Commerce question

[Urban Ranger]

You are way better off cutting down on upkeep fees.

If you want to make lots of money Great Merchant trade missions are the best.

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Costal cities trade with foreign cities and inland cities trades with other cities of your own nation. As a result, coastal cities do better. Then you can build harbours and such to further boost the commerce.


I reckon the amount of trade is a function of:

1. Distance between the cities
2. Foreign vs local
3. Size of the two cities

So there's not much you can do, except growing your cities. Finding empires overseas and have Open Borders Agreement with them is also a good idea.

I tried an experimental game at "noble" level to test some of the ideas on trade.

Trade between your own cities always seems to generate 1 commerce whatever the size of the cities are and whether or not there is a harbour. Has anyone every seem a higher figure? However, more than one city can have a trade route with a domestic city.

Trade with a foreign city generates at least 2 commerce, but only one trade route is allowed to each foreign city. An inland city can trade with a foreign city. I guess the rule is the same as for resources - there needs to be a route between the capitals and the city needs to be connected to the capital.

The size of the foreign city seems to have an impact. The trade route increases to 3 if both cities are more than size 10. However, this rule was not observed consistently, so something more complex is going on.

"Normally", foreign trade routes are allocated to your cities in size order - your largest city gets the best trade route, and so on. If you build a harbour in a city, it rises in the pecking order and gets the best routes. This seems to be why coastal cities have better trade. There does not seem to be a trade bonus for coastal cities.

I couldn't see any evidence for a consistent increase of 50% in trade from a harbour - sometimes it was increased, but other times not. However, the trade route did seem to increase if the foreign city had a harbour

Trade with a foreign city on a different continent seemed to be worth more than a foreign city on the same continent. Once again, however, this was not consistent.

I couldn't see any obvious distance effect.

I didn't check out larger routes (4+) Any counter examples welcome. some of the effects can be seen on the attached save.

RJM at Sleeper's

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by rjmatsleepers
Trade between your own cities always seems to generate 1 commerce whatever the size of the cities are and whether or not there is a harbour. Has anyone every seem a higher figure?

Yeah, I see 2 coins per route quite often, for trades between domestic cities.

[trev]

My understanding is that an airport either gives extra or better trade routes, so late in the game your cities can benefit from that

[more_cowbell]

One thing I noticed on my most recent game:

Early on, my (landlocked) capital was strictly 1+ domestic trade routes, while my costal cities basked in their 3+ (or more) international trade routes. Later in the game, however, my capital began to get more lucrative international trade routes, but not as lucrative as the costal cities.

I wonder if...

The costal cities get "first dibs" for the prime trade routes from the AI cities and that only after the costal cities routes are all filled up would a landlocked city have a chance at international trade. That would explain why you have to wait until later in the game to get the better trade routes (until the smaller AI cities grow to enough size to provide a 2+ or more trade route AND all the costal cities have been saturated with trade routes.)

I think the take home message here is that if you are only one or two squares away from being a costal city at the start of the game, go ahead and move your original settler to the coast to found the city. Otherwise, keep your capital in the middle to help cut down on maintenence costs. One caveat of the maintenence issue is that I always play as an organized civ because I find the high maintenence costs very "un-fun" to play with, and I play at only monarch level. Someone playing without orgainized trait at a higher level would be MUCH better off having a city starting in the middle of the continent vs being on the coast.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by rjmatsleepers
Trade with a foreign city on a different continent seemed to be worth more than a foreign city on the same continent. Once again, however, this was not consistent.

I did some checking with my current game last night. My biggest port city has four international trade routes at 6 coins each. That's a nice sum.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by more_cowbell
I think the take home message here is that if you are only one or two squares away from being a costal city at the start of the game, go ahead and move your original settler to the coast to found the city.

This advice is sound for all cities. Unless there are other overriding concerns, it is better to build a coastal city. Cities that are only one tile away from a coast are very bad. If nothing else, you gain the +10% defense bonus.

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Yeah, I see 2 coins per route quite often, for trades between domestic cities.

Interesting. I attach a save from a late game. I picked a position a few turns before a space ship victory. I changed civics so that I only had domestic trade routes. The only size 2 route was where the other city was larger than size 10 and had a harbour. I allowed another city with a harbour to grow to size 10 and the trade routes where it was the other city went up to 2.

I wonder if there is a bug in how harbours operate?

Has anyone ever had a size 3 domestic route?

RJM at Sleeper's

Edit: Great theory ... shame it doesn't work. Nottingham is size 10 and has a harbour, but its trade routes are only 1.