Tips For Native Trade

1. Natives in C3 will buy goods from you at the same price as traders (including at double rate with a Neptune blessing) provided a Mission Post has been built in your city at some stage and provided also that one or more 2x2 native "chiefs" huts exist and are located such that a trader can spawn and reach a warehouse. Once native trade commences it continues regardless of whether a mission post exists in the city. Natives continue to trade with you even if they are angry and are trashing your city.

2. Upon spawning native traders select a warehouse to buy from. The warehouse selected is determined by a formula involving number of units held, distance as the crow flies and possibly trade price. No-one has yet determined the exact formula to my knowledge. However, if a warehouse very close to the hut is full with a high priced export good, native traders WILL go to that warehouse. If the native trader is unable to purchase 3 units from the warehouse visited, he will proceed to another warehouse, provided one with exportable goods exists, presumably using the same formula to select the warehouse as originally.

3. Native traders spawn from large (2x2) native huts. They can spawn from any tile adjacent to the hut (but not diagonally adjacent) that is vacant or contains road or plaza, but not garden, rubble or any other player built structure. Each of these can have one trader active at a time. Traders can spawn only on certain game ticks. The most frequent spawning of native traders possible is once every 20 days (where a game month is 32 days duration). Thus the maximum possible annual native trade is 19.2 trades or 57.6 units per hut.

4. To achieve the maximum native trade, it is necessary for the native trader to have returned in time to respawn each 20 game days. The best way to achieve this is by having a full warehouse adjacent to the native trader hut, with the common tile between the two being the only tile upon which the native trader can spawn. Gardens and aqueducts are commonly used to block native trader spawning from undesired tiles. It is also necessary to keep the warehouse as full as possible with only the good desired to be sold so that the native will not select a different warehouse. It is a good idea to overproduce somewhat in order to maintain the warehouse in a completely full state at all times.

5. If the above warehouse/native hut interface is not possible due to map terrain, the maximum will be obtained by having the road-connected warehouse tile as near as possible to the spawning tile. Natives, like most cartpushers, will generally travel to the furthest road connected tile of a warehouse, thus it pays to connect a warehouse to just one road tile if possible.

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