Once a road has been built between 2 cities, what is the purpose of caravans going back and forth? When I replaced a destroyed caravan I didn't notice any difference in either city.
Now I'm not sure if the below incident was caused by a bug or not but I guess I should report it.
I have a caravan and pioneer being escorted by a recruited Ogre. Yes yes very Shrek...
They get attacked by a single low-level spider (I have the auto battle slider down to 0) so the battle options window pops up. But the only active button is the auto-battle button. I shrug and figure the Ogre will wipe out the spider no problem. Imagine my surprise when the spider wins. I'm not sure if by some miracle the spider defeated the Ogre or if there is a bug where caravan escorts are not factored into battles..
how did you escort a caravan? Caravans are unable to join groups, unless you edited the XML.
The caravan, pioneer, and ogre just merged together as you would any other group of units. This is before the trade route is created you understand.
It levels up the road! Seriously. Click on the miniature caravan, it tells you what bonuses it gives, plus there is a progress bar that fills up, mouseover tells you how many more trips till the road levels. Found out jut a while ago, awesome!
It levels up the road on a geological scale, a few thousand years after the game has completed the road will be level 2 (perhaps, but only if it is a really short caravan).
Yes, it takes a very very long time. Especially so, if you direct caravans as to maximize food production and not just to the next city at hand. Then the distances for one trip can be quite long and the road will effectively NEVER upgrade.
It rather should be something like an upgrade needing ... lets say 100 points and you get one point per turn on a road between city X and Y for every caravan that uses this road. In this way, heavenly frequented roads around your main caravan destination cities / city would upgrade faster than the periphery of your empire. And this would in my opinion feel more naturally than just having an incentive to make the round-trip or the caravan distance as short as possible.
As the system stands right now you can only choose between either food production efficiency or the still VERY long-term prospect of a road upgrade. In my opinion not much of a choice.
Rabenhoff
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