Charter Company has become worthless

[AngryZinogre]

I'm a big fan of the idea of the concept and it makes sense historically, maybe there's some high-end exploit to charter companies that meant they had to nerf them, I don't know. What I do know is that now it take 10, 15, even 20,000 ducats to trade for even the most ordinary provinces and at that point you're never going to make your investment back. At that point is there any reason not to just go to war and take more provinces for less money? It's a terrible change that effectively has removed charter companies from the game by making them 100% not worth it.

 

[GammWlf]

Isn't the point that it's a bad deal? The only times I've used it is to increase coring range / have a province that I can fabricate a claim from, so that I can expand into where I want quickly.

 

[Blizzrd33]

It's function is to enable you to to pay a premium to buy some real estate that would otherwise be difficult to take via conquest. It certainly isn't worthless. It makes getting a foothold in India much easier for instance.

 

[Uskayaw]

What I do know is that now it take 10, 15, even 20,000 ducats to trade for even the most ordinary provinces

They aren't ordinary, they are strategic.
Also, you can pay less by having good relationship with target, chartering off poorer nation and having high diplomatic reputation.

At that point is there any reason not to just go to war and take more provinces for less money?

Yes. You can conquer actual good provinces 20-50 years earlier, which is good return on investment. For example, if you buy an Indian province for 5000 ducats, and then take most trade provinces in Coromandel node in next war, you may transfer ~50 ducats out of that node. That's 8.5 years to break even; the only thing that has better ROI in the game are gold mines and trade ships with Maritime ideas. And now you can expand into Gujarat and Bengal nodes. And you don't have to fight a bunch of Muslim nations in Gulf of Aden, risking having Ottomans join a coalition against you.

 

[Cagliostro]

Can also use your chartered land to fabricate on the locals and threaten them with your might for essentially free land (save a bit of AE).