Help explaining trade routes?

[MattPilot]

Please?



Here's the thing..... I don't quite understand how the system picks trade routes between cities. I don't know what factors into having a good trade city.


Here's my situation.. I switched from Decentralized.. to Freemarket, expecting more money because of the increased trade routes. Turns out, i earn LESS money by running free market than decentralized. Why? Well the upkeep cost on freemarket is higher and apparently i already own all the good trade routes and all that +1 additional trade route per city gave me was roughly 10 extra trade routes, giving me +1 gold each.



So i'd kinda like to figure out what i can do to make my city a good trade city, so i can attract all the good trade routes.

Is it all population size? Do number of resources or city buildings factor into this? Number of religions? Happy faces? Health? etc.. .you get the picture.

I think there was a long thread here on apoly a while back that concluded that harbors artificially boost population size to attract more trade. So is it based on trade?


Why then are there many foreign cities that are smaller which give my cities relative big commerce?




I'm so confused

[Will9]

Three things affect trade route yeild.

1: Size. The larger the city the more gold.

2: Distance. The farther the city is from the city the more gold.

3: Nationality. This is by far the largest. A forign city will generate much more trade gold than one of your own so sign plenty of open borders deals.

I don't know how the trade routes are chosen. I think that only one of your cities can trade with a forign city. I also don't know how it is chosen what city gets what trade route. Although I think that the longer you have had the city the better the trade route.

[MattPilot]

I suppose then the question is, in what situations is free market civic useful?


This is what i observe:

1) If you have many cities in relation to available foreign trading cities (e.g. open boarders), then +1 trade route per city will most likely only yield a bunch of "+1 commerce" routes.

So in other words not very useful in this situation - state property should be a lot more beneficial (as it was in my case in the game i'm playing atm).


2) If you have relatively few cities compared to the available foreign trade routes, then you may be able to attract the larger trade routes if you got enough qualified cities. This then could lead to a bunch of trade routes that yield more than just one lousy commerce bonus.

So the +1 trade route per city could be quite good.




Would my analysis be correct?

[johnmcd]

If you have big cities it's worth going for too as you will muscle in more of the really lucrative trade routes and push other Civs off them.

[Blake]

Originally posted by johnmcd
If you have big cities it's worth going for too as you will muscle in more of the really lucrative trade routes and push other Civs off them.

Nope. It doesn't work that way.

A city can appear in any number of other cities trade screens - like in an 18 civ map, every civ could have a city trading with Rome... Rome would still be only trading with a few cities. Trade route are not two-way.

edit: If you want the gory details of trade, this thread may be useful.

[MattPilot]

Thanks for the link. Interesting reading.


I used to run free market all the time, just because of the +1 trade route, thinking it was the best choice, until today that is...



After reading that linked thread, i feel only strengthend in my assumption that if you have a bunch of large cities and already control most foreign trade routes, then freemarket is worthless.


I suppose a good way to check to see if free market is worthwile is to check you're biggest cities and see if they are running any domestic routes. If you have domestic routes in them, then all you are going to get under the free market civic is another domestic route worth only +1.



State property For The Win!!!

[rjmatsleepers]

One small point may be worth adding to this discussion. The extra trade route(s) give you commerce, the civic switch costs you gold. If you are running 100% science and can cope with the extra cost, the extra beakers are a benefit.

RJM

[Snotty]

is their any way to stop my opponents from using my huge environmentalist cities as trade hubs?

[Thedrin]

Closed borders.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by rjmatsleepers
One small point may be worth adding to this discussion. The extra trade route(s) give you commerce, the civic switch costs you gold. If you are running 100% science and can cope with the extra cost, the extra beakers are a benefit.

RJM

I think RJM has it. FM gives extra commerce, and at 100% gold the positive impact would usually outweigh the increased civic cost. The only exceptions I can see are very small empires and if you use FM really early with the pyramids. Alternatively if for some reason you didn't have open borders with your rivals you might not see a gain.

[Will9]

I sign plenty of Open Borders so Free market could bring in alot of gold for me.

Blake, that huge capital you mentioned in the other thread, how big was it? The largest I've gotten a city is 33.

[Blake]

I think it was size 32 ish...

I've since made a size 48 city though.