More Dynamic Trading

[Pyrolias]

I'd like to preface by saying that I'm neither a professional coder, nor content designer, so please take this with a grain of salt. Any constructive criticism to how this feature could be practically implemented is much appreciated, although it might not add much depth, I think it would make the world feel more alive while working within the constraints of the base EUIV game.

In my eyes, development represents the population of a province in terms of their wealth, production capacity, and peasantry to fight for you. The numbers can be a bit arbitrary but I think most people land on a similar general interpretation. Now one of the most clinically underrated parts of the game is trade because, for the most part, it's just not a priority to conquering land. I'd love to see a more dynamic, expanded trading system (would love some DLC that featured it), and next patch would be a good place to implement it. Specifically, one thing that never made much sense to me was the concept of specific, one-way trade paths to Europe. Sure, historically it makes sense for Europeans to funnel back all their conquered riches but there are already war goals to transfer trade power. Moreover, Europa is an alternate history game and there are plenty of what-ifs that the current trade system can deny. Like "what if" all the worlds riches flowed to South Africa? The current answer is simply, "No. Why would Europeans send goods there? Why would Americans send goods there?"

Basically, I don't like the concept of set end nodes or one way paths of trade. Instead, I propose that trade routes should travel to land with higher development, specifically higher base tax, because more wealth is concentrated in those areas and trade generally flows towards the wealthy and powerful. Trade nodes would flow towards high development by default (most likely Europe) but what if a nation outpaced the growth of European cities? Development between trade nodes can be compared and a decision could be taken to shift the flow of trade (i.e. Lubeck has more development than any connected node, 75% retained trade value, is not an end node, etc.) and if the total development in one node is greater than a node downstream of it, the flow of trade will reverse.

For example, the North Sea node flows directly into the Lubeck node at the game start because of the higher total development.
If the provinces in the North Sea node were sufficiently developed so that total province development North Sea > total province development Lubeck, then the Lubeck wealth would flow towards the North Sea.
However, both nodes are connected to the English Channel.
Assuming the English Channel still has a higher development than both, Lubeck and North Sea trade would still flow towards the English Channel.
Another node, Reims, flows towards the English channel.
In this hyopthetical, let's say that the Reims node gets a higher total province development than the English channel node.
Now, all the trade from the English Channel will flow towards Reims, making it a new end node unless, etc. etc.
You can see that this can get very complicated very quickly, which I have a feeling would be harder to code than I might expect, but quote me if you have any expertise.
Note: I said higher development here instead of higher base tax. They're interchangeable at this point.

This additional use for development can make it more profitable to develop provinces than go to war, make the world feel more alive, and give incentive to check a trade map mode. In addition, it makes it more viable to place your capital anywhere on the planet to make the seat of your historical empire the center of the world. You want Europe to be your slave basin that send precious gold and silver to your mega palace on Midway? You got it. One possible roadblock I foresee is that it will be harder to make trade actually flow properly, but this would also encourage players to develop their colonies if they want strong trade income.

There are several extra bonuses, maluses, or events that could help reinforce traditional, historical trade routes, maintain or deteriorate routes that don't make sense, etc. At this point, it's not totally fleshed out but that's what the thread is for. I'd like to hear comments on the current proposed alternate trade (pros and cons), suggestions that could improve the EUIV trade system in general (keeping in mind the game's limitations), and whether or not this is actually feasible from a technical standpoint (or how it could be made possible). The end goal is to make the suggestions reasonable enough that they could actually be inserted into the game we all love.

Similar thread: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/trade-nodes.1321357/

 

[Lightwell]

Instead, I propose that trade routes should travel to land with higher development, specifically higher base tax, because more wealth is concentrated in those areas and trade generally flows towards the wealthy and powerful.

Europe is represented as extremely wealthy in 1444 because the province development is static. If it worked as you say, trade wouldn't have "Flowed" to Europe in the first place.

 

[3ishop]

It's not so much about wealth, during the time frame historically China had the largest wealth in the world, but good still flowed out of it. It's more supply and demand. Europe had the high demand for most of the goods and the money/resources to exchange for them. Which in general would seem in many cases to mean lowering global trade value.

Personally prefer a less resource hungry supply and demand system based off the nodes and the movement of goods to fullfill them would be a good way to cover trade and fit expanding the list of goods.

And yeah it's not possible to switch trade routes in game, would require a new trade system as it's hard coded.

 

[Lightwell]

It's not so much about wealth, during the time frame historically China had the largest wealth in the world, but good still flowed out of it. It's more supply and demand. Europe had the high demand for most of the goods and the money/resources to exchange for them. Which in general would seem in many cases to mean lowering global trade value.

