Trade Routes

[Scouse Gits]

If I might make an undocumented observation - I have never seen Uranium as a supplied commodity (by my city) in OCC ...
Draw whatever conclusion you may from this ...
Good civin'

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Scouse Git[1]

"CARTAGO DELENDA EST" - Cato the Censor

[jpk]

Producing and then delivering a nonuranium freight unit often causes a city's commodities to change. It is not my experience that this means a new commodity will likly be Uranium.

Once I get radio I build truly massive numbers of freight units. Since I like to maintain a spotless reputation throughout a game I often get deep into future technologies. I play on 10,000 square maps and gradually conquer the world. Toward the end of such a game I have over 100 cities. At any one time close to half of the cities will be building freight units and I buy sufficient number of shields so that freight unit can be built in one turn--even if it means buying all 50 shields.

Even with that kind of freight unit building Uranium freight units are extremely rare. If simply building lots of freight units were the way to get Uranium as a commodity I would see far more opportunities to build Uranium freight units than I do.

In all the games I have played I can only recall one in which I had a city that reliably built a Uranium freight unit every other turn. That said, most of the time most cities never supply Uranium very few supply uranium more than once.

Again, I play the Macintosh version which may behave differently than the PC version.

[debeest]

I don't build many caravans (something I probably need to change), so I'm not all that experienced with them, except for building Wonders out of. But I've been checking carefully lately, and finding that the supposed formulas for bonus and ongoing trade given in the scrolls of wisdom archive are not really even close to accurate. Does anyone know how those formulas were generated and why someone thought they were accurate? Does anyone have a better idea how to predict bonus and ongoing trade?
[This message has been edited by debeest (edited August 22, 2000).]

[SCG]

The problem with those scrolls of wisdom reguarding trade isn't that they aren't accurate, but apparently things like the road and railroad bonuses only apply to certain game settings (or something like that) Trade between foreign civs is still a lot more profitable than domestic trade. Trade on different continents is more profitable than the same continent. And the multipliers for commodities in demand are also accurate. Of course they also leave out some other things like the lingering trade bonuses (in some cities, you can get double the trade arrows) In general though, they are a good reference.

[debeest]

This thread is of particular interest to me so I'm bumping it. William, how are you doing? Can you tell us HOW you're trying to decipher the trade equations?

A note: someone in this thread suggested that the caravan/freight science bonus may be only half as great as the gold bonus. I've been playing OCC lately and watching my science extremely closely (counting every beaker I get, and generally wasting only about half a dozen beakers per civ advance even when generating hundreds of beakers per turn), and I can say definitively that you do indeed get exactly as many beakers as gold.

Another note: I recently completed a road between my city and the city I'd traded with (no airports), yet there was no change in trade value. Moreover, in the same game, I completed trade routes to three different cities with different trade, distance, etc., yet the trade values were all the same. This proves to me that the Scrolls of Wisdom formula is false (just as a single white raven disproves the claim that all ravens are black). Maybe in SOME situations a road will enhance the trade value, but if we don't know why or when that happens, the formula is inadequate. The more I've looked at them, the more wildly inaccurate I find the Scrolls of Wisdom formulae. From the manual alone I know that the trade or the bonus is increased by (1) large city (2) faraway city (3) city on other continent (4) foreign city and (5) demanded commodity. The Scrolls formulae give me no more predictive accuracy than I get from that knowledge. Is there anyone who can rip the code apart and find the actual formula? William, is that what you're doing?

[Scouse Gits]

Thanks for bumping this debeest - it is pretty important that we finally get to the bottom of this mess.....

Another random undocumented thought that just might help the formulaists out there...

Has anyone given any thought to the return route? It seems to me that occasionally delivering (say) "Hides to Tashkent - desired" will cause one of the desired goods in my city to become parenthesised - could this happen when Tashkent produces a commodity I desire? Have I dreamt this? Does it matter?



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Scouse Git[1]

"CARTAGO DELENDA EST" - Cato the Censor
"The Great Library must be built!"

[SCG]

I've seen that a few times, although I haven't spent a whole lot of time thinking about it. When I first started playing a few years back, I tried to coordinate both ways because I thought it produced a larger bonus. I have no idea if it does or not now, and haven't really paid much attention to it of late...

