Trade Routes

[Scouse Gits]

Oil is sometimes demanded before Automobile - usually by a fairly large AI city. However, during the early years of demand it can suddenly change - usually to coal.
(This experience relates to: 2.42/Deity/Hordes on a large world)
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SG (2)

[Adam Smith]

Matthew:
I too have used wonder building caravans to change the commodities supplied. It seems to work better using commodity caravans instead of food caravans, but I have no idea why.

William Keenan:
I would agree that achieveing the industrialization tech generally causes cities to supply oil. However, I have alos seen cities which supply oil well before 0AD. While this could be part of the initial allocation of traded commodities among cities, there is, of course, no demand for oil at that time. Interesting idea about superhighways though. Any other thought on what begins or ends the supplyor demand for certain commodities?

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[Scouse Gits]

In my experience the demand for oil seems to have little relationship to superhighways. I think it might have more to do with the discovery of the Corporation - those trucks are around before the automobile - and they need oil.
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SG (2)

[SandMonkey]

Could the advent of which commodity is in demand change from game to game? I have found that when my cities change to the "modern look" changes from game to game. I've gotten it with Electronics, Automobile, and Computers. Maybe different advance can trigger the demand of something for each different game.

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SandMonkey

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[William Keenan]

quote: Originally posted by Adam Smith on 07-31-2000 08:17 AM William Keenan: I would agree that achieving the industrialization tech generally causes cities to supply oil. However, I have also seen cities which supply oil well before 0AD. While this could be part of the initial allocation of traded commodities among cities, there is, of course, no demand for oil at that time. Interesting idea about superhighways though. Any other thought on what begins or ends the suppler demand for certain commodities?

Yes Adam Smith, I have seen cities that supply oil before 0 AD as well. This of course is not something you want to have happen since no cities demand oil and without demand you don't get oil's value bonus of 350%.

I have done extensive research to discover other trigger technologies and trigger improvements. The only other one that I have found is for Uranium. Nuclear Fission causes the supply and demand for it.

quote: Originally posted by Scouse Gits on 07-31-2000 07:15 PM In my experience the demand for oil seems to have little relationship to superhighways. I think it might have more to do with the discovery of the Corporation - those trucks are around before the automobile - and they need oil. -------- SG (2)

There is no need for speculation on this topic because it is very easy to test. Go into cheat mode, give yourself industrialization and see what happens to the commodities your cities are supplying. Use the edit technologies option so you don't have to develop all the prerequisite techs first. Likewise, you can cheat in superhighways to verify that they cause the city to demand oil.

[Adam Smith]

I thought, and I think some others here have mentioned, that there was another condition on the supply of uranium. For example, nuclear fission plus a new city, or city less than size three, or city with mountain square. Also, I have a very subjective impression that AI civs stop demanding gold once they move out of monarchy. Your thoughts?

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[Scouse Gits]

William - If you are saying that an oil supply is guaranteed with industrialisation and likewise a demand guaranteed with superhighways - I'm sure you are correct. However, many AI cities have demanded oil long before automobile was even on the horizon - so there is considerable speculation on the subject.

What size of world did you use for your tests?

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SG (2)

[jpk]

William Keenan:

It may be that nuclear fission is necessary for cities to supply and demand uranium. It is not sufficient.

I am a compulsive micromanager checking every city every turn and, with some games, I have been deep into future technologies before I ever had a chance to build a unranium freight unit.

To be sure there were always many cities that demanded uranium.

If it matters I play with the Macintosh version. It is hard to imagine that their would be a difference with respect to uranium supply but I would not know for sure.

[smilo]

quote: Originally posted by Novi Nomad on 07-18-2000 09:10 AM D'oh! Didn't think about that. I guess that might explain the disappearing arrows...

It is possible for trade routes to dissappear, without the sending city was destroyed. This happened to me with self-trading cities (cities that trade with ... themselves). Under certain circumstances not yet understood, cities can trade with themselves. If a city does this during an extended nr of turns, trade routes can suddenly disappear. Why? No idea.

[jcarkey]

William:
If there is a "special" terrain square would that produce more trade? i.e. spice,gold,wine.

If a trade square, i.e. gold, is being used in the city management screen will that allow you to have more than one trade route with that commodity?(That's happened to me before but I'm not sure if it was a bug in my early version.)

Also, do certain terrain squares produce different supplies?

Thanks for being a brave soul digging into this tricky topic!

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[SCG]

quote: Originally posted by smilo on 08-08-2000 08:43 PM Under certain circumstances not yet understood, cities can trade with themselves. If a city does this during an extended nr of turns, trade routes can suddenly disappear. Why? No idea.

I've seen 2 different situations where a city could trade with itself.

The first was simply sending a bribed NON caravan in and establishing a trade route - it will create 2 actually, assuming the city having more trade than other cities (if any) it is trading with.

The other way I don't quite understand , and haven't been able to duplicate. For some as yet explained reason, a caravan built by a particular city was allowed to reenter the city and establish a trade route a couple turns later.

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[Scouse Gits]

The whole trade scene is an enigma. 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!
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SG (2)

[Scouse Gits]

double post
[This message has been edited by Scouse Gits (edited August 23, 2000).]

[smilo]

I've had a game where over 40 cities could trade with themselves. I think the total number of cities and the development level influences the number of cities that can trade with themselves. But, as said above, I've never been able to get a grip on the workings that allow self-trading.

The self-trading works to the extend that you can produce a caravan send it 1 square out and back in all in the same turn. Even food caravans work fine, meaning that a city can take care of its own 'forced' growth, which comes in handy for cities isolated on islands. For obvious reasons this trick has been banisched from occ games.

[William Keenan]

quote: Originally posted by Adam Smith on 08-01-2000 11:31 AM I thought, and I think some others here have mentioned, that there was another condition on the supply of uranium. For example, nuclear fission plus a new city, or city less than size three, or city with mountain square. Also, I have a very subjective impression that AI civs stop demanding gold once they move out of monarchy. Your thoughts?

I think there is way too much complexity in that theory. In my experience the only thing that matters is which techs have been discovered.

If you want your city to produce uranium just build and deliver a trade commodity you don't ready want, like salt or hides. This will cause your supplied commodities to rotate and in all likely hood uranium will be the newly choosen commodity. Then just build a urianium caravan to replace that salt route you setup.

I can not confirm or disprove your theory about gold Adam. I would tend to think the the reduction of gold as a supplied commodity has to do with that fact that more new types of commodities are becoming available as supply items and gold thus is being selected less.

quote: Originally posted by Scouse Gits on 08-01-2000 03:10 PM William - If you are saying that an oil supply is guaranteed with industrialisation and likewise a demand guaranteed with superhighways - I'm sure you are correct. However, many AI cities have demanded oil long before automobile was even on the horizon - so there is considerable speculation on the subject. What size of world did you use for your tests?

I have never seen a city demand oil before industrialization. I have seen cities supply oil without industrialization however.

I use normal maps for my testing.

quote: Originally posted by jpk on 08-02-2000 02:45 PM William Keenan: It may be that nuclear fission is necessary for cities to supply and demand uranium. It is not sufficient. I am a compulsive micromanager checking every city every turn and, with some games, I have been deep into future technologies before I ever had a chance to build a unranium freight unit. To be sure there were always many cities that demanded uranium. If it matters I play with the Macintosh version. It is hard to imagine that their would be a difference with respect to uranium supply but I would not know for sure.

I addressed how to get your cities to supply urainium above.


Sorry it took me so long to answer you guys. Alas, life once again had to be put before civ ... ** sigh **

[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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[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.