Can I do Auto-Trade?
- Thread starter Mizz2
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Something automatic else? I dont understand a thing about trade....
Then learn.
Trade is only a flow of cash by pumping it forward or sucking it out of a trade node. It already is automatic.
If you're not concerned about managing trade, probably the easiest is to set your capital to collect with a merchant, and pick one of the "upstream" nodes and have your other merchant go from there and direct it to your capital.
I am with you there. I just bought this game today and I must say am highly disappointed. This is not at all user-friendly like Crusader Kings 2. And i couldnt understand the trade mechanics either. How do you try and control the trade system? I was researching that right now. You cant even control or customize your rulers. You play as a country alone not an individual.
The basics of trade is far from complicated.
If you can understand flowcharts, you can understand trade.
There are arrows, you are at one of the nodes, and you want to drag in money from other nodes with arrows pointing at your node.
As you play with it more, you'll naturally understand it more and get better at manipulating it, but to start with, that's really all you need to understand.
There are things you can do in EU that you can't in CK, and things you can do in CK that you can't do in EU.
If you can understand flowcharts, you can understand trade.
There are arrows, you are at one of the nodes, and you want to drag in money from other nodes with arrows pointing at your node.
As you play with it more, you'll naturally understand it more and get better at manipulating it, but to start with, that's really all you need to understand.
EU4 != CK3You cant even control or customize your rulers. You play as a country alone not an individual.
There are things you can do in EU that you can't in CK, and things you can do in CK that you can't do in EU.
then you didnt try hard enough. seriously, trade is one of the easiest things in the game, and very essential as well.
short explaination forgetting forcelimits and strategic options.
trade is the siple process of pulling money from an region to an region you want, then collect it there. you can pull an amount of trade equal to the % of trade power you have+possible modifiers. you can also collect trade from the total, which you will do automatically in your capital, equal to the % of trade power+modifiers, althoigh collecting outside your capital will have pretty large modifier ti make that less effecive most of the times. to do this you need merchants. you start with 2, but cnan gain more through decisions, NI's and idea groups. merchants give an small amount of trade power themselves as well.
the 2 main ways to get trade power are provinces and light ships. rach province you own in an trade zone gives you trade power in that trade zone, increased by trade buildings, with centers of trade and the estuaries of large rivers(i.e. the rhine in holland for estuary or paris for center of trade) which give you even more trade power.
trade ships can be used to increase trade power in all nodes that are nrxt to water. its an job you can give them, where they will patrol the waters and increas eyour power while they patrol. lowering maintenance on the fleet will decrease their effectiveness. newer models give more power.
there. the TL;DR version of trade.
It may be too complicated to get really good at all at once, its not to complicated to get some money from trade as you concentrated on taxation and/or production. Since trade won't be a large share of your income until you figure it out, try things. Try collecting and forwarding. See what happens when you add light ships.
I got CKII too. Its even more complictated.. with all charcters feelings and things like that.I am with you there. I just bought this game today and I must say am highly disappointed. This is not at all user-friendly like Crusader Kings 2. And i couldnt understand the trade mechanics either. How do you try and control the trade system? I was researching that right now. You cant even control or customize your rulers. You play as a country alone not an individual.
I am with you there. I just bought this game today and I must say am highly disappointed. This is not at all user-friendly like Crusader Kings 2. And i couldnt understand the trade mechanics either. How do you try and control the trade system? I was researching that right now. You cant even control or customize your rulers. You play as a country alone not an individual.
There are literally dozens of threads already teaching newbies how to manage trade, not to mention this: http://www.eu4wiki.com/Trade, which is the first result if you google ‘eu4 trade’. There was no reason to start a new thread, except that you couldn’t be bothered to learn the basics of one of the game’s most straightforward mechanics on your own and you couldn’t be bothered to do a cursory search for the abundant resources that already exist on the subject.
I didn't even bother with trade in my first few playthroughs. It is far from essential if you start out as a continental power and you can slowly get more familiar with the way it works.
Understanding trade is easy.