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Sleep is a luxury and I don't have Shakespeare's Theatre in my back yard.

[William Keenan]

quote: Originally posted by debeest on 10-04-2000 12:27 AM This thread is of particular interest to me so I'm bumping it. William, how are you doing? Can you tell us HOW you're trying to decipher the trade equations?

In order to finish my paper on Advance Slot Properties I began to research the trade topic to determine what effects the discovery of different advances have on trade bonuses. What I discovered, of course, was that the Scrolls of Wisdom were not completely accurate, so I began researching the topic myself from scratch. I soon discovered that the formulas were more complex then I had a first imagined. For example, in the case of determining the gold/science value of a delivery there are actually multiple formulas.

Getting back to your question about how I am doing with it. I have allot less
The little time I have for Civ2 these days has to be divided among many projects and papers such as next revision of the Barbarian Paper, my work with the Scenario League, my web site, The Cradle of Civilization, and scenario creation and collaboration projects. Thus, the trade research project has fallen off my list of priorities and it is very unlikely that I will pick it back up again any time soon.

As to your question about HOW I decipher the trade equations, no I’m not ripping the code. The method I employ is quite simple; identify, isolate and test each variable in the formula. If you have the time and are interested in devoting the long hours needed to breakdown the formula I would gladly teach you how.

[Quantum Satis]

debeest, October 04 you wrote:

"I recently completed a road between my city and the city I'd traded with (no airports), yet there was no change in trade value."

I think the program only check one route between the two cities, and if the road is not there, those cities are considered "not connected". If you lay down roads on all squares between the two cities, you should get the 50% increase in value, or 100% for railroads. The return route you get when trading with your own cities usually don't go the same way as the forward one.

[DaveV]

Quantum Satis - I theorized a long time ago that the path that would qualify as connecting two cities is the auto-move path between those cities. Makes sense from a programming standpoint.

[The Mad Viking]

ScouseGits:

quote: One game (2.42) I was Communist and started to send food caravans to increase the population of my capital. The contributing city never showed any loss of food!

As I understand it, only the first carvan results in a -1 food production. You can always build subsequent food caravans from that city to the same destination city w/o losing additional food production.

Debeest- the question was are science beakers from caravans halved if you are in FUNDY!
Also, thanks for mentioning the "other continent" modifier. I have found it to be very important.

To WK- keep up the excellent work!
(If anyone still doubts you about oil demand and industrialization, I noticed this too, and have never seen oil demand w/o industry)
I seem to see wine, gold and gems being supplied more often from cities with these terrain specials. But that could simply be an illusion, that I simply notice it when it occurs.

[Shogun Gunner]

quote: Originally posted by SCG on 07-26-2000 07:33 AM I'd send out the caravans anyway Just find a nice big city to send them to. The more trade routes per city, the better. And eventually the commodities will change to something you can get big trade from, and you have the extra trade in the mean time. The other thing I do is try and build a 'great road' between my civ and the AI I am most likely to trade with. It doesn't affect the size of the trade bonus (contrary to most of the posts here), but it gets your camels there a heck of a lot quicker. Also, that road can facilitate the building of more cities as well

I know this is super late, but I'm playing a game where I was late with bogus cargo four times in a row!!!!

You almost need an airport on both ends to get Hides, Wool or Beads on time. How did ancient man do it? It just seems a little weird to need super fast technology for such low tech goods.

[tonic]

quote: Originally posted by William Keenan on 10-13-2000 01:40 PM As to your question about HOW I decipher the trade equations, no I’m not ripping the code. The method I employ is quite simple; identify, isolate and test each variable in the formula. If you have the time and are interested in devoting the long hours needed to breakdown the formula I would gladly teach you how.

It would be helpful if you could summarise the principles and give an example of the form the formula takes and its basic methodology.

[Crustacian]

Copper seems to be only from size 2 cities.

[Quantum Satis]

DaveV: Your theory that the trade route path is the same as the auto-move path seems to be correct. An Explorer unit sent from one city to another takes the same path as the trade route (if there is no railroad). Alpine troops and Partisans can also be used as pathfinders.

If a trade route path passes through another of one's own cities, the road bonus is given if the road is completed to that city and it doesn't matter what is beyond that city, but if it passes through another civ's city or unit before it reaches another of one's own cities or the destination city, then no road bonus is given.