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unmerged(31425)

unmerged(31425)

Married Man
Jul 2, 2004
2.826
0
OK. This is my first AAR. But some recent posts and some refinement of economic tactics of mine recently have made me think about making an AAR and see how rich I can get with the country I know how to play well Portugal.

So here are the conditions. I'm using Portugal, 1.08 beta, vanilla, coward/normal, and I'm forbidding myself to use any exploits of any kind. I have to obey all regular rules of playing. So for example I won't even attack/retreat/colonize provinces with natives in them. I will only send colonists to a province when colonizing if I am not fighting the natives at the time. And it's 1419 GC of course.

OK, well I'm up to 1532 in my game and probably should have made a report sooner, but I happen to have a good memory so I think the not too precise figures shouldn't be too much of a let down.

My basic strategy that I'm using is to no matter what circumstance I'm in, view everything I do to make the most profit possible. So for example, I won't engage in any wars, unless I it will be very profitable or there simply isn't any more other more profitable ventures lefts for me to do.

So I peaced out with Fez in the initial war, culled my army down to 11,000 men, and allied Castile. Fortunately for me Castile DOWed Aragon early and beat him up a bit, so I jumped in with 1,000 men and stole 3 sieges from him. That got me Gerona and Valencia fairly early. :) Other than this I've been a dove vs non-pagans so far.

I went with my traditional 1425 Silves to Azores and 4 Sea spaces away hit the "Winward Islands" sea zone and in early 1426 began colonizing the East Carribean islands. I saved all my money till then except what I spent for the Azores, bailiffs, filling up my COT, and filling up Astrakhan. Otherwise all money was saved till the E. Carribean colonization.

I used my explorers Silves and Eannes to get those colonies cheap. I managed to get 3 all the way up without having to pump any cash. After that I managed those tech meters as best I could to avoid as much inflation as possible.

I went cent +1 in 1419 then did free subjects once and aristrocracy twice if I can remember correctly. And I shifted land -1 in 1429. The rest of all my DP shifts so far have been free trade shifts. I'm in the middle of that one right now in 1532.

BY 1450 or so I was making about 40 ducats a month. I decided to start merchanting up the European COTs with the open slot method, 2 merchants per empty slot. Amazingly by about 1475 I had them all filled and with only infrequent losses. :)

For colonization, I grabbed all the rest of the Carribeans islands and then took some of Brazil and Virginia.

I also didn't make any manus whatsoever early on. In fact I got got trade 3 after I had infra 3 for some time by 1477. :) And without a single manu. :) By about 1485 I was over 100 ducats a month and had about 5% inflation. Unfortunately no -2 inflation random events. :(

I began to tech land in the 1490's, hoping to make A & A conquer the Aztecs and the Incas easily with out getting too much RR from WE. I attacked the Aztecs in about 1500. Took them out by about 1503. No land 5 yet. :( I got is soon afterwards though.

When I checked the northern part of the Incan empire, Chimu was still there, with the Incas owning only one of his provinces. So I moved A & A into place and DOWed him. Beat him easily cuz land 5 showed up after I took a province or two of his.

Then just my luck I got a temporary CB vs the Incas. :) Very fortunate for me because with owning the Aztecs and Chimu my stab sure as heck wouldn't go up quickly. Since I had all the European COTs filled, I didn't care to lose the merchants from the stab dips. The Incas died fairly quickly and I didn't even have to send many reinforcements.

After this I kept colonizing SA and NA. I also began exploring down the African coast once I got Cao. Unfortunately I had very bad luck there as it took too long to find places. I had to wait until the Corte Reals, jsut before the last one died too, to find a colonizeable province in S Africa. :( Even Queros later only found Bourbon. :mad: So Asian conquests are all put off. Da Gama died prematurely too. I must have rounded that damn cape 20 times before I found a single province. :(

After I finished conquering the Incas, I deliberately left conqering all the other N Americans, Mayans included. I figureed my money would better spent elsewhere and I didn't want stab hits messing up my merchant income. So I decided, I'd make manus finally and started pumping all cash. I made 7 refineries by 1532. I also in the last 6 years or so of Manuel reign, because he has high ADM and Joao III has low ADM, started converting alot of the pagan provinces.

