Trade routes

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jpsm
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Trade routes

Post by jpsm »

I noticed that some ais send caravans to my cities and built trade routes.
I don't remember to have sold anything to them. Sometimes I received a message that "we cancelled trade rout to city x to ai city y", other times I don't receive this message.
Why trade matters and what's the use?
How to build trade routes?
Why sometimes trade routes are cancelled and other times not?
louis94
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Re: Trade routes

Post by louis94 »

Trade is where your taxes come from, so it's essential for science, gold and happiness. Once established, trade routes generate, well, some trade every turn, that you can turn into gold, science and so on.

Trade routes can be established between cities A and B by building a caravan in city A and sending it to B. Depending on the ruleset and server settings, there may be conditions on the two cities: distance greater than X, being from different nations, on different islands…

A city can have a fixed number of trade routes, and when a new route is established and there's no free slot, the one that generates the least revenue will be cancelled.
jpsm
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Re: Trade routes

Post by jpsm »

louis94 wrote:Trade is where your taxes come from, so it's essential for science, gold and happiness. Once established, trade routes generate, well, some trade every turn, that you can turn into gold, science and so on.

Trade routes can be established between cities A and B by building a caravan in city A and sending it to B. Depending on the ruleset and server settings, there may be conditions on the two cities: distance greater than X, being from different nations, on different islands…

A city can have a fixed number of trade routes, and when a new route is established and there's no free slot, the one that generates the least revenue will be cancelled.
Thank you very much! Very interesting!
How to calculate the distance?
Does it works automatically after the trade route be established or do I need to send the unit back-and-forth every time between the 2 cities? I hope it to be automatically!
louis94
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Re: Trade routes

Post by louis94 »

IIRC the distance is calculated using Manhattan, max(delta x, delta y), but I'm not 100% sure. Might be sqrt(delta x, delta y) as well.

The trade routes work automatically, you can see their bonus in the city dialog (it's part of the "trade" number, you can click on it and it will show details).
jpsm
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Re: Trade routes

Post by jpsm »

louis94 wrote:Depending on the ruleset and server settings, there may be conditions on the two cities: distance greater than X, being from different nations, on different islands.
Where can I find the ruleset to discover if I can send to my nation or only to other nations?
jpsm
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Re: Trade routes

Post by jpsm »

I did use caravans. Both to my cities (I choose cities in one extreme of the island to the other extreme) and to cities of ai preferring cities with more people or more distant. I suppose that I create few trade routes because it is not generate too much revenue as I would like. Are all cities suppose to have trade routes? How many per each city? Are there any tutorial explaining how to use trade routes to generate a cash flow of many thousands of gold per turn? I would like to have such a cash flow to maintain an edge and fast research race and I would like to master the trade because I was the first to research this technology too.
Other problem that I have is that because a ship (military unit) can't enter a frontier (even in water) of a nation in peace, armistice, or cease-fire without declaring war first I can only maintain internal trade and trade with enemy nations, all foreign trade is trade with one enemy nation because the other I can't circumnavigate their shores before declare war first. How to establish a trade route with a friendly nation through sea?
PS: This is weird because in real life trade is usually maintained between friend nations and not enemy nations. Make war to have the right to trade historically is something that happens only with illegal trades, If it was drug trade such as the opium war it would make sense but usually the caravan ask me to sell goods when he go to the foreign [enemy] city.
It seems that the game ruleset assumes that you would only circumnavigate foreign territory to wage war (surely this can be a very realist reason under certain circumstances) but sometimes it is trade.
It would be nice to establish normal trade with friend nations through the sea and it would be an interesting feature.
Make war to have the right to trade is a bug that can be transformed into a feature if in future versions the technology hallucinogens drugs be introduced but both types of trade ideally should not be confused.
Wahazar
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Re: Trade routes

Post by Wahazar »

jpsm wrote: Where can I find the ruleset to discover if I can send to my nation or only to other nations?
See for example augmented2 https://github.com/Wahazar/augmented2 - there are tradesettings in game.ruleset,
if income is 0 traderoute is disabled in such case.
Augmented2 ruleset/modpack for freeciv2.6: http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=91047
jpsm
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Re: Trade routes

Post by jpsm »

Wahazar wrote:
jpsm wrote: Where can I find the ruleset to discover if I can send to my nation or only to other nations?
See for example augmented2 https://github.com/Wahazar/augmented2 - there are tradesettings in game.ruleset,
if income is 0 traderoute is disabled in such case.
Thank you very much!
Ignatus
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Re: Trade routes

Post by Ignatus »

louis94 wrote:IIRC the distance is calculated using Manhattan, max(delta x, delta y), but I'm not 100% sure. Might be sqrt(delta x, delta y) as well.
Trade distance is Manhattan but that is not max(), that is delta x+delta y (we mean, signless deltas). I.e. if trade min dist setting is 8 then two cities can trade if there is 7 tiles between them if they share a cardinal line or only 3 tiles if they share a diagonal line.

And, btw, to get corruption the distance to the capital is calculated another way - by the shortest path with diagonal movement equal to cardinal one, that is actually max(delta x, delta y). You can play on hexagonal maps where the distances are the same ;)
jpsm
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Re: Trade routes

Post by jpsm »

I received now a message "We're LOW on funds". I predicted that something on this line would happen because I only understood how to do the technology race stuff but still didn't get how to make a solid cash flow from trade. Some city sold the lab and other the bank. I knew that after the initial 50000 be consumed it would generate this kind of problem.
Other strange thing is that city improvements with upkeep 0 such as marketplaces are being sold too and city improvements with upkeep 1 despite Adam Smith wonder such as libraries and harbors are being sold too...
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