Trade Minister's Report and Poll

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Trade Minister's report:

I recommend our foreign trade be focused on the Japanese and Chinese for a number of reasons:

First, they're closest. Our transports can move from Freeport harbour to a point where they can offload Freight in Chinese/Japanese territory in one move. In other words, it's fast. The longer transports are at sea, the more risks they face (sneak attack) and the harder they are to defend. A long ship chain to Mongolia, say, would require a number of Aegis/Battleships to defend. Even assuming that we lose a Transport to enemy action after offloading Freight, the bonuses would easily pay for a new one to be rushbuilt. Freight lost en route, OTOH, is a dead loss.

Second, both the Chinese and Japanese have republican governments, meaning that the base trade will be fairly high and the bonuses better than those from trade with a fundamentalist state, all other things being equal.

Third, the Chinese and Japanese cities within range are almost all large, well developed cities. They're all around size 12, with the surrounding terrain thoroughly roaded and railroaded. Not only does this mean fairly good trade bonuses, but it also means that if we land a Freight on a road or RR, there's a good chance we could move it to any one of several cities that same turn.

Fourth, the analysis below suggests that there are no greater benefits to be gained by trading with other nations (only greater risks, as outlined in point #1)

ANALYSIS of foreign cities close to Freeport
====================================

Chinese cities demanding:
Copper 7
Coal 6
Dye 6
Silver
Spice

Japanese cities demanding:
Coal 9
Dye 7
Silk 6
Copper 4
Spice
Wool
Wine


We have:
No Copper suppliers
Coal - Capua, Port Easton
Dye - Amazon Island, Kerman
Silk - a number of cities, notably Vigo, Darkness's Fort, Cavebear City, Turin

Most of these suppliers are fairly small, trade-poor cities. The upshot is that we're not going to do extraordinarily well trading demanded commodities with China and Japan.

However - our cities richest in arrows supply Hides, Oil, Gold, Uranium (St Praski, Cadiz), Salt, Cloth, and Silk (Vigo). Of these commodities, there is some domestic demand for Oil, Gold (Vigo), Uranium (Capitol and many others), and much overseas demand for Silk. But there aren't many large cities in any foreign civilization demanding any of Hides, Oil, Gold, Uranium, Salt and Cloth. Certainly there is not enough demand in the Celtic and Mongol lands to justify the risks of a long sea voyage.

On this basis, the trading we do should be:
a) domestic - demanded commodities, especially Uranium for the huge bonuses, and Oil.
b) foreign - with China and Japan, demanded and undemanded commodities.

I recommend building Uranium Freights in St. Pratski ASAP, and completing the one in Cadiz. If these repeat, they could be very lucrative when delivered to CAPITOL, Valencia, Cadiz, WIAT, Vigo, Avila, and Leon.

As for Oil - we have a number of smaller cities supplying oil and a lot of larger ones demanding it. Thus, trade in Oil should be largely domestic. Our bigger cities that produce undemanded Freight should ship them to China/Japan - the foreign and overseas bonuses should help us greatly. I'd be willing to bet that the bonuses are 200g+ - which makes delivering Freight a better deal than using Freight to build SS parts.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Of course, even if you agree, discussion is welcomed.

I'm not one of those trade gurus who can tell when demand/supply will change in advance... I believe in a KISS approach to trade, and I believe my strategy is exactly that.

[cavebear]

I reached the same conclusion when I subbed for you last session. The trade opportunities were really very limited, which surprised me. In some ways, we are too advanced for good trade with the other civs. The few good trades were quite lucrative, but there even fewer now.

I agree with your KISS strategy, that's how I play it, too. Choose a product that is generally good (Spice, Silk) or known to be demanded and expect to deliver it somewhere later. I never have learned the tricks of (the) Trade.

[Ben Kenobi]

If we can't ship, we might as well ship to our own cities. We're at the point where a bonus needs to come now or never.

[SCG]

Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man
I recommend building Uranium Freights in St. Pratski ASAP, and completing the one in Cadiz.

I originally had St Pratski slated for building freight for that very reason, not sure why I changed it - will change it back I know i was starting to look at how to prevent the commodity from being blocked. We'd have to deliver to a rather small city like Rabbitton to keep from replacing a current trade route. Otherwise we'd have to get 3 trade routes to cities like Avila or CAPITOL or other really large trade city first so the uranium supply doesn't get blocked.

Also, I'm a bit confused at the lack of use made of the CAPITOL freights (i'd been advocating deliveries to cities that were never delivered to since mid last term when I was trade minister, such as gold to High Tower - wouldn't have been blocked before it grew to 7, likely would block now). We never did make a 2nd deliver of Wine to Leptis Parva and subsequently got it blocked. Also the pamplona-cadiz ferry is now stranded in the middle of the straight, causing loss of movement of whatever it carries if we use it where its stationed right now.

One the plus side, we do have 2 Hides freight in CAPITOL, so we can get repeating Gold and Wine if we deliver a hides freight to Avila (highest trade arrow city on the map) or another large trade city. That should create a non-replaceable route and give us a chance to deliver wine or gold or possibly uranium or oil at some point from CAPITOL. Of course it only does us any good if we don't idle all the freights built until the start of the next cabinet meeting as we seem to be doing of late... The gold freight would appear to have been built 4 turns ago (based on its position on the stack in CAPITOL) and still is idling.