Port of Memphis?

[Alrik]

I noticed that Memphis, despite having a port didn't seem to get any sea trade (all other cities bordering to the red sea are both owned by me and have ports of their own.)
I figured that somehow the rebels there might be causing a problem though they didn't seem to be (not blokading anything) so I killed them for good meassure, but it didn't help. expanding the port didn't either, (now dockyards and no trade), neither does the paved road leading there do much good.

Is there a way to get Memphis trading by sea or is the port effectively broken?
They have grains, so getting them to trade with the desert cities is somewhat preferable, to help them grow.

(Im playing the gold version straight out of the box.)

[Myth]

Can you provide a screenshot? I've never seen something like this. Perhaps your governor has bad trading traits? Also, what faction are you playing as?

[ReluctantSamurai]

Indeed, the port would need to be blockaded to lose trade. Just sitting on the trade route is not enough. Seeing as how there are only two other ports to trade with, a shipwright, which handles two trade routes, is sufficient.

Actually, Memphis has overland trade with Thebes so there's no point to sea trade there. You should only see port trade with Bostra and Petra. Very strange that you see no trade at all.....

[gollum]

What about the road leading to the port? Sometimes briggands sit there and they block trade. Or maybe the block the route to the port on the other side ofthe red sea. Just an idea.

[Alrik]

Hopefully these will work...



As you can see there's plenty of trafic going to the other ports, but there's not even a dotted line between any of them and Memphis' port and the details show that there's indeed no trade going on and it isn't blocked.



The road going to the port goes inbetween mountains so it was dark, so I figured there might be rascals there in hiding, but placing a tower to oversee the road revealed nothing.
Oddly enough when it was just a dirt road I could see carts coming and going from Memphis, though I did notice that none of them ventured into the offshoot road that lead to the port, now with the brick road I don't see any carts att all on Memphis' roads. I still have the land trade, but there's no graphics to show for it.

Oh and my govenor doesn't have any bad trader traits, I had a bit too much money in the coffers a couple of times so he's a "useless assessor", but other than that I'd rate him pretty decent.

[Alrik]

Got the graphics for the caravans now...
Notice how there's caravans leading from Memphis to Thebes, but not a single one has turned onto the road towards the port of Memphis.

Also note that there's quite a few caravans leaving Alexandria and going east, but when they encounter the brigand army they all dissapear at that point making not a single one reach Jerusalem or Petra. It's a little drastic through as the trade with those two cities doesnt ceace, it is just halfed. Removing the brigands I noticed that the land trade for Alexandria with Jerusalem went up from 134 denarii to 270 and with Petrafrom 102 to 205 denarii.

[Guyus Germanicus]

Having played RTW for over five years, I've never seen any trade come thru Memphis's port. The natural port of Red Sea trade for Egypt is Thebes. It's probably a game design quirk. In a game I played recently with the Ptolemies faction, I received some trade from Petra to Memphis, but it was the overland variety as opposed to the port to port variety.

Certainly when there are rebels sitting on the roads to your ports or between cities, you're going to a see a trade slow down. But I believe Memphis is just peculiar. It would be interesting to see a scenario where one owned Petra and Bostra and Memphis, but not Thebes to see whether the sea trade routes would alter themselves so that trade came thru Memphis's port. But I've never seen or experienced that kind of scenario. My guess is - it would be no different.

I think it's just a game quirk. As for the little caravans and boat trade routes, I know that the boats and caravan animation doesn't always appear consistently in every turn. And I'm not sure there is a relationship between their appearance and numbers, and the amount of trade that appears in your city's trade summary screen.

I have modified the game so that when I build a dockyard I get three trade fleets instead of two. I noticed some time back when I was playing around in the game's code that their was no difference in the number of trading fleets between a shipwright and a dockyard. I changed that in my game. I would be interested to know if the little mini merchant boats that sail between your trading cities have any relation to the trading capacity of your port facilities. There doesn't appear to be one. When examining the mapboard activity for trade routes between my cities regardless of whether there be a port, shipwright or dockyard there seems to be no appreciable difference in the number of mini merchants boats sailing between the cities. So my guess is - the trade animation of mini caravans and merchant ships is just for show. Though, as one of you all pointed out - put a band of brigands on your trade route, and the little mini-caravan animation gets stopped up.

For sure if you blockade a port, you're going to see the animation affected. But looking at a game I just finished with the Greeks, my trade summary for Thebes shows a small amount of trade with Siwa. But there are no mini-caravans showing up on the direct route between Thebes and Siwi. There are, however, mini-caravans connecting between Memphis and Siwa, and alexandria and Siwa. Certainly the game is not free of bugs, so I guess these minor issues are just things we have to live with.

And get this - I just brought up a finished game I had with the Brutii last year. I'm staring at the mapboard right now and sure enough, there are little mini-caravans traveling between Thebes and Siwi. So go figure. :) And Memphis has no sea trade to boot. And here's something that's really intersting - only two of my 50 cities on this mapboard are showing a negative numbers. I never noticed that before. Usually I have several cities running negative because of high admin costs that the game's AI allocates to their burden. But then I ended this game with a six figure treasury.

