Trade/colonies nerfed since 1.4? Need advice

yoursweatersux said:

Hey guys - just jumped back into EU4 after a long hiatus. I'm playing an MP game as England (with my buddy playing as Castile) and I've started colonizing North America. Now, I could be wrong, but it seems that due to the trade company mechanic I'm making a lot less money than I used to back in patch 1.4. My total tariff from the 13 colonies is only like 2 gold in 1540. Is this normal?

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The Thirteen Colonies isn't a Trade Company, it's a Colonial Nation. I think in general that Colonial Nations in the early game don't earn you a lot of money. Their main benefits are that they will support their own troops and ships and will help you fight wars in the region, that they will give you Trade Power, and that when they hit 11 Provinces they will give you a Merchant. Once New England gets some troops up it may be worth declaring war on some random natives beside them, as long as you think New England can beat them militarily. New England will take and core the provinces themselves as soon as the peace deal is signed.

When I was playing Ireland I found the tax and production revenue from the Caribbean extremely helpful in the early game, but that's Ireland. For England you may be better off expanding into another area.

Trade Companies are an African and Asian thing. You can grant provinces in Trade Company areas to your Trade Company, which gives them a +100% Trade Power bonus and a -50% tax penalty. If you can grab 50% of the land-Trade Power of a node this way, you get a Merchant. You will get be lucky to get any tax income whatsoever, but production income is unaffected. If you don't want to go to war with other people in the region, you can try to compete by building Trade buildings in the areas you do have. Gaining control of the Ivory Coast's node is huge, because tons of money will be flowing into it, and, absent diplomatic considerations, you want that money going to the English Channel rather than Seville. You can also make a lot of money by grabbing some Indian or Chinese trade nodes and collecting from them.

The main benefit of colonial nations early is they will transfer their trade power to you meaning all the trade from the chesapeake should end up in the english channel. England has actually gotten better trade-wise in some ways because the channel is now and end node. What precentage of it do you control?


After 1550 there is a chance that the Netherlands will declare independence on Austria (AI never moves their capital to prevent this AFAIK) so you might want to capitalize on that to take Holland (god trade province) and Antwerp (ICoT) both in teh Channel node. So is Caux IIRC.

Generally speaking you want to direct all trade to your home node. The exception as GB/Eng is that if you control the Cape then you can just collect there and still make it worthwhile oftentimes.

If either France or Austria are human you could have serious competition in the English Channel trade node, but yes, that is where you want the trade to end up. Tariffs are lower now. It looks like you have a good read on the main changes.

As to colonies further away you can always collect with a merchant if other powers control the nodes leading back to your home node.

You gotta increase its tarrifs if you want more income out of it yeah