Players usually only trade with larger nations while smaller nations are left out. Why is this the case?
Possible solutions:
UI:
- The bureaucracy costs are constant, so they are really high for a smaller nations to be ever profitable.
- Most countries have mercantilism, which has a very high import tariffs, making export unfeasible.
- Furthermore, countries may arbitrarily establish high export or import tariffs, making profitability plummet, essentially misleading players with regards to profitability.
- Therefore players are really afraid of establishing trade with minor nations.
- Assuming 50 countries can be traded and there are 30 goods, players have to click export / import 1500 times. Expecting player to click so much just for global trade to happen is unfeasible. Furthermore this costs 7500 bureaucracy with Free Trade, making both free trade and global trade a very suboptimal strategy, even if all countries had free trade.
- *Above does not count having to check trade opportunities, which costs types of goods x 2 (import + export) clicks.
- Trade is made by traders and tariffs are made only in bureaucracy, and historically AFAIK countries don't establish trade routes, traders do. Countries only decide which good is not to be traded, or which countries to not be traded. Countries also only impose tariffs on borders or ports, afaik not caring about whether a good is exported in multiple countries for a convoy or a single one unless the good is traded with a country with trade agreement. Afaik for mercantilists it depends on traders nationality, but it is way too costly to implement so shopkeepers suffice.
Possible solutions:
UI:
- Players should be able to create separate lists of import / export goods, setting their preferred goods to either list. Also with this:
- Players may set routes according to this setting to any country, tolerating possibly unprofitable routes.
- AI-like trade settings can be applied to player, automatically creating / removing trade routes as cautioned in the list.
- Players may just use AI setting to create trade routes.
- Goods that correspond to non-existent consumption such as fine art should be shown to player as likely to be profitable.
- *Edit: Trade may be wholly or partially automatic, first being natural trade routes (as traders establish these themselves), second being regional trade routes.
- Trade bureaucracy costs should be much lower.
- Bureaucracy costs should be on per country basis, not per trade route basis. (1)
- Regarding tariff policies, make setting non-default tariffs cost bureaucracy (or authority). (2)
- Trade level / bureaucracy solution:
- Make trade level have another production method which employs bureaucrats, costs paper (Problem: government employees don't get fired that easily)
- Creating another government building which manages trade capacity, and gives inefficiency of tariffs when overcapacity. Free trade gives a very huge boost to capacity (only checking contraband goods). Overcapacity for free trade causes tax waste (smuggling). Problem only seems to be AI programming for me, as this also makes historical sense.
- Vanilla solution but just making 1 bureaucracy per trade route level. I think the micro is manageable, and trade levels can also create alerts in insufficient amounts, as trade is slow and gradual. (also please show how much bureaucracy is needed to solve insufficient bureaucracy alert)
- All of these can be in conjunction with (1) and (2), with (2) having as multiplier and possibly base + per level and including routes made by other countries.
- *Natural trade routes:
- This may take average convoy cost + bureaucracy cost into account when establishing trade routes. In this, profitability would be directly related to minimum wage in the state.
- *Regional trade routes:
- One can include / exclude trade of a good regarding the region. This would be locally automatic as above but in here the convoy costs can be clearly seen.
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