trading with stations

[AhilE]

ok si i`m 120+ turns into my first game, and form time to time I get a message that i have discovered a new station, also in the Trade overview the down most tab is called "stations" but for me it is allways empty !!!
so, how can i start trading with stations, is there a teck i much discover first, or what am i doing wrong ?

thanks

[Blackadar]

1. Have a trading building in your city.
2. Hope there's no miasma in your way.
3. Realize that it's more profitable to trade to your own cities and ignore it.

Repeat as needed.

[Fenris]

The production and food is not always better than the large amounts of money, culture and science you can get from a trade station.

[lilbudywizer]

You have to have a path to the station that doesn't pass through miasma unless you get to 6 Harmony. It's just like Civ V in that you can't pass through the fog of war, you have to push it back. They can't pass through miasma is the new part.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by lilbudywizer:

You have to have a path to the station that doesn't pass through miasma unless you get to 6 Harmony. It's just like Civ V in that you can't pass through the fog of war, you have to push it back. They can't pass through miasma is the new part.

Civ V didn't prevent you from going through fog of war. All you needed was to be able to see the destination city and for there to actually be a path to get there. This isn't the case in BE however.
Also the Alien Hybridization tech works to let you go through miasma as well, not just Harmony 6.

[zgrssd]

Rules of trading:
You need a trade building (depot; Autoplant with quest decision) to enable routes.
A convoy (land or sea) to follow the route.
A known way to the target. Miasma blocks the way like other impassible terrain, until you get colonywide immunity to it (or remove it). Coastal Scanner data is enough to trade with anything at any coast.
Only one route can exist between any two cities. And only one city per colony/nation can trade with a station.

Is it worth it:
Yes and no.
Internal trade is always adviseable - I always make a route from every city to my capital - but only yields food and production.
The second route is targeted at my most recent outpost/city, to help it catch up to the longer established ones. This technique served me well so far.

Trade with other colonies yields energy and science. It also results in better relationships as long the route comes from your side.
But it also gives the other side energy and science. The science is more important, as it means they could out-tech or out-wonder you. More adviseable with factions being of other affinity (less conflict for wonders and strategic resources if affinites differ).

Stations Routes can give you science, energy and culture without aiding a competitor/potential later enemy the same way.
On the other hand, if the lands they occupy are good it can still be more worth to raze them and build a city instead. A city on itself will longterm give you better yields then trade with a station, but the health, science and virtue penalties limit how many cities you can have.
So sometimes keeping a station around (for a while) is a good idea if you can't afford another city right now. Stations give you penalty free income if you trade with them.

[admiral awesome]

EDIT: answer to deleted post
trade convoys can only pass miasma when you have immunity provided by the one tech at the upper right side of the tech web or harmony(6). otherwise it shows a big red circle over each tile that contains miasma and blocks your path in the trade route selection

[Mansen]

Yep - But Fog of War has NOTHING to do with blocking passage. They will happily sail across the known world through fog.

... and get themselves killed constantly unless you pick the completely mandatory alien immunity to avoid being attacked.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Mansen:

Yep - But Fog of War has NOTHING to do with blocking passage. They will happily sail across the known world through fog.

No they won't. You have to have a known path for them to cross. Which is one of the reasons why Coastal Scanner is so good.

[Mansen]

What part of "known world" do you not understand? Fog of War is not undiscovered tiles.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Mansen:

What part of "known world" do you not understand? Fog of War is not undiscovered tiles.

I missed "known world" but the context earlier in the thread was referring to fog of war as undiscovered tiles.

[Mansen]

And I made an attempt to correct that - Obviously a waste of time...

[mechanicalboob]

Originally posted by zgrssd:

Rules of trading:
You need a trade building (depot; Autoplant with quest decision) to enable routes.
A convoy (land or sea) to follow the route.
A known way to the target. Miasma blocks the way like other impassible terrain, until you get colonywide immunity to it (or remove it). Coastal Scanner data is enough to trade with anything at any coast.
Only one route can exist between any two cities. And only one city per colony/nation can trade with a station.

Is it worth it:
Yes and no.
Internal trade is always adviseable - I always make a route from every city to my capital - but only yields food and production.
The second route is targeted at my most recent outpost/city, to help it catch up to the longer established ones. This technique served me well so far.

Trade with other colonies yields energy and science. It also results in better relationships as long the route comes from your side.
But it also gives the other side energy and science. The science is more important, as it means they could out-tech or out-wonder you. More adviseable with factions being of other affinity (less conflict for wonders and strategic resources if affinites differ).

Stations Routes can give you science, energy and culture without aiding a competitor/potential later enemy the same way.
On the other hand, if the lands they occupy are good it can still be more worth to raze them and build a city instead. A city on itself will longterm give you better yields then trade with a station, but the health, science and virtue penalties limit how many cities you can have.
So sometimes keeping a station around (for a while) is a good idea if you can't afford another city right now. Stations give you penalty free income if you trade with them.

Awesome answer. Just finishing my second round of CivBE and also new to Civilization. This a great way of doing it. I don't understand fully how it works yet but building up the capital is a great strategy and so is the build up of the second. I've so far just picked the trades which have the highest numbers. I also haven't been specific in how I wield resources. I've played about 800 turns total so far and I just noticed you can do the "ONGOING" productions if you don't want to build something specific. It's great how much control there is over resources but it's also overwhelming. I also just started manually editing citizen productions and specialist slots (which I also didn't realize were there until long after I built a bunch). It's a lot of work to get production of the whole colony to where you want it at any given time but it's probably a huge advantage towards the end game. I built too many cities this last game (7) and cycling through them counting all the resource icons was tedious but also a nice break from all the general unit movement. The AI is a little off though; it doesn't always give me max production of the resource I want to focus on. Did you notice that too? Sometimes I get more of the resource I need if I focus on a different one. Very strange and seems to ruin the whole point of the "Focus" option. Manual is best anyway but it'd be a nice part of the game if I could just pick a focus quickly and then fine tune if I need to.