GAME CONCEPTS
Trade System
Trade moves goods between cities. A trade good on the map does nothing until one of your cities claims it. Once claimed it improves that city, can be shipped by caravan to your other cities that lack it, and can be offered to other civilizations in a trade deal. Some goods are not found at all but manufactured from others.
The chain
- A good lies on a tile. Your borders have to grow over it, or you found a city nearby.
- Build the improvement the good needs on its tile with Public Works, and connect the tile to one of your cities by road.
- Research the technology that lets you use the good. A few goods also need a technology before they even show on the map.
- The city now has the good. It gains the good's yields, happiness and health, once per kind of good.
- A caravan can carry the good from that city to any other city of yours that lacks it, which then gains the same benefits.
- In diplomacy you can trade copies of your goods, and gold, with other civilizations for a fixed term.
Piracy
A combat unit standing on a tile that an enemy trade route crosses can use the Pirate order to cut every route through it, taking 25
plus 2.5 per tile of the route. The caravan itself survives and returns to its owner's pool.
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