Wouldn't that represent a completely different relationship? I mean, they're coming to you to buy your goods with silver and gold, and getting tea/porcelain out of it. China was winning on that deal until it failed to regulate the silver supply within the country, and even then, it took the Industrial Revolution starting up for trade to begin to flow the other way. The only reason Europeans weren't exporting as many goods as Asians and Africans were, was due to the fact that there wasn't much demand for their goods to begin with. The entire story of the Philippines is the Spanish slowly trying (and failing) to come to terms with this fact.

Wealth flowed out from Europe during this timeframe, and the entire system should be modeled around their attempts at limiting that (mercantilism).

 

[Pyrolias]

Wouldn't that represent a completely different relationship? I mean, they're coming to you to buy your goods with silver and gold, and getting tea/porcelain out of it. China was winning on that deal until it failed to regulate the silver supply within the country, and even then, it took the Industrial Revolution starting up for trade to begin to flow the other way. The only reason Europeans weren't exporting as many goods as Asians and Africans were, was due to the fact that there wasn't much demand for their goods to begin with. The entire story of the Philippines is the Spanish slowly trying (and failing) to come to terms with this fact.

Wealth flowed out from Europe during this timeframe, and the entire system should be modeled around their attempts at limiting that (mercantilism).

This is very well put. I do think that China should have more power than it currently does and even if the trade system cant be totally revamped, there's still the possibility of changing how nodes are connected in between patches. It's not unreasonable to say that Beijing is a home node in my opinion, and even deserves to have a routre from Europe flowing into it across the silk road.

Furthermore, you brought up the concept of mercantilism, something that's not been looked at over the course of the game. It's a very shallow mechanic of pay more dip, get more money. It should certainly show how heavily a country is investing into trade but I think it should work more how estate loyalty currently does, sitting at a certain percentage of mercantilism that can tick back towards an equilibrium. Factors that raise this equilibrium could include a country's trading bonuses (i.e. efficiency, global trade power), number of nodes they're present in, whether or not the country has trade ideas, how many light ships they have, colonial nations, and total income from trade or percentage income from trade. Similar factors could decrease mercantilism, say if you have no light ships protecting trade and very little control in any trade nodes. I wouldnt be opposed to maintaining some active control of mercantilism via diplopoints, but a passive system will encourage more trade play as well. I think a mercantilism rework would be significantly easier to implement than dynamic trade nodes. Thoughts?

 

[Pyrolias]

It's not so much about wealth, during the time frame historically China had the largest wealth in the world, but good still flowed out of it. It's more supply and demand. Europe had the high demand for most of the goods and the money/resources to exchange for them. Which in general would seem in many cases to mean lowering global trade value.

Personally prefer a less resource hungry supply and demand system based off the nodes and the movement of goods to fullfill them would be a good way to cover trade and fit expanding the list of goods.

And yeah it's not possible to switch trade routes in game, would require a new trade system as it's hard coded.

First off, good point. I agree China was very wealthy and probably deserves and end node in itself, or at least some trade routes to flow there from Europe. A more advanced relative economics system is still something I'd like to see implemented though. The concept of a system that shows demand for a certain good in certain regions is interesting and potentially doable. For example, seeing an increase in the price of furs in provinces that belong to countries with western tech or are in certain regions (i.e. European beaver trade). I think the price of a trade good is a relatively easy way to represent this and they're often portrayed as being equal across the world when that was often not the reality, historically. Do you think there's potential here or a way that would better represent national/regional demand for goods that could be worked into a trade system?

 

[Pyrolias]

Europe is represented as extremely wealthy in 1444 because the province development is static. If it worked as you say, trade wouldn't have "Flowed" to Europe in the first place.

Yes, may need to be rebalancing in how provinces are developed if a dynamic trade system were to be implemented over a static one. However, province development is absolutely NOT static and Europe has quickly developing provinces, especially in the English Channel, Germany, and Italy, generally due to land that's cheap to develop, an overabundance of monarch points from many smaller countries that cant expand quickly enough to expend all of them, and various other factors. Trade wouldnt have flowed all the way to Europe at the start but it already doesnt as is. Instead, trade would have flowed towards historically reasonable nodes in the beginning, as it already does, i.e. China, India, SEA, and the Middle East.

Dynamic trade more or less works as a concept based on this system but I've been told the calculations required would be too intensive on the current generation, so I'd like to move on to other trade based suggestions if you cant think of a potential solution.