Tell me why trade in EU4 is an improvement over trade in EU3

[mgoetze]

The longer I play EU4, the more convinced I become that trade in EU3 was much more dynamic and engaging. In EU4, everything is so static. There is pretty much a clearly optimal way to deploy your merchants, and the only time you ever need to check on that again is when you've conquered more provinces. Otherwise, if you have money left over you can spam some light ships and assign them to a trade node - again, there will be a clear and optimal choice, and that's pretty much it. Strategy is not involved.

By contrast, in EU3, the dynamic growth of areas of trade was awesome, someone creating a new center of trade could really change the game, and when one of the AIs changed its merchant deployment then your merchant deployment could suddenly be suboptimal and you would have to adapt.

So, if you think the trade system in EU4 is at all better than in EU3, please let me know why.

 

[richtman]

I totally disagree. The trade system in EU4 actually drives conquest and colonization in a really immersive way. The constant spamming of merchants in EU3 was totally boring and lots of micromanaging. Also in EU3 if I remember correctly you could gain monopolies all over if you had good trade efficiency, not matter if you had any real presence in that area.

I haven't really though much about it, can only tell you that personally I feel the trade system is one of the major IMPROVEMENTS of EU4.

 

[Kalpa]

I don't even know how trade system in EU4 works, compared to EU3, but...

[Insert fervent argument here]

...there's much less random checking of ledger to see which COTs are now the most lucrative and reclicking of automerchant priorities. So, less micromanagement.

On the other hand this doesn't really say that much about the system, only about the UI implementation.

 

[Knut Skallagrim]

Because trade areas are actually connected and influence each other on their respective trade power and wealth. Eu3 cot gave too much importance to the owner of the center of trade instead of the actual dominator of the trade area (by ships, by territory in quantity or strategical means), while right now having a center of trade (which is just a mere modifier on the whole trade power of the area) is an advantage but not total. You can own all the 13 colonies but if you've no fleet to protect the trade you'll lose most of your trade fees. More plausible than waiting for a special icon to pop on your province and win the economy without doing nothing to mantain it (just spam merchants in the same areas). I do recognize that it should be more dynamical, but right now i consider it a very big upgrade from eu3 (and eu2 since cot were also a feature of older titles)

 

[Haccoude]

I totally disagree. The trade system in EU4 actually drives conquest and colonization in a really immersive way. The constant spamming of merchants in EU3 was totally boring and lots of micromanaging. Also in EU3 if I remember correctly you could gain monopolies all over if you had good trade efficiency, not matter if you had any real presence in that area.

I haven't really though much about it, can only tell you that personally I feel the trade system is one of the major IMPROVEMENTS of EU4.

While I definitely agree it's better than the immense micro of EU3, it would be a bit better if the first province in a trade node gave a higher amount of trade power in a node, so that trade only really encourages establishing trade posts, while acquisition of vast territories is driven by the production, tax and manpower gained.

 

[artemis667]

If creating a need for constant micromanagement makes a game better, than sure. I'm not sure I agree though. EU4's trade system links much more intelligently into the rest of the game and the choices you make in it. There's the potential for micromanagement if you want to do it, with the way trade power can shift around in nodes, but it's not forced upon you.

 

[No idea]

I totally disagree. The trade system in EU4 actually drives conquest and colonization in a really immersive way. The constant spamming of merchants in EU3 was totally boring and lots of micromanaging. Also in EU3 if I remember correctly you could gain monopolies all over if you had good trade efficiency, not matter if you had any real presence in that area.

I haven't really though much about it, can only tell you that personally I feel the trade system is one of the major IMPROVEMENTS of EU4.

I basically agree, however, one good thing about EU III trade system was that it was more dynamic than the current one. You could create CoTs and give or take away provinces from CoTs. In EU IV the system drives expansion very well. It gives sense to the conquering of a particular province/of some particular provinces, but it has the problem of CoTs not being dynamic (they cant be created nor destroyed. They can only be benefit or disadvantaged). Overall, I think EU IV system is better, but it also has its flaws.

 

[Kh3lben]

The trade system in EU4 actually drives conquest and colonization in a really immersive way.

Pretty much this.Apart from nation specific quests/goals,trade domination is the only thing that makes territorial expansion meaningful,immersive and fun.

 

[beckdawg]

I still struggle with EU4. I had something like 1500 hours into eu3 up until I got a mac like several weeks ago and realized for whatever reason DW and other expansions never got ported to steam. That made me break down and get EU4 when it finally had a really decent sale few weeks ago. Some of the UI changes are really nice(macro builder ftw) but overall I often feel like the game railroads you. Having the choice of 3 missions is all fine and well but when one is to build a larger army than <x>, one is a flavor mission you can't complete(such as securing the imperial border as austria because burgandy always rivals you) and something sort of useless like improve relations for 3 freaking prestige there's not much choice there. Also some of the idea groups just make certain countries almost always dominate. One of the great things about 3 was depending on who randomly allied with who various different countries got dogpilled in the almost inevitable start wars(burgandy vs HRE...etc).

