Is there a way to stop the AI from building Centers of Trade everywhere it can? it's gotten so bad in my most recent game that almost every OPM in Europe is building one...
Can we reduce the Center of trade spawn?
- Thread starter Faeelin
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+1. There are like 20 CoT with a value of like 200 by game end in Western Europe alone.
Editing the game files and raising the required minimum level of ducats before a new CoT can be split off an old ones helps here.
Raising cost for creating COT will do nothing as AI will simply mint if it wants to build COT, so in the long term you might actually cause a lot of hurt.
What you need to do is open definies.txt and find one modifier (cant remember 100% where) which sets certain number of provinces per COT. In DW vanilla its set to 35 IRRC, what this does is spawn a new COT whenever you have more than 35 attached to any one COT (trade leagues might be exception, not 100% sure). If you set this to something like 250 the number of auto spawned COTs will drop significantly, but AI will still build them from time to time.
What you need to do is open definies.txt and find one modifier (cant remember 100% where) which sets certain number of provinces per COT. In DW vanilla its set to 35 IRRC, what this does is spawn a new COT whenever you have more than 35 attached to any one COT (trade leagues might be exception, not 100% sure). If you set this to something like 250 the number of auto spawned COTs will drop significantly, but AI will still build them from time to time.
It's interesting to see in the history how centres of trade come and go (London, Stockholm and Hamburg become CoTs while others dissapear). I doubt it'd be feasable to impliment, but I'd like to see CoTs shifting around rather than more just spawning, as though they're tied to the successful nation or the locations that actually would be centres of trade in a given game. Maybe the penalty of getting rid of them could be reduced as well?
What might work is the ability to close centers of trade in peace deals. But I don't think you can implement that...
Instead of changing the cost you can increase the minimum size required for a new CoT to be split off (EDEF_CREATE_COT_THRESHOLD). The default is 400; should maybe be 600 or 800 instead.
COT spam really puts me off vassalization. All the effort and BB needed to kill a COT is just such a pain. And the fact that vassals and allies don't/can't be asked to join your Trade Embargoes was a major design oversight. Stagnation rarely gets high enough to choke a COT to death and meanwhile your trade efficiency plummets.
This wont help you much. As i said earlier, there is another game mechanic that sets a certain number of provinces per COT (should be 35 in DW). If you have more than that game (engine) will AUTO spawn a random new COT. Best soloution is to increase that number from 35 (or whatever) to something like 100 or more.
It does actually increase in cost as the game goes on in that it increases with inflation, correct? I've never seen an AI without ugly inflation. Still, it should start out costing like 1000 ducats and they should be required to be spaced out a little bit more than they are. There are definitely way too many CoT's come 1650/1700.
This, set this to 1000+ maybe at least 1400 but experiment until you find whats good for you.
As far as i can see this wont stop the AI building another CoT, it will just prevent another one spawning in your territory until you hit the limit.
Also, if you lower the stagnation limit threshold then all those little 100-200 CoTs will close down much quicker! This plus the higher existing CoT value modifier works well for me anyway.
Mainly, get more provinces trading through it. Or, if you're a Trade League get more members & trade agreements. And any buildings that affect the trade price of a province will raise it along with manufactories.
Could somebody explain how stagnation works? Also, the game says a cot closes when there are to few merchants trading there, I have a monopolised COT will it ever close down? Thanks
Changing the splitt off limit has worked wonders for me in my games
I hardly ever see any autogenerated CoTs, if they appear they won't be in Europe where the problem is so I don't see the need to change that limit.In base HTTT I used to see over 40 CoTs in europe by the 1650s, all created by countries (most were in Germany but even France would have between 3 - 5 within it's proper borders).
Changing the limit above to 800 reduced that to about 10 - 12 in europe by the same date
In the best of worlds I'd want to be able to script real conditions for CoT-creation. As it is we can only change the price and the break off limit...
I'm also curious about CoT stagnation though. I've tried very hard but I have never gotten a CoT to actually stagnate no matter what I set the limit too. At best it seems to regulate how small the smallest CoTs get. But I still have never seen one actually disappear (I presume that's how it's supposed to work as that's what it did in EU2).
I upped the minimum CoT size for split off to and it works brilliantly.
+1 for adding this in a patch so I can play with achievements and this.
+1 for adding this in a patch so I can play with achievements and this.
In your EUIII/common folder open defines.txt
you will find lots of lines, the ones you are looking for are:
35 #_EDEF_COT_PROVS_PER_CENTER
Number of Provinces that can be attached to a CoT before the game generates a new one. I usually leave this alone.
400 #_EDEF_CREATE_COT_THRESHOLD_,
The minimum value a CoT can be to create a new CoT in one of it's provinces.
500 #_EDEF_CREATE_COT_PRICE_,
Price of a new CoT.
To change any of these just edit the number.