Post your ridiculous trade income

[Tiaexz]

"real game"=MP?

Purposefully ambiguous, and colonization is fast, sure. It only took me 5 wars to keep Portugal out of the Caribbean, that is not including Great Britain in the 13 Colonies, Spain in Brazil... MP is more sabre-rattling too and won't give up a fight easy. The sheer cost of manpower and resources just to get near to setting up the trade route would be steep. Perhaps the far more stable MP system has given me a different perspective to this, but if he would be getting no where near that amount if I was another player in that game, lets say, like France.

 

[Myrten]

So should I only be collecting trade from Sevilla and using merchants to send it upstream in all the others? I have read the posts on trade and such but it is not exactly spelled out clearly to me, other than a bigger share of the trade power leads to more of the income for you (i.e. more boats, more trade power buildings).

I mean, is the key to send a merchant to send trade up in each market before Sevilla in a chain and then collect in Sevilla? I was just sending them to collect trade in the markets that had the largest income and I had a good share in it.

Trade will always be collected in your home node (Sevilla), just transfer it towards it. Collecting abroad has a large trade power penalty and is not worth it generally.

Hmm, the English civil war event can only fire between 1600 and 1700, and has a MTTH of 167 years, so I'm not certain to get it...

There is a "Adopt Plutocratic Administration" which lets one change from a Republican Dictatorship to a Merchant Republic


Also, I'm not certain I can get AI France to steer from Ivory Coast->Timbuktu->Tunis like you did...

Yes, this large MTTH is a problem indeed, although it can be reduced by 25%.
You can always colonize Mali\Timbuktu area yourself and then you won't need France to redirect

I must disagree.

If it was obviously a major balance issue, then this would be a problem in SP and MP alike, depending on the countries chosen to play and compete with, and it isn't.

You can dominate trade in SP with just about any country you choose and in MP you will face real competition for trade (unless a trading cartel forms that is strong enough to discourage all non-members from even attempting to trade), which shows that what this is is an obvious AI issue - the AI not being good enough at competing at playing the trading game - not a balance issue.

And AI issues are best addressed by improving the AI, not by getting rid of mechanics that AI isn't good at. The latter is occasionally the only way out, but the former is absolutely preferable.

Well said, I guess that Paradox balanced game in regards to MP. However, cartel of Spain/France/UK could monopolize trade and get 10k ducats divided between themselves. It would be interesting to see super rich trade powers fighting with land powers coalition focused on military

Purposefully ambiguous, and colonization is fast, sure. It only took me 5 wars to keep Portugal out of the Caribbean, that is not including Great Britain in the 13 Colonies, Spain in Brazil... MP is more sabre-rattling too and won't give up a fight easy. The sheer cost of manpower and resources just to get near to setting up the trade route would be steep. Perhaps the far more stable MP system has given me a different perspective to this, but if he would be getting no where near that amount if I was another player in that game, lets say, like France.

Yeah competition between major trade powers can ruin everything and lead to Russia\OE being the richest country

 

[calvinhobbeslik]

Meh, I want to sort of roleplay as England, so conquering France/interior of Western Africa is out of the question (conquering the Chinese coast and Japan was, but I expanded the line because of the manufactories, though I wonder if I can pull off a similar income by just conquering all of India, which I wanted to do anyway, and spamming manufactories there)

 

[Myrten]

Meh, I want to sort of roleplay as England, so conquering France/interior of Western Africa is out of the question (conquering the Chinese coast and Japan was, but I expanded the line because of the manufactories, though I wonder if I can pull off a similar income by just conquering all of India, which I wanted to do anyway, and spamming manufactories there)

I wasn't talking about conquering France, only provinces in Ivory Coast\Timbuktu trade zones.

But generally it's hard to roleplay and power game at the same time, conquering India isn't that much profitable and it's better to focus on China and Japan as trade from there get's multiplied few more times.

 

[calvinhobbeslik]

I wasn't talking about conquering France, only provinces in Ivory Coast\Timbuktu trade zones.

But generally it's hard to roleplay and power game at the same time, conquering India isn't that much profitable and it's better to focus on China and Japan as trade from there get's multiplied few more times.

Why is India not so valuable? Just because it's a few nodes closer to Europe?

 

[Myrten]

Why is India not so valuable? Just because it's a few nodes closer to Europe?

Yes, this difference is huge

For example 10 trade value in Canton/Beijing/Nippon node vs 10 trade value in Ceylon node:

10 trade value from China goes this route: Canton/Beijing/Nippon->Hangzhou->Malacca->Bengal->Ceylon and bonus can range from 1.2^4 to 1.46^4 which means that when it reaches India it will be worth between 20 and 45 trade value and it's likely that it will be closer to the second one.