I hit infra 4 in the middle of all of this but waited until I finished these two projects to go LCing everywhere and spiked up my trade demands. Unfortunately due to there being so few manus in the game, the luxury goods didn't hit demand 200% until I had mayored up all my provinces. Once about 1/3rd of the mayors were completed, they hit 200% demand. Of course gold is the higher income at this point still.
 
Here's my stats for August 1532.

Monthly income:
tax = 110.3
goods production = 52.9
trade income = 86.3
gold mines = 102.0
total = 351.5

Inflation = 22.9% Unfortunately after over 113 years of playing I have not gotten a single inflation reducing event! :(

I have 7 refineries and no other manus.

And yes my empire is enormous and that's why I have so much monthly income and not because of high techs. I do however dominate all of the COTs I know, which is all but the 4 most eastern ones.

Well I'll continue this with the next post.
 
Here's my stats for january 1600.

Monthly income:
tax = 204.1
goods production = 128.4 with 83% PE
trade income = 226.3 with 92% PE
gold mines = 114.4
total = 673.2

Inflation = 8.7% Oh and I finally got 2 -2 inflation events.:)

These stats are a bit skewed as I just got a stab hit so I'm really at +2 stab.
I have 11 refineries and no other manus.

I mostly just spent the last 70 years colonizing and filling up those last 4 COTs. I did kill the Creek and Cherokee. I just recently took Zanzibar and Alexandria from Oman and his ally. I unfortunately attacked Ahtanti twice and peaced out with nothing. I lost about 35,000 troops on them and of course had to make 100% troop maintainance for about 2-3 years. :(

Otherwise things are progressing well. I think I'll focus on more refinery production and warmongering for key valuable provinces, as my inflation is more under control.

Oh and as I ddin't mention before, my objective is the most REAL income. Anotherwards, I view inflation as being deducted at the end. So ideally I want no inflation, not just a huge empire with 100+% inflation.
 
Interesting, but wouldn't getting goods manus become a better goal than more refineries by now?

Though you seem to be doing pretty well by now, I also doubt all those LC's were worth it, some guys once calculated it and figured you needed REALLY many manu's to make them profitable, but not sure.

Still, nice job :)
 
Avernite said:
Interesting, but wouldn't getting goods manus become a better goal than more refineries by now?
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Trade potetentially has more income than production. Because some commodities, the more valuable ones, can have up to 200% demand. Takespice for example. At 200,000 population with 200% demand makes 80 ducats in trade income but only 40 ducats in production. Alot of the commodities are like this actually. Anyways, I don't think I need to lecture you on how much higher trade efficiency will usually be than production efficiency either. So trade is decidedly more valuable. In fact my plan is to make all refineries and no other manus unless goods manus cost half of what a refinery costs and then I'll make them.
Avernite said:
Though you seem to be doing pretty well by now, I also doubt all those LC's were worth it, some guys once calculated it and figured you needed REALLY many manu's to make them profitable, but not sure.

Still, nice job :)
Click to expand...
LC's are easily worth it. Besides being able to spike the demands of some commodities, which happen to be the larger contributing ones, they each produce 2.4 ducats of tax income for me every year. Half of this is census income of course and is thus inflation free. They aren't as profitable as alot of those colonies, but I make so much census income now that I have extra for LCs anyways. I also rarely have to spend on merchants. Maybe once every 3 years I send some merchants to a COT. Right now I'm making pretty big strides. I'm up to 882.6 in 1617.
:)
 
I believe you make a lot of cash from TC's, I just think you might make more from manu's. But I haven't read the end of the discussion on the EU2 board ;)

And I think Goods manus will be more valuable than refineries before they reach half-price, and in fact I'd believe you allmost hit that half price, but I'll take your word for it ;)
 
Avernite said:
I believe you make a lot of cash from TC's, I just think you might make more from manu's. But I haven't read the end of the discussion on the EU2 board ;)

And I think Goods manus will be more valuable than refineries before they reach half-price, and in fact I'd believe you allmost hit that half price, but I'll take your word for it ;)
Click to expand...
I'm up to the 1680's and I'm over 2,000 ducats a month now. Trade is by far the largest contributor. The trade income is well over double the production income. And I'm strong enough now that I can man handle any of the AIs with minimal effort. I just don't want the BB and/or long wars.

