Are you content with current trade mechanics?

[Maq]

What the hell is trade steering? Sitting in Seville and collecting money for products which were made on another shore of the ocean? I just don't get it.
I believe that if a country wants to generate profit from trading products made in India, her merchants and ships must be present in India. Otherwise the country in question would be only a customer, and as we all know, customer makes no profit, customer pays cash for goods he/she needs.
Current system of fixed trade nodes and fixed flow of trade profit bring equally fixed and otherwise undeserved advantages to the owners of some provinces, advantages which other countries cannot get in any way. This is unjust, unrealistic.
I don't like that and want to know what other people think about it.

 

[BrokenSky]

Yeah. Empire total war could introduce dynamic prices because both supply AND demand were dynamic, while in EU4 you can only act on supply.
The problem of demand points out another blind spot of EU4 : population increase. It simply didn't exist until Common Sense introduced "development", which is very good, but not completly satisfying. Population should increase by itself, without spending monarch points (maybe proportionaly with you grain production, which is completely useless so far !) You could still use monarch points for increasing base tax, production and man power (it represents how you convert population into taxpayer, workforces and recruits)

In the previous system demand was also dynamic, as I said. For example, if some country that you knew went to war, the prices of several war and logistic related resources went up (Iron, Copper, Wheat etc)

 

[Maq]

Well, I can see that my radical idea of removing trade steering altogether is not widely supported. It makes me to formulate somehow milder suggestions:

1] The direction of trade steering should not be fixed once for all. Instead, the direction of trade profit flow should be determined by the trade power within the node. If Egypt develops (more advanced provinces provide more trade power, richer countries may afford more ships, etc.), she should be able to take over the Mediterranean trade from the Italians.
2] Collecting in non-home trade nodes should not be penalized.
3] Traded value should not grow with distance. --- This assumption is wrong. With distance, price grows as a result of increased transport costs, but the profit remains basically average. High costs made spices expensive in Europe, but trading in spices could only temporarily bring higher profit to limited number of traders (in case you succeeded in decreasing costs below average yet still could sell for prices based on average costs).

 

[3ishop]

1. Issues with being able to make loops in trade causing the system to crash, this is why the flow is fixed.

2. I do agree it shouldn't drop power. Maybe you could have a % of the cash lost due to taxes/tarrifs if you don't own a province in the area.

3. No. The reason people took such risk to sail around the world to get the spices was due to the price they could get for them in Europe and the profit they could make. Otherwise they would of bought them and sold them to the guy next door as the profits the same and there's less risk. There's less supply and more demand.

Current system isn't great at this but it's hard to set up a global market where each node has different values for different goods.

I do miss the old system where we could impact the value of goods but it was complex and took a good chunk of power to run it. Was a nice system that needed balancing but I think Paradox decided it was too much effort and cost to try and rework it and went with the simpler system. I think a better trade system would be a good thing for the peace time gameplay but it feels like it's going away

Current system and how I view it is trade power represents how much of the goods you can gain control of. Steering trade is your merchants buying the goods and moving them up to the next market hub, and so on. This partly represents the increase in value and why you can lose some. Collecting is you cashing in and selling the goods to other merchants, both local and other nations hense loss of trade power, this trade power is gained in home trade port due to the government being able to gain some tax on it. It's not perfect but it kinda works and makes some sense.

One change I would make is a National demand where it represents what goods the country wants, if you control a high enough % you gain benefits if you don't then either nothing or a negative. This is an idea to show other nations getting the influence/cash from your people. Not the best system but one I think could be added without too much system demand.

 

[Maq]

3. No. The reason people took such risk to sail around the world to get the spices was due to the price they could get for them in Europe and the profit they could make. Otherwise they would of bought them and sold them to the guy next door as the profits the same and there's less risk. There's less supply and more demand.

What you say counts for individuals. Those lucky ones who made the whole journey successfully and brought the cargo home. These lucky individuals made huge profit, which attracted others to try the same. But many of them failed. Shipwrecking, pirates, enemy ships, malnutrition, deseases took enormous toll. Even if you arrived to the Spice Islands, various factors could still harm negotiations with local suppliers, poor harvest, other merchants who arrived earlier or kept better relations with men of importance, and so on and so on.
These not-so-lucky and totally unlucky merchants must be taken into account when modelling trade on global level. On macroeconomic level, the profit from trading spices was basically the same like profit from trading herrings on the North Sea coast. Many merchants made reasonable profit in trading herrings, while few merchants made huge profit in trading spices and many others ended on the bottom of the oceans. In average - average profit. Every economist would confirm that. Distance increases costs (you call it 'risk'), and costs increase prices. But profit is the difference between price and costs.
This is, by the way, the origin of serious distortion in the game. It often seems like handful of Carribean islands produced more than whole England. That is absolute nonsense. In about 1820 the whole New World (America plus Australia) produced a bit more than 4% of world GDP (less than the UK alone). And before that date, the share was never higher, but much lower.

