#114 Trade routes configurability
It's very difficult to understand how trade routes work given the current documentation. In Island play, when I'm alone on an island, I set up a trade route for a wagon that involves all five cities on the island. One city has a customs house so I want the wagon to go pick things up to bring back to the city with the customs house. The problem is, I can't set the route up so that wagons will only remain in a city for one turn whether or not there is enough "stuff" to take back to my customs house city. In this particular case, I care a lot more about making sure that my wagon keeps moving so low producing cities don't keep the wagon so long that highly producing cities start wasting stuff because there's no wagon.
There are other times when I want to set up trade routes so I keep some minimum number of resources at the "giving" city so it doesn't get too low, but at the same time, be able to have the wagon transport excess above that minimum to another city that may be a customs house city or one that lacks that particular resource (like ore or tools). This would allow me to set up a city that harvests raw materials and gets back finished product (like tools) back from a city with an iron works for example.
What is it that you are suggesting?
I agree that the current trade route panel is limited and anything but intuitive, and it requires a good deal of assumption from the player's part:
1- There is only a destination button, no source, so I'm supposed to assume that the city where a wagon train is in when I click on "assign trade route" and then "create new trade route" is not automatically treated as the source, but must be added as one of the destinations.
2- I cannot partially load/unload good on/off the wagon train (or any carrying unit)
3- If I load lumber and ore in stop 1 into the "cargo on carrier" box, in stop2 I leave just the ore in the box, and in stop 3 I have have just food in the box, does that mean that the carrier will load ore and lumber in stop 1, unload the lumber at stop 2, and unload the ore and load food at stop 3, then goto stop 1 and unload the food and load ore?
4- I can't set a maximum waiting time spent at each stop.
5- How do I use "All colonies"?
6- How do I transfer goods from the wagon train to a ship?
7- We should be able to choose all settlements as possible destinations, including Indian ones, so we can automate trade, and to either choose "sell automatically" or "sell manually" where manually will show us the panel where we can negotiate a price.
I agree with item #7.
This has been brought up before:
http://old.nabble.com/trade-routes-%28JList%29-td27004293.html
and more recently:
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3502445&group_id=43225&atid=924982
Also, see:
trade route dual list box - ID: 3502445
all that needs to be done is a better interface, such as the dual list box which has controls to add, remove, and change the order for colonies.
A similar interface could be used for trade goods, so that there's a priority.
Trade route improvements are imminent.
Especially this one.
Its non intuitive. I get the "all destinations are empty" and no way to add goods to the wagon. Its meant to be drag and drop but there is no place in the menu to drop goods. Draging to another frame or menu does nothing. There is ample room on the menu for a pick up and drop off box. Very confused.