How to get Treasure Fleets as Malaya?

[_Shak]

Hi everyone,

Having a blast paying Malaya. Pretty much blocked off all of South America and am wiping Spain off North America. Problem: no treasure fleets. Does anyone know how I can get treasure fleets?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Move your trade capital somewhere that is downstream from the CNs that provide it.

Note that Malacca node does allow treasure fleets from Australia, Mexico, Rio Grande, and California because it is downstream from these nodes (Mexico can be steered into the Nippon path).

 

[_Shak]

Ahh I should have colonized those first. I actually raced across the Atlantic to stop European powers from expanding too fast. Thanks for info!

 

[ShahanShah]

You need to be downstream of the trade nodes

 

[Gans]

Why would you want the fleets? Just raise tariffs and let the CN's eat the inflation.

 

[qwertzuiop]

Hi everyone,
Having a blast paying Malaya. Pretty much blocked off all of South America and am wiping Spain off North America. Problem: no treasure fleets. Does anyone know how I can get treasure fleets?

Why would you want the fleets? Just raise tariffs and let the CN's eat the inflation.

Yep, getting no treasure fleets is a huge advantage. There are players who plan their colonization and trade strategies in a way that lets them disable treasure fleets.

In general, the American trade nodes only feed into Western Europe, except for California/Rio Grande/Mexico (they can be steered into Asia) and the ones that go through Brazil (Brazil goes to the Ivory coast, but the Ivory coast only feeds into Western Europe so not a big difference).

So for example, treasure fleets from Mexico can reach most places in the world and you could only prevent them if you had your trading capital in one of the more isolated nodes. Peru on the other hand only reaches Western Europe and the other American nodes that are in between which means that most locations in the world will not get treasure fleets from Peru.

Tariffs in rich colonial nations with gold mines (and disabled treasure fleets) can be absolutely huge. The only disadvantage is that you need to manage your CN, you need to increase tariffs manually, develop their gold mines (or even other provinces) and if necessary buy down their liberty desire by paying off their debts or spending prestige. The whole process does cost you monarch points but the return is so huge that it's definitely worth it. In my opinion that strategy works best if you focus on maximizing tariffs in one single CN because that's all you really need and doing the same in several CNs at once will cost more admin points.

 

[rinehime]

Yep, getting no treasure fleets is a huge advantage. There are players who plan their colonization and trade strategies in a way that lets them disable treasure fleets.
...
if necessary buy down their liberty desire by paying off their debts or spending prestige.

I'm not totally convinced it's all that much better to prevent treasure fleets. Assuming no pirating of the fleet (somewhat easy to do), you need 100% tariff efficiency (w/ no modifiers) or 69% efficiency with a +45% tariff modifier (trading in slaves+exploration) to get the same income as treasure fleets. The inflation doesn't really matter and, whether blobbing or not, I don't really think it's a good idea to spend paper mana to increase the tariffs (though events do it increase it quite a bit).

The only real benefit to preventing the fleets that I see is that it creates stronger CNs which might actually be able to do something (because they keep the gold income) and the total gold income of you and your CNs is greater b/c tariffs create ducats ex nihilo.

A minor point - wealthier CNs w/o fleets also means it's a bit harder to pay of their debts.

 

[qwertzuiop]

I'm not totally convinced it's all that much better to prevent treasure fleets. Assuming no pirating of the fleet (somewhat easy to do), you need 100% tariff efficiency (w/ no modifiers) or 69% efficiency with a +45% tariff modifier (trading in slaves+exploration) to get the same income as treasure fleets. The inflation doesn't really matter and, whether blobbing or not, I don't really think it's a good idea to spend paper mana to increase the tariffs (though events do it increase it quite a bit).

The only real benefit to preventing the fleets that I see is that it creates stronger CNs which might actually be able to do something (because they keep the gold income) and the total gold income of you and your CNs is greater b/c tariffs create ducats ex nihilo.

A minor point - wealthier CNs w/o fleets also means it's a bit harder to pay of their debts.

I haven't done the maths but I'm sure it's worth it just based on my experience in the games I've played. Spending admin to increase tariffs is counter-intuitive, yes, but you reach a point where your income increases in such a huge way that it starts getting useful even though it's precious admin points for "just" money. As far as I know it's even possible to get over 100% tariff efficiency, haven't tried that lately but it definitely used to be possible in the past.

That said I'm not suggesting that it's a strategy that every country needs to follow. There are many situations where it's just easier to do a traditional CN setup especially as a Western European country. But it's definitely something that is good to know, even more (but not only) on Very Hard where a strong economy matters a lot. For example, many people equate CN usefulness with the possibility to steer trade from it (aka "Your trading capital is in X so you cannot profit from colonizing") and that's just not the whole story.

Anyway, if I was playing a colonizing game as an Asian country I would definitely go for Peru 99% of the time. It's also entirely possible to do a traditional CN setup in Mexico (steering trade to Asia, getting treasure fleets) and using my strategy in Peru (huge tariffs, no trade, no treasure fleets).