Steering trade and Collecting

[barretta]

About steering with ships.. In any node where you have a province. You are now listed in that node and the default action is to steer trade to the next node (only option unless u send a merchant). By patrolling that node with your ships your steering has more power.

Hope that clears up my earlier post. Cheers!

 

[Belissarius]

well, it seems that I have overlooked everything due to my high expectations; its really so simple and limited, even if you choose the trade route as your focus and gain extra merchants, there isnt much to do once you've placed them. Again i could be wrong, at this point I have no clue how far and indepth things go in the game. This is just a demo, and we've seen beta gameplay only, so perhaps there is more to trade than just collecting, steering, protecting, and building to improve your trade income.

reading about EU3, it sounds like you can have trade league wars, trade rights to certain products, and send merchants across the world to build a massive trade empire. Hopefully they will add this to EU4 in the future

You are wrong,

The complexity of the system is revealed by investing in trade. You say there is no depth when you are looking at the start of the game before there has been ANY investment in trade. To get the value out of the system you have to invest in it. Same with colonization to get any value out of colonization you have to invest in that area of the game. if you want depth out of any system in the game you have to invest monarch points. For trade you need ideas. This allows you more merchants which allows you more options. Sometimes its better to deny the enemy income vs getting more income for yourself. More merchants means you can Target nodes around an enemy and steer trade away from them even if its not steered towards you. You can only afford to do this IF you invest in trade to have the merchants.

You can have trade wars in EU4 one of the peace deals is you get 50% of the nations trade power.

Trade rights - not implemented as far as I can see but then again the above trade power peace negotiation is similar. Also before you couldn't steer trade from the new world to your capital now you can and it gets value added for travelling through nodes.

In EU4 you can also send merchants around the world to have a massive trade empire. What you couldn't do was send merchants around the world at the games start because of trade range. So its not really fair to complain that you can't send your merchants all over the world in eu4 like you could in eu3 when you couldn't do it in eu3 either at this stage of the game.

 

[Red_warning]

well, it seems that I have overlooked everything due to my high expectations; its really so simple and limited, even if you choose the trade route as your focus and gain extra merchants, there isnt much to do once you've placed them. Again i could be wrong, at this point I have no clue how far and indepth things go in the game. This is just a demo, and we've seen beta gameplay only, so perhaps there is more to trade than just collecting, steering, protecting, and building to improve your trade income.

reading about EU3, it sounds like you can have trade league wars, trade rights to certain products, and send merchants across the world to build a massive trade empire. Hopefully they will add this to EU4 in the future

Meh, most of the trading in the EUIII system was handled automatically and required little effort from the player, and I believe embargoes still exist in some form in EUIV (I think I got embargoes plenty as Austria). The system that EUIV uses is on the other hand more dynamic, trade flow changes as the geopolitical situation changes, bad times and plundered provinces in China might end with a reduced trade profit as far back as Europe. It rewards players who like to min-max and and those who keep an eye out for changes in the trade flow.

 

[TheFluff]

*Ships don't steer trade! (by themselves)*

They only help your merchants do it.

 

[unperson]

Pedroantonio made a great table showing possible effects of merchants/nodes in another thread and I tought I'll post it here: all credit to him/her
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0At73KTzHGGdXdE9VRDYxbEVXV1NlOTdlRTI4QjU2dnc#gid=0

 

[Cymsdale]

bad times and plundered provinces in China might end with a reduced trade profit as far back as Europe

I think this is one of the coolest aspects of the whole thing. I don't think the amount of the game we can see in the demo or the AARs really makes this clear.

 

[ejones44]

Can a country have more than 100% trade power?







Is it just a waste or do I get more income if there are competitors?

You're not mousing over your relative trade power. You are mousing over the amount of trade that is being collected there rather than being steered forward.

See how there are no tabs at the top right of that window? That's because Venice is an end node .

 

[barretta]

*Ships don't steer trade! (by themselves)*

They only help your merchants do it.

FYI That's not correct.

Any trade node you have a province in will auto steer trade forward and you can send your ships to add power. However to be able to send ships where you don't have a province I believe you must have a merchant (going to test that). Cheers!

 

[Sn3ipen]

I agree with most people here and I don't think I will play much before the game gets out of beta.