Quay use question.

[Aoi Arashi]

Are they only useful for trade within your own empire? (It seems that way so far.)
I can see a great deal of usefulness in the Ba area, as roads are not going to happen, but navigable rivers are all over. However, the upkeep cost of 80 per turn makes them useless the first 80 to 100 turns as the ones I've built return about 30 to 40 per turn, even with bronze and pottery in the city in the middle. (My city sizes were something like 36 to 40, with only one having enlarged.)

Anyone have suggestions, or is the cost per turn just prohibitive till after turn 120 or so?

[Aries]

Well sea trade seems to be jacked up for now.. I made a post explaining this in the bug forum if u wanna have a read.. but basically, distances don't jive:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=775097300

I took few cities from White Di and few from turbans.. Now, Guangyang has a wharf- upkeep 140.. It's trading to Lingshou and Zhongshan; for 160 and 161= 321- 140=181 profit.

Since those two require at least a quay to receive sea trade; that's upkeep of 80 x2=160 and both of those cities only have local junk they export for 10 each so 20 income: 160-20=140 loss
So, total trade bet those 3 cities.. 181-140 is a whopping 39 profit
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=775388277

Now it's map dependent, if Guangyang had mulberries or the pottery bonus icon thing.. or the other two cities had it's own unique resource they could trade, that would've made it much more profitable.. So if you can place cities with access to a resource they can export to each other it would be worth it..

[DarkThug]

From what I see, naval trade is mainly useful for long distant caravansary re-export. From there, you setup a new land trade network. For remote region, this might be more cost efficient than building cities+markets+caravansaries along the way. Not to mention less burden to authority. That being said, it is pretty map dependent.

I don't think building quays in every cities along the river is the way to go. At least not until late game where all your cities are 100+. Even then I'm not sure if it is better than building only a few market every other city. I haven't done the math myself yet.

[Aries]

I'm not sold on caravansaries either..
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=775231219
Egyin has jade exports to Dingling and Burkhan..Jade is op; it trades for 400 to Dingling. I put the cities there so Gekun could re export jade to 4 other cities..

Watched my incomes before and after Caravansary got built. didn't notice any increase in my treasury and since it says that it would re export the trade goods imported to the city.. I don't see Jade being exported in Gekun to the 4 cities it's trading with. So quite the disappointment not getting all that extra jade income..

[DarkThug]

From what I've seen from your screenshot, there is no trade route between Egyin Gol and Gekun. I'm assuming you only build caravansary at Gekun, that's why there is no imported jade for Gekun to re-export.

You need to either upgrade a market at Egyin Gol so it can reach Gekun, or setup a bazaar+caravansary at Dingling or Burkhan so they can re-export an imported jade to Gekun for further re-export.

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Take another look at your other example, Xiong Nu's White Di. Assuming you know how to properly connect trade network and Pingshan is now your next designated trade center equipped with wharf, caravansary and possibly market (probably not needed in this case). It is ready to export any good your empire have to offer to your newly conquered territory.

you only need a single quay at Guangyang to receive whatever good Pingshan has to offer. From there, you setup another bazaar+caranvansary at Guangyang, so it can export all the good to Da, Lingshou and Zongshan. No other cities need anything.

You will want to upgrade Guangyang's quay to wharf only when you conquer new territory deeper into China and want to export all the good there. And your newly designated trade center only need a quay to import it. Then caravansary+bazaar/market to export it to surrounding cities. In case that you newly conquered territory has an exotic good that your empire hasn't got yet. That's when you will consider give it a wharf to export it back to Guangyang, then Pingshan, then the rest of your empire.

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Admittedly, I haven't done a detailed math to see which is best option in this situation between
A. pure land route
3 bazaar + 3 caravansary = 420 upkeep
B. my setup
1 wharf + 1 quay + 1 bazaar + 2 caravansary = 460 upkeep
C. pure naval route
1 wharf + 3 quay + 1 caravansary =480 upkeep + another 140 for bazaar+caravansary if you don't want to leave out Da

It depend on whether an income worth an upkeep of wharf/quay. You may be better off simply using three sets of bazaar+caravansary at Pingshan+Zhongshan+Guangyang. Or, if the trade is lucrative enough, naval trade superior modifier might offset an upkeep of 1 wharf+3 quays.

EDIT: forget about Pingshan's caravansary in calculation :p

[Aries]

If you had clicked on the pic and see it in full view you could've counted the distance between Egyin and Gekun and it's 16 hexes. Which would've made your first paragraph a moot point and saved you time typing. And of course both cities have a market

Recent patch made it so the route follows a road and the trade route from Egyin to Gekun is actually moving along the road towards Dingling and it passes the city just south and continues down the road to Gekun..