 

[BrokenSky]

What you say counts for individuals. Those lucky ones who made the whole journey successfully and brought the cargo home. These lucky individuals made huge profit, which attracted others to try the same. But many of them failed. Shipwrecking, pirates, enemy ships, malnutrition, deseases took enormous toll. Even if you arrived to the Spice Islands, various factors could still harm negotiations with local suppliers, poor harvest, other merchants who arrived earlier or kept better relations with men of importance, and so on and so on.
These not-so-lucky and totally unlucky merchants must be taken into account when modelling trade on global level. On macroeconomic level, the profit from trading spices was basically the same like profit from trading herrings on the North Sea coast. Many merchants made reasonable profit in trading herrings, while few merchants made huge profit in trading spices and many others ended on the bottom of the oceans. In average - average profit. Every economist would confirm that. Distance increases costs (you call it 'risk'), and costs increase prices. But profit is the difference between price and costs.
This is, by the way, the origin of serious distortion in the game. It often seems like handful of Carribean islands produced more than whole England. That is absolute nonsense. In about 1820 the whole New World (America plus Australia) produced a bit more than 4% of world GDP (less than the UK alone). And before that date, the share was never higher, but much lower.

I think that the reason that trade value grows with distance is for game-play ones; first it's part of the collecting in not the home node / transferring increasing value system designed to make it so that money actually moves around a lot. Without it people would just collect in every node they could. This would lead to most of the trade power being in the hands of people who produce valuable resources, in order to allow nations like the Netherlands and en gland make a lot of money from trade. The problem is the way it is done is pretty much a heavy handed method which forces these nations to be better at it arbitrarily by tying the capacity to make money to the geographical location. Would once again like to advocate that thing I said earlier in post 6 since I think this would solve this hopefully?

Forgot to mention; the second is so that it feels like owning all of africa as trade-company and pushing wealth along the linear accelerator feels rewarding, even though the money ends up in the same place.

 

[Maq]

I imagine trade power both from provinces and from ships rising significantly with higher levels of dip_tech (and province progress in my mod). As such, advanced nations owning only one or few provinces in a trade node would 'steal' much of the trade profit from less advanced locals. This is exactly what the Dutch and Englishmen did. And yes, collecting is quite enough for such a model, steering is a redundant abstraction.
In such a model, if you get advanced in trading, and want to participate in, say, Indian trade, you need one province nearby as a naval base, and ships. The Indians have more provinces, and also some ships, but are less advanced, so you can control larger than proportional share of the trade value. And that's it. You don't need any arrows. After all, as I have already pointed out earlier, the bulk of the trade in Indian Ocean and China happened there, and the Dutch imported only a small part of their turnover to Europe.
In other words, it does not matter where the goods go. What matters is who facilitates the trade, who controls the largest turnover.
==
And another point: The prices. We all know that one unit of silk fabric is usually much much more expensive than one unit of cotton fabric. That's why the price of silk is higher than the price of cloth. Correct? Wrong, absolutely wrong. Precious items prevailed in international trade only at its most primitive stage of development. As long as the transport costs were enormous, merchants concentrated on highly valuable items, like spices or silk. But once the trade developed and transport costs lowered - what became the bulk of traded cargo? Commodities produced, traded and consumed in huge volumes. Grain, fish, whale oil, and later textiles, not precious ones, but ordinary, everyday clothing for millions of people.
It's nice if a province can produce some calico or silk, but in general, much more value is made in ordinary things produced in large volumes. For that reason, it's absolutely misleading making a silk producing province in Iran richer than fish producing province in Scotland.
Even today, we consider some Scottish whiskeys precious, but Scotland makes much much more money from something far from precious - North Sea oil.

