Trade and micromanaging

[Cervantes]

Good afternoon to everybody. After several hours of playing the new update, I can not stop to notice that many times my trade routes disappear (due to AI, provinces revolting, war, etc.), and although I love trade in this game, renovating the routes has become somehow of a hassle.
Thus, I have thought that maybe regions governed by other characters should manage their own trade, with the ruler being able to interfere. This would remove a task to the player that is not the most engaging experience, while making them feel that governors actually do something. What do you all think?

 

[Roelath]

A lot of people would like to see this already considering Empire level of management becomes tedious. Now due to the fact that trade routes are based upon Noble/Citizen pop values as well Marketplaces. Having to scan every year is a bit too much that I generally don't even bother. A lot of the management in this game should be delegated or out of user hands such as trade in general.

 

[Tiberius911]

The trade definitely needs to be automated, but so does the the construction.
I don't really want to micromanage every single building built in every city. The governor should be able to handle this with the income they receive from their province.
I would prefer them to act more like autonomous governors as opposed to simple modifiers on province stats.

 

[ttilex]

But we only go to war in your game?

There is Total War games for this

 

[Tiberius911]

But we only go to war in your game?

There is Total War games for this

I'd like the option of automating
So if necessary I can intervene on the micro level if necessary.
Otherwise, I can leave it to the governors.

The Total War series are too high level lol

 

[Moonpie]

A group of 6 of us are several days deep into a MP game and we had to pause and spend 30 minutes filling up import routes. It would be very nice to have an option to make provincial import routes auto-fill.

 

[ealge1486]

I was also in the MP game, and I almost completely disagree, I just want notifications when provinces are getting negative food (not due to an army walking through). There can be better panels for dealing with trading and making it more fluid, but it is NOT something I want to give up control of AT ALL, because controlling the economy manually also controls how much money other nations make.

See my post for advice on this. The MP game is a bit of a unique circumstance where two players trading with each other decided they would have to go to war and fixed their routes around that. But honestly, that SHOULD be hard. You shouldn't just be able to dec on your trading partner and have everything autofill up, it should be somewhat tedious to get the routes back if you want to do that.

I think part of the issue could also come with how uninhabited provinces are handled. In Rome I just go click around every once in a while to see if I have routes open, and since there arent a lot of uninhabited areas I can do it easily, but godamn is it a bit more tedious to do it in the east.

 

[Roelath]

I was also in the MP game, and I almost completely disagree, I just want notifications when provinces are getting negative food (not due to an army walking through). There can be better panels for dealing with trading and making it more fluid, but it is NOT something I want to give up control of AT ALL, because controlling the economy manually also controls how much money other nations make.

See my post for advice on this. The MP game is a bit of a unique circumstance where two players trading with each other decided they would have to go to war and fixed their routes around that. But honestly, that SHOULD be hard. You shouldn't just be able to dec on your trading partner and have everything autofill up, it should be somewhat tedious to get the routes back if you want to do that.

I think part of the issue could also come with how uninhabited provinces are handled. In Rome I just go click around every once in a while to see if I have routes open, and since there arent a lot of uninhabited areas I can do it easily, but godamn is it a bit more tedious to do it in the east.

That's being tedious for the sake of being tedious.

It isn't realistic nor is it fun for people to manage trade/food on a province by province scale. You'll have one province making +30 a month and the province nearby is -10 w/o any additional trade routes because it's simply a city. The current food/trade mechanics are awful. Victoria II has a far superior system that handles the amount of produced, consumed, exported, and imported. Maybe instead of these trade deals involving a single unit of resource we just have a treaty to trade goods with said nation. With the only avenues being direct neighbor, port within diplomatic range, and zero attrition gained so a Germanic minor w/ full upgrades can't trade with Egypt. Trade shouldn't be this arcadey 1:1 dealings as a populated Empire of 10k+ pops shouldn't yield the +8 bonus for 2resources just the same as a nation with 10pops.

 

[tobysimpson]

I totally agree that this needs looking at again.

I don't remember this being the case as much before the last update, but I seem to spend half of my time replacing trade routes having been told that I am "no longer importing x from y to z". The trade mechanics are really interesting, but this is just a pain.

May I suggest to the devs that players pick the produce they want imported to a province, but the AI then selects which country those imports come from based on which country you have the highest diplomatic opinion of, perhaps also with a proximity kicker, and have that working in the background whilst you get on with the game.

This would also mean that AI countries would only take your exports ahead of others in the market if they have a high opinion of you. Of course setting up a trade route could no longer have a cost, but instead the import capacity has a cost based on no market buildings, provincial investments and population. This would add to the importance of the diplomacy mechanic as would highlight the economic need to have a good global repuation and good relations with key export markets set against your need to crush all around you.

 

[Bodxx]

I totally agree that this needs looking at again.

I don't remember this being the case as much before the last update, but I seem to spend half of my time replacing trade routes having been told that I am "no longer importing x from y to z". The trade mechanics are really interesting, but this is just a pain.

May I suggest to the devs that players pick the produce they want imported to a province, but the AI then selects which country those imports come from based on which country you have the highest diplomatic opinion of, perhaps also with a proximity kicker, and have that working in the background whilst you get on with the game.

This would also mean that AI countries would only take your exports ahead of others in the market if they have a high opinion of you. Of course setting up a trade route could no longer have a cost, but instead the import capacity has a cost based on no market buildings, provincial investments and population. This would add to the importance of the diplomacy mechanic as would highlight the economic need to have a good global repuation and good relations with key export markets set against your need to crush all around you.

I Like The Sound Of That....

 

[Cervantes]

But we only go to war in your game?

There is Total War games for this

War is just one of the reasons trade routes disappear. Sometimes the AI of other countries does weird stuff and the trade route disappears only to be back again, and sometimes their provinces revolt and they no longer trade, or they have a civil war and you have to change your import...
As Roelath already said, I do not consider this to be hard, but tedious. Therefore, I think it needs fixing.
The idea that toby has given sounds good too, since it does not require the player to keep paying attention to trade routes in case they disappear.