So to reiterate; actual distance is just 16 tiles and both cities trade with each other since the patch made trade a straight shot between cities. Gekun after building a caravansary didn't increase my income and there's no jade being exported from it..
Are we Clear now>?

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As for the other example I'm just talking about distance and straight sea trade. nothing bout caravansaries or other non sense... You can count the hexes from Pingshan wharf (30 hex trade) to Lingshou quay at 17, theres no trade route.. to Gangyang wharf- it's 23; no trade

Guangyang already had a wharf when I took it from turbans who took it from White Di.. and if you manage to count the distance from its wharf to Pingshang wharf- it's at 23 hexes.. no trade.. only two sea trade routes from Guangyang is to Linshou quay-6 hexes away and Zhangshan wharf-21 hexes away..

So obviously it isn't just distance from quay to quay and either it counts distance from the city to its own quay or something is screwing it up like the land trade and rivers pre patch..

Yeah, I know you only need a quay to receive sea trade.. I wrote that in my first post on top.

[DarkThug]

1. How do I know if Egyin Gol has a bazaar or a market ? You never mentioned that. I did count the distant between two cities and see that you need 18 hex market, not 12 hex bazaar.

Since you mentioned there is no jade reaching Gekun, the only natural conclusion I draw is that Egying Gol only has a bazaar.

2. there is also no way for me to know if that route is from Egyin Gol-->Gekun or Gekun-->Egyin Gol. since it's not moving and tiny arrow is not visible.

In case you don't know, you need Egyin gol's market to reach Gekun for Gekun's caravansary to work. Not the other way around.

3. I only use you previous post as an example to showcase my point about connect caravansary. Because you also complain in that one that naval trade if not worth it unless you can get resources to trade (which is obviously intentional). And you seem to have problem connecting such a simple caravansary in the second one. So I might as well show you.

4. Are you sure you are not forget to scroll down ? A trade to Pingshan might just be there. I might be wrong here. A screenshot of bottom part of that trade screen would be nice. Also don't forget to end a turn to make sure it update correctly if you just capture the city.

That route indicator might be a simple graphic glitch. The color is wrong to begin with anyway.

5. I'm trying to be helpful here. If you are rude again. I will stop wasting my time.

[Aries]

Alright, I assumed you didn't look at those screens, didn't mean to come across as rude..

So>1,2:>> you could've seen the trade routes coming out of Egyin which are more than 12 hexes. so thought that was obvious it has a market.

3> Wasn't complaining about sea trade, was simply answering the OP question and showing examples from my current play. It takes few factors for a profitable sea trade since the upkeep is higher. Is it cuz I wrote jacked up? That was a statement referring to numbers.. It's a game, so idk where you got complaining from.. And never said sea trade wasn't worth it.. Even with the other two cities operating at a loss with upkeep for 2 quays, Gangyang exported enough thru sea lanes to make a profit for all 3 cities.

anywho..

And 4>>In the pic of sea routes. I'm holding my mouse over the trade routes coming out of the wharf at Guangyan, you can read in the pop up window on the bottom that it's showing only 2 domestic routes which are white in color; to Linshou and to Zhangshan and one foreign- to Linzi. So I didn't miss a sea route to Pingshan by not scrolling in the income window.

Here is Egyin exporting jade to Gokun
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=775589574
Gokun trading with Egyin and other cities- no jade being re exported
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=775589587
and it has a caravansary
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=775589599

And 5> well, we can jibber jabber bout game things, but to me looks like you wrote before either looking at my previous posts or missing the things from pics I pointed out.. I just wrote few things I noticed like no re exporting jade even tho a city has a caravansary and sea trade numbers not quite adding up so Devs take a look at it and fix it.. like they fixed the land trade routes yesterday..

[DarkThug]

Upon carefully check every caravans in my save game. I do notice several oddities. A few caravan does indeed miss a few good. Majority of them are still working fine though. Which is more of a mess actually, when things are inconsistent like that.

However, in order not to derail this thread any further, I will take all my finding to your trade bug thread instead (with some more testing and composing when I have more time later). The topic of this thread is, afterall, how to use naval trade, not a bug we might find. While we may encounter some along the way, the principal is still the same.

Basically, naval trade has an expensive upkeep. So it only worth it only when it involve large enough income or long enough distant that you may need several hop of land caravan otherwise.

I'm also not convinced that building ports to all cities along the river is the way to go. Although I don't know definitely which is better between pure land route, pure naval route or mixed route. That is what we should be discussing.