How do you trade commodities between cities?

My end goal is to create a tech city. The very first city I created I tried this, but soon ran into resource problems.

I then started a new region, my first city was mining. When I got to the point where I could smelt, I wanted to start creating alloys (for the later tech city), but of course I needed coal. So I started a second city that just mines coal. All good so far. I have two cities, one mines ore, the other mines coal.

At this point I want to send the coal I mine from city 2 to city 1, instead of having to buy it from the global market. But for the life of me I can't figure out how to do this. I have searched far and wide. Please Stack Exchange, help me out, it's very frustrating.

Thank you

Solution 1:

You can gift any of the 10 commodities to any other city in your region that has a road or rail connection. You can also gift cash.

To do this, go to region view while loaded into the city you wish to send the gift. Once your camera pans out, select the city you wish to receive the gift, but do NOT load it. Once the city is selected, click the gift button on your toolbar (it will be the farthest icon on the right). This will allow you to send anything your host city has in stock to the remote city.

A couple of caveats:

• The host city must have the item in supply at a trade depot or at a place of origin. Such as the coal mine or oil well. The host city also must provide a vehicle for transport (each of these sources has 1 by default, more can be added via module).

• The destination city must have a place to store the item, such as their own trade depot with the appropriate module OR a building that can receive it (in this case, the smelter).

• Gifting is not instant. The item has to actually be physically loaded into a vehicle and transported to the other city. I like to wait for the notification at the top of the screen confirming that a "gift has been sent to city X". By the same token, the other city will take a bit of time to receive the gift as it is in transit. When the gift is received, you will also get a notification.