Trade agreements

[Cat Lord]

According to

18 : Type: Game Logic | Status: FIXED | Severity: MAJOR
Trade Agreements do not work (kick merchants, lose monopolies)
Reported In: 1.02 | Correction planned In: 1.03 | Corrected In: 1.03

the Trade Agreements should work properly since 1.03 now.

However, according to this thread (and BiB's response in it), TA are still buggy (you can still kick out merchants with TA or be kicked out).

However, TA and TE were not designed initially to be used in mass, and that 's why they are buggy and quite unbalance the game in favour of the human player.

That said, someone made a very good proposal in the thread, and I'd like to know if it is possible to implement it without that much coding (i.e. as a normal support activity).

The proposal is that the total amount of possible TA or TE is limited (say 10 each), and that the respective limits of both changed with your free trade/mercantilism DP slider. People going mercantilism getting more TE and less TA (say to a max of 15/5) and people going free trade the contrary (say max 5/15).

That way, the bugginess as a whole will be diminished.

I think it was interesting to raise it here, so that maybe you can pass it to beta land and/or Johan.

Thanks,

Cat

 

[Owen]

Slight modification

Thanks Cat Lord,

Well, as it's my proposal, I thought I might add something. I think the country size and probably trade tech should be taken into account. Something along the lines of total number of TAs+TEs allowed = (5+(number of owned provinces)/10)*trade efficiency. I do not think number of known provinces or known CoTs should matter though the best variable may be the number of CoTs your provinces trade in.

How many of these were allowed as TAs vs TEs would depend on the free trade slider, presumably in the proportions Cat Lord suggests.

If you get the right number in place of 5 above then trade embargoes become available for nations of less than ten provinces at the same trade level as they do currently. The downside is trade agreements would be disallowed until much later in the game, particularly for the ai, which is usually strongly mercantilistic. Maybe someone can tell me how often trade agreements were signed in the 15th century.

 

[Owen]

And another one...

...and my other suggestion later in that thread is that Trade Agreements should be cancelled whenever you are at war with the other nation, whether you just joined in with your alliance or not. I don't think there should be any stability loss there though.

Trade agreements should perhaps be cancelled by religion changes as well.

 

[unmerged(6147)]

Re: Slight modification

Originally posted by Owen
Maybe someone can tell me how often trade agreements were signed in the 15th century.

My guess would be that a general TA (i.e. one that covers all places where trade takes place, or at least the large ones)between nations, has never happened in history. I may be wrong but I wouldn't bet on it

Apart from that I think your proposals are interesting. Generally I like very much when the DP slider positions have a greater influence on more and more things. But unfortunately Paradox will not change the mechanism. They have specified that there will only be bug fixing for the time being. When HOI and CK are launched perhaps more time can be put into EU.

 

[Shai]

Another option is to tie the number of TA's to the trade tech level. Receive one at the first level TA's are allowed, and one with each successive level.

OR, tie TA's to the number of embargoes allowed by your DP slider in Mercantilism.

 

[unmerged(4219)]

The trouble with allowing max trade agreements to be reduced is the issue that inevitably occurs when someone has met that maximum.

Do you cancel a random one? Leave it? What about the obvious abuse of just temporarily going one way on the slider, signing a bunch of agreements, and then going the other?

 

[Owen]

Originally posted by YokoZar
The trouble with allowing max trade agreements to be reduced is the issue that inevitably occurs when someone has met that maximum.

Do you cancel a random one? Leave it? What about the obvious abuse of just temporarily going one way on the slider, signing a bunch of agreements, and then going the other?

Well, I see you're right about potential coding issues, but I believe this is exactly what would happen IRL. Imagine government policy moves towards free trade or mercantilism (=dp slider click). The main effects of this are 1. a change in how much the country's merchants will trade overseas (=change in rate of receiving merchants) and 2. a change in how much any other country is allowed free rein to buy and sell within your markets etc. (=trade agreements or embargoes and also =how likely your provinces are to trade in your own CoT)

 

[AndrewT]

This is still an open bug:

246 : Type: Game Logic | Status: NEW | Severity: NORMAL
TAs do not always prevent competition in CoTs
Reported In: 1.04 | Correction planned In: | Corrected In:

 

[Owen]

Andrew,

I think we're also trying to solve the problem of mass trade agreements, allowing players to maintain 5 merchants in nearly all CoTs with minimal effort. I think I managed to prove in the link shown in Catlord's first post that without this bug, mass trade agreements become even more powerful. Paradox may of course not want to do anything about this, since it is strictly speaking not a bug.

 

[Shai]

Yokozar....

"The trouble with allowing max trade agreements to be reduced is the issue that inevitably occurs when someone has met that maximum.

Do you cancel a random one? Leave it? What about the obvious abuse of just temporarily going one way on the slider, signing a bunch of agreements, and then going the other?"

If TA's were tied to the number of embargoes allowed you wouldn't be able to use that exploit. Further, if free trade is maxed you are encouraging aggressive merchants to challenge the various markets. TA's would logically be less desireable to those so inclined.

Conversely, encouraging mercantilism would do the opposite and attempt to control the markets by law and through trade agreements. So it seems to me, anyway..hehe

 

[unmerged(4219)]

Originally posted by Shai
If TA's were tied to the number of embargoes allowed you wouldn't be able to use that exploit. Further, if free trade is maxed you are encouraging aggressive merchants to challenge the various markets. TA's would logically be less desireable to those so inclined.

Conversely, encouraging mercantilism would do the opposite and attempt to control the markets by law and through trade agreements. So it seems to me, anyway..hehe

I'm talking about a possible game exploit here - if there is anything in the code that can reduce a maximum, one must always consider what to do when that maximum has actually been met, and how to lower it to the new maximum.

 

[Cat Lord]

Originally posted by YokoZar
I'm talking about a possible game exploit here - if there is anything in the code that can reduce a maximum, one must always consider what to do when that maximum has actually been met, and how to lower it to the new maximum.

Very good point. That's a design flaw in my suggestion...

Cat

 

[Owen]

Cat Lord,

As I said above, I think that's how the free trade/mercantile slider would have worked in history. Of course, it would have to be coded, but it isn't a showstopper in itself.