What is Capitalization?

[Oldman]

Hi SCG, Good point about the food caravans!!! i suppose that if you've only got the food caravan option, you'd be best off building Capitalisation!!!!!!

But a further question about trade... I've found in the occ games that for huge periods of time i'm not able to build a caravan with a tradable comodity?!?! when it would be a greta help to get cash coming in, is there a way to reset the traded comodities, or make one become available?!?!!??!

Nice to have you with us SCG!!! so what do you study then? and where to you come from? just being nosey...

[SCG]

Can't say I have much of an answer about changing caravan options - i can guess that significant city growth or certain new technologies factor in, but I haven't been able to see any real pattern to it. Often, it seems like as soon as a caravan reaches its destination, the things your city supplies change.

Then there is the bug with hides, where even if you are supplying hides somewhere, you can still build more hide caravans. I've not seen that mentioned in the forums anywhere yet, though i'm only back to threads that had their last posts in april 2000. Was it fixed with a patch sometime?

As one further insight, i've noticed that caravans register as one of your 3 trade routes only if they are with a city that has at least 1 more trade arrow than any of your 3 current cities, reguardless of other factors. So if I want to trade with a foreign city that has less trade than a city
I'm already trading with, i temporarily decrease the # of arrows in the city i want to eliminate. Easy to do with my own cities - I just make everyone an entertainer. Harder with foreign cities - you have to squat on their trade specials for a turn. I don't do that too often, for obvious reasons

Anyway, since you asked, Oldman, I'm a grad student in Computer Science over in the eastern US

[Oldman]

I'm kind of new to all this trading business myself!!! i hardly ever used to use caravans for anything but wonders until i played occ and saw the point!!!!! i never knew about the bug with hides, i'll have to have a look!!!!


have fun doing your computer science!! can't wait to get back to uni myself next year!!! lazy days again!!!!!!!!!!!

[DaveV]

In the absence of someone who knows what he's talking about (*paging Adam Smith*), I'll post my opinions on trade routes.

I think you can "reset" a trade commodity by establishing a trade route from a different city. For example, you, as the Romans, have trade routes with Berlin, Washington, and Delhi. If Berlin already has 3 routes established and you send a caravan from Veii to Berlin, Rome may reclaim its commodity that it sent to Berlin (while still retaining the trade route). I'm not a big trader, but this has worked for me in the past.

As for food caravans, they can be worth a lot more than coins if used to help build a wonder or a spaceship part.

[Oldman]

Cheers DaveV,
Just one query though? How do you do that with occ??????? i'm not playing any other types of civ game at the moment!??!

[tonic]

While we're talking about caravans, 2 questions:

1. While playing OCC3 I had the first 3 caravans - hides, oil and gold - around 600BC but no civs demanded any of the 3. Is this common?

2. Has the AI the annoying tendency to change the demand for your caravan commodity if you land in your own airported city or ends up on a square adjacent to the destination city (only to find your long trek devalued by loss of demand on the next turn)?

[SCG]

I'm a little surprised no one was demanding hides - they are pretty common especially in BC - but you're usually lucky if you can get more than 1 city to demand oil or gold, and in my experience, a lot of those cities are quite small (1-3), making it not really worth it.

As for cities changing their commodities enroute, i've seen it a few times, but i tend to trade with capitols (since they usually are unriottable), and tend to supplement roads around those capitol cities to cut down travel time and bolster the trade gains so I don't really know how common it actually is.

[DaveV]

I don't play OCC much, so this may be a fluke, but I built 4 (non-food) caravans in OCC 8 before I delivered any. When I delivered the 3rd and 4th caravans (all to the same city), two commodities became available again. Eventually, I got greedy and sent some caravans to a city that was bigger and further away; this messed up the recurring commodities. I think I would have been better to build a chain of ships and send caravans every turn to the original city.

[Paul]

Hides are usually in demand somewhere in the BC era, but gold is rarely demanded and oil is usually only demanded later in the game. From my own experience, dye is usually the most demanded commodity.

[catullus]

Paul: I think a civ must have developed trade before it can start having demands (and obviously supplies). By 600BC the other civs just might not have discovered trade yet. Give thy neighbours the trade tech, and you should see the initial trade bonus grow.
Can this be confirmed by anyone?

C.

[tonic]

Your hypothesis makes sense, Catallus!

[Scouse Gits]

Sorry Catulus - had a game going where the Russians were researching trade - but clicking on Moscow still gave the demands...


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Scouse Git[1]

"CARTAGO DELENDA EST" - Cato the Censor