Theben,
That would lend support to my theory on how the "tying up" of available supply and demand commodities works.
Any city that receives a caravan has the potential to tie up that commodity as a supply option in the city that sent the caravan. (Putting that commodity in parentheses in the supplying city's city window.)
A destination city ties up supply commodities in a source city
only if both:
1) the source city sent a commodity that the destination city demands and
2) this particular route from the source city is one of the destination city's three
best trade routes (as judged by
permanent trade arrows).
Only when this happens is that demand finally met and put in parentheses in the destination city.
If you only meet the first criteria, but not the second, you still get the "meet demand" commodity bonus to your one time gold and beaker reward - you just don't tie up any commodities.
Note that the source city still gets permanent trade arrows from the route (regardless of whether it meets any of the criteria) as long as the new route is better than all the existing routes (permanent trade arrow wise) in the
source city.
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Theben,
This means that City A could send an undemanded bead caravan to City B and, surprise, City B could have one of it's previously met supplies suddenly become unmet (also freeing up that commodity as a supply option in the city that previously met it)! This would happen if City A had a relatively large number of natural trade arrows so that when it's undemanded caravan set up a route with City B, this new route was better that the third best route that City B already had, thus kicking that demand-meeting route off of City B's top three list.
This example is what I postulate happened to you. The final dye or gold caravan you sent came from a trade-rich city thus making a new trade route which was better than the silver route that city previously had. (Not only was your new route better than the previous silver route but also the silver route would have to have been the third best route that city had. It wouldn't surprise me if some of the earlier caravans you sent helped bump that silver route down in the city's top three list until you finally established three better routes.)
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Adam Smith,
This means that City C can send a demanded silk caravan to City D, and yet, surprise, City C can still make silk caravans! This would happen if City C had relatively few natural trade arrows so the new silk route was worse (in City D's eyes) than City D's other three routes.
I postulate that this example is what causes the Repeated Commodity Trade situation you describe. What's really happening is that the destination city (call it City E) already has three really good routes and also has one or more unmet demands. Whenever a new caravan arrives with a demanded good (say from City F) it can't compete with City E's three established great routes. Thus City E doesn't have it's demand tied up, nor does City F have it's supply tied up.
The dream ends when some city (maybe even City F after being beefed up by some "We Love" days or centuries of growth) not only meets City E's demand but does it with a route that's more lucrative (permanent trade arrow wise) than City E's previous three best routes.
This seems to match some of SCG's experiences:
quote:
In one game I had an AI capitol demanding dye. With some experimentation, I found that if i delivered the smaller payload dye caravans first, I could deliver more dye caravans before the AI demand changed or was satisfied.
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Here the initial smaller dye caravans aren't beating the existing three routes in the AI capitol. Once one does, the demand is met.
The fact that you rehome all your caravans in your SSC throws a wrench in this explanation. The only thing I can think of is that the magic cities already had three
undemanded routes from your SSC (or some really big AI city). Otherwise your first demanded caravan from your SSC should have met my criteria and tied up the demand in the magic city. After the magic city had three great undemanded routes, the new trade routes from your SSC would at best tie the old routes in quality (having same number of permanent trade arrows as the previous routes which are also from your SSC) so the new routes would never meet my second criteria by virtue of never being
better than the three established routes.
I guess I'll need to test my theory further.
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Of course, this theory doesn't address the mysterious changing of types of supplied and demanded commodities. (e.g. Thebes used to demand silk, coal, gold - now it demands silk, coal, dye - go figure).