Since my trade income is over twice the size of my production income and it doesn't look like I can be forced for any long period of time out of a COT now, I don't see the point in making any manus except refineries. With my last count I had 51 of the them.:) And my trade efficiency is in the 170's.

Apparently if you make all of one manu the other ones only have a gap of so much between them in cost. I haven't seen the goods manu hit half price yet, and with 51 refineries I don't think it can happen now. The goods manu is about 3/5ths to 4/7ths of the price of a refinery. So the math doesn't lie, I can't make as much money with a goods manu. So I'm just going to stick to my current strategy. In fact it is working so well that I can hold a monopoly in all of my COTs without a merchant loss for a few years at a shot, then I have to re-send 3 or so merchants to re-acquire it. If I went goods manus earlier, I wouldn't be raking in this much dough. Because the super-high trade efficiency has made even rung 6 almost unstoppable now. And each monopoly gives me +2% trade efficiency.

I'll give more precise figures and the outline for the 17th century when I hit 1700. But I'm going to sleep first so it may be awhile.
 
Here's my stats for january 1700.

Monthly income:
tax = 744.7
goods production = 364.2 with 109% PE
trade income = 1327.9 with 222% TE
gold mines = 153.2
total = 2590.9

Inflation = .7%


I have 61 refineries and no other manus.

Big enough jump for you in 100 years?:D

I actually only did a little warmongering in the past 100 years. I now have a monopoly in every COT in the game, and about perhaps once every 18 months I have to replace a merchant loss, usually the lvl 6 rung. I been beating up France cuz heTEed me about 3 times. I took nothing from him, though I made him cede a W. African province to my ally, who is stubbornly resisting vassalage, Ashtanti. And yes he is catholic.
At my present rate, without causing any inflation, I can make a manu about once every 2 years. Since my income is growing steadily, I figure this will not change. So in 1800 I'll probably have a good number more refineries.

I switched tactics. Since trade is worth so much now, I just been TPing most of the time. I've TPed most of the worthwhile provinces but not all have more than lvl TPs.

Another odd thing I've noticed is that my provinces produce more trade taxes than production. For those who don't realize what I'm saying, trade taxes is an income from the left column of the commodity icon when you click on a province. It is different income from the income that goes to COTs. So even trade taxes, which IIRC is categorized as "tax income" in the monthly ledger, is higher than production. Trade taxes are affected by trade efficiency. So at this point a goods manu simply can't compare in profitability to refineries. They make a ton of money.

Here's an example of the trade taxes vs production. Flores has 21.3 in production and 24.5 in trade taxes. Since Flores has the most valuable commodity, excluding gold, you can get an idea of the desparity between the two in other provinces, since the trade taxes elsewhere are still high even if the production, due to a low priced good, aren't. For example here's Curitiba: production = 9.3 and trade taxes = 26.8.

Right now at 61 refineries, with about 2 being made, they are only running me a little over 15,000 ducats. So having such low inflation has it's perks. :)

I think if I just went expansion crazy I could make more money, though this would result in less refineries. I can keep my troop and ship maintainance fairly low, due to simply not needing ot fight often or put down many revolts. Makes the game go faster too. We'll see how high I can get by 1820. :)
 
Here's my stats for january 1800.

Monthly income:
tax = 1335.1
goods production = 597.3 with 120% PE
trade income = 2852.4 with 299% TE
gold mines = 202.7
total = 4988.1

Inflation = 3.2%

I have a mere 126 refineries.:D I captured 6 of them in war. The rest I above 61 I built, except for 3 in a historical event. Though I did lose about 5 or 6 through random events.

I now have 1 weapons manu. I captured it in war. I didn't really want it, but it was on a province with a COT.

I also now have 1 goods manu. I got it from a historical event.

I actually only did a decent amount of warmongering in the past 100 years. I mostly just tried to grab those 6 refineries and COT provinces. I own about 2/5ths of the provinces in the game currently.


I have a monopoly in every COT still, except that now the AIs never compete any of my merchants out, not even in their own COTs.:D

I found out that all those TPs in Siberia have decreased the furs demand and now colonies are a better investment yet again. Fortunately, most of my TPs are colonies now.

