Center of Trade Anomalies

[unmerged(1319)]

I have discovered a rather bizarre anomaly involving centers of trade. Specifically, assignment of provinces to a center of trade does not appear to follow any rational rules. Most provinces are assigned geographically to the closest center of trade. I now have a game where one of my computer opponents has two provinces that are assign to a center of trade that is literally on the other side of the planet! WTF?

One computer opponent has every single province of his attached to a center of trade that he owns, irrespective of the fact that there are closer centers of trade. This does not apply to all of the computer players.

Let me sight two specific examples. The first involves the coast of Africa. My opponent has a COT in Guinea and I have one in Namaqua. The six adjacent provinces of interest run along the coast from Namaqua to the north.

The six provinces from south to north are

PROVINCE – OWNER – COT
Damara – Iroquois – Namaqua
Ovambo – Iroquois – Namaqua
Curango – Iroquois – Namaqua
Lobito – Catalunya – Guinea
Launda – Iroquois – Namaqua
Zaire – Mughal – Namaqua

Launda and Zaire are farther north than Lobito and are still a part of the Namaqua COT. Lobito is owned by Catalunya and is attached to the Guinea COT, also owned by Catalunya. How did Catalunya manage to do this? Geographically, Lobito should be a part of the Namaqua COT. The truth is, every province owned by Catalunya is attached to a Catalunya COT, regardless of the many closer COTs.

The second example is on the Malaysian peninsula. Malaca is owned by Catalunya and is attached to the Quatar COT. The Delhi and Shantung COTs are much closer. All of the colonies that I established in Asia and the provinces that I conquered in Asia are all attached to the Shantung COT. Why is Malaca an exception? Quatar is owned by Catalunya.

Also on the Malaysian peninsula are Phuket and Kuala Lumpur, both owned by Eire. They are attached to the COT in Flandres! There are at least six COTs that are much, much closer that Flandres. Flandres is owned by Eire.

I am not saying that the AI is cheating. The other five AI players do not seem to have any anomalous COT action going on. So, what gives? How does Catalunya manage to attach every province it owns to a COT that it also owns? How can Phuket be attached to a COT that is over 8000 miles away?

I can add new COTs in the save game file. There does not appear to be a way to adjust the province COT assignments. This information is not saved in the save game file, the game just makes it up on the fly!

Just for grins, I added a new COT in Da Nang. All of the provinces surrounding the new COT became attached to it except for Malaca. Malac is, of course, owned by Catalunya. I own Da Nang.

In my next bizarre experiment, I moved my phantom COT to Kuala Lampur. This seemed to force Malaca to be attached to the closest COT, possibly because it is adjacent. It could also be because I don’t own Kuala Lumpur.

In my last COT experiment, I moved the phantom COT to the province of Sarawak, just a short boat ride away from the Malaysian peninsula. The results were both amazing and rather nauseating. Of the three provinces on the penisula, Phuket remained attached to Flandres, Kuala Lumpur was attached to Sarawak and Malaca remained stubbornly attached to Quatar. Provinces farther away, like Bangkok, Kwai and Da Nang were all attached to Sarawak as I think they should be. Why Phuket and Malaca remained attached to COTs that are thousands of miles away is beyond me.

The entire trade system in the game really s***s a**. It s***s unbelievably huge quantities of a**. The randomly appearing COTs and illogical province allocation just make a bad trade system worse.

 

[Johan]

Its very simple.

Christian owned provinces almost always end up in Christian CoT's.

 

[unmerged(1319)]

Originally posted by Johan
Its very simple.

Christian owned provinces almost always end up in Christian CoT's.

I am playing the fantasia scenario. There are no Christian provinces. I… uh… sort of made every single province pagan and all countries pagan. I wanted a completely level playing field.

So then, this is hard coded into the game?

 

[unmerged(1609)]

To add to this discussion I experinced another strange phenomenon related to province assignment to a particular CoT. Palying GC scenario as Poland-Lithuania I managed to establish small colony in Quatar and a trading post in adjacent Bahrein. According to the game rules they were both assigned to my 'home' CoT in Danzig. But I also conquered two other CoT's in Kurland and Novgorod (both happened before I established my colonies). Several years after setting up my colonies y TP in Bahrein was unexpectedely reassigned fromDanzig to Novgorod while Quatar stil remained with Danzig. Some times later Bahrein trade moved back to Danzig, again for no apparent reason. Is there any explanation for this kind of behavior?

 

[BiB]

The importance of COTs change during te game. Venice is worth loads at the start and gradually declines for example while Anglia isn't there at the start but will pop up and keep growing (colonial income) untill the colonies get their own COTs.

 

[Dark Knight]

About provinces being part of extremely distant COTs: The ownership of the province makes an enormous difference as to which COT it's in. This makes perfect sense in the EU framework, because colonies historically would have their trade directed to the mother country through trade restrictions and so would be economically isolated from nearby provinces controlled by other nations.

 

[BiB]

A divided India where Portugal, Netherlands, France and England all have colonies and if there's no European COT opened there yet, then every colony will report to its home one, Anglie, Ile de France, Tago, Holland.

 

[unmerged(1319)]

I think I have debunked the “Christian CoT” thing. I altered my save game file to make the whole world Christian. The CoT assignments were not affected. I now think that I know why.

The Fantasia scenario has many things that make it less than completely balanced. I am going to post a “How To” thread on fixing most of these with a few simple file alterations. The CoT issue is one that unfortunately can not be fixed.

The game is very Europe-centric (hence the name). There are a few things that are greatly affected by this. Nations having their capital in Europe have a few advantages, at least one of which is hard coded into the game.

If a countries capital is located in Europe, the trade from it’s provinces will only go to a CoT that is own by a country whose capital is located in Europe. The CoT code in the game guarantees this. I have experimented at length and have proven this to my own satisfaction.

The Fantasia scenario was a good idea. The game engine was simply not designed to support it. Maybe at some point the CoT code will be altered to really go to the nearest Christian CoT. I would rather they concentrate on the “defeated” armies advancing problem and the interrupted movement problem.