Trade Companies

[bly08]

For even access, I don't think European GPs or countries with similar development have it easier than Asians/Africans. There are plenty of locations (Shirvan/Kazan) to move the capital to.

 

[alexti]

I have a lot in India but not in other parts of Asia. I suspect that bigger CNs with manufactories are also needed to reach that level of income. I know 10k isn't farfetched since smaller European starts can reach those levels with minimum blobbing. Income isn't too important after a certain point during WCs but I was surprised I could only get to 2k even after rearranging merchants.

CNs won't make that much difference, Mexico and California are the only ones you can feed to the trade chain, but it's definitely worth building manufactories in those two. You can check what is your current trade value multiplier. Trade efficiency also looks a bit lower then typical for that time, I think. Combining this with missing manufactoring in China, Girin, Nippon etc probably explains the low trade income. But that's true that after a certain point income becomes sufficient for practical purposes anyway.

My problem, or my concern is basically this: TCs are ultimately responsible for more of my income than states. I stopped even making states a while back because I simply have all the money and FL I could ever need and MP are far more scarce in the late stages of a WC. The reason that is a problem is the uneven access to TC land depending on where your capital is. I quite like the suggestion of changing the restriction from continent to sub-continent. That still massively screws Indian tags over, although maybe the ability to get perma-claims on that entire sub-continent sort of makes up for it. India is my second favourite place to play after Western Europe and I was thinking about a Vijayanagar game after I wrap up this WC but I'm put off by realising that France is a better tag to play an India-focused game.

I agree that TCs work in a strange way, however Indian tags are in an excellent position to take advantage of TC - they can easily move the capital to Africa (and later to Oceania and Europe) and they can start taking advantage of TC right from the start. It's a bit harder for European nations to get there - most will likely need to take Exploration first.

 

[Badesumofu]

I agree that TCs work in a strange way, however Indian tags are in an excellent position to take advantage of TC - they can easily move the capital to Africa (and later to Oceania and Europe) and they can start taking advantage of TC right from the start. It's a bit harder for European nations to get there - most will likely need to take Exploration first.

I agree that they do have good access, I don't like that they have to move their capital out of India in order to get it, though. I was going to say that I don't like it thematically that you have to move your capital out of your own homeland and then turn your homeland into Trade Companies but then half the stuff you do in a WC doesn't make sense thematically anyway so maybe I'll have to try another Vijay game and do it. I'd probably take Exploration anyway to beat the Europeans to Cape in order to turn Zanzibar into a pseudo end-node. Also I'll want to make a Kannada CN at some point

 

[alexti]

Yes, from thematic point of view the optimal play seems rather strange (like many other things besides TCs). But then if played thematically , EU4 loses most of its interesting decisions

 

[Incompetent]

I've felt this way for a long time about TCs - they create this ridiculous bias against countries with their capital in Asia. Starting in (South-)East Asia, you're literally better off moving your capital onto some pile of guano somewhere in Oceania, just so you can conquer and rule your own back yard more efficiently. The various special bonuses TCs got when first introduced were powerful but made some sense, and when states came in it was actually interesting to decide between TCs and states in some instances. By contrast, the decision to give TCs zero autonomy, even though you only pay for territorial cores, made no thematic sense and was completely over the top, and it was clear that it would be the moment the devs announced it.

Another interesting related case of Paradox design is the poor old Merchant Republic. The government type is notoriously unplayable if you want to expand in Europe, due to the severe limit on provinces in states. But actually MRs are somehow serviceable in TC-land: it's the one loophole that lets them get large amounts of zero-autonomy land. I mean it's still not optimal, given the low Absolutism and so on, but if you just want to make lots of money, the cash potential of India + China stuffed with manufactories, with the goods steered through a ton of merchant boost on the trade network (due to trade leagues etc), is pretty bonkers, certainly far in excess of what you could earn as a boring old Asian country with state land in India/China. So it's perfectly possible to play a monster blob MR, it's just that the vast majority of your valuable land *must* be in Asia/Africa and *must* be on a different continent to your capital.

 

[EthanZak]

I'm agreed, the o% autonomy thing for TCs makes no sense - I was quite happy before they brought that in, to sacrifice tax/manpower for easier control and trade power boost of an essential province; it added to the strategy required for establishing a trade empire without large armies.

With the non-euro TC thing, it is kinda silly that you have to move your capital to another continent to take maximum advantage of your land; I'd be happy to see every coastal province in Europe/etc set as possible TC for Asian/African countries, but without a properly dynamic trade system that could flow both ways it would probably still be sub-optimal for non-euro nations.

EDIT Actually, would it be that hard to change the trade flow to operate in both directions? I mean, we can already specify which 'out' direction a node takes if there's a merchant in it - surely it should be possible to send it back the other way?

 

[Ultima_Ratio]

What's the excuse for the 0 autonomy even supposed to be? Isn't trade value unaffected by autonomy? If their trade power was also unaffected by LA, that would still be a powerful economic incentive for using TCs without being utterly hilariously broken as it is now.

 

[Kapi96]

They are horribly overpowered as is. Seems pretty stupid that a European can conquer land in Africa/Asia and almost instantly have more use out of it than the original inhabitants.