Noob Trade Route question

[Jfp3]

I have just built my first Caravan, have Horses, Copper and Wheat to trade, But a "Friendly" City State only 7 hexes away won't show up in my list to trade with. What am I doing wrong?

[kkeday]

What type of 7 hexes. If there are mountains, the caravan must to around & the distance limit may be exceeded. Is there a body of water within those 7 hexes? Have you officially met the City State (CS)? Not that it matters, but did you pledge to protect them for the 5 point bonus? You may want to post a screen shot.

[Jfp3]

Yes the route goes through mountains (NAmerica, Appalachians). I have just lost friend status prior to writing this.
And a single strip of road costs 1gp per turn for Maint??? guess that won't happen for a LONG time.

[kkeday]

You do NOT need to build a road to the City State in order to have a trade route.
Sometimes a CS will ask you to build a road, in which case you get an influence boost.
Also note that the return on Sea trade route is greater than Land routes. As an aside Harbors are a great way to connect cities with your capitol.

[Jfp3]

Great info there KK...thanks much!

[Amanoob105]

Minor addition about roads and who pays for them. While it's true than if you have built them within your or unclaimed territory you have to play for their maintenance, if you build them within someone else's territory they have to pay for it. This includes the territory of city states.
Just something that can help a bit if you build that road the city state wanted.

And yes, you can use this to bankrupt someone by gaining access to their lands and mass building roads all over it.

[Damsteri]

Roads can extend your trade route length as caravan's take roads in account when calculating route length. So, you can have a trade route with a caravan with a CS that is for example 12 tiles away, if you build couple of road tiles in between (even if they don't lead anywhere). Trade routes use all friendly routes too.

One of my best trade routes ever was in standard size Fractal map (long snaky continent) mid/late game. I was in one end of the continent and trade route destination was the civilization at the other end of the continent. My caravan went through the whole continent going through six other AI civilization's lands using their roads. That land trade route yielded much more gold than any sea route would have yield. I had all possible bonuses and I was Arabia, which helped.

[Damsteri]

Roads cost (base 1 gpt), but roads connect cities and you get gold around 1 gpt for each population from cities connected to capital. For not losing gold you need to have city growth to same size as how many tiles you need to connect it, i.e. pop 4 if you need 4 new tiles to connect it.

[Jfp3]

More pearls of wisdom here, thanks gents. There is still something not right it seems. I don't have a new CS showing up as a trading option that has a straight line to it over a river and through some forest. I'll have to play around with it -- I'm sure it's something that'll just pop out at me eventually.

[Damsteri]

Post a screenshot, it would be easy to say from that what's wrong.

[Yojo0o]

I think everybody missed the crux of your issue.

Caravans exchange and generate currency. Sometimes they also carry some science points or religious influence. They are NOT for establishing an exchange of resources like copper or horses. You cannot actually trade those resources with city-states, only other civs. To get the resources of a city state, you need to either build a relationship with them to the point that they ally with you and share them voluntarily, or else take the city-state over and take the resources for yourself. You can only trade those types of resources with other civilizations.

Selecting your caravan should allow you to establish a trade route for the purpose of generating currency with civs or city-states in your caravan's radius. I'm not clear on whether or not you've already done this, but if you have, your caravan's job is done.

[Jfp3]

Ok here is my first try uploading a screenie in Steam. Note that New York is indeed blocked by mountains/hills from New York to Quebec, but Pensacami to Chokai is not, only woods AFAIK.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2599791193

You can see an active Caravan between NY & Pensacami, but I was not able to select Chokai when it was still max friendly, and direct the trade route from Pensa to Chokai.

Thanks again for the help!

[Alfonso Lofason]

Build Caravanasary =D Also you can trade resources only with other players, your luxury and strategic resources dont really matter for trade routes, they only make the trade routes give more gold (as long as the resources you have are different from the ones the city you send trade route to has)

[Damsteri]

You should be able to make these trade routes:

From New York
- Quebec City
- Cahokia
- Pensacami (food if you have granary in NY, production if you have workshop in NY)

From Pensacami
- Cahokia
- New York (food if you have granary in Pensacami, production if you have workshop in Pensacami)

Only one trade route between any two cities, i.e. you can't make both land and sea trade route between NY and Pensacami. You can target one city from multiple cities, so you can make trade routes to Cahokia from both NY and Pensacami.

CS friendly status doesn't matter at all. Only times you can't make a trade route to a CS is when you are war with them, or CS trading is banned by world congress resolution.

You clearly have some mods in use. Your mods might have changed the game rules regarding trade routes or are broken, if you can't make a trade route that should work.

[Jfp3]

1st off, thanks for helping. Great crew here on forums and you folks really make the game shine.
Now --
1) I made the caravan in NYC, so do I need to (and CAN I even) transfer ownership to Pensacami (Pensacola + Miami btw), and THEN make a TR to Cahokia? Or do I need to create a new caravan in Pensacami itself in order to originate and service that TR?
2) Can I just build one road improvement (a single hex) through/over the hills from NYC to QC or will I need a whole stretch of road to make the route?

Unrelated:

3) What are some early production & happiness improvements/buildings that I should research "from the get-go" so I don't cripple my play early on? I have noticed that I'm in the red for coin pretty early on with the size of my (fairly small) military, and almost every building has a maint cost. Those add up quick already.

Thanks much again! Hope you won't get too annoyed with my sure-to-be-a-lotta questions going forward :-)

[Mr. Monday]

Originally posted by Jfp3:

1st off, thanks for helping. Great crew here on forums and you folks really make the game shine.
Now --
1) I made the caravan in NYC, so do I need to (and CAN I even) transfer ownership to Pensacami (Pensacola + Miami btw), and THEN make a TR to Cahokia? Or do I need to create a new caravan in Pensacami itself in order to originate and service that TR?

Yes, you can transfer your trade route to the other city. You'll just have to wait for any current routes to end before doing so.