On Trading
Milan is supposed to be a major trading power – it was historically, anyway. As it is, I’m being less successful than I have any right to be!
I sent a merchant into my own CoT at Liguria, hoping I might be able to get a monopoly and thereby draw some decent income from vacant spots rather than from the value of total trade there. I don’t know what happened – this may deserve some analytical attention – but the appearance of my one additional merchant (added to the 3 I already had there) presaged some sort of gold rush for the 8 vacant spots that existed there over the summer of 1474. Suddenly, by October, all but 1 was filled!
Even more bizarre – I lost this new guy to competition a month later! :rofl:
I don’t recall if I used the term “4-play”
in the Strategy Guide or not – probably not – but that’s what I call the “swarm” tactic when I send 4 merchants at a time. I will switch off between a “2-play” merchant swarm and a “4-play.”
A 2-play provides the opportunity for one merchant to open a spot through a successful compete, and for the 2nd merchant to take that open spot. It is my educated belief that sending 4 at a time further increases the mathematical chance that you’ll have a successful compete, and therefore, increases the chance that you’ll have an open spot to go into. My testing with this concept has generally yielded better than what I have gotten with 2-plays.
My availability for advisors had up to now been pretty low – a lot of advisors who I didn’t want, but none that I did. Finally, the advisor pool opened up, and I replaced my 2 previous advisors with 3 expert merchants, who together give me +.8/yr merchants. This just counteracts my penalty to merchants from Mercantilism policy, which I have addressed and will continue to address in the direction of Free Trade.
If any advisors with tech investment (esp. trade tech) had been available, I would have preferred to have 1 or 2 of those, but there were none.
For whatever reason, after having a relatively easy start to the game, my opponents have now awakened to the fact that they’re in a trade war, and that they’d better treat it that way if they intend to have any success. I keep battling to keep my merchants in CoTs, but I’m having trouble placing more than I’m losing – I’m actually losing ground, in the net.
My income from trade keeps revolving between 1 ducat and 2 ducats per month, averaging out around 1.4 ducats or so. I’ve decided I just can’t count on this income to be reliable, and since I’m starting to maintain decent balances in my treasury, and I don’t want to encourage inflation, I’m just leaving my budget at a slight loss most of the time. I’ll make it back up at “Christmastime” (when I get new census taxes at the end of December).
By March of 1477, we’re down to just 2 merchants in Venice again (down from 5 just 2-3 months prior!) due to competition. I’m hoping that soon (by 1480) I’ll have an extra trade tech which will help our compete chances. I’ll also be choosing a national idea to help out. In the meantime, we may need to find a less popular CoT in which to trade.
I'll post feedback in just a few minutes here (give me 30, just to be safe!). Watch for it!