Settlement connections

[dbemont]

I am not one of those who is raging about the game. There's a lot to like here, and I have been having a good time in general. But the settlement connections remain a mess in 1.1.1, and this one thing I am losing patience with.

By settlement connections, I mean a) connected to the trade network, such that their worked resources can be shared by other settlements, and b) connected to specific other settlements, for example sending food from a farming town to a particular city.

The more I play and observe, the more inexplicable this seems. I honestly don't know whether it's a mass of bugs, or whether there exist detailed rules that they have not documented anywhere. My cynical side says some of both, and they are not documenting the rules largely to hide the extent of the bugs.

But I am seeing farming towns six or seven tiles away from the capital, unable to send food to the capital. Sometimes. And sometimes a merchant can fix this with a road, sometimes the merchant is not offered the option of building that road.

I am seeing a line of settlements across the continent, all within 6-7 tiles of each other, all connected as of the end of the Antiquity Age. But the moment I begin the Exploration Age, the two at the end are outside the trade network. (This happened my last game prior to 1.1.1, and again the first game after the patch.)

Honestly, I find this inexcusable. This is not an obscure corner of the game, nor such trivial aesthetic preference, it's a matter of the core systems of the game working. The devs say in their livestreams that they play the game, and they even play live. It's extremely unlikely that they do not know about this problem.

And, I would add, I think that it is fair to assume that this is impacting the AI civs, too. Me, if I see this and cannot fix it, I know enough to quit and start a new game. But the AI can't do that -- in which case i don't know that I am playing against one or more broken opponents.

[Minnesota Ray]

I have been enjoying the game, but have also been frustrated at not being able to connect a settlement to my trade network, even in the modern age (where trade range is presumably greater), even though the settlement was surrounded by nearby settlements that were in my trade network. I also bought merchants in both the problematic settlement and nearby settlements and tried to build roads to or from the problematic settlement, but was denied a "green tile" option to do so.

[Rhapsody]

Are you using a mod to check the yields or double-checking after the current turn? Some yields don't update after the beginning of the next turn. Nvm it works straight away after all.

99% of the time I've no issues connecting resources, but I have paid less attention on transfer of food. Roads should ignore continent borders, but connections over water don't. I often build my empire with the 1:1 towns for cities scheme anyway and that works.

[gmsh1964]

This is still jacked-up. I am sure its an easy fix, but until ten..., damn-it.

[hannibal_pjv]

Most likely difference between cities and towns… aka cities are the hubs that dictates the distance. So 7 from city to town… but if there are two towns at 7 to each… no connection. This is just ques.. have not tested, but would make a sense.

[Bandit17]

I never have an issue with this...anymore. Yes, the merchant creating the road is step one. Try it from both settlements. Often a fishing Quay will do the trick.

The biggest headache I had was connecting Specialized settlements 100% of the time. What I realized is if you create a Specialized town on another land mass make sure you check the continent because it will only send it's goods to it's same continent. Does not matter how close it is to your home continent it will only connect to it's own continent for whatever reason.

[BadMojo]

+1 - I've played about 40 games so far, diety yes, I believe I'm fairly experienced at this point. This is broken imho - and fishing quays. I just quit a game because I had a fantastic diety game rolling, and had two distance towns rocking resources - and fishing quays are broken. Even though both quays are on navigable river (1) next to coast, and one directly on coast, can't connect to trading network for all my other cities. I have quays and extensive trading/roads with the other towns. Extremely frustrating, no explanation given or documented about how to effectively do this, clearly seems buggy to me. And yes on merchants not being able to build roads. WTF even though clear path unobstructed by other civ, no ability to build roads.