I've seen some provinces where the trade taxes are not far behind the 60 ducats for tariffs in provinces with COTs. It sounds crazy but trade taxes are the primary source of income for most of my provinces, even to the point of often surpassing all other income accrued from them combined. In fact that fat tax income in the ledger is largely trade taxes.

At this point in the game I think I'm just going to skip expanding. The Europeans are starting to catch up to me in land tech and I don't want to lose alot of money supporting alot of troops. I can make a refinery about once every 2 years still, even though they now cost about 32,000 apiece.

And all my techs are maxed so I'm making/breaking RMs to be able to invest in stab, instead of running up inflation. Most of my DOWs were without CBs. I wanted that, as the BB helps me be able to avoid inflation.:D
 
It seems the cost increase in refineries is linear .. 61 manus == 15,000 gold and 126 manus == 32,000.

BTW, do you get an integer overflow when the cost goes over 32,768? or 65536? Those are the 16 bit signed and unsigned integer limits btw.

I'm curious what they used as the cost .. I'm sure Paradox didn't suspect someone would be building 120+ manus :D
 
Mettermrck said:
Egads! 120+? If I get 10 total of all buildings, it's a success for me. :)
Click to expand...

My current game is the first where I've concentrated on factories .. I've got a total of 24 mixed types, but IDLF really takes it to the extreme :rofl:

Up to now I've always considered that 1% bonus/refinery to be puny and negligible .. this AAR proves that if you're stubborn enough to pay 15,000 per refinery then it can really pay off :D

Well done IDLF, you've certainly taught me something here :cool:

Can we get screenshots of your empire? I'm sure we won't get rivetting plot ;), so the next best thing would be screenshots .. Thanks
 
Forgive my noobish question but what is LC?
 
dsk said:
It seems the cost increase in refineries is linear .. 61 manus == 15,000 gold and 126 manus == 32,000.

BTW, do you get an integer overflow when the cost goes over 32,768? or 65536? Those are the 16 bit signed and unsigned integer limits btw.
Click to expand...
Integer overflow? I don't know what you mean by this term?
 
dsk said:
My current game is the first where I've concentrated on factories .. I've got a total of 24 mixed types, but IDLF really takes it to the extreme :rofl:

Up to now I've always considered that 1% bonus/refinery to be puny and negligible .. this AAR proves that if you're stubborn enough to pay 15,000 per refinery then it can really pay off :D

Well done IDLF, you've certainly taught me something here :cool:
Click to expand...
Well one very important thing I think this AAR pretty solidly proves, is that no manufactories, from a purely economic perspective are worth making, except refineries. The simple truth is that trade has a greater potential for income, almost all the time. And certainly until you grab most of the map, your base trade income will be higher than your base production income. The problem is that trade taxes are also affected by trade efficiency. And they are very sizeable too. A little over 6/7ths of my tax income is really from trade taxes. So it isn't just base trade and base production that you're comparing for what gets modified.

I have however figured that CCs and SYs can be worth making over refineries, but not till they cost about 1/20th the cost of a refinery. The math is a bit complicated and the exact math varies widely. So I'll summarize I how figured it out rather than make an example. Each SY and CC increases the demand of 2 goods each by roughly 1%. There are only so many of those 4 commodities in the game. And once again it's not just the increase in trade income due to the increase in trade efficiency that's being compared but trade taxes as well. So it takes a very long time for a CC or SY, even at a mere 1,000 ducats for the first one, to actually pay off bigger than another refinery, even at very high costs.

Considering that weapons and naval manus, don't modify income more than a paltry amount, and since their support limit increases are petty in comparison to other support limit factors in the latest betas, I don't think they are ever worth making anymore. That's not to say that they aren't worth getting via historical event early due to their tech benefits. But there isn't, as near as I can tell, any justifiable reason to ever make them, for pure profit. Refineries are simply too valuable.

