two specific trade route questions

[ghen]

First off, I'm not exactly sure what trade routes are.. Do they have anything at all to do with tradeable goods like cows/spice/gold etc.?

Second, I saw Mercantilism says 'no foreign trade routes' is that bad or good?

The manual isn't too clear on this sort of thing.

[vmxa1]

I think trade routes are as they were in Civ III. That is any road from a town to the capitol is part of your trade network.

I can only think that no foreign trade is good, when you want to not help them with income. It will hurt you as well. Basically no Open Borders with do the same thing.

[vmxa1]

Oh it stops them from using a Great Merchant in your empire.

[ghen]

so trade routes are straight gold, do they transfer gold between civs or does it make the money itself?

[xxFlukexx]

Trade routes go into that cities base commerce, which you then split into sci/gold/culture and then banks/universities/etc take effect.

It doesn't really rob other AIs of trade as they can trade with other friendly(open border) cities so if the AI is only friends with you I guess going mercantilism or closing borders would be a hit to their trade routes, but yours as well. I think that the trade routes are equal between two nations.

Using Mercantilism usually means a slight hit to your gold per turn and science, but you get a free specialist. Most people combine this with representation to get +3 science per specialist giving a science specialist a whooping +6 science or +2 production and +3 science from a engineer, mmm mmm. This is usually most effective in the early to mid game as not everything is hooked up to a trade network and trade routes are not that much commerce, but late in the game, mmm 4 trade routes in a big city is a major boost.