I've posted about this idea several times before, but never on the suggestions forum. I think it's about time I collected all of my thoughts here.
The big problem with the current trade steering system was revealed by the Western Europe trade node. You could own all of Asia or the New World, but a bunch of nations without any investment in overseas trade could steal most of your trade value with light ship spam and trade power propagation.
Specifics of this have been or can be changed - WETN is gone, trade propagation and light ship effectiveness have never been set in stone - but the fundamental problem remains. I can build a ton of light ships to patrol off the coast of Mauretania, and without a single colony past Mali, steal a significant portion of trade coming in from Asia. Not by privateering, but by sending ships to "protect" trade that I've never owned. This is a natural result of a system in which all trade in all nodes is evenly divided between all people with power in that node, and trying to avoid game-y situations like this will always require dancing around the ultimate cause.
My proposal is to make trade value travel in protected streams from the moment it enters your hands. The specific implementation could vary, but I'll outline one possible model:
Trade enters streams in one of two ways: 1) owned provinces provide a % of their trade value directly to your stream, this percentage being modified by mercantilism and trade power/efficiency; 2) each node has a pool of "free" trade value that is divided up exactly how current trade value is divided, based on local trade power. "Free" trade value is a combination of the trade value from provinces that doesn't directly enter the stream of the owner, along with a percentage of the trade value collected in the node (ensuring that there will be some free trade value even if all locals have 100% mercantilism). For trade to enter your stream, however, you have to be collecting at some point downstream. If you aren't, the trade goes into the free trade value pool.
Once trade enters your stream, it travels down that stream to a point of collection, and cannot be leached off simply by opposing nations' trade power. Only privateers can steal your trade, and the main point of sending light ships to protect trade will be to actually protect trade from privateers. Privateer efficiency in a node would now be increased by local trade power, keeping around the need to seize strategic ports even in areas where you aren't very interested in taking trade value.
Trade power transfer agreements are changed such that the partner formerly receiving trade power in the node instead gets a bonus to tapping into the free trade value produced by the junior's provinces, as well as the free trade value produced upon collection. So, establishing protectorates over production-rich Indian states would be especially lucrative. The downside for the state transferring trade, however, is that they suffer from trade efficiency penalties based on how much trade privilege they grant, decreasing their own profit (which makes sense - if your number of trade partners is restricted, your bargaining power and profit margins go down). It's less of a big deal than transferring trade is now, though, so countries will be more likely to establish trade agreements, which was a common thing.
Advantages of the new system
-Trade steering makes more sense. No more passive-aggressive duels between fleets of dozens of light ships drifting about the seas near Europe, accosting merchants and forcing them to land in your ports. Instead, you worry about what real empires worried about. You have to actually secure a source of trade goods overseas, and the main worry along the journey home are privateers, not your men deciding to go trade in London because they saw a Union Jack off the coast of Senegal.
-Privateering, and therefore the Espionage idea group, become much more important, as privateering is now the only way to directly harm the trade of an enemy once it enters transit, and to profit from Asian trade if you have no investment in actual trade yourself.
-Mercantilism becomes more important - it now becomes a choice between locking down trade from the provinces you own yourself, or being better at siphoning off the free trade that floats around nodes.
-Forming overseas trade empires becomes more viable for poorly-placed Europeans, because you don't have to worry about all of your trade being siphoned off because it passes through one extra node on the way home - provided you maintain good relations with the dominant powers along the route. Genoa can actually take in trade from Caffa, or any American colonies she owns, but if she pisses off the people in charge of the straits of Bosphorus or Gibraltar, she'll see a lot of her trade seized.
The big problem with the current trade steering system was revealed by the Western Europe trade node. You could own all of Asia or the New World, but a bunch of nations without any investment in overseas trade could steal most of your trade value with light ship spam and trade power propagation.
Specifics of this have been or can be changed - WETN is gone, trade propagation and light ship effectiveness have never been set in stone - but the fundamental problem remains. I can build a ton of light ships to patrol off the coast of Mauretania, and without a single colony past Mali, steal a significant portion of trade coming in from Asia. Not by privateering, but by sending ships to "protect" trade that I've never owned. This is a natural result of a system in which all trade in all nodes is evenly divided between all people with power in that node, and trying to avoid game-y situations like this will always require dancing around the ultimate cause.
My proposal is to make trade value travel in protected streams from the moment it enters your hands. The specific implementation could vary, but I'll outline one possible model:
Trade enters streams in one of two ways: 1) owned provinces provide a % of their trade value directly to your stream, this percentage being modified by mercantilism and trade power/efficiency; 2) each node has a pool of "free" trade value that is divided up exactly how current trade value is divided, based on local trade power. "Free" trade value is a combination of the trade value from provinces that doesn't directly enter the stream of the owner, along with a percentage of the trade value collected in the node (ensuring that there will be some free trade value even if all locals have 100% mercantilism). For trade to enter your stream, however, you have to be collecting at some point downstream. If you aren't, the trade goes into the free trade value pool.
Once trade enters your stream, it travels down that stream to a point of collection, and cannot be leached off simply by opposing nations' trade power. Only privateers can steal your trade, and the main point of sending light ships to protect trade will be to actually protect trade from privateers. Privateer efficiency in a node would now be increased by local trade power, keeping around the need to seize strategic ports even in areas where you aren't very interested in taking trade value.
Trade power transfer agreements are changed such that the partner formerly receiving trade power in the node instead gets a bonus to tapping into the free trade value produced by the junior's provinces, as well as the free trade value produced upon collection. So, establishing protectorates over production-rich Indian states would be especially lucrative. The downside for the state transferring trade, however, is that they suffer from trade efficiency penalties based on how much trade privilege they grant, decreasing their own profit (which makes sense - if your number of trade partners is restricted, your bargaining power and profit margins go down). It's less of a big deal than transferring trade is now, though, so countries will be more likely to establish trade agreements, which was a common thing.
Advantages of the new system
-Trade steering makes more sense. No more passive-aggressive duels between fleets of dozens of light ships drifting about the seas near Europe, accosting merchants and forcing them to land in your ports. Instead, you worry about what real empires worried about. You have to actually secure a source of trade goods overseas, and the main worry along the journey home are privateers, not your men deciding to go trade in London because they saw a Union Jack off the coast of Senegal.
-Privateering, and therefore the Espionage idea group, become much more important, as privateering is now the only way to directly harm the trade of an enemy once it enters transit, and to profit from Asian trade if you have no investment in actual trade yourself.
-Mercantilism becomes more important - it now becomes a choice between locking down trade from the provinces you own yourself, or being better at siphoning off the free trade that floats around nodes.
-Forming overseas trade empires becomes more viable for poorly-placed Europeans, because you don't have to worry about all of your trade being siphoned off because it passes through one extra node on the way home - provided you maintain good relations with the dominant powers along the route. Genoa can actually take in trade from Caffa, or any American colonies she owns, but if she pisses off the people in charge of the straits of Bosphorus or Gibraltar, she'll see a lot of her trade seized.
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