Help me optimize my indian trade network

[Stadhouder]

Do NOT steer at this stage. Collect in three places. Try collecting in Indus instead of Goa. The difference between steering and collecting in Indus should actually be minimal since you've made Hormuz your trading port.

There seems to be a general belief among the community that steering is usually superior and I'm not sure where it comes from. Collecting is always almost superior with little trade power.

Hormuz isn't a good node to make main trading port since it's easily contested and only Indus goes there.

He has a healthy chunck of trade power in most nodes, so why are you talking about with little trade power?. With some small tweaks he could easily double, conservative estimate, his trade income with proper steering. It's not a general belief, it's tried and tested.

 

[bly08]

He has a healthy chunck of trade power in most nodes, so why are you talking about with little trade power?. With some small tweaks he could easily double, conservative estimate, his trade income with proper steering. It's not a general belief, it's tried and tested.

Where do you see a lot of trade power? I see one node with more than 80. There's no combination of transfer that would make more money than collecting at this point.

Who tried and tested?

 

[bbqftw]

Steering is practically never better than collecting unless you are literally exterminating entire tags out of the nodes you have power in, and possibly the upstream nodes too.

It is one of the biggest lies that has ever been propagated in this game that steering is generally superior.

 

[Sfan]

Well, tbh he has that little power because he loses 50% out of collecting. He needs to try different options, but collecting everywhere is clearly not working for him. Collecting in Persia, maybe, but collecting in 2 nodes upstream from one another is a bad idea 99% of the time, unless I miss something.

 

[bly08]

OP can test it but I'm positive there's no combination of transferring merchants that would make more money than collecting merchants in that situation. You really need to own at least 80%+ in successive nodes, more in contested nodes with caravan power to be able to transfer. I thought it was the wiki giving false information but the tips from the "Trade Strategy" page are sound. Not sure where the idea that transferring is better comes from.

In a typical blobbing/WC game most if not every merchant should be collecting until at least an entire area has been annexed. After that it takes a bit of time to find the right setup which usually comprises of a combination of transferring between fully owned nodes and collecting at temporary end nodes.

• If a country has no Merchants or capital downstream of the node, they should collect on that node---transferring Trade Power upstream is extremely inefficient.
• If a country dominates trade downstream of the node all the way to a collector, then the boost may outweigh the cut taken by other countries along the way, and steering trade may be a good idea. As of Patch 1.2, the boost is relatively small, so near-complete dominance is required to make steering the better choice.
• If a country has enough Merchants and controls multiple trade nodes, it is advisable not to steer directly to the trade capital, but to make the money pass trough as many other nodes as possible, since it multiplies the amount of money by passing through a node.

 

[Ole122]

Thanks to all of you. I've now switched my Capital to Europe and set up TCs in India and conquered a bunch of land in the west. All in all this has raised trade income from 20ish to about 45, so there is a defini9te improvement, even though I still don't control Goa or Ceylon - I expect more once that is done.