Not sure what is the current meta, but I always aim at laissez-faire and free trade. At the beginning of the game, when I am bureaucracy and convoy limited, I establish only the most critical import trade routes. But when I grow enough and have enough convoys I just import everything that is possible and I don't bother with exports routes (unless some good is -75% which does not happen often, because AI will use theirs convoys to import my goods). And there is point in the game when trade just becomes mindless clicking in following order:
And unless you are isolationism or commended trade player should not manually establish trade routes. Instead player should have the option to define following values:
And then, probably the most complicated part to implement: trade routes are established automatically maximizing income of traders. And preferably trade routes should work both ways - e.g. there is extremely profitable good to import from oversees, but to do not have empty ships one way then merchants would take with them anything that take can sell on the way, even with marginally small profit (modern example, exporting trash is not commercially viable, but because Western economies import way more from East Asia than they export, so exporting trash generates almost no cost, because otherwise ships would be empty one way).
But otherwise: just give me button "import everything that is possible and economically viable and automatically cancel all routes generating loses).
There could be even three additional buttons per good:
- Pause the game.
- Annul all inactive and unprofitable trade routes.
- Establish EVERY single import route that has green numbers (which is extremely lags the game after some point).
- Unpause the game.
- Rinse and repeat (preferably as often as possible).
- isolationism - no trade allowed (or only extremely limited trade allowed by establishing manually trade routes),
- mercantilism - you cannot import more than you export (it could be, your export value must e.g. 25% bigger than your imports value),
- protectionism - your import taxes must be higher than export taxes,
- free trade - you have no input on trade expect free trade agreements and embargoes (establishing embargoes should give you penalties to industrialist opinion of you)
- command economy + protectionism (or separate law called "commanded trade" or something like that) - basically how trade works right now
And unless you are isolationism or commended trade player should not manually establish trade routes. Instead player should have the option to define following values:
- import duties
- export duties
- import quotas
- export quotas
And then, probably the most complicated part to implement: trade routes are established automatically maximizing income of traders. And preferably trade routes should work both ways - e.g. there is extremely profitable good to import from oversees, but to do not have empty ships one way then merchants would take with them anything that take can sell on the way, even with marginally small profit (modern example, exporting trash is not commercially viable, but because Western economies import way more from East Asia than they export, so exporting trash generates almost no cost, because otherwise ships would be empty one way).
But otherwise: just give me button "import everything that is possible and economically viable and automatically cancel all routes generating loses).
There could be even three additional buttons per good:
- automatically import
- automatically export
- automatically cancel unproductive routes
Last edited:
- 9
- 3
