Indian Ocean trade route

[WaverleyHonour]

I've noticed that the Indian trade nodes retain the vast majority of their value, and that the value of the Aden, Alexandria, and Basra trade nodes comes mostly from provinces in those nodes. Shouldn't it be the case, for example, that the Aden node draws most of its value from the Indian nodes, and Alexandria from the Aden node (indirectly from India)? If the Arabian (and European) countries had a major advantage over the Indian ones in trade power in the Indian nodes, this would be the case, but it currently doesn't happen. I think it would be more accurate if the Indian trade nodes had massive value, but great difficulty in retaining that value vs. Arab and European traders. Thoughts?

 

[unmerged(475475)]

It is too early in the game to judge as colonial trade goods often skyrocket in value late game. Also, the trade won't flow unless someone (you) is steering it.

 

[Xeorm]

I did think it odd that no trade naturally flowed. Hopefully Oman AI steps up to pick up some of the slack.

 

[Heatth]

I noticed that too. At last in early game, most of the nodes draw their value mostly from themselves, instead from the upstream nodes. This is very underwhelming as it devalues the importance of trade. Furthermore, it fails to represents the Mediterranean trade decay as the trade started to go around Africa, since most of their value comes from Europe/Middle East themselves, the loss of India trade doesn't make much difference.

Also, the trade won't flow unless someone (you) is steering it.

There should be tons of steering going on, even early, though. It is not like Europe are the only ones interested in trade. The Middle East/East African countries should all trying to move trade from India to themselves. In turn, the Mediterranean powers should be trying to bring that trade to Europe.

 

[Ellestar]

Why didn't they make a trade flow dynamic? It should have been so easy
Each province already calculates it's supply and demand for each good. Add it up for each trade node, you got a resource supply/demand for each node. Do a simple pathfinding task, say, each month, to find how exactly goods reach consumers, and you got a fully dynamic trade where, say, tea, flows from india to europe along a possible trade routes.

 

[Brownbeard]

Think of trade value in a bit more abstract way than just the bulk and value of goods. It is the profit that is made from flow of goods by controlling trade. Spices make their way from East Indies to Europe, but control of trade and steering determines if the profits from these trade are divided among the various merchants along the way or do they all go to Portugal. Spice must flow and he who controls the spice controls the universe. Or was that from another game?

 

[Zarine]

Trade comes from the other trade node if the nations are spending trade power (light ship and merchant) to push it. It's only a problem of having them... and maybe an AI problem...