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Trade, Trade and Trade!
 
 
   In this Strategy Academy's lesson, I'm going to speak about trade! Trade is by far one of the most important things to do in a game, and I wonder how many players realize it! Sure, in a multiplayer game with double production and double movements it'ss not the most important thing to deal with, but in a normal game (i.e single player, PBEM or multiplayer 1x1 game) it’s very, very important!  
 
You get three kinds of benefits via trading:
  • When you open a trade-route, you get money
  • When you open a trade-route, you get tech (one “bottle” for each money you get)
  • Every turn, you get trade points in the cities that have a trade route.
 
 The second benefit is the most important one. With this tech bonus, you can research much faster than any player who has no trade: A democracy with tech routes can research very, very fast. This benefit can’t be overestimated: more commerce means more science, more science means more victories. But also the money-benefit can be very important; in my humble opinion, it can be very useful in order to get money at Medieval-Renaissance ages, when you need the money (and the caravans) in order to speed-up (or rush-build) very important Wonders.
 
The exact formulas of trade are:
  • Trade = (Trade of home city + Trade of destination city + 4) / 8
  • Payment = ((distance + 10) * (Trade of home city + Trade of destination city)) / 24

(original idea of Robert Lancaster, posted on Civfanatics’ War Academy http://www.civfanatics.com/civ2strategy1.shtml)
 
To see the full list of bonuses, please consult these links. It’s very important to remember that you get a x2 bonus if the destination city is not yours, so it’s always a good idea to commerce with other civilizations, especially if they have big cities, because a big city means a huge trade.
 
Summarizing, trade is one the most important things you can do in the game.
 
 
 
Javier Muñoz
 

Our next lesson: Little tricks (exploits)