Question about trading

[I had a bad name 99]

Not sure whether this is the right forum to ask a "trivial" question.

But is there any way of improving long-term relationship through trading. And that will in turn give me favorable trade deal in the future?

So, let's say, as Germany, I decide to import oil from a faraway neutral country like Venezula. If I keep importing, would that improve relationship, and hence bringing about a more favorable trade deal (basically, the trading cost goes down progressively). In this case, trading cost is defined as being able to have more trade influence, hence getting more oil compared to the exporter's rival importers.

 

[Mousetick]

But is there any way of improving long-term relationship through trading. And that will in turn give me favorable trade deal in the future?

According to the HOI 4 wiki, trading doesn't affect your trading influence, or your relations with the exporter.

Factors that affect trading influence:

• Distance between the two countries
• Relations between the importer and the exporter
• Support (popularity) of the political party with the same ideology as the exporting country (except for non-aligned countries)
• A larger amount of divisions along a common border.
• A larger amount of ships at the exporter's coastline.
• The autonomy of a puppet.
• Operative Missions.

Trade - Hearts of Iron 4 Wiki

hoi4.paradoxwikis.com

 

[I had a bad name 99]

I did check wiki too, but this part confused me.

 

[Mousetick]

Ok. The way I understand it, by looking at the tooltips in the diplomacy screens:

- If you export stuff to a country, their opinion of you is increased, but yours of them is not affected.
- Conversely, if you import stuff from a country, your opinion of them is increased, but theirs of you is not affected.
- The increase in opinion varies depending on the country, and is not explained, probably depends on the quantity traded.
- In some cases, trade seems to have no effect on the importer's opinion of the exporter at all, and the reason is unknown.

So if you wanted to increase Venezuela's opinion of Germany via trade, so you as Germany can have more trade influence over Venezuela, you'd have to somehow make Venezuela import stuff from Germany. Which is kind of the inverse of what you were hoping to do, if I'm not mistaken.

Look for the "Trade partners" opinion bonus in the opinion tooltip. Here UK likes USA a lot because it imports lots of oil from USA:

Despite importing steel and chromium from Soviet Union, USA doesn't have a "Trading partners" opinion bonus with them:

Not sure if this is clear, hope it helps a bit.

 

[Switters99]

It’s very helpful for me at any rate, I had no idea it was only a one way thing. Maybe that should be tweaked to give us a bit more control over relations? Would it be too easy to game then?

 

[Mousetick]

I had no idea it was only a one way thing. Maybe that should be tweaked to give us a bit more control over relations? Would it be too easy to game then?

A possible reason: if the trade opinion bonus were bidirectional, it might give an unfair advantage to the human player vs. computer in manipulating opinions via trade. It would also give an improved relations bonus with no tradeoff (no pun intended). Whereas all other means of improving relations have tradeoffs, be they political power, lend-leased equipment, etc.

 

[Fulmen]

A possible reason: if the trade opinion bonus were bidirectional, it might give an unfair advantage to the human player vs. computer in manipulating opinions via trade.

This is exactly what happened in HoI3, or at least in the BICE mod (don't remember if trading affected relations in vanilla, but I think they did). The worse the relations, the better off you were if you sold stuff to them. Conversely the better the relations, the better off you were if you bought stuff from them. Every time you signed or cancelled a trade deal, it'd affect relations, so what players would do was spam a series of extremely tiny trades and boost relations up to +200, then make the deals they really wanted to make. It was a terribly gamey system and barely had a shred of realism to it, and I quickly modded out the opinion effect from signing/cancelling trade deals from my game.

 

[Mister Analyst]

....is there any way of improving long-term relationship through trading. And that will in turn give me favorable trade deal in the future?

So, let's say, as Germany, I decide to import oil from a faraway neutral country like Venezula. If I keep importing, would that improve relationship, and hence bringing about a more favorable trade deal (basically, the trading cost goes down progressively). In this case, trading cost is defined as being able to have more trade influence, hence getting more oil compared to the exporter's rival importers.

Appointing a Smooth-Talking Charmer as a political advisor is supposed to give a +10% trade deal opinion factor according to the HOI4 wiki.

However, the footnote for Smooth-Talking Charmers, such as the German Reich's K. von Neurath, indicates that this effect has not worked since version 1.6.1 of the game. I do not know if this has been fixed.

 

[Mousetick]

This is exactly what happened in HoI3, or at least in the BICE mod (don't remember if trading affected relations in vanilla, but I think they did).

I think it worked the same in HOI 3 vanilla, if I recall correctly. Not only trading improved relations on a diplomatic level, but the improved relations would provide better trading prices for resources, creating a snowball effect.

 

[Fulmen]

Appointing a Smooth-Talking Charmer as a political advisor is supposed to give a +10% trade deal opinion factor according to the HOI4 wiki.

However, the footnote for Smooth-Talking Charmers, such as the German Reich's K. von Neurath, indicates that this effect has not worked since version 1.6.1 of the game. I do not know if this has been fixed.

Are the bonuses for a number of advisors, like the speed bonus from a Blitzkrieg Theorist, still broken as well?

 

[Mousetick]

Appointing a Smooth-Talking Charmer as a political advisor is supposed to give a +10% trade deal opinion factor according to the HOI4 wiki.

However, the footnote for Smooth-Talking Charmers, such as the German Reich's K. von Neurath, indicates that this effect has not worked since version 1.6.1 of the game. I do not know if this has been fixed.

According to this bug report by bitmode, this has been fixed (in 1.9+):
Smooth-Talking Charmer does nothing

 

[CantGetNoSleep]

According to this bug report by bitmode, this has been fixed (in 1.9+):
Smooth-Talking Charmer does nothing

Yes, it probably is fixed, in that you get a 10% boost to their opinion of you when they buy things from you. It's the worst boost ever however as all it does is boost the opinion people have of you once they're already trading with you. What you'd really want is someone who will make trade with you more likely.

From what I've seen, there's no way to get others to increase their trade with you before 1939/1940 as only tiny minors without steel will import anything, and then they always import from the same people (nearest neighbour on same continent, ideally with same politics). After that, yes there's a lot more import/exports, but it's all faction based unless there's no way for them to get it any other way.

In conclusion, influencing trade via advisor or spies makes diddly squat difference. Sadly.