First, bring up the trade mapmode. Every province belongs to a hardcoded "node". The trade value from each province is attached to this node. Nodes can have outgoing links (places that they can forward trade onto), and incoming links (places they can take trade from). Essentially, there's two actions that can be taken:
1) Harvest trade. It happens automatically in the node associated with your capital. This means you convert some of the trade value to your own income.
2) Steer trade. This means your merchant will attempt to move trade out of the node. You can direct this using the trade mapmode. Click on the link you want to steer to and it'll show what node you're aiming for with a red arrow underneath it.
Note that the effect of your actions is modified by the amount of trade power you have relative to everyone else in the node. If you have 50% of the total power in a node, then you'll either harvest or forward half of the node's income. Power is increased by provinces you own contributing to that node (which can be increased by trade buildings), and light ships which are patrolling the node.
Some tips for trade:
1) Don't leave a merchant in your capital unless you've nothing better to do with him. You'll collect there anyway and all he gives is a 10% boost, which is probably better spent elsewhere.
2) You take a large penalty to your trade power if you collect outside your capital. If you can forward to your capital, you're probably better off doing so.
3) If you have no merchant in a node, then any power you have will be used to steer trade away from the node, which is split in every direction. This means that on nodes with only one outgoing path, you don't actually need a merchant to steer trade away.
That's pretty much it in a nutshell. There's various other parameters that play into it, but that's the basic system. It's really not that hard to understand.
First, bring up the trade mapmode. Every province belongs to a hardcoded "node". The trade value from each province is attached to this node. Nodes can have outgoing links (places that they can forward trade onto), and incoming links (places they can take trade from). Essentially, there's two actions that can be taken:
1) Harvest trade. It happens automatically in the node associated with your capital. This means you convert some of the trade value to your own income.
2) Steer trade. This means your merchant will attempt to move trade out of the node. You can direct this using the trade mapmode. Click on the link you want to steer to and it'll show what node you're aiming for with a red arrow underneath it.
Note that the effect of your actions is modified by the amount of trade power you have relative to everyone else in the node. If you have 50% of the total power in a node, then you'll either harvest or forward half of the node's income. Power is increased by provinces you own contributing to that node (which can be increased by trade buildings), and light ships which are patrolling the node.
Some tips for trade:
1) Don't leave a merchant in your capital unless you've nothing better to do with him. You'll collect there anyway and all he gives is a 10% boost, which is probably better spent elsewhere.
2) You take a large penalty to your trade power if you collect outside your capital. If you can forward to your capital, you're probably better off doing so.
3) If you have no merchant in a node, then any power you have will be used to steer trade away from the node, which is split in every direction. This means that on nodes with only one outgoing path, you don't actually need a merchant to steer trade away.
That's pretty much it in a nutshell. There's various other parameters that play into it, but that's the basic system. It's really not that hard to understand.
I beg your pardon? Crusader Kings II is ten times more complicated than this one.
As someone who has far too many hours of EU3, EU4, and CK2 racked up, I can confidently say that while CK2 certainly has all sorts of complexities that EUx lack, it also has much better discoverability - and it is discoverability that underlies "user-friendliness".
I can't agree with that. But if you find it more "discoverable", then you do, and I can't disagree either.
Can you elaborate at all? It's a bit OT for this thread I know, but then there's a zillion other "how do I trade" threads, so no great loss I feel
What features does CK2 have that makes its complexities more discoverable, and aid learning? Is it better tooltips, a better UI, more descriptive text? Or something more fundamental?
I'm always interested to know what is being done differently in CK2, because although they have a common Studio, share an engine and (sometimes) share team members, it does seem to me (as admittedly someone with virtually no CK2 experience, and just basing comments on references I read to it, and occasionally browsing their forums) that there's evidence of some philosophical differences in their design and ongoing development. I don't mean specific game features, buttons and so on, but rather development strategy and priorities: release procedures, moddability features, things like that.
So I'd be interested to hear what CK2 is doing better in this regard than EU4 to get another point of data on how they differ. And perhaps with a view to asking for (or modding in) the same in EU4 eventually.
Thanks!