Merchant cant compete at all issue?

[Xcandyman2131X]

so im having some issues with my trade and i don't understand why.

first off i have free trade slider all the way up. i have anywhere from 50% to 90% compete chance in all COT's(mostly 60% and up)on a regular basis. one of my problems is this fluctuates a ton on a monthly
basis. one month it may be 80% the next it could be 60% (weather i sent merchants their or not) also the values of everyone's center of trade changes super rapidly to and i don't know why one year a center of trade is worth 1200 the next its 700 and another COT is 1200. it changes so rapidly that auto sending merchants is usless. also another extremely annoying this is that it wont let me send merchants to centers of trade at all for what seems like a random period of time. (no embargo and i have the money to send them to) but for some reason it just says your merchants cant compete here. but then a few months latter i may let me again. as you can see this is extremely frustrating.

also i bought the whole EU 3 collection with all dlc recently when i was before playing on just the EU3 complete before and i noticed the numbers of value of COT are drastically different. on my old game a COT of 800 was crazy high value but now it seems that COT are easlily getting above 1000. (and that value was around 1470 in the old game ware as the value for the new one is while im only around 1418)

also even tho these things fluctuate so much i still have pretty good trade income. (or i would think i would) but it seems that while i get like its doing nothing. i have merchants in some COTs getting 70 and in more many in others COTs getting around 30 or 40. i have an inflation of only 1.0 and i have a master mint reducing inflation by .10 and the national bank for a total reduction of .20 so even while having this much and keeping my slider up so that i gain 0.1 inflation a year still only still has me losing about 3$ annually. on top of that i have a tiny army of only 4 regiments and i have maintenance at the lowest. my maintenance on navel is so low its actually 0 so i just don't see how i could lose money each month and on top of that have a negative annual fee with this things i have.

also not sure if this really matters but i have around 70 legitimacy and 6 infamy and im in no current wars.

Please help someone

 

[Dauth]

Other nations embargoing/warring/trade leagues can have an effect on CoT value. Just go for both of them. If the merchants can/cannot compete it may be due to trade range, territories you're occupying or someone else is occupying can change the path to the CoT. In 5.2 I've has CoTs over 4000/yr.

If you're in a trade league you'll also have the issue of not competing with other people in the same league. 6 infamy won't do too much damage. If this doesn't help then post a couple of screenshots for us to look at.

 

[Xcandyman2131X]

It might be something to do with trade leagues because i notice im in one and some others are in a different one but for example one nation i tried to trade with didn't let me then afew months latter they did and now afew more months latter they wont let me again. so maybe they were joining the trade league and then leaving and then joined again? Ill go check it out and report back.

i don't know to much about the trade leagues so if anyone could explain that would be nice.

 

[Dauth]

http://www.eu3wiki.com/Trade_league

 

[unmerged(20077)]

Trade League members don't compete against each other but that doesn't stop merchants being sent to a CoT - unless all the merchants in that CoT were from countries in the same Trade League!

 

[Xcandyman2131X]

so if i have free trade slider all the way over then would it be best to not join these trade leagues and therefore ill be able to trade with every country?

 

[unmerged(20077)]

If you have gone fully Free Trade you are better able to compete overseas, but you lose your advantage with any CoTs that you own. It's likely that you will be losing out staying in the League because your leader will be a worse trader than you would be, but check their ideas and sliders before leaving the League.

 

[Xcandyman2131X]

Ok new question that is also related. so started a new save as Holland and was doing epic. i have 5 guys in every COT and my compete chance everywhere was over 80%. once i sent a merchant i almost never had to worry about him being competed out of COT. so i was making loads of money and i didnt own a single COT (also before i go any further my free trade slider was all the way up and i was part of the hensiatic league (i think i spelled that wrong) ). now i knew i was likely a bad idea because i lose advantages for COTs that i own but i captured antwerpen and therfore got a gained my own COT. i figured that if anything it would just lower my compete chance in that one cot and if that did happen then i could just sell it. so what i did was i waited afew years and my compete chance started to plummet. in 5 to 10 years my compete chance went down to nearly 0% but in all COT's not just the one i owned.

now the thing is at this point i already had so much money that i was buying almost every building upgrade available so my production was bringing in so much that it equaled out me losing merchants. now the thing is my infamy was getting really high because of unlawful territory claims made by the holy roman empire. (by this point the game was all downhill) basicly everyone around the entire world eventually declared war on me and i lost lots of my old territory. so now my production is very low. so i figured i would do what i did before when i was small and use merchants again. thing is by this point compte chance was 0% in Very near all COTs but the one i owned. so i decided to sell antwerpen and figured if i dont own a COT my compete chance will start to soar again. (that didn't happen) it just stayed around 0 and i lost my merchents in antwerpen. it is now utterly impossible for me to compete anywhere.

so i figured i would try what THE IMPALER said and leave the trade league. i did this for about 2 to 3 years and nothing happened . so i decide mabye i should join the trade league venice owns but that didnt seem to work either.

so does anyone know why this has happened and how i could fix it?

