Trading - Trade Caravans and Docks

[Thales]

Recently played a multi-person game where the markets were separated by water. No land route available. Merchants ships can be created to trade between the docks. That raises the question of if it is worthwhile to even create a "trade caravan" (camel)?

The camels can be put aboard a merchant ship. Is there any benefit to that?

[Deicide4u]

6 minutes ago, Thales said:

The camels can be put aboard a merchant ship. Is there any benefit to that?

It increases the yield of the merchant ship if a trader is in it.

Trade between allies is more profitable, but you can trade between your own docks and markets, as well.

[Thales]

45 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

It increases the yield of the merchant ship if a trader is in it.

Can the trader (camel) simply remain in the ship?

Or does the trader (camel) have to be loaded and unloaded at each dock to receive the benefit?

Edited July 10 by Thales

[Deicide4u]

Well, I've never bothered to ask such question, you got me a good laugh.

No, the trader doesn't have to unload from the ship, he should remain inside to provide the trade bonus.

Edited July 10 by Deicide4u

[Dunedan]

One merchant ship with five garrisoned traders has the same efficiency as two merchant ships, however 1 ship + 5 traders costs 500 food and 500 metal, while 2 ships only cost 200 metal. As all the units count towards your population limit, 2 ships aren't just significant cheaper, but they only incur a population of 2 instead of 6, you'd have with 1 ship + 5 traders.

Therefore garrison traders in merchant ships usually doesn't make sense at all and might be only helpful if you have land based trade at first and switch to merchant ships later on.

[ffm2]

Too many ships on the same route could also block each other.

I think it doesn't happen in 0 A.D. anymore, but I had a little deja vu when I saw this pathfinder bug in amazon robots

[Gurken Khan]

21 minutes ago, ffm2 said:

Too many ships on the same route could also block each other.

I think it doesn't happen in 0 A.D. anymore

Can anybody confirm that? I hated basically everything about ships so I stopped playing with them. I had it happen that a single allied ship completely blocked a river, and that a ship at the shore could be an insurmountable obstacle for all other ships...

[ffm2]

I just meant the pattern that the amazon bots show. Incoming and outgoing trade ships have the same direct line as path and tried to avoid each other by going left and right. But I'm not sure on that either as I don't play naval voluntarily.

Ships in general still block a lot. Players are incentivized to squeeze as many ships in the channel as they can. What works a bit against this are champion archer taking them out from a distance.

[Thales]

5 hours ago, Dunedan said:

Therefore garrison traders in merchant ships usually doesn't make sense at all and might be only helpful if you have land based trade at first and switch to merchant ships later on.

Just to reiterate, there were no land routes available. The map consisted entirely of islands.

2 hours ago, ffm2 said:

Ships in general still block a lot. Players are incentivized to squeeze as many ships in the channel as they can. What works a bit against this are champion archer taking them out from a distance.

Agree. Since the map consisted of islands, had a lot of ships. They periodically blocked each other. I also lost tract of a ship that had troops on it. It attacked a tower and was sunk, so I lost the troops. I also had a couple of cases where the water apparently was too shallow for the ships. It would be nice to have a visual indicator of the water being too shallow.

[Boudica]

So it turns out that the question Thales asked isn't a bad one at all. The most profitable way to trade on a naval map would indeed be using land traders that you manually put in and out of a ship. And I wouldn't really use a merchant ship for that. You'd want to use the bigger, faster and stronger warship. Athens used to have a hero boosting the speed of the ship he was in, so you'd definitely want that.

Now, you need to be precise about how you handle the merchants for this to work. You want to set them up to trade between the docks (or markets), starting from the one that is reachable by them (on the same island), and when they start carrying resources, you put them in the ship. After moving the ship to the destination and dropping them off, you need to use the back to work command (this is the key part). Only that will ensure you won't lose the carried resources.

I had tested this strategy previously, and in a low-resource naval environment, I can definitely imagine that this could work. One player could probably focus on just managing merchants and sling resources to allies.

[Dunedan]

6 hours ago, Boudica said:

The most profitable way to trade on a naval map would indeed be using land traders that you manually put in and out of a ship.

In theory it might be, but unless there is a way to automate that, that sounds like an absolute microing nightmare.

[Thales]

47 minutes ago, Dunedan said:

In theory it might be, but unless there is a way to automate that, that sounds like an absolute microing nightmare.

Agree. Attempting to micromanage Camels inside/outside a trading ship would be an absolute nightmare.

But now I have an additional related question concerning "Diaspora". (see attached image, labeled Diaspora) I consider that technology to be a must. When you have three traders (camels) that option becomes available. Will it become available if you have three merchant ships?

What about a combination, such as one merchant ship and two traders (camels)?

Attached is the minimap (WaterWorld) for the game I was playing. I was playing blue. My daughter red. The yellow and green were the opposing AIs.

 

Edited July 11 by Thales

[Dunedan]

11 minutes ago, Thales said:

When you have three traders (camels) that option becomes available. Will it become available if you have three merchant ships?

The next release of 0ad won't have this requirement anymore. See https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/pulls/7742 for details.

[Boudica]

The repeated mention of the word nightmare in reaction to a powerful idea that I shared with you has somewhat turned me into a sarcastic mode. Imagine having to click periodically in order to acquire required resources! What's next? Having to place a new house every time you reach the pop limit? Restarting unit production at the barracks every minute? Or! Imagine having to manually pack up your catapult in order to move it to the next strategic target every time. Almost sounds like they're requiring you to control what's happening in real time. We could as well give it a funny name to that effect, something like... IDK, a "real-time strategy".

[Deicide4u]

9 hours ago, Boudica said:

You want to set them up to trade between the docks (or markets), starting from the one that is reachable by them (on the same island), and when they start carrying resources, you put them in the ship. After moving the ship to the destination and dropping them off, you need to use the back to work command (this is the key part). Only that will ensure you won't lose the carried resources.

Doing all that work alone to sling your allies in the very late game when you can't help in any other way might be alright. Doing it while you actually have to do everything else is indeed a nightmare.

You need to compare the benefit of all that micro to literally any other action that you might be doing. You aren't playing in a "sea-based trade with land traders" vacuum.

[Gurken Khan]

39 minutes ago, Boudica said:

a powerful idea

Yeah, well, I wouldn't bother with it. I wouldn't be willing to make it a priority, so my timing with getting them on and off the ships would be anything but optimal. I do put some effort into my trading, with production and research, usually changing routes once per game when I acquired huge tracts of land, but that's about what I'm willing to do.

[Boudica]

It definitely was a nightmare... to the enemies who had to do "everything else", but they were lacking the wood for that anyway, while my allies could keep spamming warships and disrupting the trade, which was the only remaining source of wood. Sure, it wasn't easy to evaluate all the various factors and come to the conclusion that doing an efficient trade was indeed the best use of the scarce APM available. Those five clicks per minute completely sucked me into a "sea-based trade with land traders" vacuum, making me unable to focus on anything else but winning the game.

I think it starts showing that there is now little variety of the hosted games. People just have their one mainland build and will run if a setting change requires them to do something different. Even considering that a strategy could mean something you do when it's the right time for that, rather than something you now just do every time, becomes hard.