I don't understand caravans

Caravans provide a % bonus to food production to both cities the caravan connects. The longer the route, the bigger the bonus.

And each city can only produce one caravan unless you research the 'more caravans' tech in the empire 'cooperation' tree.

So, as said in another thread, funnel all your caravan toward your capital for a massive food bonus!

You could wait and research some of the adventure tree in order for orchads and twilight bees to appear, I had, rarely, other cities producing more food than the capital...

I don't understand them either. On that point, does anyone know how to change the caravan bonus from a food multiplier (which doesn't make any sense) to a gold multiplier.

I don't think you can.

However why does the food multiplier make no sense to you? It can be very important. In one game it was all that kept my kingdom ticking, as i did not find any other food sources besides the initial 1+2 from adventuring tree. The bonus can be huge, far better than say an irrigation improvement. It is susceptible to attacks by monsters tho, so you want to increase your influence area so that all routes are covered.

It doesn't make any sense because a wagon going from A to B should not magically increase the amount of food.  Gold makes more sense because moving product to more favorable markets can increase the income from said product.

Food doesn't spoil as quickly b/c caravan brings it at a faster rate.

As quickly as what?  Not making it travel across the country in the first place?  That MIGHT make sense if resources weren't global.  Since they are, caravans are simply causing food to multiply in transit.  I guess the world is magic after all...

Personally, I was looking forward to the trade system as originally lined out - caravans take excess resources from point A to point B, causing a "trickle down" effect; stuff could only be built where the necessary resources are. It would have made trade and choosing locations for cities much more meaningful.

But I guess providing some sort of bonus is better than having the feature removed completely.

theer might be a bug with multiple caravans... or maybe some kingdom building gives a 2nd one...

or maybe captured city gives 2nd one.

a few patches ago i was able to build 2 in certain cities but not others when playing as kingdom

This might still be possible. Looking in the CoreResources.xml it looks like Global sharing can be turned off and caravans used to transport the item. Putting a 1 for stored causes the food supply to grow every turn.

Haha! i didnt even noticed it is giving a food bonus, i just automatically thought it is giving a gold bonus.

i think that making caravans introducing the option to share the resources globally to the cities connected in the road grid is a much more logical and interesting mechanic, this way seiges can be achieved by blocking the trade routes.

This is what irritates me. The code for this appears to be in the CoreGameDefs.XML file but it's like it was never implemented. Grrr...

Plain and simple, the food bonuses from caravans are important [for growth] but doesn't make any sense. I like the idea that settlements share the resources they can provide. A farming settlement might share some food with another (causing it to generate a small amount of food) or a mining camp might share a bonus to materials or a trading city might share it's income all leading to an overall bonus. That's basically how trading works and would be a good system if implemented in Elemental. Like Syt1976 said, it'd make trade more meaningful to the player and to the game.

Since it's based on distance traveled, you'll get better returns linking more distance cities. And since the bonus applies to both ends, you can double up on the bonus by linking two food producing cities. Since the bonus is also percentage based, you'll get more out of it by putting a caravan to a city with an oasis and/or multiple resource hordes. The capital isn't always the best choice.

Damn I also thougt there was some sort of money earned by doing trade, if food is the only bonus you get then blah ;(.

A suggestion would be to link it to whatever nearby resources the city has. For example, if you send a caravan from a city with a gold mine, then the destination will get a bonus related to that gold, like say 1 gold per turn? Same would apply to any nearby resource, this way you could trade between cities that took the gildar bonus and make those level up bonuses more meaningful and interactive!

2.8 How can I use caravans and what is their benefit (Food, Roads)?

- You can unlock caravans by researching the Trading tech in the Diplomacy (Kingdom) or Cooperation (Empire) technology tree. Once unlocked, they can be trained like regular units with the Train Unit option in a city. After completion, you can send the caravan to any of your cities or the cities of friendly/neutral factions. After their arrivial, they will automatically establish a trade route between the city of origin and the city they travelled to, and they will create a road that will increase the movement speed of any unit that walks on it. Every turn you will see a trader wander back and forth between both cities to indicate to you that they are connected and profiting from each other. You can click on traders to see about the specific bonus on food production for both connected cities in the Vitals tab on the lower left side of the screen and to learn about the amount of turns it will take before higher level roads will appear. You can establish a two-way connection between cities to increase the bonus on food production even further. 

- Be adviced that you can increase the maximum amount of caravans for each city when playing an Empire faction by researching the repeatable tech Advanced Trade Routes in the Cooperation (Empire) technology tree. Kingdoms on the other hand may research the tech Merchant Guilds in the Civilization (Kingdom) technology tree to increase the amount of gildar a city with a trade route produces each turn.

!!! Beware that the caravans/traders can be attacked and destroyed by enemies. Even though the roads will remain, you are forced to train a new caravan if you want to re-establish the trade route. !!!

- The benefit of caravans is not only the construction of a road network, but also the trading of food between the connected cities. The more trading routes you establish, the higher percentage on food production in those cities and the more food in your global resource pool to build houses, raising the population cap in your cities. The effect is more prominent if you establish routes between cities that are far away from each other and between cities that are both high on food resources.

I don't mind that my Caravan's get destroyed, it keeps my armies on thier toes.  However, having to retrain the unit each time is an unnecessary hassle.  The Caravan died meaning no payoff, the city it's coming from should just automatically rebuild another after a time delay.  The time delay should be based off of the length of the route to be traversed.

Also, with Caravans auto-rebuilding they should no longer be "found" when flipping through Idle Units unless there's a problem with it's target destination (conquered/destroyed).

any idea how fast roads upgrade?

Interesting that the rudimentary xml outlines are still there.

Mind you, I wouldn't want a logistics nightmare like the original Colonization (micromanagement hell), but something that allows to create "trade hubs" where your resources are collected centrally and where your most advanced/most expensive units are built. It would create a much more "real" epic empire feel - a few important big cities and a number of smaller settlements who mostly provide the resources for the big cities.

Might be tough for the AI to handle, but the Settlers series pulled it off, so ...

Are you sure about that?

I noticed that I still got the food bonus, even after the caravan was destroyed.

Caravans transporting different resources was in one of the beta's, but I don't think anyone liked it.

Prob a glitch they need to check on that, if it was destroyed, then it is lost!

i'd rather they became a gold increasing thing. trade is about making money primarily. there are plenty of ways of increasing food production already (there's always nature's bounty if you lack farms) but gold is much more likely to be a limiting factor in my experience.

failing that a system that just generally increased production of a resource in a city when receiving from a city with a surplus would be nice, but i think gildar really should be part of the mix. perhaps gold should be related to the resource discrepancy prevented?

I just use them to build roads between my cities (that I never use, because "strategy" in Elemental devolves into having a couple big stacks that murder everything).  I never even bothered to check if i was getting a bonus to anything ... I had assumed it was a gold bonus.

Honestly I make caravans once or twice a game, link stuff with roads to make it look pretty, and ignore them.  I'm rarely short on resources or need to move quicker from point A-to-point-B using a road.  Teleport works fine.

I established a caravan from a town with +8 food to one with -2 Food which resulted in a town with -3 food and one with +9 food. I haven't seen the caravan since I established the route, but every now and then when I click on the city I snag the 'trader' stat screen and it does seem they are traveling as the road improvemet bar is increasing.

So how come the city with the food shortage didn't benefit at all?

Traders give a %-bonus to food output. I hope that if the output is negative the trader doesn't increase the deficit: e.g -2 + 25% = -2.5