Maximum Amount of Trade Arrows

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Scouse Gits
but my memory could easily be at fault...

SG[1]

Hmm, alcohol kills brain cells:

/me puts 2 and 2 together

/me gets 4.

[DaveV]

Originally posted by Lars-E
I had rivers and traded with different continents. Normal production.

As I understand it, the cities must share a continent in order to maximize the trade arrows. Different continents give higher delivery bonuses, but lower ongoing values. Even with your phantom railroads, I don't think you can gain the road/rail bonus if the other city is on a different continent.

[solo]

Lars-E,

Trade route arrows are increased with a connecting road and railroad, if the cities are within a distance of 22. I believe these bonuses will outdo anything you can set up between two distant islands. IIRC, these bonuses each add 50% to the trade route arrow totals.

[War4ever]

actually now that i remember, i think i have had low 50's for trade routes in OCC, does that count? i forgot about OCC and then saw SG's report on trade. IIRC it was a wine, gold, silk, whale city

[rah]

Yeah, now that I think about it, I think I had one in the mid to upper 50's in OCC. Of course my memory is so poor, it was probably higher.

[War4ever]

well thats just it, not to mention i can't remember that far back.....perhaps someone else can trigger my memory

[solo]

I set up two cities using the cheat menu. Each had 4 gold and the other tiles were grassland. All city tiles had roads and rivers. Both cities had superhighways, and one had the Colossus wonder. The two cities were connected with a road and a railroad. In the Colossus city I added a marketplace, bank, stock exchange, and all scientific improvements and wonders. After this 3 freights were used to establish 3 trade routes.

Total Trade Produced: 423 arrows
Trade route sizes: 87 arrows each
With taxes at 100%: clearing over 1000 gold/turn
With science at 100%: 3384 beakers
With luxuries at 100%: No worries

The road and rail bonuses were not as stated in my last post. This Super Trade City without a rail connection was producing 372 arrows and without a rail and road connection, 318 arrows, so by adding both of these connections, the arrows went up 33%, from 318 to 423. I believe the 50% increases apply to the amounts received when delivering commodities.

I do not think higher trade values can be achieved with a two continent setup having two cities at maximum distance, which will just increase your payoff bonuses, and not the route bonuses. I think the best you can do for a two continent route is 52 arrows.

[War4ever]

now i have to test this out too......but in a game , not in the cheat menu

[solo]

It's very unlikely that a random start will produce an opportunity to obtain as much trade. Probably a little more than half these amounts is the best I would expect from an actual game.

I was interested in seeing how many arrows could be generated with fully optimized cities, necessitating the use of an edited map to create ideal cities and use of the cheat menu to speed things up in order to get a quick answer to the question being posed in this thread.

[DaveV]

Originally posted by solo
The road and rail bonuses were not as stated in my last post. This Super Trade City without a rail connection was producing 372 arrows and without a rail and road connection, 318 arrows, so by adding both of these connections, the arrows went up 33%, from 318 to 423. I believe the 50% increases apply to the amounts received when delivering commodities.

Solo - are you adding in the city's base trade when calculating the road/rail bonus? Using your numbers, I calculate the trade routes at 70 with roads, 52 with neither roads nor rails. This gives a trade route income bonus of 33% for roads, and another 33% bonus for rails.

[War4ever]

Originally posted by solo
It's very unlikely that a random start will produce an opportunity to obtain as much trade. Probably a little more than half these amounts is the best I would expect from an actual game.

I was interested in seeing how many arrows could be generated with fully optimized cities, necessitating the use of an edited map to create ideal cities and use of the cheat menu to speed things up in order to get a quick answer to the question being posed in this thread.

yes point taken, i am also curious as to what the possiblities are on a regular game.

i will have to monitor my small maps mp games for the results....

one question i have, is four gold the highest amount our trade arrows that a city can get from specials, or do combinations work best. IIRC gold produced the most arrrows...so naturally i would assume this to be the case, but have not tested this theory, especially since i usually end up with an iron or two mixed in with my golds in this case, not so much in an mp game as production and trade is a nice blend

[solo]

DaveV,

Yes, I was speaking about base trade. The road and rail add 33% each to the arrows for each route, as you say. Here is a summary:

Without roads or rail

Route arrows: 52
Base Trade arrows: 318

With just a road connection

Route arrows: 70
Base Trade arrows: 372

Add a railroad connection

Route arrows: 87
Base Trade arrows: 423

The road and rail added 33% to the base trade arrows, resulting in an increase from 318 to 423. Route arrows went up 34% with a road and another 33% after the rail was added, with both providing a net increase of 67%.

The 50% bonuses I was referring to are those that you get from roads and rails when calculating caravan and freight delivery payments, which is a separate matter not affecting the number of arrows a city can obtain for its routes or base trade.


War4ever,

I'd be curious to see what you can manage in a regular game, too.

I'm sure you can not do better than gold, since gold provides more arrows than any other special, and all amounts associated with Trade are based on arrows.

Other trade specials such as wine, silk, and spice are good to use, if 4 gold are not handy, which is almost certain to be the case with a random start. (I have never seen this happen).

Iron is great for production, but useless for trade, but combining it with gold creates a strong city, very potent for MP games.

A mined wine gives very good production and trade and is perhaps the best special when you want or require both shields and arrows.

Oil is not bad, if you want shields early, but would prefer some arrows later, since it can eventually be transformed into silk.

Similarly, wheat is very good for rapid growth, after which it can be mined into silk for more shields and trade.

[ramses II.]

Has anybody seen oil on a river yet?
----
In some MP games, I build some cities on (pre)mined oil (if oil is available, else iron or coal) ... only fo caravan production purposes.

[Lars-E]

Originally posted by solo
I do not think higher trade values can be achieved with a two continent setup having two cities at maximum distance, which will just increase your payoff bonuses, and not the route bonuses. I think the best you can do for a two continent route is 52 arrows.

Would be interesting to see how high the payoff bonus could be.

[Caesar the Great]

during OCC games i've seen upper 40's... but that was with a mid-sized AI city - of course my city had the works