you should always build an additional market close to the neutral market and train traders from there, after each trader has collected its first load, switch their “home market” to the farthest market. the trader immediately gains a “full” load of trade instead of having to do the initial run
this saves minutes off the initial run of each trader. i havent seen anyone do it in any of the matches ive played, so thought i should reiterate here
Wow thats amazing. Great find bro.
I might a bit late to the party. I saw a lot of pro’s doing this strategy. Luckily I found your post, which clarifies some things. But I still have one question, do you have to select the traders individually or can you shift-queue the commands with the market (before they spawn)?
Yes, you can shift-queue the commands!
yeah this was before people worked out how to optimise it
now you build 2 markets, one adjacent the neutral market, one, opposite side of the map. shift queue to your fartherest market and then to the neutral one. if you dont do it in this order the trades dont do return trips or something
I think they should actually remove this capability. Force the traders to make contact with their “home market” first before going to the other to pick up gold.
It would fix the exploit the Malians can do with their toll outposts.
Then they could just balance trade from that point without this trick being involved.
exactly, ive always seen it as a bug, no idea why it wasnt removed before
Same thing with Religious building and Monks.
You can qeue monks and shift click the rally point back and forth between all the relics and the religious building. And the unit you produce will collect and deliver each relic you rallied.
Another trick i find extremely usefull at least for abbasid and dheli consider they tend to go for bushes is when the vills are on the last bush or 2 last bushes, you can shift click them to build a new mill near alternate food source, this make sit so when the bush runs dry, they will immidietly start moving to the next foodsource.
Same goes with villagers on woodline when the woodline starts getting close of turning dry, just select them all and shift click them to make a camp near the next woodline, and eventually once their tree is emptied they will start moving off to the next one.
Saves you a lot of idle time and microing for later stages of the game when your busy fighting.
Wow thanks a lot for the answers!
This seems like a strange interaction, but as long as the devs don’t fix it i guess we can use it. 
Then they could just balance trade from that point without this trick being involved.
I agree.
ah that means in maps like french pass you can do it twice per run xD
And TGs with micro you can do it back to back.
Or with malians you just take the toll and keep doing it in the exact same spot. Over and over.
according to RB it’s not a bug. But they wont fix it.
Devs should do 2 versions of game: for tournaments and for others. UPD: [SARCAZM]
nah, thats a very bad idea, splits the community even more. obviously pros will play on the tourney version, the huge portion of players that follow pros will want to play on tourney version to emulate, that will kill MP
Yeah I’d say that’s an exceptionally bad idea. Like potentially the worst anyone has suggested.
upd, that it was sarcazm LOL.
But what we really should do: treat game as ONE, tournaments + devs + others.
There is a huge list of “features” which considered by RB as bugs but devs are sleeping and in reverse.
Walls, stone towers, some shit with fast-repair, etc.
This is a bug that I already reported
If we are going to remove that “bug”, which also seems to work with docks too, then I think there should be some other adjustments to compensate for this, as this mechanic is one of the few things that makes trade viable in 1v1 for civs that arent mali, otto or mongols.
One good change would be to make so that traders move faster when not carrying any resources with them and move at the current speed when carrying ressources back to the market.
As for team games they could put the neutral matket more in the middle of the map instead of the corners to cut off some of the distance while making so that trade posts spawn in the corners when playing 1v1s.
Bug
Appreciate the discussion. This one is being worked on.
Oh shit… now mali will be dead last in all scenarios…