As for trade, it's one area I may give EU4 some props. One of the biggest issues with EU3 was playing a trade nation was just basically giving you a free republic government and then the rest was like any other country. I will say EU4 feels like it could be more fleshed out here. The AI still plays this way rather than just focusing on dominating trade. As for non-merchent republics, I don't know that it should really be that big of a focus as the reality would be trade was a means to an end for most countries where as republics built their country on it.

It's also worth noting that typically when we talk about eu3 we view it as a complete product(eg with DW). EU4 1.8 seems like a bit of a cluster.... to me at the present time but there is stuff to build on.

 

[Alerias]

Trade in Eu4 feels nicer, with trade flows and such. You look at the map and it seems really well thought out.

But I admit I also loved the COT system of Eu3 and I'm not entirely sure it was mechanically inferior. Kind of a tough call.

 

[Lord Finnish]

The EU2/3 system started to feel a bit arbitrary and archaic. Now it's much more responsive and "richer" if that makes any sense.

 

[Zusk]

The old system was a bit more tedious

The new system is easier through it being a single button press instead of something that you have to invest time or thought into. Static in that it has a lot less divergency then the EU3 system. I still have vidid memories of when in a Eu3 game I destroyed China so hard as korea that the trade routes began to switch from Nanjing to Seoul to the point that the Nanjing CoT was destroyed. Nothing like that is capable of happening in Eu4.

The new system is also a major drain on performance, ultimately I much, much prefer the old system and was amazed that it was not tweaked at all in the trade expansion, instead we got trade companies that are just another button that you press then forget about :X

 

[mgoetze]

The trade system in EU4 actually drives conquest and colonization in a really immersive way.

Wow... there is no need to drive conquest and colonization in EU4 because it's the only thing to do in the game anyway. And if you derive "immersion" from a little square that says "Important center of trade: +15 local trade power" when you hover your mouse over it ... well good for you, but it doesn't do anything for me.

One of the biggest issues with EU3 was playing a trade nation was just basically giving you a free republic government and then the rest was like any other country.

It's absolutely the same in EU4. I seriously tried to play differently with a trading nation in EU4, but I discovered very quickly that there is only one way to expand your trade: conquer stuff. And playing any other nation, there's only one way to expand your basetax/forcelimit/manpower/whatever-you're-looking at: conquer stuff.

 

[riknap]

It's absolutely the same in EU4. I seriously tried to play differently with a trading nation in EU4, but I discovered very quickly that there is only one way to expand your trade: conquer stuff. And playing any other nation, there's only one way to expand your basetax/forcelimit/manpower/whatever-you're-looking at: conquer stuff.

well, technically the main difference is that with trading nations you only to conquer far less land (focusing on trade-important places), enough to have naval force limits that allow you to maintain multiple armadas of light ships (as light ships are your primary means of steering trade, not to mention the most flexible as you can assign them where you need trade power)

as such, you can get far richer than your weight in land, and thus you can swing mercenaries around for wars and fight toe-to-toe with much-larger nations with much larger manpower pools (like venice vs france, if your venice is large enough - though you're smaller than france, you can compensate with your far larger income and win against them)

 

[unc15]

The new system is boring and unimaginative, but the old system was also bad. Two bad systems. I hope they write something completely different for EU5.

 

[Karabas1543]

I like the EU4 system. EU3 was basically spamming merchants, which is a bit ridiculous. As mentioned, EU4 trade drives expansion (you can say expansion is what you do in EU4 anyway - but 1) not everybody plays for blobbing and 2) trade DIRECTS where you choose to expand, not the choice of whether you expand or not) and one really feels in competition with other powers, etc.

I'm not sure why people find the EU4 trade system boring. I definitely don't - there are different ways to interact with it and especially now that RotW got buffed, it provides for some interesting alternatives for how to play as a RotW nation.

 

[Korsan82]

Because we had sooo much to do in peacetimes the trade managament has been made easier. Now we can focus on other aspects of peacetime gameplay like... ummm... right...?!

I once proposed a dynamic trade route system where you can create your own routes by clicking on the starting province and the end of the trade route.
This would have implied that you need to maintain diplomatic relations with countries on the way, means you'd finally had a reason to maintain good relations.
Of course this trade system would be something really new and entertaining unlike the current system it was never discussed or considered as it needs "too much work".

Just imagine the possibilities...

 

[afb]

While I definitely agree it's better than the immense micro of EU3, it would be a bit better if the first province in a trade node gave a higher amount of trade power in a node, so that trade only really encourages establishing trade posts, while acquisition of vast territories is driven by the production, tax and manpower gained.

But I think that is the case to some degree. For merchant republics the first province is much better, as one province in each trade node can get a bonus to trade power. If you're a colonizer in Africa and Asia you won't need to capture whole nodes either. A few well chosen provinces in each node all the way to Indonesia is more cost efficient, especially as you get bonus merchants from dominating each node.

 

[petertel123]

the trade system is only good if you play in europe, the farther you go away from europe the worse it gets

 

[birincikalite]

Oh really?

You could make unreasonable amounts of money with OPMs in EU III. Just play Aachen or something like that and watch as you're world first on technology and have thousands of ducats after some time. No sorry, a nation with a single province should't make many times more profit out of trade than, say the Ottomans or Portugal.