Collecting vs. Transferring Trade Power

[Elbryncanticle]

I've played EUIV for a long time and only recently started deep diving into min/maxing my trade potential. I understand the basics and understand that I should focus as much trade power/ducats into my home nose, but I've noticed I often lose money unless I collect in various nodes that seem like important transfer nodes.

I'm currently played another Aragon > Spain run and Ige been fortunate to basically dominate colonization in 100% of Africa along with the bulk of the Caribbean and South America.

Castile and Portugal were conquered first off so don't exist, leaving France and GB dominating North American colonies ( I opted to avoid confrontation here while I conquered the entire African continent.)

Currently, I'm the most powerful colonial force in the world and dismantling the Ottomans and Timurids.

My question is, having complete control of Africa and all it's trade nodes, do I transfer everything to Sevilla? No, I don't control Genoa - yet!

Thanks

 

[schondetta]

Well, if you dont control Genoa then where else are you going to transfer it? i mean you kinda answered your own question lol. And a node that cant be pushed to Sevilla (for example the Ethiopia trade node) wouldn't be worth putting a merchant there

If you dont want to dominate Genoa then your next best bet is to go for the spice islands. im not sure if that is what you are really asking. but routing Indonesia trade to Zanzibar, around the cape, and up to Seville is the next best thing. actually you should do that regardless if you are in Genoa or not

 

[Nostalgium]

The answer to your question is yes, assuming you have Sevilla properly controlled.

More generally, though, "it depends". "Always transfer to home node" is true based on the assumption that usually, you will have dominance of that node, but the best node being the home node isn't an ironclad rule. If, for example, you have 100% control over Ivory Coast, but only 20% of Sevilla, transferring all the wealth of Ivory Coast to Sevilla would result in losing 80% of the trade value, as it would be collected/transferred by other parties.

You should be aiming to steer your trade towards the center of trade where you have the most control, and thus, can collect most of the profit. If collecting in the nodes nets you more ducats than collecting in your "last" node (end node or otherwise), then that simply means you're leaking ducats along the way.

 

[Namepending4]

It depends how much control you have over Valencia, Sevilla is probably between 98 and 99% since you control all the Iberian peninsula, but if you haven't taken the land in Valencia from France yet then it might be closer to 80 or high 80's. If you tried collecting in Valencia and transferring from Sevilla the trade value of Valencia alone probably wouldn't make up for the loss in trade because you have less control of Valencia. Also since you own all of Africa, a lot of trade value, the value difference from moving your home node to Valencia even at 100% control might not be worth the dip. However, I would test collecting in Alexandria and Sevilla, since the Alexandrian node can't be routed back to Sevilla like all the other nodes in Africa your just making the Italians richer. Any trade value you have will pull trade if you aren't collecting, so none of the value stay's in Alexandria and all of it is currently getting transferred to Genoa, Venice, and Constantinople. Look at you trade value, collect in Alexandria, let the month tick and check if it increased or not.

 

[Elbryncanticle]

Well, if you dont control Genoa then where else are you going to transfer it? i mean you kinda answered your own question lol. And a node that cant be pushed to Sevilla (for example the Ethiopia trade node) wouldn't be worth putting a merchant there

If you dont want to dominate Genoa then your next best bet is to go for the spice islands. im not sure if that is what you are really asking. but routing Indonesia trade to Zanzibar, around the cape, and up to Seville is the next best thing. actually you should do that regardless if you are in Genoa or not

I apologize for any ignorance on my part, I suppose my question is before I take Genoa (it will be late late game with Extended Timeline installed since currently Genoa is owned by Savoy with a very strong Commonwealth alliance who I am also allied with), should I be transferring everything possible to Sevilla from the Caribbean and Africa? Sorry if I didn't make that clear, trade is still a bit complex for me

Thank you for the reply!

 

[Guibou]

Short answer: In your case, you probably have >80% of Sevilla so transfering there is usually the best way to go. If you have a chain of nodes with 40%+ I would transfer it all up to the end, no matter from where.

Long answer: But not all your game will be as a major nation, or in a good trade node. Or you could have a hole in your transfer chain. Like if you own all of Malaca, Cap and Iberia but England colonised Ivory cost and is sending it to the channel, it's better to collect in Cap than to transfer it to other nation in this exemple.

You won't like the answer but often time trying is the best way to learn. Pause, check the trade tab and note the amount collected, change a merchant, wait for a month tick AFTER the merchant arrived (2 month or more if node faraway), and check back the amount. If you are limited in your amount of merchant it's a good thing to do when you don't know wich node to transfer, wich one is the more profitable. 15% of a rich node or 90% of a toundra node ? Transfering 15% of that rich node into 40% controlled node, or collecting in that 40% node and forgetting about the 15% rich one ? Choising isn't always easy with raw numbers, you have to try it. Doing this a few occasion in different conditions will give you a good gut feeling of what to do in your next games.

