Attention CA: Trade Disruption Bug!!?

**Quietus** · 10-06-2004, 00:29

I did a some study of the Trade Disruption Feature of RTW ( the so-called “blinking icons”)

I after scouring around looking to eliminating rebel, I found one along the road between Condate Redonum and Alesia. I have a Diplomat nearby so I made a test.
(Farms and Taxes remained the same and were not a factor; Tax Level Low (constant; Taken from the trade details parchment. This is not the net income of the province)

Trade Test Result for bribing a rebel stack** to disperse (850d). (Trade Summary; Sorry, I pasted from Word and I don't know how to tab here. Think: graph with 4 columns.

C.Redonum Trade Income (Before bribe) (After bribe) (Change) (%Change)
Land Trade:
Samarobriva* - (120) (120) (0) (0)
Alesia - (85) (172) (87) (102.3)
Lemonium - (191) (191) (0) (0)
Sea Import:
Londonium - (133) (133) (0) (0)
Deva* - (30) (30) (0) (0)
Sea Exports:
Londonium - (449) (680) (231) (51.4)
Batavodurum* - (208) (315) (107) (51.4)

Deva* - (159) (240) (81) (50.9)

Total Trade Income: (1375) (1881) (506) (36.8)

C. Redomum:
# of Blinking Icons (3) (4) (1) (33.3)
# of Bold Icons (4) (5) (1) (25)
# of Gray Icons (0) (0) (0) (0)
# of Total Icons (7) (9) (2) (28.6)
Undisrupted Trade (814) (1070) (256) (31.4)
Trade Disruption ((-)561) ((-)811) (250) (44.6)
%Total of T.D. (40.8) (43.1) (2.3) (5.6)

Alesia:
# of Blinking Icons (0) (0) (0) (0)
# of Bold Icons (3) (3) (0) (0)
# of Gray Icons (1) (1) (0) (0)

% Total of T.D. is calculated as (Trade Disruption/Total Trade Income) x100%

This doesn’t make sense. The income and trade disruption BOTH increased!!! Trade disruption percentage increased from 40.7% to 43.1%!! The number of blinking icons also increased!! Income should increase while the trade disruption should decrease.

Also, the Sea Exports are affected by rebels right smack in the middle of Alesia and C. Redonum, while the road to the port is up forks up north and not remotely accessible to the rebels. There is something very wrong here. Any CA Developers reading this please comment and/or take note for Patch consideration

The computer adjusts the income but I think the effect of the rebels weren’t removed, although they are gone in the strategic map and dispersed away to the field. I’ll do another test as soon as I find more rebels.

*- Foreign Provinces
**- 1 Warband(120) and 1 Swordsmen(80)

**Dorkus** · 10-06-2004, 01:20

how do you know the blinking icons are trade disruption?

**Quietus** · 10-06-2004, 01:55

Sorry, I havent been clear.

1. I attacked a rebel stack and I got an empire-wide increase of 10k the next turn and some blinking icons are reduced back to bold on a lot of provinces.

2. Today, I was going to test it again, however, my army garrison can't reach the rebel in 1 turn and I had a diplomat close. So I just bribed them.

I got an increase in trade in C. Redonum immediately(see the "graph" up there), but the percentage of trade disruption is still there with a slight increase.

So my hypothesis is: The computer adjusts the affected provinces' trade income, however the rebel's effect still remain although they are already dispersed and not visible in the map. If you look, the trade exports to londonium, deva and batavodurum increased by at least 50% (last column). This happened immediately without hitting end-of-turn (after the bribe).

I wrote down the numbers before and after the bribe. That's from the trade detail parchment.

**Tamur** · 10-06-2004, 04:22

I've noticed quite a number of situations where I clear out rebels from my trade routes, then go back to the town two turns later. There are no rebels in sight, but there is trade disruption hijacking HALF of my trade income! Eeek, I say, and look around for clues. No luck. It's as if the rebels were still there, but there are so many factors that COULD be involved, I haven't been able to nail anything down.

Some light on this would be very helpful.

**andrewt** · 10-06-2004, 06:15

Actually, the blinking doesn't seem to be trade disruption. If you add the blinking to income, that's the income displayed by the game in your city stat sheet.

**Quietus** · 10-06-2004, 08:04

Andrew, yeah it does seem like the blinking may not have anything to do with trade at all.

At the .Com, someone posted about port-types. If you have Shipwright to Dockyard, you automatically get the blinking. If you have just a port, no blinking.
It checked out for me except for 1 of my port that is being upgraded to shipwright. It seems now that building a shipwright triggers the trade icon blinking. One other mystery is the management icon is blinking too, I don't have any governors at all in a lot of my towns.

What I don't understand now is why isnt' it corollary to Land Disruption? Clearly, if you eliminate rebels sitting at your route, you will see a verifiable trade increase.

If it is completely separate, what in world is its purpose?

Any CA Devs lurking around , have an explanation???

**Jambo** · 10-06-2004, 20:23

Well, using my trusty calculator and adding up the values on the settlement scroll, the blinking icons are counted in the income. So it looks like it's just one of Rome TW's little idiosyncracies.