Briefly speaking one province in Canton/Beijing/Nippon node in terms of trade is worth around 3 times as much as province in Ceylon node.

 

[MajorHeartfire]

Your trade is so amazing, you broke the interface.

I love when that happens.

 

[kemor]

You can dominate trade in SP with just about any country you choose and in MP you will face real competition for trade (unless a trading cartel forms that is strong enough to discourage all non-members from even attempting to trade), which shows that what this is is an obvious AI issue - the AI not being good enough at competing at playing the trading game - not a balance issue.

That takes as a basic argument that every single nation will coastal and focused on trade in MP games. What if someone plays Poland or Austria? Then trade wise, the player playing say Castille will be vs AI for trade most of the time, and this can happen.

And AI issues are best addressed by improving the AI, not by getting rid of mechanics that AI isn't good at. The latter is occasionally the only way out, but the former is absolutely preferable.

I agree that the AI should handle trade redirection better and this can probably tweaked a bit but the issue here naval supply limit and the solution is not letting the AI also spam ships.
Another issue is that the trade value should not exponentially grow when you steer, only when you collect.

 

[1alexey]

I must disagree.

If it was obviously a major balance issue, then this would be a problem in SP and MP alike, depending on the countries chosen to play and compete with, and it isn't.

You can dominate trade in SP with just about any country you choose and in MP you will face real competition for trade (unless a trading cartel forms that is strong enough to discourage all non-members from even attempting to trade), which shows that what this is is an obvious AI issue - the AI not being good enough at competing at playing the trading game - not a balance issue.

And AI issues are best addressed by improving the AI, not by getting rid of mechanics that AI isn't good at. The latter is occasionally the only way out, but the former is absolutely preferable.

However, the trade-multiplying-after-each node needs to be heavilly toned down, to maybe 3-5% instead of current 20, since land powers can not generate nearly as much income as trade-based empires.

 

[Lessing]

If it was obviously a major balance issue, then this would be a problem in SP and MP alike, depending on the countries chosen to play and compete with, and it isn't.

You can dominate trade in SP with just about any country you choose

It IS a balance issue in SP because you can make tons of money if you focus on trade with a country that is in a good position, but if you pick another country that is landlocked and not focused on trade, you get a half or a quarter of the income.

Meaning that if you go trade in SP, you will have a huge edge vs another gamestyle. Trade income is simply too big in the extreme. You can never push taxes, tariffs or production that high, and even trying would cost you much more than investing into trade.

Aka if you go trade in SP, you play easymode.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

However, the trade-multiplying-after-each node needs to be heavilly toned down, to maybe 3-5% instead of current 20, since land powers can not generate nearly as much income as trade-based empires.

It is not at all obvious why land powers should have the opportunity to generate anywhere near as much income as trade-based empires.

Naval dominance of world-wide trade is, after all, intended, as is trade being the key to great wealth - just as it has been in EU1-3. The difference is that the new trading mechanics in EU4 makes navies important for trade dominance also in SP, whereas previously it has only really been so in MP, where navies were needed to protect far flung colonies and snatched CoTs from rapacious human players, and not in SP.

It is entirely possible that the current setup will be tweaked, but I do not expect that underlying design to change: If you aren't competitive in trade, don't expect an income anywhere near that of one that is.

 

[Ethanol]

For english players the thing is to redirect trade from ivory coast to the carribean and then chesapeake and london, going through seville with an active portugal and spain is just to much of a hassle.

I had a similar trade empire (well I got bored after attaining 1600/month and never bothered to actually go farther away then nippon), but even then the AI is pretty bad at managing trade, I embargoed Spain for 200 years just to steal all their trade in the americas and they never even bothered to declare war on me... (same with portugal and france).

Also the over-forcelimits penalty to maintenance has been tweaked it would seem, it may be me recalling badly but in my memory it was much harder to maintain a fleet over the forcelimits (here I think the % of malus upkeep for being a certain % over the forcelimit applies only to the maintenance you are paying for being over your forcelimits and not all of it (like in EU3).

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

It IS a balance issue in SP because you can make tons of money if you focus on trade with a country that is in a good position, but if you pick another country that is landlocked and not focused on trade, you get a half or a quarter of the income.

Working as designed. Trade was during this period and remains today extremely important for national wealth.

Aka if you go trade in SP, you play easymode.

And what exactly is the problem with that?

