Setting up a Caravan network is needless busywork. It's also a complete interface cludge that's just really, really unpleasant to deal with.
Think it's fine in your little empire? Try ensuring every one of your cities is connected on a larger map, in the midgame, on a higher difficulty, when cities are rapidly changing hands and routes are getting broken or ravaged by monsters. It sucks.
I don't have any issue with attacking on-map caravans (though again, visuals get in the way of this, unless you zoom out to cloth view, caravans are not easy to spot), but the process of building, evicting, and targeting every caravan - then trying to confirm if it arrived at the right city, then discovering 20 turns later that you have a caravan idling in a city, or arrived at the wrong city - not one bit of it is fun or interesting.
Handle it through a special UI panel, handle it through a Trade window on the kingdom interface, handle it through a Trade tab on the city, whatever, just don't handle it through the unit movement ui.
Agreed x 1000, making sure every city is connected to every other city is mind numbing.
Thirded! Pain in the @ss! And also... what ever happened to the caravan limit to prevent exponential expansion gains?
Agreed!
ABSOLUTELY AGREED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I absolutely abhorred the caravan setup in WoM. The ONLY reason I would build the caravans in the beginning was to create roads, becuase in no time at all wandering monsters would destroy them all. When a caravan is killed, it just says "Caravan from xxxx was destroyed". Really? And where did this caravan go to? Choose the wrong city tro send another one and it might sit there because that town had reached its limit, blah, blah, blah. I read that one faction in FE has caravans that cannot be destroyed, but that ought to be the way it is for ALL factions--just some factions get more benefit from them. Or--if you want wandering monsters to have an affect on caravans--let them stand on a road and block your caravans until you destroy the creature(s). Or... if a creature (or opponent) engages a caravan, they just rob it and you get no bonus from that caravan for 2 turns or something (inspiring you to eliminate what's robbing your caravans). But to have to figure out where it was going, build another and send it--only to be destroyed a few turns later--is monotanous.
Speaking on this topic... I wish you could also set up "intelligent guards". I would try to place a unit on a road and hit "guard" hoping to make monsters think twice about messing with my caravans. Those idiots would sit on that one tile, and let monsters ravage my carvans in the next block over. I wish you could have a unit guard a "grid" that you highlight and select, and if anything not friendly comes into that grid it goes after it. If it leaves that grid the units just goes back to the middle of the grid and waits for the next enemy. Now THAT would be useful.
Agree 100%. This is WoM leftovers that needs to be removed ASAP.
Agreed. It just doesn't work.
Automate caravans. Roads build up the same. Monsters/armies can stand on the road or stand outside of the city to block off trade.
Agree. A civ style system where roads provide trade and unit move bonuses would be great.
Hmm, I don't like the caravan system either, but right now I'm having another problem. I sent two caravans (from different cities) to an unconnected city, but when they arrived they couldn't enter the city and create the route. I just get the "bump" sound and they won't move in. What am I doing wrong?
EDIT: Nevermind, it works now... guess it was just a bug.
Here here!
The caravan system should be a building, not a unit. Call it "Traders Depot" or something, and have it connect to one city per city level. This could automatically generate a road. Perhaps a paved road if both cities had trade depots.
I almost never bother with caravans now. Protecting them is annoying, and constantly rebuilding them is a chore.
Hear hear! Automate caravans! They are no fun - but a tedious necessity to boost "gold" production
I'm not a beta player, but it sounds like a good suggestion would be to use the system that total war series uses for land trade routes. In TW, if you put a hostile unit on the road being used by a trade route, not only do you disrupt the route, but you also raid it at the same time, diverting a percentage of the resources being generated by that route into your coffers. This makes behind the lines raiding profitable and means that you have to devote some energy to guarding them if it is a possibility.
It's simple, and it works.
Agree with OP.
I wanted to add my agreement. The caravan trading system, as is, is a micromanagement nightmare.
Will plus this one.
I agree wholeheartedly.
I think the "Trade Depot" idea is a good one as well--requires some investment on the front end, and could easily(?) be balanced by the city level.
A city of Level 1 can only connect to one other city, a city of Level 2 can connect to two cities, Level 3 can connect to FOUR cities, etc. (Exponential growth of connectivity, basically.)
Set it up so that they connect to the closest city automatically, and go from there.
I also like the idea of a monster or enemy army camping on the road and "breaking" the trade route until you open it back up by removing the impedance.
Agreed. The littel trade screen would be helpful.