Oh well . . . interesting conversation.

[Alrik]

Thanks Guyus ;)
I figured that the faulty port wasn't just on my game, it's nice to see suspicion confirmed.

However I just finished a shipright in Bostra and lo and behold:



A ship going to Memphis' port!

Memphis still gets no export or import trade, but Bostra now gets a 239 denarii export trade to Memphis. :) It's a start. Though I suspect that the turns spent to upgrade Memphis' port would have been better spent elsewhere...

[Guyus Germanicus]

Fascinating. So it can happen, I guess. I just never remembered seeing it. I have always been amazed at the sheer number of little caravans moving down from Bostra to its port. the trade route animation has always been one of the fun features for me in this game. I love it when I own all the eastern Mediteranean ports and all the little boats sailing back and forth between the cities. COMMERCE!!! It fills my treasury coffers. That's quite a Seleucid Empire you've got going there just looking at your snap pic map.

So we now have evidence. Memphis CAN conduct sea trade. Well done.

[Myth]

You know what... I'll load my Brutii save and just go and conquer Egypt right now. I bet a temple of extra trade would help...

[Alrik]

Yeah, it's surpising though that Bactra is able to export things to Memphis, but Memphis isn't importing anything from Bactra, makes me wonder if it's a rebel port and what plans they've got for the future?

As for the empire, yeah, I'm an expantionistic bastard, so when I had conqured all of Asia minor, I realised that I started playing Selucids because I really wanted to try out elephants, but I was still using mostly levy pikemen, so I jumped over to Greece because I wanted all seven wonders and then realised that I really really hate naval warfare, so I took Thermon and all costal settlements leading to my empire, so that if anyone would want a fight they'd have to do a land battle and I'd only need one fleet at Thermon to keep my waters enemy free.
But since I found it a little boring, and because Pathia deserved to be whiped form excistance I sent a few pathetic forces north. I took the krim penisulae, Bhosphorus is it? Because I wanted the grain trade it'd provide and found Scythia owning it so I figured I might as well whipe them out too, especially since I hate fighting horse archers. (At least as long as I don't have long range archers...)

I was a bit scared of the developement at first since I want civilized factions to fight later on (I kind of butchered Greek Cities, which wasn't really what I wanted and Macedon who had been the second force of the world after me kinda got the stuffing beat out of him as well, but at least he didn't die like Greek Cities.) But perhaps worse was that the Roman factions all held just their starting provinces and Gaul and Germany were the ones that had expanded. Luckily that changed, so now Julii are butchering Gaul and strangely enough Britons seems to be making short work of the Germans. It must be the result of auto calc, because the way I see it, Germans should slaughter Britons, they have better archers and cavalry and their spear warbands can perform the phalanx, which is the best counter to chariots ever.

As for Memphis, I won't rest until all ports around the red sea are dockyards! :P

[Myth]

When the AI controls the three Roman factions they usually sit on their duffs for more turns than expected out of a regular player. The most expansionistic are the Brutii but they tend to hit a wall once they reach Corinth, Sparta and the other big cities in Greece.

Then, suddenly, all three go berzerk with several huge stacks and completely slaughter their intended enemies. The Julii reach Western Europe and the Iberain Penisula, the Brutii take the center of the world, aka. the Peloponnese and Asia Minor, and the Scipii take Africa.

Germany is very strong but very very poor early on. They do not have a city that can rival Londonium for trade and taxes. And they cannot catch those light chariot archers the Britons field. However, I'm surprised as autocalc usually does no justice to hit-and-run type armies.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Then, suddenly, all three go berzerk with several huge stacks and completely slaughter their intended enemies.

I've never done an analysis of why this happens but I believe that at a certain point, any surviving Roman faction controlled by the AI gets a huge money boost. If one can believe the charts, I've seen all of them go from having 10k denarii or less to well over 100k. And this happens even if I have every single Roman port blockaded, which I've done on occasion. Not sure how to prove it, though....

[Alrik]

Ok, summaries:

Memphis:
Land trade: Alexandria, Petra, Siwa and Thebes
Sea trade: None

Thebes:
Land trade: Memphis and Siwa
Sea export: Petra
Sea Import: Petra

Petra:
Land trade: Jerusalem, Bostra, Alexandria and Memphis
Sea Export: Thebes
Sea Import: Thebes

Bostra:
Land trade: Damascus, Dumatha, Jerusalem, Palmyra and Petra
Sea Exports: Thebes and Memphis
Sea Impots: None

That's with Dockyards and paved roads in all of these red sea cities and at least paved roads in the others mentioned. So It would seem that Memphis isn't the only busted port. I think a little import from Memphis to Bostra isn't that much to ask for and Thebes really should trade with Bostra as well, looks like it is on the graphics, but not in the scroll sheet, the export from Bostra to Thebes is just 500 or so denarii and compared to the Thebes to Petra export or the Petra to Thebes export that's pathetic.
In short as long as it is bust, seeing as ports doesn't say that they increese trade, just that they increase trade routes it would seem unnecessary to build a port at all in Memphis as it is just a recieving part, more than a port in Thebes or Petra and just a shipwright in Bostra.