Trade: Controlling the source or the route?

[Aquilegia]

Historically European nations had colonies/conquests/trade posts in India and SE-Asia, to control the source of the trade (The Dutch had monopolies on some spice islands for instance). But will there be a reason ingame to conquer these areas? To control the Asian trade as a Western-European power it seems more efficient to control the coasts near the Red Sea (to avoid trade vanishing towards Venice) and those of Western Europe (to avoid trade going to European rivals) to steer trade in your direction.

So is there a mechanic that will make controlling the source of production in Asia useful for trading, apart from the mechanic which gives you power in a trading node if you have power in a connected trading node (Which may be useful for American trade, but less so for Asian trade with so many nodes inbetween)?

 

[Fawr]

Like you said trade power in adjacent nodes adds together to become even more effective. So to make your trade manipulation in the Red Sea effective you probibly also want control over the trade nodes in Goa and Zanzibar. Of course to make them more effective you want trade nodes in South Africa and Ceylon...

Also if you only focus on the Red sea you may find that much of the trade never even gets that far. Some of the trade from Indonesia could go north to China, and other bits could head to the Philippines and then to Mexico.