complimentary commodities

[defrancoj]

Hi.
I was reading solo's early landing thread and his extensive discussion of trade routes. One thing I'm curious about:

if city A sends a caravan to city B with a commodity that city B demands, does the magnitude of either the delivery bonus or the permanent trade-arrow stream depend on whether city B has on its supply list a commodity demanded by city A?

Related:
how is it determined what supply commodity (if any?) will be blocked in the destination city upon establishment of a new trade route?

As always, thanks for the insight!

[Elephant]

We did not see a relationship between a B-A trade route and the A-B bonus or route value in the testing we did back then, but we did notice that sometimes there was a blocking of a commodity in the destination that corresponded with a demand in the supply city. Over time those will change as the S/D values vary, and there were a few stray cases where it seemed the commodities were different (but we did not check whether the new route might have forced an S/D refresh that changed what appeared in the list). If you want to do some serious testing of this issue be our guest; it should be easier to do between your own cities, but there may be different parameters that come into play when the cities belong to different civs (like how the bonus payment increases for different civ or different continent). Hope that helps.

[SlowThinker]

how is it determined what supply commodity (if any?) will be blocked in the destination city upon establishment of a new trade route?

See "Secondary (opposite) trade routes" in Trade basics. (but remember I may be wrong, the article was never debated...)

if city A sends a caravan to city B with a commodity that city B demands, does the magnitude of either the delivery bonus or the permanent trade-arrow stream depend on whether city B has on its supply list a commodity demanded by city A?

Can you rephrase?

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by SlowThinker


Can you rephrase?

I believe the question is whether the delivery bonus or the size of the trade route is influenced by whether or not the destination city can produce something demanded by the originating city.

And I believe the answer is no - this doesn't affect the bonus or trade value.

RJM

[SlowThinker]

I agree, the answer is no.

[defrancoj]

yes, rjmatsleepers has it right. Thanks for the insight.

[Elephant]

Concur - the bonus and trade route value calculation is not affected, but a destination supply commodity can be blocked if it corresponds with a demand in the origination city. Note that no actual caravan is required to move from destination city to cause the reciprocal block, and no bonus payment is made to the AI when it happens.

[SlowThinker]

the bonus and trade route value calculation is not affected, but a destination supply commodity can be blocked if it corresponds with a demand in the origination city.

I disagree. Blocking of supply in destination city has nothing common with a demand in the origination city.
Blocking of supply is caused by establishing an opposite route, and it is irrelevant if the commodity of the oppo-route is demanded or not.