbors is not gaining you anything: all your trade routes will be +1 to your best 2 cities (after currency 2 trade routes). Building harbors doesn't change that.

You would be tempted to not build harbors: after all, you don't gain. However, this does mean that others get better trade routes: In case somebody gets Astronomy they get your trade, even if you haven't reached Astro yet (and thus have no trade). By building harbors, you seem to be limiting the gain others are getting (the magnet effect works, even if you're not taking advantage of it)

I've observed a couple of times that the moment the world is learning Astro, more AIs will go for merc... their trade income is dropping by having more contestants for the good trade routes...

DeepO

[solo]

A harbor following the Great Lighthouse works particularly well in OCC games. I'll send out a galley looking for good cities to trade with while building the GL. Once the wonder's ready, the boost in commerce from trade routes soon propelled me into the tech lead in a Monarch game.

[Killazer]

harbors are great... coastal cities generally are great big boost for economy makes u really want to place all cities on the coast if possible.

[inca911]

This post was way too far down the page....

[El Conquistador]

Does a city need to be on a tile directly next to a sea one or would having cultural borders next to or on sea be enough?

[El Conquistador]

For building harbors and sea units I mean.

[El Conquistador]

NM, found out.

[DeepO]

thanks for the bump

DeepO