Trade routes are working well overall, but I think itâs time for some adjustments.
Letâs start with the aesthetic:
The trade routes in Africa are great, but the speed with which the trade caravan moves is ridiculous. Camels donât exactly stand out for their speed in real life (I know they can run, but itâs not usual when they carry merchandise on top of them). Thatâs why I propose that instead of scaling its speed, they scale the resources it delivers on the route, while the caravanâs speed remains the same. This would give more realism and uniqueness to African trade routes. Same for shipping/river routes using non-steam ships. It also doesnât make sense for him to scale his speed.
The trade route tracks must also be changed, which are currently the same as stagecoach tracks, but should represent the foot prints of camels and human travellers.
Current
Fix
Fix Conga Line Camels
In case you use the us federal card âcorliss steam engineâ, the second upgrade of land and shipping/river trade routes will be replaced by a train or steam ship respectively, as this would not make sense for camels or ships who use candles The changes will be made to all trade routes on the map, and since itâs just a cosmetic change I donât see the problem.
Gates on the trade route:
Trade routes have always been an obstacle to building a good wall, and I understand that the purpose of this is to make it more difficult to dominate the map so that the enemy can attack more easily with raids, but I think that this in the long term It is irrelevant. That is why I propose that once you reach imperial and you have made all the improvements in the trade route, you can build a gate on the trade route, since the trade route hinders the construction of a good defense a lot.
There are people who oppose this because âit would be very easy to win by monopolyâ, but canât you enclose the local populations? They also count as TP to carry out the trade monopoly.
Again, this would only be enabled in the Imperial era and with all the path upgrades done, so it doesnât affect early game.
[Poll] Would you like to be able to build doors on the trade route after the imperial era in the standard game, or at least in the treaty mode?
A new improvement (telegraph):
Late game trade routes donât have the impact they do in the early game, so I propose the following. Because people and I think developers donât seem to be willing for trade route resources to increase significantly (in addition to delivery speed rates), I propose a new technology called telegraph. It is basically the precursor of all current telecommunications.
Telegraph: Each trade route TP you control reduces the experience cost of shipments by 5% and increases the arrival speed of shipments by 5%.
This upgrade will be available after researching iron horse and equivalents, both land and sea/river routes. This is how it would look on land routes approximately:
It could also be a technology in the European university if it is ever implemented.
Finally: Add naval/fluvial trade routes on maps where there are none yet, such as the American and Asian maps. New Maps with Riverine Trade Routes
