The problem with endnode trade

[amonraa]

Yep. I feel the big mistake that the devs made here is to let trade power from ships propagate upstream. It means that a ship parked on one of the Big Three end nodes (each of which have 5 incoming nodes) has far more influence than it deserves, to the extent that there's almost no point in sending ships to the feeder nodes. I'm OK with trade buildings having a far-reaching influence because there are natural limits on how much you can do with them, but it's bad for the game to have all these doom fleets parked in Europe instead of actually patrolling the world's trade routes.

The other aspect of trade where the balance is seriously off is the massive amounts of flat trade power available to even the puniest OPM from having a merchant either in or steering towards an inland node. You end up with the HRE yanking all the trade out of the Eastern Europe due to the sheer number of principalities. If all the trading minors were absorbed into the Hansa, a 'country' whose whole raison d'être is trade, it would actually make Germany worse at trading under current mechanics.

that is always one of my goals is a doom fleet at the seville trade node.
i would stick a doom fleet there even without a trade node being there.
u do not enter the Mediterranean without my permission.

 

[BaZERGer]

I have myself thought upstream trade power could use some kind of situational reduction, like getting significantly reduced when not adjacent by land, and maybe having a reduction based on number of connections too. Maybe 50% for not being adjacent, and 5% multiplied by the incoming number of routes minus one, minus the outgoing number of routes. It would give end nodes a 70% reduction in upstream trade power to places like Ivory Coast and Caribbean, or if calculated together with the current 20% upstream amount, it would subtract 14% from it, leaving 6% of the total trade power going upstream, while neighboring nodes would still recieve 18%.

And yes, upstream trade should only take the province trade power in the node, either that, or transfer the trade power upstream BEFORE adding percentage trade power modifiers to it, since it gets added on the next node too.

 

[Hirron]

I would like to see something along the lines of making downstream trade a modifier rather than a flat increase. This would make investments more profitable downstream from areas you already control. Not adjacent by land might weaken using light ships in foreign nodes.