2 Questions

[Glohithia]

Great game!! There are two pretty minor things that are eluding me, though. If the answers are in the manual, I appologize for missing them but I have given it a thorough going over in the bathroom the last couple of weeks to no avail :-) And I have not seen these questions asked in my casual reading of the forum.

1. Trade routes in general. I understand that you need to be connected to foreign cities (various ways to do that) and that civics can effect routes. I also believe that the routes are automatically made for maximum commerce. My specific question is "Can you only have 2 trade routes from any one of your own cities to any of your other various cities?" I seem to find some cities have only 2 routes at various times and others can have up to 4. Just curious what the rules are here.

2. I cant seem to find where in the game you can see what cities built what wonders. It shows what civ built them, but if Im thinking about keeping a captured city or not, that piece of info would be nice. Is there a way I can find this out? Now I have noticed that the cities have a detailed view of buildings if you zoom in enough and this would be a good enough way to solve my problem. But how can I find out what the building look like (Pyramids is pretty easy, but some are more difficult for me to recognize).

Thanks for any help you can give.

[eluciv]

Trade routes are increased with varous techs and city improvements. They're all listed in the manual. I know that Airports add one route, harbors increase them, Free Market civic adds 1 to all cities, Astronomy allows over the ocean routes. General info, but it's all in the manual.

As for #2, I don't know. I also would like to know of wonder/holy cities before I raze them. In older civs, I seem to recall it would tell you that you captured a certain wonder. That no longer happens. I would assume it would be somewhere in the info menu. Probably a good habit to check it when at war with a civ.

[Jaybe]

For wonder location, you have to LOOK for them at individual cities -- close up (I'm not referring to spy use)! It may take some experience to know what to look for. Use the F9 illustrations as a guide; you can use the mouse to look at it from above. Of course, if you haven't explored (or gotten map of) the city, you can't look at it.

It helps to become acquainted with what all the other buildings look like when zoomed so you can ID the wonders.

[Diadem]

2) You can see wonders in one of the advisor screens. I don't have access to the game right now, but if you look at the row of buttons with advisors, it's either the one most to the right, or the one next to that. Each of these screens is subdivided into several screens. You won't find the information on the first subscren, you have to go to the 2nd or 3rd. (There's a ton of information that can be found in these screens btw. Check them out!)

1) Trade routes are not paired, it's important to understand that. City A can have a traderoute to B while B does not have a traderoute to A. That means that for example when you have mercilantism (no foreign traderoutes), foreign civs can still have traderoutes with your cities, you just can't have routes with them.

For every foreign city, only one city in your empire can have a traderoute with it. But a single city can have traderoutes with multiple foreign cities. Cities automaticly select from all available cities (which means connected and not yet taken by another one of your cities) the best ones to trade with. I don't think you can manually change this, it's all fully automated. For cities in your own empire there is no limit. Every single one of your cities can trade with your capital, for instance. Foreing traderoutes are usually much more profitable though, because those cities are further away (and I think there's a bonus for foreign trades too, not sure here).

You start with max 1 traderoute per city. Currency adds one more, Free Market (civic) adds one more. Airports add one as well, so that's 4 total. The Great Lighthouse adds 2 for each coastal city, but it expires quite early. Harbors don't increase the number of traderoutes, but they add 50% profit to each traderoute.

Traderoutes work over roads and rivers. The Sailing tech allows trading via coasts. All cities on the same coast will then be connected. I'm not sure if cities on different islands, which are connected via shallow water, will be connected then. Once you research astronomy, traderoutes via oceans become available, meaning every coastal city in the world will be connected to every other one (well, if they are not at different lakes, of course).

You can only trade with other civs you have an Open Border agreement with (meaning these agreements are important for your economy!). And you need to have a traderoute with them, of course. I'm not sure if a traderoute can go through the land of a civ you don't have open borders with (to, for example, a 3rd civ at the other side with whom you do have open borders). Someone else will have to check this.

[Blake]

Trade Routes: Corporation also adds +1 traderoute. Final total is +5, and you can get +6 with Great Lighthouse + Airport - Corporation (which adds 1, but removes the +2 Great Lighthouse ones).

Harbors work in a fuzzy-illdefined way - they increase the attractiveness of the city, such that a city acts as if it's twice as large for the purpose of attracting good trade routes. A size 10 city with a harbor will pull good trade routes away from a size 19 harbor-less city.
Harbors do not add +50%, they can add UP TO +50% in special cases, but mostly they just rearrange the trade routes (moving the good ones to coastal cities) and add about +15%-25%.

Note in some cases harbors could be negative, if for example your Oxford city is landlocked and has all the good trade routes pulled away from it by harbor cities.

Small cities don't need harbors (they wont help if larger cities already have harbors), build them in your largest coastal cities, and anywhere the health bonus from seafood will help (which again will mostly be your large coastal cities, but you might favor them over Aqeducts and as such relatively small cities might get harbors for health purposes).

[Glohithia]

Thanks a lot for the replies, that pretty much answers what I wanted to know about trade routes. I knew Id get what I needed and more by asking here!

Diadem, I am familiar with the screen you mentioned, however, it only tells what civ got a wonder, not what particular city (I think).

Jaybe, I guess Ill be looking for similarities between the zoomed in city and its buildings and the illustrations found thru the F9 key. Hopefully that will work out.