Free Trade with owned COT's

[Sciith]

So most people would agree that free trade is the best slider decision in most circumstances. However, I was just wondering if this would still be the case if you have one or two COT's in your territory. For example, my current Italy game has me in control of Venezia and Liguria, naturally. Would shifting towards free trade hurt my compete chances with these two COT's. Also, do you really need shrewd comerce practice, or can you get by without it?

 

[brifbates]

So most people would agree that free trade is the best slider decision in most circumstances. However, I was just wondering if this would still be the case if you have one or two COT's in your territory. For example, my current Italy game has me in control of Venezia and Liguria, naturally. Would shifting towards free trade hurt my compete chances with these two COT's. Also, do you really need shrewd comerce practice, or can you get by without it?

1) Full free trade hurts your compete chance in CoTs you own, anything short of that you will still get a small bonus for the percentage of trade in a CoT you own (it is much bigger as mercantalist though).
Non-cored CoTs that you own dramatically reduce your chance to trade in unowned CoTs-thus crippling free trade until you get cores.

3) If you are going free trade then SCP is pretty much required, yes; if going mercantalist it is not particularly useful

 

[Ricox]

I think mercantilism is pretty useful if you're making a large empire, either colonial (ex. England, all those provinces in North America will contribute greatly, you can make some CoTs over there as well) or continential (ex. France, plenty of CoTs in Europe & your provinces will do the job), but other than that - free trade seems to be better. Atleast that's from my experience, since if you make an empire you'll eventually come across the opportunity of seizing another nation's center of trade, altho it probably would hurt early game when your conquests are slow or you're just preparing.

 

[brifbates]

I think mercantilism is pretty useful if you're making a large empire, either colonial (ex. England, all those provinces in North America will contribute greatly, you can make some CoTs over there as well) or continential (ex. France, plenty of CoTs in Europe & your provinces will do the job), but other than that - free trade seems to be better. Atleast that's from my experience, since if you make an empire you'll eventually come across the opportunity of seizing another nation's center of trade, altho it probably would hurt early game when your conquests are slow or you're just preparing.

Pretty much. It is possible for FT to dominate for a blob as well but in general FT requires a lot more effort (slider moves, NIs) that can be put to better use by blobs. The big drawback FT has is all the embargos you will run into if you aren't also at least somewhat of a blob. being great at competing away from home does you no good if you CAN'T compete away from home due to embargos...