Bidirectional trade routes functional?

[lionheart67]

Hello guys,

thanx alot for releasing this "way too undiscovered" pearl of a strategy game. Just voted for "greenlight" and bought it.

I have a question regarding the trade routes: Is there additional sense in setting up two-way trade routes? So if you have running a route between A and B is it still reasonable to set up a route from B to A?

The first intuition is that trade routes are bidirectional by definition and trade posts also show out- and incoming amounts of trade. But towns connected by only one trade route starting in a neighboring town still show "trade AWFUL" which makes me doubtful about this.

Thanx in advance for clearing this up.

[Simon]

Hi lionheart, glad you are enjoying Spice Road

Trade can certainly benefit from a double A>B and B>A link. The best reason for this is to make trade events more frequent - eg: if the route takes 6 months then a single caravan takes 12 months to complete the round trip and this may be too long for a town's stores to last. A double link would keep the stocks fresh with a trade every 6 months.

That said you will get a similar result by simply having two A>B routes. This can be useful in reducing the burden of running a caravan route from town B, by putting the Tradeposts all in a larger town A.

Also a town might simply need more volume of trade (eg: its caravans don't have enough camels and it can't carry enough products to the outlying towns). Building an extra route can help this - as can simply adding camels to a single caravan.

Another reason for trade to be marked AWFUL is if a particular good is too expensive - this can happen if it is in short supply, or if the supply chain through other towns has the item highly priced. In this case you need to lower the price by supplying more of the good, perhaps build markets in inbetween towns or produce more of the expensive item, or simply expand trade with the of-map supply points.