Showing -
* which cities are connected
* which are connected but without working caravan
* list of idle caravans
* caravans on the way, but not on routes - with a little line connected to start city
If I could choose idle/moving ones and point them to one city that'll be great
I completely agree with the OP. The idea of vulnerable caravans populating trade routes is awesome. Micromanaging them: not so much.
There really is no reason that establishing trade routes couldn't be made easier. Give me a button on my city for "establish trade route", let me pick a target city, then automate the rest, including costs.
Agreed. Current system becomes a nightmare as the game goes on, especially on larger maps.
I think Sword of the Stars had a great trade system, although some disagree. Basicallyyou have trade sectors and could assign freighters and escorts to each sector. Sometimes random raiders would attack a sectoracne prompt a battle. We could do something like that in FE. It would be easy to manage from a single screen, and would not force us to micromanage caravans or guards, and we could tell at a glance the status of the entire trade network and build new caravans and guards with one click.
Techs and buildings could determine the number of caravans, profit, effectiveness of guards, etc.
Each city would form a trade zone. You could then send raiders to any trade zone, or any zone you border. Random enemies would also raid your trade zones, especially if there are active lairs nearby.
Roads would be included here, and would improve or degrade based on your investments, techs, and buildings.
I'd actually be in favor of going back to the tried and true method for trade. Give pioneers the "roadbuilder" trait, let them build roads whever you want (1 turn/square in faction lands, 2 turns/square outside, 4turns/sq in swamp, desert, 16turns/sq over mountains (have to be able to move onto a mountain square to do that, though). Make it an "improvement" that adversaries can destroy. If a road connects two cities, give a 1%/level of the city trade bonus. Make pioneers stackable so that 4 pioneers can complete a road over swamp in 1 turn.
Agree with the OP 100%. The caravan system is a mess and has been since the beginning.
I would like to see a much more civ like method of building both roads and improvements. Have some sort of worker unit that can build roads between cities that's also required to build improvements on resources. Model trade routes automatically, as soon as the road is completed caravans just start moving between the cities and are open for pillaging, but they're not user built units and are automatically generated at the cities.
One second apart. Great minds, jpmcconnell...
I wouldn't even use the worker mechanic, instead, like was previously mentioned, have a trade screen where you can setup and manage traded routes for each city.
Yep. Agree completely. If it is best to have a large caravan network then please automate this. This is the last of the micromanagement pains from WoM.
I think that idea has merit from a standpoint of ease of managing your traide,s mq, but it makes it hard to think about how you could hold trade routes at risk in a war situation (or even from the creatures of the wild). Could you lay out a mechanic that allows for trade route disruption in the "trade screen" setup?
Maybe we reimagine the whole concept of trade.
Here's a thought: Each level of city earns a number of "trade points". Let's say one per level. Let's say you have 2 level 5 cities, A and B, and 5 level one cities, V, W, X, Y, and Z. A and B each have 5 trade points. V-Z each have one. You can spend one trade point in each city to build a trade network between them, using a trade screen as you have specified above. When you do that, a road automatically appears between those two cities that grant each unit moving on it +1 moves. There are 5 levels of road: Path, dirt, stone, paved, and magical, and each level confers a +1 move bonus to each unit on it. Each level of road also confers a trade bonus; +5%, +10%, +20%, +40%, +100% (or some such with balancing). You "level up" a road by choosing to spend more trade points between two cities. So, I could spend all of A and B city's trade points in establishing a magical road between them, but then I have no path to V-Z (V could have a path to W, say, and X could have a path to Y). Or, I can make a dirt path between A and each of V-Z, getting less trade bonus (A would get 5x5%=25%, V-Z would each get 5%, for a total of 50%, as opposed to A and B getting 100%, and V-Y getting 5%), but letting me move troops a little faster to each of those (likely to be frontier) cities (or outposts). The reason I like this mechanic is it provides a good "guns vs. butter" choice for me: better trade, or a little better troop movement and defensibility of my outlying realm.
Roads can be attacked by a simple "disrupt" action (it should be a trait, not every army can disrupt a road, just those who are designed to do so, like engineers). If you disrupt a road, the trade link is lost, each of the cities on the ends get back their trade point (ie, it's not gone for good), but you have to set the trade route up again. Let's say it takes 1 turn/level to set up the roads (ie, magical roads take 5 turns to set up, growing each turn from path through to magical).
Okay, that's an alternative idea that abstracts trade from caravans being a unit, needs no builder unit, allows for strategic choice, and can still be held at risk as an asset, which allows for economic warfare.
Winni
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