There are lots of things that can be qualified as "playing easymode" in SP. Starting as a country in a techgroup without a negative monarch power modifier. Starting as a major rather than a minor. Not setting AI bonuses. Not setting Hard difficulty. In SP, depending on level of skill, knowledge of game mechanics, starting year, setup, and playing style, playing easymode can be everything from playing one of a handful of powerful countries to something that is the case with all but a few countries in the world.

Now, an argument can certainly be made that the game would be more fun if there was more competition for trade in SP such it would be harder to totally dominate trade in SP, but that is a different matter from decrying this as a balance issue, that trade, which is intended to be extremely important, is in fact extremely important.

 

[Supernal]

Can someone here explain to me how trade works? As I literally have no idea. All I do at the moment is chuck merchants around in nodes and see which makes the most lol. I do have light ships protecting the trade in these nodes too, but I tend to lower maintenance as I wanna save money and didn't see much difference in income even though the effectiveness of the ships goes down as you do this. I'm playing as Naples and own most of Italy including Venice and Genoa, also have a colony in Sierra Leone, but I think I make only like 5.5 in trade. This is from the economy screen so I assume that's monthly, is that good or...?

 

[steveh11]

I'm amazed, impressed and not a little confused. I have no idea what I'm doing with the new trade mechanics yet. No tutorial, thread, article or manual has yet made any sense to me.

 

[Tiaexz]

That takes as a basic argument that every single nation will coastal and focused on trade in MP games. What if someone plays Poland or Austria? Then trade wise, the player playing say Castille will be vs AI for trade most of the time, and this can happen.

Austria can inherit Antewerpen and in our MP session, this is what happened and they took up trading. Kept annoying the English, French and Swedes by stealing their income till the Brits and French built up post-offices, then the Austria player swapped to Venice. (That Austria player even got around to forming the HRE too)

 

[Lessing]

Working as designed. Trade was during this period and remains today extremely important for national wealth.

Not when trade-based economy beats a tax/production-based economy with the factor of 1000.

This is what this thread is about.

 

[Danarca]

Uh, apparently I was the only silly guy to paint the map by hand instead of using a shortcut key (I assume you used a shortcut key, which I still don't know what one is):

Spoiler

:O Must've taken a lot of time!
If you press F11 while playing you'll export a worldmap of your currently selected map mode, that's how we did it

 

[Tiaexz]

Finally had some time to load up that save. In short..

It is 2000 ducats going into Sevilla, producing 4500 trade income. Not sure where the nearly 9k listed at the start comes from.
A few key jumps are done by the AI, but heavily persuaded by the Spanish Fleet tradepower.
You say you needed to lose mercantilism for the Indian trade-buff. You never took the Importation act which would have made you lose that, plus given you higher trade income.
Force limits are not even that bad, opposed to what has been said in thread. It is 544 force-limit (due to owning majority of the world) and 1654 ships. Your upkeep is 1 ducat per ship, which is double the normal upkeep (0.5)
Only 1200 or so of the ships were Frigates. Even deleting all the frigates at nodes with no traders, and reducing his overall naval force limit to 620, there is still a nice healthy profit being made. Though the trade income is a more modest 340.

Not when trade-based economy beats a tax/production-based economy with the factor of 1000.

This is what this thread is about.

More like a factor of ten. But it does require you to shift the trade from around the world. You have to remember that trade is also very lucrative compared to production which came via the industrial revolution which is after the Eu4 time period, and more the Vicky one.

After actually getting to look through the save myself, it isn't that broken. All it needs is naval force limits be more heavy, so instead of 'double cost' for simply being over, it should be 400% the cost for being twice times over the limit, then 900% for being 3 times over the limit (like colonies).

which shows that what this is is an obvious AI issue - the AI not being good enough at competing at playing the trading game - not a balance issue.

And AI issues are best addressed by improving the AI, not by getting rid of mechanics that AI isn't good at. The latter is occasionally the only way out, but the former is absolutely preferable.

It is actually a force-limits issue, not an AI issue. The AI generally sticks to force limits whilst in this case, the player went 4 times his forcelimits to pull off the stunt.

What I am going to do is set up a Netherlands game, then simply take 1 province at every node, then just spam them with Frigates. Should be able to reproduce the same results without a virtual world conquest.

 

[steveh11]

Really, it was just as easy - or more likely, much easier - to do something like this in EU3. My only complaint is that I'm finding the new trade system difficult to comprehend, on a "This is what you do" level. But results like this, in a SP game don't indicate that "the game is broken!" to me.