Devastation (the little fire symbol) on the other hand doesn't seem to be factored into the final value....?! Does anyone know where the effects of devastation are fitted into the equation?

Jambo

**Quietus** · 10-06-2004, 21:01

That's what Andrew was saying earlier (thx Andrew).

@Soulflame, I'll read more on your posts later and check out your findings. I just want to make a few quick statements.

1) I was going to reiterate what Jambo just said. Thus, we don't even have to worry about that anymore!

2) Again, building a shipwright Triggers the blinking icon. Thus, if you put them on build queue, you get the automatic blinking. If you remove them, you get no blinking at all.

3) Rebels do indicate trade fluctuations but the blinking icons are no way an indicator of a trade fluctuation itself (unless CA has something to say about this). Thus, it is difficult just by looking if trade is being disrupted because they are invisible until you chance upon them.

**Soulflame** · 10-06-2004, 21:32

Okay now this is just weird. Jambo (& Quietus & Andrew) you are right.. it is added to the income and devastation is left out. This could be because devastation is an abnormal loss and as such directly substracted from your total (as in rebuild of the land or something?)

I have checked, and it is even more narrow:
Apparantly the lowest of the sea trade exports are NOT blinking, the others (if any) ARE. Thus, if you have a shipwright, the lowest income providing export has normal icons, the other one is blinking. If you have a dockyard, the combined income of the two highest is blinking, the lowest one is again not blinking.

I checked this with my old Scipii campaign and it was true for all that I checked.

The question still remains as to WHY those are blinking.. why isn't the lower one blinking? And why does Victoria say it's a loss?

And secondly, why is it possible that I get the exact same amount of trade after making a shipwright? In my experiment save game I have a Trade income 1088 in Nicomedia, with just a port. If I build a Shipwright, I get flashing icons up until 1088 and until 835 I have normal icons. This is true until the building is complete, then the flashing icons suddenly jump up to 1500. The 700 difference with the 800 of normal icons is now once again the trade of the highest sea export (to Byzantine).
So what's up in the time that I make the shipwright?

Guess:
It seems it is partly a measure to see how much the port upgrade will deliver to you, but in a VERY awkward way. You see, you will always begin with the most profitable trade route... so let's say the first route gives you 500 income. Now you upgrade into a Shipwright. When you click build, you may see static icons now until 300, and flashing up to 500. This indicates that you have a trade route of 500 in place, but the new trade route will give you an additional [static icons]=300. Total after the building is complet: 800 (of which the top 500 will be flashing, since those are not from the lowest producing sea export).

Other put:

Before
500 income on the trade screen, nothing fancy happening.

During build
500 income on the trade screen. on the settlement screen, up to 300 normal trade, 200 extra blinking (so it says 500 when you go over the blinking icons)
=> indicates next trade route will give you 300 income

After build
800 income on trade screen. on settlement screen, 300 normal trade, 500 extra blinking (so it says 800 when you go over the blinking icons)
=> indicates that the lowest sea export gives 300, the others combined (in this case only one other) 500.

If this is indeed how they meant to use this, it is a VERY poor system, since it is really not intuitive. I'll try confirm this, so I'll be back later tonight.

@Motorhead: it's perfectly possible that City A has blinking Icons and City B doesn't, since it only seems to affect sea exports, and city B doesn't necessarily have to export to city A. And what we just found, if city B has only a Port, it should have no blinking icons.

**Jambo** · 10-06-2004, 22:08

Can anyone figure how devastation is calculated into the equation. As far as I can see, there's no accounting for devastation at all?! :(

**Soulflame** · 10-06-2004, 22:20

I have reconstructed 3 scenario's and my guess seems to work out so far. It works with Shipwrights and Dockyards. I forgot to say you need to substract any landbased travel if they are present. So here once again my (probably not so good) attempt to share what I found:

If you upgrade your port into Shipwright or Shipwright into Dockyard, here's what you do:

You have static icons until 1000. You add the building to the queue. This should cause some icons that were static to go blinking. Now hover over your now non-blinking icons. (example, it says 800). If you hover over your blinking icons you should have the original amount that was first static, so in this example, 1000. This is the income you still get until the upgrade is finished.
Now goto the specified trade screen and substract ALL LAND income from it. Say land income is 500, then finishing the upgrade on the port/shipright will install a new trade route which will give you [amount of non-blinking icons noted before] - [land trade] = income from new route. In the example: 800-500 = 300.

{{This works with upgrading Shipwrights into Dockyards the same way, since it will always add a slightly lower profitable sea export (it always goes for the best export first, so the port gives you the best trade route, the Shipwright adds the second best, and the Dockyard the third best traderoute) and the lowest is always given static}}

EDIT: Sidenote. If you see nothing happening to the icons if you add an upgrade to the queue, the city can't make another trade route (maybe because you have no trade rights, or there are no ports in the vacinity etc). So upgrading your building then gives you NOTHING extra. I tested this as well.

Now that this mystery is solved (although it's still a very stupid way to give this information IMO) we need to ask why Devastation isn't taken into account in the total income of a settlement on the settlement scroll....