 

[Xcandyman2131X]

also in the first paragraph about what happened after 5 to 10 years of geting antwerpen i ment to say my compete chance when to nearly 0% for all COT except the one i owned. the one i owned had the compete chance drop from about 90% to 66%

 

[Dauth]

Non-core CoT gives -15% compete chance abroad. Couple that with maybe other traders hitting Gov 9 and taking a trade idea, or 10 and getting Formalize Weights and measures and you'll be competed out.

 

[1anrs]

Which country are you playing and how many HRE provinces do you "illegally occupy"? The wars will be caused by you going over your infamy limit either through just gradually increasing as you have implied or if you had a monarch with lower legitimacy inheriting it may then have pushed your infamy limit lower than it was before

 

[Xcandyman2131X]

i was playing a Holland and through hours of more playing a figured out that thats what the problem is. i had enough non legally owned HRE provinces that even with a lvl 6 infamy reduction guy i was still gaining like 2 infamy a year. infamy also greatly effects you compete chance. for some reason they don't put in a pop down bar like they did with prestige all the effects of infamy (DUMB). anyways i found this out because if your at a cot and hover over other merchents besides you it gives all the stats that are effecting that merchants compete chance and i saw one that was losing compete chance because of infamy. so i came to the obvious conclusion that that their was my core problem.

 

[Xcandyman2131X]

ok so im guessing this will be my last question on this thread. it seems that the main reason that owning my own COT didnt work out before was likely more due to the fact that i had alot of infamy and not that i had lost bonuses because i hade free trade.

thing is by this point im kinda hesitant on ever having a cot because when i do things always seem to go bad. i have made many many times more $$$ if i just stay out of owning a cot and just compete abroad.

so my question is i know that having free trade loses lots of benifits of owned COTs but if i have full free trade is it still worth it. its seems like almost every post i see about it says COTs are nothing but good but then again they seem to move slider away from free trade. and thats fine and all but would i rather have one big monopoly in my cot or have 10 monopoly's in 10 COT. ( i would chose the latter) so if im going toward free trade then would having my own cot still be beneficial or would it be more trouble than its worth?

 

[1anrs]

I think it really depends on your situation. If I don't already have a CoT, then I will often not bother setting one up now like I did before, although you do get many other side benefits like a more rapidly increasing population, etc, etc. What is quite nice is to set one up in the caribbean if you are colonising really early though because you don't get much competition and your CoT can end up being worth thousands because of all the tobacco, coffee and other really expensive goods you get there.

 

[Xcandyman2131X]

but if you can easily get your hands on one would it be worth it or would it mess up trade for you in general

i say this because i play as holland and antwerpen COT it right next to me it would be an easy takeover

 

[Dauth]

If you can get core on it then a CoT is worthwhile. If not then it can be a liability for a big trader. If you form Netherlands then get your hands on Antwerpen. Also don't go for an absolute monopoly if you're a free trade just get 6 merchants in there and be done with it.

 

[unmerged(180647)]

There is a nice list of modifiers to the compete chance in the wiki. It is valid since IN:

Base: 50% compete chance
Stability: -3% to 3% compete chance
Monarch Administrative skill: +1% compete chance for each skill level (%1 to 9%)
Trade Efficiency: bonus equal to TE divided by 2
Prestige: -15% to +15% compete chance
Infamy score: -1% competitiveness in foreign CoTs for each infamy point
Owning a non-core CoT: -15% competitiveness in foreign CoTs for each such CoT
Lucky AI nations: +10% compete chance
Trader advisor: +2% compete chance per advisor level
Shrewd Commerce Practice national idea: +10% compete chance
Mercantilism/Free Trade domestic policy:
Towards mercantilism: +8% compete chance in owned CoTs for every notch left of the center (%40% to 0%)
Towards free trade: +5% compete chance in foreign CoTs for every notch right of the center (0% to +25%)
Penalty to compete chance for each merchant placed: -0.5% compete chance for each placed merchant globally
Several events add or subtract to merchant compete chance

 

[Pewt]

Some of those modifiers are wrong. For instance, infamy is -2%/point. The general issues are prestige, non-cored CoTs, and high infamy.

 

[alexnothome]

Free Trade policy has Compete chance but Mercantilsm has Merchant Placement chance. The more merchants you have at COTs around the world the less likely you may join a new one. Also, each merchant you have placed drops your compete chance after the max. Last, but not least, COTs have a max amount of traders it can support and once the limit been reach you need merchant placement chance to remove one of their competitors for your own merchants. Also, if you have no merchants you will get that message. Also, if the COT been taken over by someone new who has not open their markets to you then that problem will persist until you force open the market or open through diplomacy.

Save and restarting the saved game helps with conflicts where you forced to previous tab.

 

[Xcandyman2131X]

i thought merchant compete was the same thing as merchant placement. whats the difference?