Caravans?

[jarjargaba]

I need help to know what caravans does and if they match? you know with supplies and demands? can all caravans match the supplies and demands between every cities?

[EdwardTKing]

Caravans set up ongoing trade routes with other cities.

Each of your cities can have up to three trade routes.
You can set up a trade route between two of your cities or with a city owned by another civilisation.

You simply build your caravan and move it to the other city and a route is created!

There are two main benefits to cartavans.

The first benefit is the initial (once time only) bonus when the route is formed; the second benefit is the ongoing revenue which you receive each year.

Unless it is near the end of the game, the ongoing revenue is more important than the initial bonus.
Ongoing revenue tends to depend upon the size of the cities and the type of government owning each city.

I do not think it is too important to match demand and supply. If you have a caravan which can be delivered to two different cities of about the same size and once city demands the goods but the other does not; then send it to the city demanding the goods.

Some goods such as copper and uranium are often demanded more than others; so produce them if you have a choice.

[Scouse Gits]

You missed an important item - the one time gold bonus for delivering a caravan is matched by an identical one time beaker bonus - this can make enormous changes to your researh rate

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Scouse Git[1]

"CARTAGO DELENDA EST" - Cato the Censor
"The Great Library must be built!"

[jpk]

Just because you can build a caravan with a given nonfood commodity it does not mean there is a city that demands that commodity.

While I agree with EdwardTKing's comments that it is not too important to match supply and demand,I disagree when he writes, "Unless it is near the end of the game, the ongoing revenue is more important than the initial bonus."

Caravans and later freight units do provide extra trade arrows that help keep cities out of disorder and in We Love the ? Days. Elaborating on what Scouse Gits writes, while the one time monetary bonus is useful, you simultaneously get a one time science bonus of the same size as the monetary bonus. The science bonus from a single caravan can easily be greater than several turns of science output of your entire civilization.

A few weeks ago Dave V started a thread on the strategy called ICS, Infinite City Sleaze. Basically that strategy involves building as many cities as possible as fast as possible. Other than building caravans for wonder building, caravans play little part of that strategy. If you choose not to build a lot of caravans that would be a good alternative strategy.

[strategicking]

Arghhh. The trade benifits to the city is irrelevent. You want the gold revenue. With that you can buy another caravan and send it to establish another route. This is a self-sustaining strategy that is assured to work. Launching massive offensives with junk crusaders or catapults is not guranteed to work. Seemingly you get paid more gold if you have the lighthouse(my exp. is a bout 25% more but i could be wrong) and the lighthouse prevents others from sinking your ships as they will never see them coming.

[Scouse Gits]

Although there is now some dispute as the the exactness of the formulae contained here the Scrolls of Ancient Wisdom give an excellent indication of what factors influence trading.
Good civin'

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Scouse Git[1]

"CARTAGO DELENDA EST" - Cato the Censor
"The Great Library must be built!"

[debeest]

The manual describes some factors that determine the value of trade routes and bonuses. While the Scrolls of Wisdom reference addresses some of them, I've been calculating the "expected" values of my caravans and finding the actual values to be not even close to them. Moreover, I've been finding that the formula gives much more uniform values than I actually get. That is, most of the calculated values are within fairly narrow ranges compared to the much more variable values I actually get. Scrolls of Wisdom is wrong on both the trade route and bonus values and on the cost to bribe cities. At this point I'm skeptical whether they even accurately IDENTIFY the factors that affect the values, much less HOW they affect them.

[Sten Sture]

quote: Originally posted by strategicking on 09-04-2000 10:35 PM Arghhh. The trade benifits to the city is irrelevent. You want the gold revenue. With that you can buy another caravan and send it to establish another route.

Are you sending them to the right place??

I consider the trade benefit to the city to be substantially more important than the one time gold bonus. The science bonus I would put first, but the per-turn benefits allow for civ-wide WLT_Ds and with any kind of a perfectionist approach get multiplied quickly to overwhelm the initial gold benefit.