Trade nodes rework

[nyetflix]

People have already made thorough trade suggestions for Europe and East Asia and I pretty much followed pre-existing suggestions there (specifically this awesome post by BalticM, and this one by 2dsoul). Let's look at trade nodes outside of those two places, though. I made no changes to the overall flow of the global trade network, there's just some extra nodes here and there. We have:

Altiplano - purple node in South America. This is there because of the huge geographic barrier that is the Andes, meaning that trade has always had a north-south axis here. The region is considered of prime importance during the colonial period because immense amounts of resources were extracted in the mining towns, then trade moved up towards Lima. I think the most logical thing would be for trade to also flow to Cuiaba.

Columbia - dark red node in northwest America. California as a whole is way too big of a node, and the Columbia river was certainly a site for competition over trade.

Great Plains - pink node in western America. Also due to geography, because this area can't be well integrated with bordering areas of the Mississippi river system.

The old Panama node has been reshuffled into a Bogota/Cartagena node and a Guatemala node. I did this so that Venezuela wouldn't have to be considered Caribbean, and to break the large and oversimplified Mexico node. Central America was ruled as a single unit since colonial times, and I think it even makes sense in pre-columbian times, because there is a fundamental difference between lowland jungle areas and the dramatic landscape of central Mexico.

Java - red node in Indonesia. Java cannot be lumped in with the Moluccas, they are completely different in every way. Java is a huge, huge center of activity and population and a distinct stop on the trade network. Moluccas are more undeveloped and reliant on growing spices.

Gondwana - bluish node in Central India. This area will show up again and again if you look at any type of map relating to India, because its geography as a land of hills and forests mean that it's the most remote part of the Indian subcontinent proper. It was pretty much never integrated into Indian empires before the Mughals, and options for transportation/direction of trade are very limited.

Rajasthan/Ujjain - purple node in India, low priority. Mainly included because I feel that surrounding Gujarat, Deccan and Doab nodes should be more concentrated on their core areas - Gujarat trade was definitely coastal based, Doab was really only concerned with the Ganges plain, and Malwa is not part of the Deccan.

Malabar - light green node in south India. This is included to avoid having the giant Coromandel node on both coasts. Malabar traded more with the Persian Gulf and was one of the first places that Islam spread through trade, whereas Tamil seafarers tended to look east. It's a bit weird to put in inland Karnataka, but I had to give it enough provinces somehow.

Katanga - purple node in Central Africa. This area had a pretty independent economy from western Congo, and it's only since the scramble of Africa that they were closely linked. Congo mainly shipped to the Atlantic trade, while Katanga focused on extracting minerals and trading them in both directions, thus being a big factor in the development of Swahili culture.

Red Sea - green node in Middle East. Not the most booming area for trade, but it really makes more sense for the area to be one node instead of split between Aden and Alexandria. Alexandria was always a Mediterranean city, while Red Sea trade mattered in its own right - both the Mamluks and Ottomans took control of several ports to strengthen their holds on the region.

Harar - yellow node in East Africa, low priority. This is mainly just to split the sprawling Ethiopia node. Harar was not an important city on the global scale, but it exercised influence over the surrounding region and was not directly part of the Aden trade.

Senegambia - yellow node in West Africa. This is situated in the Sudan region and was used as the coast for Mali and Songhai empires. Also includes the core region of Mali, which is more forested and southernly than the likes of Timbuktu. Ideally the Burkina Faso area would probably be an independent node too, but as of now there are too few provinces.

Gulf of St Lawrence has been shifted to include New England and New York, while Ohio River, now centered around the Great Lakes, includes Quebec. Mississippi takes the Ohio river itself. This is more me playing around and doesn't necessarily need to be changed, but I think it could work better for colonial competition in the area.



Harar is the most superfluous one that I added and Rajasthan probably isn't strictly necessary, but besides that, I think the rest of these are actually very necessary. Java, Altiplano and Gondwana are the most important to be added for me.

In addition, some changes to existing nodes:
Cuiaba moved east
Zambezi gets a coastline (and should be renamed Mozambique)
Zanzibar is shifted north to include the east coast of Somalia
Ivory Coast (definitely should be called Guinea) is reduced to the south coast of West Africa, but should get a couple inland provinces that were historically accurate to compensate
Congo gets a coastline
Burma gets a small coastline
Moluccas and Philippines get a couple provinces of Kalimantan
Small adjustments to provinces of Bengal and Amazonas nodes

I'm more than open to feedback and suggestions and would like to hear what others think. I know I frequently ignored state borders, which can be remedied easily.

 

[RichardOlcese]

Great post! Living in South America, I can tell that the Altiplano, Panamá, Cartagena, are economically accurate. One small thing: if tthey create so many new nodes, they ought to bump amount of merchants available as well. Perhaps start with 3 instead of 2, I don't know. But you'll need them to push trade/collect in the many new nodes suggested.

 

[nyetflix]

Great post! Living in South America, I can tell that the Altiplano, Panamá, Cartagena, are economically accurate. One small thing: if tthey create so many new nodes, they ought to bump amount of merchants available as well. Perhaps start with 3 instead of 2, I don't know. But you'll need them to push trade/collect in the many new nodes suggested.

Yeah I'm sure they'd have to do some rebalancing, perhaps in the ideas as well

 

[Lightwell]

View attachment 572498
People have already made thorough trade suggestions for Europe and East Asia and I pretty much followed pre-existing suggestions there (specifically this awesome post by BalticM, and this one by 2dsoul). Let's look at trade nodes outside of those two places, though. I made no changes to the overall flow of the global trade network, there's just some extra nodes here and there. We have:

Altiplano - purple node in South America. This is there because of the huge geographic barrier that is the Andes, meaning that trade has always had a north-south axis here. The region is considered of prime importance during the colonial period because immense amounts of resources were extracted in the mining towns, then trade moved up towards Lima. I think the most logical thing would be for trade to also flow to Cuiaba.