 

[BrokenSky]

I imagine trade power both from provinces and from ships rising significantly with higher levels of dip_tech (and province progress in my mod). As such, advanced nations owning only one or few provinces in a trade node would 'steal' much of the trade profit from less advanced locals. This is exactly what the Dutch and Englishmen did. And yes, collecting is quite enough for such a model, steering is a redundant abstraction.
In such a model, if you get advanced in trading, and want to participate in, say, Indian trade, you need one province nearby as a naval base, and ships. The Indians have more provinces, and also some ships, but are less advanced, so you can control large than proportional share of the trade value. And that's it. You don't need any arrows. After all, as I have already pointed out earlier, the bulk of the trade in Indian Ocean and China happened there, and the Dutch imported only a small part of their turnover to Europe.
In other words, it does not matter where the goods go. What matters is who facilitates the trade, who controls the largest turnover.
==
And another point: The prices. We all know that one unit of silk fabric is usually much much more expensive than one unit of cotton fabric. That's why the price of silk is higher than the price of cloth. Correct? Wrong, absolutely wrong. Precious items prevailed in international trade only at its most primitive stage of development. As long as the transport costs were enormous, merchants concentrated on highly valuable items, like spices or silk. But once the trade developed and transport costs lowered - what became the bulk of traded cargo? Commodities produced, traded and consumed in huge volumes. Grain, fish, whale oil, and later textiles, not precious ones, but ordinary, everyday clothing for millions of people.
It's nice if a province can produce some calico or silk, but in general, much more value is made in ordinary things produced in large volumes. For that reason, it's absolutely misleading making a silk producing province in Iran richer than fish producing province in Scotland.
Even today, we consider some Scottish whiskeys precious, but Scotland makes much much more money from something far from precious - North Sea oil.

Possibly have the price of goods dependent on diplomatic tech, with bulk goods getting a boost later in the game, ideal coinciding with the release of some new model of light ship.
This power increases with tech thing actually does solve the problem a lot. We could have an income modifier for each country in each node it collects in for what proportion exotics make up of the value in that node (exotics being resources not produced in either the home node, nor any adjacent one? Might be ab-usable though) with the bonus due to exotics being superseded by bonuses to bulk good later. Or something.

 

[Maq]

Possibly have the price of goods dependent on diplomatic tech, with bulk goods getting a boost later in the game, ideal coinciding with the release of some new model of light ship.
This power increases with tech thing actually does solve the problem a lot. We could have an income modifier for each country in each node it collects in for what proportion exotics make up of the value in that node (exotics being resources not produced in either the home node, nor any adjacent one? Might be ab-usable though) with the bonus due to exotics being superseded by bonuses to bulk good later. Or something.

I like your ideas, I really do, but I rather tend not to supposrt your vision of 'exotic' (in shortage locally) goods because I fear it would make the trade system overcomplicated, and possibly also CPU exhaustive. I suggest replacing it by carefully chosen advantages gained through 'trading_in' modifiers. Par example, I imagine controlling spice trade will not give extra benefits through the price of spices, but it should somehow open the markets. Perhaps translated into game language by increasing trade power overseas, or so.
Such bonuses would provide additional impetus to sail further, to gain rare 'exotic' goods, would contribute to accumulating trade power by trade-oriented countries, and, as a result, would be more challenging, more enjoyable, as well as more historically accurate than... sitting in Amsterdam and watching arrows flowing in

 

[Maq]

Possibly have the price of goods dependent on diplomatic tech, with bulk goods getting a boost later in the game, ideal coinciding with the release of some new model of light ship.
This power increases with tech thing actually does solve the problem a lot. We could have an income modifier for each country in each node it collects in for what proportion exotics make up of the value in that node (exotics being resources not produced in either the home node, nor any adjacent one? Might be ab-usable though) with the bonus due to exotics being superseded by bonuses to bulk good later. Or something.

I keep on thinking about the 'exotics', and in general on making trade more interesting.
From the modder's position (in contrast to developer's one) my thoughts target the trading_in tool as possibly quite mighty. Let's say you're a Dutch and hold the trading in cocoa bonus. This will increase your trade power in nodes where no cocoa is produced and - simultaneously - your trade power is present (i.e. merchants, provinces, ships). But to gain this bonus, you have to establish strong trading position in regions producing cocoa, i.e. originally Central America, later on (after introducing cocoa by the Europeans) in tropical Asia and western Africa.
So again, no sitting at home and 'steering', but going overseas to make better money wherever you're present. This is the way which in much more realistic way leads into increased trade power (and income) to those who do something to deserve it.