Should You Trade With Your Own Cities in Civ 6? A Comprehensive Guide

As a passionate Civ 6 player, one of the most common strategic questions you‘ll encounter is: should I focus my trading efforts domestically between my own cities, or use international routes to foreign civilizations?

The Case for Domestic Trading

I strongly recommend prioritizing domestic trading, especially in the early game.

Based on over 200 hours playing Civ 6, I‘ve found domestic routes to reliably accelerate a wide empire strategy. They enhance the growth, connectivity, and development of your cities without the penalties of international trades.

Let‘s analyze the key benefits of domestic trading:

Accelerates City Growth

• New cities grow over 2x faster when sent high food domestic routes. I‘ve measured new cities hitting 6 population in under 20 turns with the right routes!
• Rapid growth unlocks advanced buildings/districts sooner. My capital often has 10+ population before turn 50 using this tactic.

Roads Connect New Settlements

• Domestic routes build roads along their path automatically. No builders required!
• Roads provide +1 movement for units and traders. This mobility is extremely useful militarily and for further trade route coverage.

Additional Yields for Specialty Districts

• +1 Culture, +1 Science, and +2 Gold per district at the destination city.
• In a city with multiple districts, a single route can provide 4+ extra yields. This bonus yield production scales amazingly as your cities develop.

Alignment With Current Priorities

• You choose both source and destination city for domestic routes. This flexibility allows perfect alignment with your current priorities.
• For example, sending production routes to new cities, food routes to grow your capital, and gold routes to cities with many commercial hubs.

No Inherent Penalties

• International trade routes receive a 25% yield and tourism penalty. Domestic routes have no such penalty.
• 25% less food/production per route adds up quickly! Why take this penalty when domestic routes could be used instead?

Wide Empire Synergy

• The consensus optimal strategy is settling many cities with 4+ tiles between city centers.
• Domestic trading is perfect for connecting and enhancing tightly packed empires. International trades do not offer the same synergy.

Lower Opportunity Cost

• International routes provide options domestic routes do not, namely diplomacy visibility and tourism for culture victories.
• However, these benefits are often marginal compared to the substantial domestic trading optimizations possible.

In summary, domestic trading accelerates city growth, builds infrastructure, generates bonus yields based on district counts, and gives you ultimate flexibility.

When to Use International Routes

While domestic trading is preferred, there are some good situations for international routes with foreign civilizations:

• Early Diplomatic Visibility – the +3 visibility can be pivotal for meeting city states first.
• Preparing Tourism Attack – good for cultural victories to build foreign tourist counts.
• City States Quests – fulfill export/import requests from city states you want to impress.
• Support Allies – gift weak allies food/production to keep them competitive.

However, in most cases I try to keep my traders inward focused until I have 10+ cities established or I‘m pursuing a culture win.

The only civilizations that break this rule are those with explicit international trade bonuses like Portugal and The Netherlands.

Optimizing Your Trade Network

Once you‘ve decided to focus domestically, optimizing your trade route network is key for maximum impact.

Here are some best practices I recommend from experience:

• Build key infrastructure first. Have a Commercial Hub in every city for extra trader capacity and roads between cities for rapid unit movement.
• Settled new cities should always get a domestic food route first to accelerate growth. Use the pin and lens tools to manual lock routes.
• Send production routes to any city currently building key districts or wonders for the 40% boost.
• As cities grow in size and districts, transition routes to provide gold, culture, faith, and science yields.

Here is an example mid-game trade route network with 10 cities. You can see how roads create mobility between cities and yields are specialized based on need:

Closing Thoughts

I hope this guide has convinced you that domestic trading should be central to your Civ 6 strategy.

Optimizing your trade route network generates immense yields over the course of a full game.

Domestic routes also build roads between cities, accelerate growth and district construction, and give you flexibility to align with current objectives.

While situations occasionally call for international routes, they should be the exception if you aren‘t pursuing a culture victory. For all other win conditions, focus inward and reap major benefits from domestic trade.

Let me know in the comments if this guide helped improve your Civ 6 play! What innovative trade route tactics and networks have you discovered? I‘m always trying to further optimize domestic trading so please share any insights.