NOOB Question on Trade Companies and Investments
- Thread starter Otay
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the goods produces investment makes you a lot of money. the trade power one adds a lot of trade power so it can be good in contested nodes or to get over 50% trade power for the extra merchant. the fort defense one might be useful on provinces with forts. i usally never use the other ones.
You make a trade company by assigning territories to them. You can do this either from the Province view for individual provinces, or from the Trade Node menu to add all elegible provinces (that's any non-stated province) in that node. Trade Companies follow the Trade Nodes, and can be established in any province outside your home region. For you, that's any province outside Eastern Europe. It's worth noting that you can never convert the religion of a Trade Company province, so if you want them to be your state religion, you have to convert them before you add them to the Company.
Trade Company Investments are powerful, state-wide buildings which improve all provinces in the state that they are built - even those you do not control and/or are not in Trade Companies. These will increase various metrics of the provinces, though the Goods Produced and Trade Power ones are the most useful, as these will increase the economic value of the trade node, and the power you have in the node, respectively. You can build them from the macrobuilder (specifically the State tab & Trade Company Investments sub-tab), or from the State Interface portion of the Province view.
Further, every trade node where your Trade Company has more than 50% of the power will contribute one extra merchant to you, to make it easier to steer your trade towards your home node. There are various ways to use all this info to your benefit, but if you're not terribly interested in min-maxing for the absolutely best gain, I'd recommend putting everything east of the Urals in a Trade Company, and prioritize the Goods Produced and Trade Power investments over any other building. It isn't the singular most effective way of using a trade company, but it's the least micro-intensive and still nets you a substantial boost to your income as Russia.
Trade Company Investments are powerful, state-wide buildings which improve all provinces in the state that they are built - even those you do not control and/or are not in Trade Companies. These will increase various metrics of the provinces, though the Goods Produced and Trade Power ones are the most useful, as these will increase the economic value of the trade node, and the power you have in the node, respectively. You can build them from the macrobuilder (specifically the State tab & Trade Company Investments sub-tab), or from the State Interface portion of the Province view.
Further, every trade node where your Trade Company has more than 50% of the power will contribute one extra merchant to you, to make it easier to steer your trade towards your home node. There are various ways to use all this info to your benefit, but if you're not terribly interested in min-maxing for the absolutely best gain, I'd recommend putting everything east of the Urals in a Trade Company, and prioritize the Goods Produced and Trade Power investments over any other building. It isn't the singular most effective way of using a trade company, but it's the least micro-intensive and still nets you a substantial boost to your income as Russia.
It's an alternative way to organize your provinces. As a general rule, either you put them in a state or a trade company (you can also leave provinces as territorial cores so they have very little benefits but use less governing capacity. Only provinces outside of the super-region your capital is in can be added to a trade company. These super-region borders do not exactly conform to those of trade nodes, but as Russia you should want to trade company every node downstream of Kazan and Astrakhan (Samarkand, Persia, Siberia, Girin, Yumen etc.). IIRC there's one area in the Siberia node still in Eastern Europe so you state that one, and trade company the rest.
As for what effect this has, I can explain it by the book as the wiki does, or try to explain it in a more practical manner:
- Provinces in a trade company have significantly increased provincial trade power. This gives you more leverage in contested nodes.
- Provinces in a trade company have severely reduced contributions to tax, manpower and land force limit. They also have a minor reduction in production income but both the former and the latter can be mitigated partly through trade company investments. Overall though, they WILL make you more money, don't worry about the tax loss.
- Trade company provinces have no penalties from wrong culture or religion. For Russia there's lots of Tengri and Sunni provinces you can conquer that are better to put in a trade company than trying to convert.
- You gain an extra merchant for every trade company you have at least 51% provincial trade power in. This really lets you chain a massive trade network.
- Trade companies can be invested in on an area basis (so a group of provinces that can also be a state) and also have a few investments where you can get one per node that can give effects on a national level and/or the whole node. These are extremely powerful!
As for how this is relevant to your Russia, here's some things you should be doing for your trade situation.
- Re-organize your merchants. You got the ones transferring from Kiev and Kazan right, the one collecting in Baltic is acceptable but you're misusing the ones collecting in Astrakhan and Novgorod. The one in Astrakhan should be steering trade, and the one in Novgorod should be moved to either Siberia or Crimea to also steer trade.
- Consolidate the trade nodes downstream of Novgorod. You have many more provinces you should be taking from Commonwealth in the Kiev node, and a couple in the Crimea node. Conquer Nogai, Uzbek, Oirat. Push out the Ottomans! They should be well below the Caucasus. Not only is it a danger to you, they're eating your lunch trade wise! Crimea and Astrakhan are nodes YOU should be dominating.
- Trade company everything south and east of the Eastern Europe super-region. Great parts of the world can potentially flow into Novgorod if you get to work! Build your own silk road. You already fully own Kazan, into this node you can get trade from Astrakhan. You'll want to fully own Astrakhan too, into this node you can get trade from Persia and Samarkand. If you fully own Samarkand, you can get trade from Yumen. If you fully own Yumen... you can bring in trade from all of China.
As for what effect this has, I can explain it by the book as the wiki does, or try to explain it in a more practical manner:
- Provinces in a trade company have significantly increased provincial trade power. This gives you more leverage in contested nodes.
- Provinces in a trade company have severely reduced contributions to tax, manpower and land force limit. They also have a minor reduction in production income but both the former and the latter can be mitigated partly through trade company investments. Overall though, they WILL make you more money, don't worry about the tax loss.
- Trade company provinces have no penalties from wrong culture or religion. For Russia there's lots of Tengri and Sunni provinces you can conquer that are better to put in a trade company than trying to convert.
- You gain an extra merchant for every trade company you have at least 51% provincial trade power in. This really lets you chain a massive trade network.
- Trade companies can be invested in on an area basis (so a group of provinces that can also be a state) and also have a few investments where you can get one per node that can give effects on a national level and/or the whole node. These are extremely powerful!
As for how this is relevant to your Russia, here's some things you should be doing for your trade situation.
- Re-organize your merchants. You got the ones transferring from Kiev and Kazan right, the one collecting in Baltic is acceptable but you're misusing the ones collecting in Astrakhan and Novgorod. The one in Astrakhan should be steering trade, and the one in Novgorod should be moved to either Siberia or Crimea to also steer trade.
- Consolidate the trade nodes downstream of Novgorod. You have many more provinces you should be taking from Commonwealth in the Kiev node, and a couple in the Crimea node. Conquer Nogai, Uzbek, Oirat. Push out the Ottomans! They should be well below the Caucasus. Not only is it a danger to you, they're eating your lunch trade wise! Crimea and Astrakhan are nodes YOU should be dominating.
- Trade company everything south and east of the Eastern Europe super-region. Great parts of the world can potentially flow into Novgorod if you get to work! Build your own silk road. You already fully own Kazan, into this node you can get trade from Astrakhan. You'll want to fully own Astrakhan too, into this node you can get trade from Persia and Samarkand. If you fully own Samarkand, you can get trade from Yumen. If you fully own Yumen... you can bring in trade from all of China.
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Here's my screenshot of a recent run... very different territorial extent compared to yours cause I've been gunning down trade node domination. I also took out a bunch of loans at tech 11 to start building about 30 iron, copper, salt and cloth manufactories to bump up my income, you can see the difference in 7 years! You can make a boatload of money as Russia if you know what you're doing.