Civilization – Connect capital to city-states quest, do sea routes count

civilization-5

When city-states ask for connecting your capital with theirs, do sea routes count? My capital is far away but I do have some coastal cities in between, but I do not know if completing a road from my coastal city (connected by sea to my capital) to the city-state would count.

Best Answer

In my experience, it counts so long as the city you connected it to has the city connection symbol. If that city is blockaded before the road is finished, you'll need to break the blockade before the quest is withdrawn!

Related Solutions

Civilization 5 – What is the Formula for City Connection Income?

UPDATE The formula has changed as of the March 2011 patch, it is now

(city population * 1.1) + (capital population * .15) - 1 for each city connected to the capital, not including the capital.

The Machu Pichu wonder increases the modifier by 20%, to (city population * 1.3) + (capital population * .15) - 1.
Arabia increases the constant by 1, to (city population * 1.1) + (capital population * .15) (thanks WillfulWizard).

The economic overview also gives a far better explanation of how it is calculated - in other words, this question is now trivially solved by simply looking at that economic overview :)

Original answer below.

Okay, I did a bit more testing, and bwarner's answer is almost accurate:

Each city, excluding the capital, provides (city's population * 1.25) + 0.01 gold per turn. Owning the Machu Pichu wonder increases the modifier by 20%, to (population * 1.5) + 0.01, for all the cities.

The capital does not provide any gold.

The 1.25 and 0.01 can be seen in the Assets\Gameplay\XML\GlobalDefines.xml file:

<Row Name="TRADE_ROUTE_BASE_GOLD">
    <Value>1</Value>
</Row>
<Row Name="TRADE_ROUTE_CAPITAL_POP_GOLD_MULTIPLIER">
    <Value>0</Value>
</Row>
<Row Name="TRADE_ROUTE_CITY_POP_GOLD_MULTIPLIER">
    <Value>125</Value>
</Row>

The economic overview also demonstrates these values.

I couldn't find any other factor which affects these values, and I checked different difficulty levels, different distances between cities, different city route type (road vs railroad, road/railroad vs harbor), different city health and whether it is occupied. Looks like it's solely the population.

Civilization – Do trade routes activate between the cities when a road goes through city states or other civilizations’ cities

Regarding passing through another civ or city-states territory:

Trade routes can pass through other civs as long as you have open borders agreement from them. Trade routes do not work through a civ you're in war with, even though technically your units can pass within their borders.

Regarding city-states, it works of you are either friends or allied with them.

Regarding passing through an actual city:

I believe it's precisely the same as the above - your road passing through the actual city shouldn't make a difference, except for saving you money, since cities count as road tiles.