No merchant in home node?

[unmerged(221873)]

Haven't played EUIV since summer. Upon stanting a new game as Venice I noticed there is no merchant automatically placed in Venice, as my most important trade node. I FAINTLY remember reding somewhere that since version XY trade revenue in your capital is collected automatically, without the need to place merchant there. Am I correct? When was this change introduced?

Also, this means every country with at least one tradenode gets one free merchant (that used to be placed in home tradenode)?

 

[Sunspawn]

Yup, don't need to waste a merchant in your home node. Better send them to transfer from nearby nodes.

Frankly, this is one of the least broken things about trade in EU4. The endnodes being in Europe is quite frankly, idiotic.

 

[Schmoekoeksklok]

There has never been a need to put a merchant in your capital, it's just that 1.8 added some trade power bonuses if you're not collecting with any of your merchants. There's still a 10% income modifier when using one to collect in the capital, and that does often outshine any other use for your merchants. In most cases, though probably not for Venice, the starting setup is absolutely terrible, because the game will never start you out collecting in your capital node anymore (even if that is the only node you can even do anything useful in).

For the most part, the rule of thumb is similar to before. While you're small and mostly in one node, you still want to collect in the capital. Once you start to branch out into multiple nodes you might be better off only steering, or collecting in multiple places. Once you established dominance over several nodes, you definitely want to steer only. Having better trade income modifiers speeds that process up significantly, as the 10% extra isn't that helpful then.