Merchants, LCs, mayors, TCs, and colonies, can under good and common circumstances be a better investment. But weapons manus, naval manus, FAAs, and goods manus, should never be made for economic purposes. And shipyards and conscription centers should only be made late game after refineries are into the 20,000's in cost and even then making more than a few of them is less profitable than the refineries.
dsk said:
Can we get screenshots of your empire? I'm sure we won't get rivetting plot ;), so the next best thing would be screenshots .. Thanks
Click to expand...
I haven't actually made screen shots before, but my friend left me written instructions on how to do it. That doesn't mean I can get it right the first time, but we'll see if I can figure it out. I intend to keep the saved game and the screen shots for it. I only have 5 years or so left in the game. So I'll post final results soon. :)
 
Here's my stats for november 1819.

Monthly income:
tax = 1339.2
goods production = 633.8 with 120% PE
trade income = 2531.1 with 308% TE
gold mines = 205.7
total = 4768.7

Inflation = 2.7%

I have a only 135 refineries.:D

I now have 1 weapons manu.

I have 1 goods manu.

Unfortunately these statistics are skewed, as I have +1 stability. I got hit with -5 stab within the past few years. :( Also In mid 1819, I got hit with a civil war at 0 stab. I restarted from a save, so that it wouldn't mess up the stats, and this caused a bunch of AIs to place merchants all of a sudden, lowering my trade income substantially. In point of fact, I have fluctuated wildly from 4,600 ducats a month to 5,400 ducats a month for the last several years. It is in large part due to the fact that I am simply dumping merchants in COTs I own pushing out the AIs there to get more from my monopolies, so I can squeeze every penny out of them.

Anyways, I'll post screen shots in the next few days if I can figure it out.

As for conclusions of the game, I think there is alot of room for improvement. There seems to be clear shifts in priority at various stages of the game, not all of which I capitalized on. The bottom line seems to be that making as many refineries as possible is the way to go. Thus making sure you can capitalize on every moment to squeeze as much profit out as possible, so you can plop down as many refineries as you can, as quickly as you can, is what I should be doing.

For example, at a certain point in the game, making mostly TPs became more profitable, as opposed to mostly colonies. This later shifted back to colonies when TPing the Siberian corridor heavily caused the price of furs in the 102 fur provinces to go down, making them less profitable per ducat invested. The whole idea of course with the shift to TPs is to free up alot of money for more refineries and to gain quickly, what was at the time, the most valuable part of a province, trade value.

Another thing I did was make a decent amount of CCs and SYs. I later calculated the effects they were having and realized it would have been more profitable to have invested in more refineries at that time instead.

Hitting 250% trade efficiency is a crucial point in the game, as it causes the AIs to never be able to compete my merchants out anymore. That means no TEs and thus I never have to DOW them to force open their COTs.

The high trade tax revenues makes miltary expansion very profitable. But I think the key is to grab as many provinces as possible as opposed to grabbing merely the more valuable ones. This is because the trade taxes become so extremely valuable, that tariff income, tax value, production income, or the trade income(which I'm already getting most of) actually become less important. Since this requires me breaching the BB limit and increasing my active troop counts and supporting the troops at 100% more of the time, it can really compete with refinery production. Thus I think non-selective military expansion should be postponed till the 18th century or so. Before this, mass producing refineries, with less miltary interests competing with it, may be a better route to go.

There are other things too. I didn't capitalize on priority in colonizing which provinces before the others as well as I could have. I got a bit sloppy in that, but actually it has sizeable importance, even though many largely ignore that issue.

So I think I'll try this type of game again in the future and see if I can't beat what I got here by a good sized margin. :) Anyways, I hope you all enjoy the results of this unorthodox experiment.
 
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idontlikeforms said:
Integer overflow? I don't know what you mean by this term?
Click to expand...

It's a computer science term. When a number gets increased to such a large size that it cycles back to the start of the range.

eg. 16 bit signed integers go from -32,767 to 32,768, so if you did 32768 + 1 the result would be -32,767

which is obviously the incorrect result, but that's the limits of the machine, and is known as an integer overflow.

idontlikeforms said:
Well one very important thing I think this AAR pretty solidly proves, is that no manufactories, from a purely economic perspective are worth making, except refineries. The simple truth is that trade has a greater potential for income, almost all the time. And certainly until you grab most of the map, your base trade income will be higher than your base production income. The problem is that trade taxes are also affected by trade efficiency. And they are very sizeable too. A little over 6/7ths of my tax income is really from trade taxes. So it isn't just base trade and base production that you're comparing for what gets modified.
Click to expand...

