I thought I know all about trade...

[Viadro]

I'm trying my WC run with Ottos and I was playing with merchants a little.
I had all of Ragusa trade node provinces so I thought I will start collecting there to stop the upflow to Venice node (Austria).
To my surprise, after sending a merchant there, I noticed he is collecting 1 ducat per month while the 6 ducats is still being transferred by other countries...
I checked the node again and only now I noticed that I have only 13% share in this trade node!

I mean... having all provinces except one (Hungary) and I have same Trade Power as Hungary and only 13% share in total??? I checked and HUngary is not using trade ships here...

How is this possible? Oo

https://i.imgur.com/iqujbS4.jpg

 

[Ultima_Ratio]

Any country in downstream provinces from Ragusa gets a share of their provincial trade power (10% I think) in upstream nodes, and since Ragusa has little provincial trade power and flows into provinces that have very high combined provincial trade power (Genoa specifically is huge with a lot of trade centers), it's impossible to keep it from hemorrhaging all it's value. Same can be observed with Ivory Coast.

The real value in controlling Ragusa as OTT is that it makes the Constantinople node less vulnerable.

EDIT: I think I may have confused upstream and downstream there

 

[Ultima_Ratio]

Also, since it's not your capital node, you get a penalty to trade power (in your screenshot your power modifier is -40%).

 

[Viadro]

aaaah... forgot about the penalty for collecting in a non-home trade node, that explains it

 

[Sfan]

That's a bit offtopic, but I think you should reposition your other merchants as well. As the Ottomans you have a strong endnode, so have someone collecting there for +10% income. Instead of Crimea and Ragusa which are useless nodes, set up a route from India to Constantinople. There is no need to have a merchant in Persia, there is only one node downstream, so the merchant is wasted, he only brings you tradepower but that's not as impactful as putting him in India. Same goes for Basra if you control Persia (Basra into Persia into Aleppo or Basra into Aleppo is the same if noone collects in Persia), so the merchant is useless. You have friendly units deep in India from what I see, so use the Trade Companies in India to the full extent and bring the Spices home where they belong. With 6 merchants I'd have something like Ceylon, Goa, Aden, Alexandria, Aleppo and collecting in Constantinople. I'm curious how much you'd gain, but that could be as much as twice what you used to have.
Of course that depends on what exactly you own, I judge only by minimap.

 

[SolSys]

I checked and HUngary is not using trade ships here...

How come?
According to the screenshot they do -- 52 from ships/merchant.

 

[Bibor]

I mean... having all provinces except one (Hungary) and I have same Trade Power as Hungary and only 13% share in total??? I checked and HUngary is not using trade ships here...

If you want significant power in Ragusa, you have to literally own the Venice trade node and then collect in (and put your trading capital into) Venice instead. Invest into Balkans for domestic trade power in Ragusa. There are some Greek and Hungarian provinces worth upgrading for production and trade.

Before you can pull this off, I suggest collecting in Constantinople, as it's already "protected" by your power in Ragusa node from steering off. Also, make a quick work of Genoese trading ports after they dump HRE protection. I usually take the city of Genoa, especially as Ottomans. It's a good staging ground for Western Europe as it shares borders with France, Northern Italy and Aragon/Spain.

 

[Drachenfels]

Constantinople is almost always better if you playing in that region. Venice or Genoa while on paper could be better, in practice it's much harder to control them properly. What is important to remember is that merchants that are set as a chain apply multiplicative bonuses. And it may be huge. So rather than putting merchants strategically sometimes it's worth to put merchant as a chain ignoring fact at some node trade is steered away. Obviously take it with pinch of salt as it's subject to many different factors.What I learnt after 3 failed WC, I need to put some effort into merchants placement as it's a lot of ducats wasted.

 

[Incompetent]

The answers about trade power downstream are kind of missing the point; this situation is not at all like Ivory Coast.

Yes, you're losing some trade due to power propagation; in principle, you could fix it by conquering the nodes immediately downstream. But what you are getting absolutely wrecked by is Caravan Power pulling towards Wien, and there's no way to completely fix that short of a wholesale conquest of Europe. Look at the picture: Genoa is a huge node in terms of provincial TP, but it's only pulling away a small fraction of what is going to Wien. The thing about caravan power is that it's a disembodied kind of trade power, valid for anywhere in the world that the country in question chooses to send its merchants. It's also capped, so a pack of caravans from a few medium-sized countries can overpower a single blob. You could literally own every province in the world east of Venice, and in a node like Samarkand, located thousands of km from anything that isn't your clay, you still wouldn't be able to control exactly what happens, because a few jokers in the HRE or Italy randomly decide to send merchants there and mess up your planned route.

Basically you can divide the trade map into two kinds of node: caravan-safe nodes, i.e. coastal nodes that have no inland node immediately downstream of them, and the rest. Constantinople and Ivory Coast are both examples of caravan-safe nodes, so they're both OK to collect in if you have good land ownership in the node and nobody else has a big trade/pirate fleet. (You'll lose a bit to TP propagation, but it's usually not too bad.) Ragusa is caravan-unsafe because of Wien, and you're liable to get plundered at any moment by caravans unless you station a huge trade fleet there. You can try to build a route through caravan-unsafe nodes, but compared to the caravan-safe route, it's an exercise in frustration.

As others have said, longer-term the solution is to conquer Venice or Genoa (both end nodes) and collect there. In itself though that's not sufficient to solve your problem, because you'll still get robbed in the Balkans if you route your trade through Ragusa. So instead, for a stable long-term trade route, you'll want to route as much Asian trade as possible through Alexandria -> Venice/Genoa, because that way it's caravan-safe.

 

[Sfan]

Ragusa is not an inland node, caravans only apply that magical TP in inland nodes. Here we're clearly in an Ivory Coast situation instead, where you can own all the provinces but only have 30% of the TP if you have nothing in Sevilla and English Channel.

 

[Braan]

You also get the caravan power bonus if you are transferring to an inland node (like Wien in this case) even if the node you are transferring from is coastal if I'm not mistaken.