31-07-2000 17:06									#1
	trade question Full PM-box? Change here!

Hey all. I just started playing Civ 2 last week so I'm very much a newbie! I've read through many posts here and have found them very helpful -- I don't think I'll ever forget this as long as I live: when you have enough of caravans, build more caravans!

Anyway, my question is, when I trade with other civilizations, I get a lot of benefit from this, but so are the other civilizations??? Is that a bad thing, helping out your opponents like this?

- Aislyn

	31-07-2000 17:30									#2
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Aislyn:

The other civilization will get a trade route, just like you. What you get but the AI civilization does not get is the money and science bonus for the trade route. In my opinion these are the most important benefits of trade.

If you are worried about helping the AI civilizations too much then only deliver caravans to one of their cities. That way any civilization will have no more than three trade routes with your civilization.

If you get obsessed with tipping every goodie hut on the planet you will end up with cities scattered all over the world. Then you could trade between your own cities. You will get a greater bonus if the source and destination for a caravan are on different continents.

Personally I wouldn't worry about helping the AI. The bonus that you get for delivering a caravan of needed goods to an AI city on a different continent than the source is extremely valuable. The bonus can easily be worth several turns worth of science that ALL your cities can produce.

When I play I tend to wait until fairly late before I get involved in serious battles with the AI. The measure I use to compare my situation with the AI civilizations is how many more advances I have as compared to the most advanced AI civilization. The idea is that if you can use armor to run over pikemen and musketeers then the human player has a big advantage. The only way I know of that allows that kind of advantage is to deliver lots of caravans the deliver huge science bonuses.

	01-08-2000 06:18									#3
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The AI gets a benefit, yes, but in the scheme of things, they're so incredibly tactically stupid that it won't hurt you.

------------------
finbar
Mono Rules!
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	01-08-2000 15:34									#4
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Thanks for the input, jpk and finbar. Also, I notice that we max out on the 3 routes per city as well (or what it seems to show on the bottom of the city screen). Does this mean that after this number, our 4th route won't really count as much? I notice that the trade number, science, and tax money still go up, but does the route actually show up on the bottom of the city screen (for example, Veii Gold +5) since it seems to max out at 3 routes. I'm not sure if you know what I mean . I think one time I remember adding a 4th route and nothing went up nor did I see any changes made in the city screen.

Also, why is it sometime a city runs out of trading goods and I'm only left with food -- I don't think it's a good idea to ship food to another civilization And what does the parenthesis enclosing the goods mean? That the good isn't in demand as much or the city has run out of resources to produce this?

More questions later. As I said, I'm very much a newbie

	01-08-2000 17:27									#5
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Aislyn:

Each trade route benefits two cities: the source of the caravan and the destination. If a city already has the benefit of three routes (It doesn't matter if the city was the source or the destination of the route), and a fourth route is completed. Then, among the four routes the one with the lowest trade will be discarded. But just for that city.

If you want to check that it works this way in your next game deliver the first caravan from four of your cities to the same city. Each of your four cities will have a trade route but the destination city will only have three listed routes.

A city can only produce three nonfood commodities. Suppose a city can produce silk and you build a silk caravan. That caravan represents all the silk that city produces so you can no longer produce that commodity for trade. From time to time the commodities a city produces change. When it does you can then produce other commodities. Sometimes it will happen that even after producing a commodity the city can still produce more caravans of that commodity. This last event seems to happen most often with hides.

While you may wish to send a food caravan to one of your own cities, for example your science city, I can't think of a good reason to send a food caravan to an AI city.

If a commodity is in parenthesis (either supply or demand) it means there is a route that is actually delivering that commodity. In practice you can not build a commodity caravan for a supplied commodity that is in parenthesis. If you deliver a commodity to a city whose demand for that commodity is in parethesis, then you will get less money.

	01-08-2000 20:31									#6
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Aislyn

Food caravans are most often used for helping to build wonders, although as a beginner I frequently erroneously built food caravans because I thought I had food shortages in some cities (it was poor worker/city square management instead).

I sometimes build a food caravan when I have nothing else I want to build urgently, as "storage" for the next wonder. In the meantime, I send them off wandering around the other civs to do some reconnaisance, find out where the cities are etc.

Fergus

	01-08-2000 23:39									#8
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The science bonus is the same as the gold bonus. So if your caravan gets a 200 gold bonus you also get 200 beakers added to your current research.