SP and trade routes

[Chris1111]

Anyone else play like me and just never really bother with making trade routes? I just never really saw the point. I always have good tech levels and more then enough gold with my 80-100 cities. The only time I use caravans is for wonders and only have routes when the AI wanders through my continent to my capital with a caravan.

I play prince and king mostly are trade routes more essential at higher levels?

Wonder if in civ3 they will be more important(at least to me ).

[DaveV]

See this thread for a "lively" discussion on this topic .

[East Street Trader]

The difference (which counts) at the higher level is unhappiness. You'll struggle to establish that number of cities unless you adopt an ICS approach and get lucky with terrain.

So trading becomes more significant (for the perfectionist) as you need to increase arrow count so as to combat unhappiness efectively.

[ZoboZeWarrior]

I was using trade route expecially for Wonders first.

But at the end I begun to appreciat trading.
I liked using Trade route with alien civ. It give consequente amount of gold sometime.

Trade route are good for extra luxaries so somewhat helpfull in cities with unhappiness problems ...

[Gothmog]

The really good thing about trade, and it took me a while to appreciate this fact, is that not only does it pump up cash flow, but also science.

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"There is no tiddle-taddle nor pibble-pabble in Pompey's camp."

[Ecthy]

Question: if a tech is 50 beakers before being discovered and I gain 80 beakers from a trade route being established, does it mean I start with 30 beakers PLUS in the next tech a turn later?

[Scouse Gits]

No - there is absolutely no tech carry over from trade - indeed you cannot actually get a science advance from trade alone - if you have science at 0% no Eins (and no random beakers from rounding) you will never get an advance. Exactly how close to full your trade can get you is AFAIK not yet completely determined, but a hypothesis that had some weight around a year ago was that the trade bonus could only fill two thirds of the remaining beakers.
Hope this helps...

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Scouse Git[1] -- git1@scousers.net

"Staring at your screen in horror and disbelief when you open a saved game is one of the fun things of a succession game " - Hueij
"The Great Library must be built!"
"A short cut has to be challenging,
were it not so it would be 'the way'." - Paul Craven

[East Street Trader]

Judging solely from the appearance of the line of beakers when you press F6 I believe the beaker bonus can get you to one beaker short of the total needed.

I usually try to organise delivery of high value caravans/freights to take place when there is still a goodish way to go to the next discovery (workiing on the basis of the received wisdom that there is a cap on the total bonus which might be a percentage of remaining beakers) but sometimes I have a number of caravans/freights in the territory of a hostile civ and want to deliver them all in one turn for fear of them being destroyed, or else a ship arrives with several on board all of which can be offloaded into suitable ports in one turn and I don't want to keep the ship hanging around. On these occasions I sometimes press F6 before each delivery just to see roughly how many beakers I'm getting for each. Inadequate as that evidence may be, it suggests to me that the limitation is not in fact a percentage of the beakers remaining. The progress towards the next advance seems to continue to relate to the amount of gold generated until you get right up to the point where the bar is full.

It is a little hard to judge, though, because the point along the bar which corresponds to it being full seems to move around a bit from advance to advance.

[EOL]

I thought that the max payout was 2/3's of the requirement for your next tech and that you can fill the box with caravans but require some beakers from a city to actually obtain the advance. I guess that those who play on giga-maps will have more experience of the big hauls of gold and beakers and would be better able to tell.

EOL

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"One day your life is going to flash before your eyes, make sure it is worth watching."

[Scouse Gits]

On re-reading my post I realise that there is an ambiguity - what I meant to say was that a trade bonus could only fill ?two thirds? of the gap left at that particular moment in time - I like you, EST, am not convinced by the 2/3 recieved wisdom - it does seem to be more generous than that - but given that we can't currently even accurately predict what the gold from trade will be it is very hard to be prescriptive on beakers - and indeed it is certainly possible that the gold is limited by the beakers in some way rather than the other way round!!!

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Scouse Git[1] -- git1@scousers.net

"Staring at your screen in horror and disbelief when you open a saved game is one of the fun things of a succession game " - Hueij
"The Great Library must be built!"
"A short cut has to be challenging,
were it not so it would be 'the way'." - Paul Craven

[East Street Trader]

SG

That is the first time I have seen a suggestion or speculation that the formula for the gold bonus might have an additional factor, limiting the total available in some way.

I'm deeply suspicious of my memory but, at first blush, I feel there may be something in it. I sort of feel that when I deliver multiple caravans in a turn the later ones may be taking some sort of hit.

But I do tend to deliver the one which is going to attract the biggest bonus first which may make that feeling merely a psychological one.

Anyway, this strikes me as very amenable to play testing so I might keep a desultory note or two.

You (or SG[2]) kindly provided a link to a neat little ruler which I discovered I'd mislaid last time I OCCed. If you've got the link handy it would assist me.

By the by, do you have any trick to cope with the varying end position on the bar (assuming I am right to think it does vary)?

[Scouse Gits]

EST - I think you are talking about the 'Cool Rule' available from here. Good luck with the Lab -- My own feeling is that after the first few advances the end point seems to be a fairly constant 4 or 5 inches on a 17" monitor, but you might like to observe the slight 'interference fringes' that are ofttimes visible - these lead to a more accurate count of individual beakers ...
Or - like Rib and her ilk - you could resort to detailed paper and pencil note taking - far toooooo messy for my blood.

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Scouse Git[1] -- git1@scousers.net

"Staring at your screen in horror and disbelief when you open a saved game is one of the fun things of a succession game " - Hueij
"The Great Library must be built!"
"A short cut has to be challenging,
were it not so it would be 'the way'." - Paul Craven