I wasn't aware that TE raised tax values as well .. very interesting.

Can you give us a breakdown of your tax incomes for comparison?

idontlikeforms said:
I have however figured that CCs and SYs can be worth making over refineries, but not till they cost about 1/20th the cost of a refinery. The math is a bit complicated and the exact math varies widely. So I'll summarize I how figured it out rather than make an example. Each SY and CC increases the demand of 2 goods each by roughly 1%. There are only so many of those 4 commodities in the game. And once again it's not just the increase in trade income due to the increase in trade efficiency that's being compared but trade taxes as well. So it takes a very long time for a CC or SY, even at a mere 1,000 ducats for the first one, to actually pay off bigger than another refinery, even at very high costs.
Click to expand...

What's a SY? CC would be Conscription Centre ..

idontlikeforms said:
Considering that weapons and naval manus, don't modify income more than a paltry amount, and since their support limit increases are petty in comparison to other support limit factors in the latest betas, I don't think they are ever worth making anymore. That's not to say that they aren't worth getting via historical event early due to their tech benefits. But there isn't, as near as I can tell, any justifiable reason to ever make them, for pure profit. Refineries are simply too valuable.

Merchants, LCs, mayors, TCs, and colonies, can under good and common circumstances be a better investment. But weapons manus, naval manus, FAAs, and goods manus, should never be made for economic purposes. And shipyards and conscription centers should only be made late game after refineries are into the 20,000's in cost and even then making more than a few of them is less profitable than the refineries.
Click to expand...

Myself I've always invested in weapons and naval manus so that there's a trickle of research going into them, even when I'm researching trade or production .. the increase in support is pretty worthless (as you say) in the betas, eg. I never reach anywhere near my support limit for naval.

But it may be worth more to actually invest in trade .. if you get enough refineries then it may be worth it.

I've always thought that having low stab (eg. from having a monster empire) always resulted in your merchants being kicked out, regardless of trade efficiency .. Is there ever a time when your TE gets so high that your merchants are never kicked out, regardless of stability?

That to me is the critical difference between going for profit and a WC, since you can't have high stab in a WC .. at least not with a refinery only approach.
 
dsk said:
It's a computer science term. When a number gets increased to such a large size that it cycles back to the start of the range.

eg. 16 bit signed integers go from -32,767 to 32,768, so if you did 32768 + 1 the result would be -32,767

which is obviously the incorrect result, but that's the limits of the machine, and is known as an integer overflow.
Click to expand...
IC. In that case then, I honestly don't know.
dsk said:
I wasn't aware that TE raised tax values as well .. very interesting.
Click to expand...
More specifically it raises "trade taxes," aka "tolls."

dsk said:
Can you give us a breakdown of your tax incomes for comparison?
Click to expand...
Sure. If you hit F6 and go to the "income" chart, you can see the breakdown for last year there. So for what I'm about to give, it should be my 1818 income for the whole year.
taxes = 2048.08.
Tolls(aka "trade taxes") = 13,887.95.
production = 6485.33.
trade = 36,448.88

Both "tolls" and taxes comprise the "tax income" in the monthly ledger. As you can see, trade income and trade taxes combined, dwarf production. To be fair though for production, if I had made mass goods manus, it would be larger than trade taxes, and quite likely, by the latter part of the game, larger than trade income. But the point is that we are not comparing just production to just trade, in determining what is better to make the manus for.

And in fact in the game, I haven't got a single province that has higher production than trade taxes, except for gold provinces. I'll give an example of the colossal trade taxes I'm talking about.

Baladok province has 2,000 something population, which means that the production and trade taxes, are not modified by population yet. It makes 14.1 production per year. But the trade taxes are 30.9 per year. 2 of the production points come from TCs and mayors BTW. Incase you were wondering why I get 14.1 ducats instead of 12, as furs, it's commodity has a base value of 10 and I have 120% PE.

