As of now, Blockade is back on.  

But - purely because we know how much you hate it when we change things (ofc, that's when you're not asking us to make more changes, more quickly ) - there are some changes to the way it works.

When trade units enter or leave a settlement there is a danger of interception, with a couple of caveats:

Why do Gatherers not get intercepted on the way out?  

Because they have nothing that a blockading army wants until they have gathered, so there is no point capturing them until they are laden. 

Why do outbound Caravans fulfilling market orders not get intercepted? 

Because the trade tax payment covers (amongst other things) ensuring the safe dispatch of all goods on both sides.  And also to avoid the massive, vast, galaxy-sized black hole of trade exploitation that this would potentially open, sucking every single Illyrian trader into its merciless, pitilessly gaping maw before being spat out into the pauper dimension.

Evading blockades is now more specialised than it was before. 

If someone goes to the effort of Blockading a town, then it shouldn't be possible to realistically beat that Blockade just by completing some inexpensive Researches. 

And if someone goes to the effort of maintaining a full encirclement of eight Blockades around a city, then it should be very hard to get through. 

On the other hand, if a player goes to the effort of specialising a city in trade, then their professional, dedicated caravan handlers should have a better chance of getting through Blockades. 

So, evading a Blockade has changed as follows:

If you have no Trade Office (in other words, no trade specialisation) in the trade-unit-owning city then you are limited to the bonus given by your Marketplace level.  If you're a trade specialist (ie you have one or more high level Trade Offices in the trade-unit-owning city) then you get many more bonuses levels.

The chance of beating a Blockade is no longer a secret formula (not that it really ever was), but we're making this clear so that everyone can make more informed decisions about specialisation.

The Avoid Interception research gives a 0.5% chance per building level of beating a Blockade, Blockade Running doubles this to 1.0%, and Break Trade Embargo raises it to 1.5%. 

So if you only ever build a Marketplace, you can never have more than a 30% chance of beating any one Blockade if you have all three researches (20 levels x 1.5 chance). 

If you want a much better chance of getting goods through, you will need to send them from a trade-specialised city.  A very heavily-specialised trade city (with 3 level 20 Trade Offices) will have over 80% chance to beat any one Blockade.

However, remember that if there are multiple Blockades in place against a city, you will have to beat each one, and each one gets an independent chance to successfully blockade you.  So however specialised your city, you still cannot reliably run a gauntlet of multiple Blockades.

1 x Markeplace @ L20 = 20

+

1 x Trade Office @ L20 = 20

+

Total levels = 55

55 x 1.5 = 82.5%