How do trade routes work exactly?

[Aytee]

After I've signed commercial agreements with factions, how do I establish trade routes? I see I have active trade routes with 1 of the 3 I have signed. I don't know how I have activated the first one, and dunno how to activate the two others. Help ? =)

[Zarthol]

Trade routes work auto-magically, both internal and external with other factions. You can have 2 I believe on capital, and then 1 with further cities which can be increased with technology.

Check out https://www.reddit.com/r/endlesslegend for some great content and stuff on the sidebar to the right with links that have helped me learn the game.

Here is the most helpful item - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=407299720

[easytarget]

The short answer in my view is not very well.

[PhailRaptor]

Originally posted by easytarget:

The short answer in my view is not very well.

Actually, they work quite well.

The problem is that the AI rarely, if ever, even researches the technology to unlock the road building achievement, let alone actually building it.

[MezzoMax]

Originally posted by PhailRaptor:

Originally posted by easytarget:

The short answer in my view is not very well.

Actually, they work quite well.

The problem is that the AI rarely, if ever, even researches the technology to unlock the road building achievement, let alone actually building it.

With the newest update they do this really early. Around turn 70 my Drakken neighbours have roads in all their regions I can see. The newest update improved this a LOT. before I had to gift this tech to them and they still didn't build the roads. Sadly I play as Necrophages in this game. :-)

[Aytee]

Originally posted by MezzoMax:

Originally posted by PhailRaptor:

Actually, they work quite well.

The problem is that the AI rarely, if ever, even researches the technology to unlock the road building achievement, let alone actually building it.

With the newest update they do this really early. Around turn 70 my Drakken neighbours have roads in all their regions I can see. The newest update improved this a LOT. before I had to gift this tech to them and they still didn't build the roads. Sadly I play as Necrophages in this game. :-)

So if I just get an commercial agreement it will start to trade automatically if the AI has the necessary research as well?

[Faust]

if the AI has the necessary research AND has built the improvement in its territory.

[BigBaIIs]

You have to build roads in every one of your cities and they must be touching borders to trade within your empire.

With commerical agreement your neighbors must have roads built AND they must be touching your borders as well.

Trade system is convoluted for sure.

[MezzoMax]

I think trade routes work without commercial agreement. The agreement just buffs existing routes to that empire. Am I right?
Otherwise it is true that the AI must have the tech and build the roads, as well as yourself. You can see if the AI builds the roads because they are built automaticly on the map. If only one of you has built roads the region of the other one will only have dirt roads, no paved roads. The dirt roads just indicate where the "real" roads will be after the owner of this region has built roads in this region.

[Ԇaᵶîeƪ]

The agreements are buffs towards your trading partner and urself while also increasing their hapiness towards you. Both cities need the trading improvement building and a trade route will naturally spawn. There's a limit to how many trade routes each city can have but can be upgraded/researched later to increase capacity. The research is in the second era "Imperial Highways", the building is called "The right of way". The research for increased capacity i believe varies per faction or is faction unique, too lazy to look at each research tree per faction tbh.