All of my provinces in the game are like that. Trade taxes, are the largest contritbuting income from many of my provinces. Sounds Bizarre, I know. I wasn't expecting that to be the case either. I'd like to post a screenshot with that selected.
dsk said:
What's a SY? CC would be Conscription Centre ..
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ShipYard.
dsk said:
Myself I've always invested in weapons and naval manus so that there's a trickle of research going into them, even when I'm researching trade or production .. the increase in support is pretty worthless (as you say) in the betas, eg. I never reach anywhere near my support limit for naval.

But it may be worth more to actually invest in trade .. if you get enough refineries then it may be worth it.
Click to expand...
Yes refineries would be better. The only real benefit for weapons manus and naval manus, would be that for the next few decades, you'll tech them faster. After that, they hold no advantage, as the mass refineries have an exponential effect in the long run, and thus should eventually compensate for that. Also keep in mind that making a refinery instead, doesn't mean that you will not be able to get +5 per month for that specific tech, as the refinery increases your income more overall and you can hypothetically, put that increase to work on land or naval tech. So it isn't as much as +5 ducats for land or naval that you are giving up to make another refinery, it's actually less, and it varies how much depending on how much trade and trade taxes income you have.
dsk said:
I've always thought that having low stab (eg. from having a monster empire) always resulted in your merchants being kicked out, regardless of trade efficiency .. Is there ever a time when your TE gets so high that your merchants are never kicked out, regardless of stability?
Click to expand...
If you hypertech trade, this shouldn't be the case in the betas. The cutoff point where I lost not a single merchant for the rest of the game, was about 250% trade efficiency. At 200% or so, I was able to acquire monopolies and only seldomly lose a merchant from rung level 6(monopoly) which I then got in all the COTs in the game. BTW, that causes a sizeable boost in trade efficiency itself. So there mass refineries strategy, has a domino effect in more ways than one.
dsk said:
That to me is the critical difference between going for profit and a WC, since you can't have high stab in a WC .. at least not with a refinery only approach.
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No but I seriously wonder, to what extent GTD, would make the last 300 years of WCing easier.
 
idontlikeforms said:
IC. In that case then, I honestly don't know.
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No problem, I was just idly curious ..

Actually, can you tell me how much your last refinery, from the 135 refinery save, costs? That should at least give a part answer.

idontlikeforms said:
Sure. If you hit F6 and go to the "income" chart, you can see the breakdown for last year there. So for what I'm about to give, it should be my 1818 income for the whole year.
taxes = 2048.08.
Tolls(aka "trade taxes") = 13,887.95.
production = 6485.33.
trade = 36,448.88

Both "tolls" and taxes comprise the "tax income" in the monthly ledger. As you can see, trade income and trade taxes combined, dwarf production. To be fair though for production, if I had made mass goods manus, it would be larger than trade taxes, and quite likely, by the latter part of the game, larger than trade income. But the point is that we are not comparing just production to just trade, in determining what is better to make the manus for.

And in fact in the game, I haven't got a single province that has higher production than trade taxes, except for gold provinces. I'll give an example of the colossal trade taxes I'm talking about.

Baladok province has 2,000 something population, which means that the production and trade taxes, are not modified by population yet. It makes 14.1 production per year. But the trade taxes are 30.9 per year. 2 of the production points come from TCs and mayors BTW. Incase you were wondering why I get 14.1 ducats instead of 12, as furs, it's commodity has a base value of 10 and I have 120% PE.
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I've always thought that Tolls had a limit of 12 .. that's what the tooltip says is the maximum if you look at the province income.

Obviously that's not correct from this game.

idontlikeforms said:
All of my provinces in the game are like that. Trade taxes, are the largest contritbuting income from many of my provinces. Sounds Bizarre, I know. I wasn't expecting that to be the case either. I'd like to post a screenshot with that selected.
Click to expand...

Should be very interesting ..

idontlikeforms said:
If you hypertech trade, this shouldn't be the case in the betas. The cutoff point where I lost not a single merchant for the rest of the game, was about 250% trade efficiency. At 200% or so, I was able to acquire monopolies and only seldomly lose a merchant from rung level 6(monopoly) which I then got in all the COTs in the game. BTW, that causes a sizeable boost in trade efficiency itself. So there mass refineries strategy, has a domino effect in more ways than one.
Click to expand...

very interesting .. you've got me interested in doing a Portugal game and duplicating this. Thanks.
 
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