Building roads for trade.

[Sten Sture]

If you want to partially follow Vengers advice and at least limit the AIs trade while still getting plenty of your own....

Pick a small boxed-in friendly AI, say a civilized perfectionist like the Babs or Persians, that has a decent city location, and do all of your trading with that city. If the city is ocean adjacent, you can ship in anything you want. Ally with the civ if you wish. Give them the techs for Aquas, Sewers, Supermarkets, Superhighways, Airports, and bridge building. The AI will never take as full advantage of trading as you can, they haven't learned the concept of trade dumping! It might get 3 +20 routes, but you can get a hundred times that if you need to, just make sure you can intervene if they are threatened militarily...

Build caravans, then rush build some more.

Don't bother building roads to another civ. (Unless you are going to use it as an avenue of attack ) Instead, build 8 caravans, put 'em on a ship, and send them to a civ on the other side of the world. Do this every turn, and you'll find yourself reaping 6K or more gold a turn from trade routes. This works a lot better thatn building roadss to another civ.

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Long live the Communists!
-- SilverDragon

[SandMonkey]

Wouldn't cornering off an AI civ early, reducing it to one or two cities, and using that as a trade buddy work, also?? Then you really don't have to worry about how much trade you're giving the AI since they will pose no threat to you in the future. Also, if you just trade with one AI city all the time, then after the third caravan yo uare giving the AI no more advantage, you just reap all the benefits.

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SandMonkey

"Shut up brain or I'll stab you with a qtip"
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"Ecky ecky ecky!"
"It's just a flesh wound!"
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Check out my 1602 A.D. site

[Venger]

quote: Originally posted by Bird on 04-25-2000 03:38 PM Once you have superhighways, you almost have to try not to get one advance per turn if you have a decent trade system going. Personally, I don't think this issue is even close, regardless of what the ai is doing in its own cities, but don't forget that just because YOU don't set up trade routes with ai cities doesn't mean the ai won't set up its own routes. So your refusal to trade with the ai cities ends up costing you 50% of the delivery gold bonus and 50% of the delivery science bonus, all to avoid giving the ai something it will probably get in many cases anyway.

Are you saying you get a SCIENCE bonus with each successful caravan/freight? Not just money in the bank, but light bulbs toward research? If so, that's freaking NEWS TO ME, I've played Civ since my Amiga 500 ran it off 4 floppies and never have read you get a lamp bonus for trade routes...

If that's so, I'll be GOD DAMNED...well, that changes some things. Can't believe that having owned Civ, Civ2, Civ2MGE, CTP, and Civ2:ToT, that I've never read or noticed it.

Venger

[Venger]

I'll be DAMNED!!!

Page 21 in ToT book says you get a matching equivalent of trade beakers toward research. Son of a gun!!!

Well, that just makes those 600%+ Deity scores that much more impressive...he he...

Venger

[Bird]

Welcome aboard venger, there is no better place to learn this game, no matter when you started. Believe me, I know....

We look forward to your contributions.

[Bird]

(Controversy to follow) BTW, this is all just a bunch of theoretical BS. Face it, when was the last time you were ever in a position that you needed to set up all these trade routes in order to win. As far as I can tell, this is only relevant if you're trying for a high score or an early launch, and if it's an early launch, it's only relevant for a very short period.

Other than that, listen to Adam S. He knows what he's talking about.

[Bird]

PS: You can listen to Sten Sture at your own risk. He's often delirious. More so recently