County of Fortune raft ports are a region's water-trade building, and they are the only way to move heavy goods between regions. Rafts carry goods downstream only, and nothing heavier than a light product will travel on a road.
County of Fortune raft ports: what they do
- They ship heavy goods. Logs, stone, clay and sand move by raft; none of them move by road.
- They count as a market. A raft port can send and receive inter-region road traders as well, so it can receive lighter goods by land as long as the region you are trading from has a small market of its own. That is the workaround for products that cannot be shipped by river at all.
- They need a Village-level settlement. A raft port is one of the higher level buildings, alongside taverns and the small market, so the settlement hosting it has to be at Village level (level 2) or above before it can be placed. Once the port is standing, trade routes covers the route that runs through it.
Setting up the trade that uses them
Set the trade route the normal way — T, pick the good, add the trade route, select the two regions — and the raft port receives the goods by water. Trade routes covers the full sequence, and trading covers how a water connection sits alongside a road one.
Two placement notes
- Piers are placed automatically, and their coverage of tributaries is not always what you would want. The developers have reworked pier placement to cover multiple tributaries better, and for now suggest forcing a different placement by blocking tiles with roads.
- A raft port can interfere with a neighbouring building, such as a water mill. A fix is being worked out; in the meantime, moving the settlement with the raft port a few tiles away sidesteps the problem.
Ports also arrive with sailboats in Early Access, which are the first way to move heavy goods upstream. Trading covers how water and land trade fit together.