 

[Elbryncanticle]

Short answer: In your case, you probably have >80% of Sevilla so transfering there is usually the best way to go. If you have a chain of nodes with 40%+ I would transfer it all up to the end, no matter from where.

Long answer: But not all your game will be as a major nation, or in a good trade node. Or you could have a hole in your transfer chain. Like if you own all of Malaca, Cap and Iberia but England colonised Ivory cost and is sending it to the channel, it's better to collect in Cap than to transfer it to other nation in this exemple.

You won't like the answer but often time trying is the best way to learn. Pause, check the trade tab and note the amount collected, change a merchant, wait for a month tick AFTER the merchant arrived (2 month or more if node faraway), and check back the amount. If you are limited in your amount of merchant it's a good thing to do when you don't know wich node to transfer, wich one is the more profitable. 15% of a rich node or 90% of a toundra node ? Transfering 15% of that rich node into 40% controlled node, or collecting in that 40% node and forgetting about the 15% rich one ? Choising isn't always easy with raw numbers, you have to try it. Doing this a few occasion in different conditions will give you a good gut feeling of what to do in your next games.

Thank you so much for the perspective. I've played this game casually for years and recently started getting a lot more in depth in how I play. Trade has always seemed a bit daunting to me and I'm researching it a lot more and I've noticed a significant increase in my incomes, especially with colonies.

I will definitely experiment with my nodes, this is the first game where I actually completely dominated Africa without any other countries interfering so I wasn't sure if there were strategies for this, but my own intuition reflects a lot of what you said, so I'll just keep toying with transfers and see what happens. I suppose it's wishful thinking trying to find a chart explaining the best trade routes etc given how unpredictable each playthrough is.

Thanks a lot for the reply!

 

[Talamare]

Well, if you dont control Genoa then where else are you going to transfer it? i mean you kinda answered your own question lol. And a node that cant be pushed to Sevilla (for example the Ethiopia trade node) wouldn't be worth putting a merchant there

If you dont want to dominate Genoa then your next best bet is to go for the spice islands. im not sure if that is what you are really asking. but routing Indonesia trade to Zanzibar, around the cape, and up to Seville is the next best thing. actually you should do that regardless if you are in Genoa or not

??
Ethiopia > Aden > Zanzibar > Good Hope > Ivory > Sevilla

 

[xrws31]

Most people always prefer to transfer to home node, as they like the concept of setting up a long trade chain. They also insist that it is pretty much always the best option.

However, it's actually usually more profitable to collect in each node.

There's 2 key things to consider:

1) If I transfer, do I have sufficient ( >80%) control of the node I am transfering to (and by "transfer to" I don't just mean the final home node, I mean every single node along the chain)? If not, then that's just throwing money away. People get very excited about the idea of cumulative transfer/steering bonuses along a transfer chain, but that's all meaningless if you transfer through a node which you only have 20% control of and someone else siphons away all of your work.
2) Do I need to maintain the Merchant Transfer Bonus in my home node? This is the bonus where, if you're not collecting anywhere else, then you get a +10% trade power boost in your home node for each merchant in the world that is transferring. If you already dominate your home node , then you probably don't need this. Or, if your home node doesn't actually have much trade value, then its also probably not worth keeping. But if your home node is very high value, and you have some, but not total, control of the node, then the Merchant Transfer Bonus can be pretty significant and worth keeping.

But ultimately, since its so easy to re-arrange your merchants and see each month how that works out in the Trade tab, best approach is really just to trial-and-error.

 

[Nostalgium]

People get very excited about the idea of cumulative transfer/steering bonuses along a transfer chain, but that's all meaningless if you transfer through a node which you only have 20% control of and someone else siphons away all of your work.

Slight amendment to this being if the majority of the steered trade is going in your direction anyway. Then it can be useful to build up steering bonus for the next node, where you may have more control.

 

[Banedon Runestar]

Trade has lots of modifiers and mechanics. Lots of people think it’s complicated. I found that it’s much easier to understand if you think of trade as a river, but instead of water it’s money.

You want to dam (collect) where the river is strongest so you can generate the most power (money). What’s more useful, diverting lots of a weak stream, or some of a stronger stream? Can you even divert the river towards you?

To me, it made understanding things easier if I pictured a literal river. Instead of my eyes glazing over looking at a massive pile of dry numbers and stats that seemed to have very arbitrary relationships.