[SPOILERS] Patience is a virtue

[flugauto]

I think that if the trade route symbol is absent, it means the city has no trade routes with any of your cities. If you close borders with Joey and dtay, you get trade routes with Gavagai's cities including Jucha. Maybe.

[EDIT]
Or maybe if Gavagai closes borders with somebody and gets your cities as best trade routes, the symbol shows up.

[plako]

As you can see from screenshots I've a city connected with roads just besides Gavagai's city of Jucha + OB. Feels a lot like a bug.

[flugauto]

I know you can have trade routes, but the thing is Jucha's trade routes are all not with your cities.
Here are Commodore's cities without the symbol.





[EDIT]
And here is dtay's Ursa without the symbol.

[plako]

This is totally different. I've had no Open borders deals with Commodore.

[flugauto]

You can look at your PB18 screenshots.

[plako]

I've probably figured the trade route issue. I probably don't have a actual trade route to the Gavagai city from any of my cities despite of OB. That is a bit strange though since dtay's city is on same land mass as most of my cities so it should be more beneficial to have a trade routes to Gavagai's city, even if it is smaller. I guess there are lot of alternatives with similar trade route value so this city was randomly not chosen.

I've now converted to Espionage economy. There are plenty of cities with 125% Espionage points multiplier so I think it is a bit more efficient currently than direct research. Also being only one doing this means I'll have good discount from accumulated espionage bonus to pretty much everyone in the game.

Converting to State Property was a mistake. I don't get enough out of the extra food from workshops to compensate the massive amounts of commerce lost and then I would have more cities having the real trade route. Not gonna waste 2 turns to anarchy so this will had to do for now.

Commodore has continued his military build up + Focusing on techs with military value. End result is that he has more power than I do, but his economy is by far the worst in the game.

[Old Harry]

I've probably figured the trade route issue. I probably don't have a actual trade route to the Gavagai city from any of my cities despite of OB.

Wasn't that what Flug was trying to say?

[plako]

Wasn't that what Flug was trying to say?

yeah. He got it right. I needed few days to come to the same conclusion. Getting too old to play this game I guess.

[flugauto]

Getting too old to play this game I guess.

I think this way every day, but the addiction is too strong.

[plako]

Gawdzak trying to piss me off. Maybe he thinks that me losing a fight against Commodore decides the game . Thank god I'm really patient in this game. At least I'll try to be, until I get iron ships of my own.