Columbia - dark red node in northwest America. California as a whole is way too big of a node, and the Columbia river was certainly a site for competition over trade.

Great Plains - pink node in western America. Also due to geography, because this area can't be well integrated with bordering areas of the Mississippi river system.

The old Panama node has been reshuffled into a Bogota/Cartagena node and a Guatemala node. I did this so that Venezuela wouldn't have to be considered Caribbean, and to break the large and oversimplified Mexico node. Central America was ruled as a single unit since colonial times, and I think it even makes sense in pre-columbian times, because there is a fundamental difference between lowland jungle areas and the dramatic landscape of central Mexico.

Java - red node in Indonesia. Java cannot be lumped in with the Moluccas, they are completely different in every way. Java is a huge, huge center of activity and population and a distinct stop on the trade network. Moluccas are more undeveloped and reliant on growing spices.

Gondwana - bluish node in Central India. This area will show up again and again if you look at any type of map relating to India, because its geography as a land of hills and forests mean that it's the most remote part of the Indian subcontinent proper. It was pretty much never integrated into Indian empires before the Mughals, and options for transportation/direction of trade are very limited.

Rajasthan/Ujjain - purple node in India, low priority. Mainly included because I feel that surrounding Gujarat, Deccan and Doab nodes should be more concentrated on their core areas - Gujarat trade was definitely coastal based, Doab was really only concerned with the Ganges plain, and Malwa is not part of the Deccan.

Malabar - light green node in south India. This is included to avoid having the giant Coromandel node on both coasts. Malabar traded more with the Persian Gulf and was one of the first places that Islam spread through trade, whereas Tamil seafarers tended to look east. It's a bit weird to put in inland Karnataka, but I had to give it enough provinces somehow.

Katanga - purple node in Central Africa. This area had a pretty independent economy from western Congo, and it's only since the scramble of Africa that they were closely linked. Congo mainly shipped to the Atlantic trade, while Katanga focused on extracting minerals and trading them in both directions, thus being a big factor in the development of Swahili culture.

Red Sea - green node in Middle East. Not the most booming area for trade, but it really makes more sense for the area to be one node instead of split between Aden and Alexandria. Alexandria was always a Mediterranean city, while Red Sea trade mattered in its own right - both the Mamluks and Ottomans took control of several ports to strengthen their holds on the region.

Harar - yellow node in East Africa, low priority. This is mainly just to split the sprawling Ethiopia node. Harar was not an important city on the global scale, but it exercised influence over the surrounding region and was not directly part of the Aden trade.

Senegambia - yellow node in West Africa. This is situated in the Sudan region and was used as the coast for Mali and Songhai empires. Also includes the core region of Mali, which is more forested and southernly than the likes of Timbuktu. Ideally the Burkina Faso area would probably be an independent node too, but as of now there are too few provinces.

Gulf of St Lawrence has been shifted to include New England and New York, while Ohio River, now centered around the Great Lakes, includes Quebec. Mississippi takes the Ohio river itself. This is more me playing around and doesn't necessarily need to be changed, but I think it could work better for colonial competition in the area.



Harar is the most superfluous one that I added and Rajasthan probably isn't strictly necessary, but besides that, I think the rest of these are actually very necessary. Java, Altiplano and Gondwana are the most important to be added for me.

In addition, some changes to existing nodes:
Cuiaba moved east
Zambezi gets a coastline (and should be renamed Mozambique)
Zanzibar is shifted north to include the east coast of Somalia
Ivory Coast (definitely should be called Guinea) is reduced to the south coast of West Africa, but should get a couple inland provinces that were historically accurate to compensate
Congo gets a coastline
Burma gets a small coastline
Moluccas and Philippines get a couple provinces of Kalimantan
Small adjustments to provinces of Bengal and Amazonas nodes

I'm more than open to feedback and suggestions and would like to hear what others think. I know I frequently ignored state borders, which can be remedied easily.

Instead of separating Senegambia from Timbuktu and shrinking the Ivory coast, I'd just try to allow trade from Katsina to draw from Alexandria, and allow the Ivory coast's trade to be directed to Timbuktu or Morocco. There should be a way for an African hegemon to collect from all parts of the continent in a single node.

 

[Ashvin]

+1 for Deccan Node

Gujarat & Rajasthan is combined better

Malabar should be another node well till Surat

 

[Tempscire]

It is nice to see people put a lot of effort into improving the trade map. Here are a couple of points to consider:

In vanilla each area always belongs only to a single trade node. While this is not strictly necessary it is quite nice and I doubt this will change. In your suggestion this is not the case for example in the Java trade node.
Without connections between nodes it is really difficult to judge the suggestion as the interactions between the trade nodes are as important as the trade nodes themselves.
Adding a lot of trade nodes can depending on connections severely hamper the flow of trade value along certain longer routes. For example the still very important Indian Ocean/Spice Trade currently represented as
Malacca -> Bengal -> Coromandel -> Gujarat for the part dominated by the Gujarati and
Coromandel/Gujarat -> Gulf of Aden -> Alexandria for the Red Sea Trade,
is underrepresented even in vanilla (due to a combination of limited trade range and the way trade power propagation works). Having additional nodes in-between like the new Malabar and Red Sea nodes will make this even worse.

I think the cited suggestion on the Chinese trade is very well thought out and your addition of the Java trade node could be great. One idea would be to cut the connection from Malacca to the Cape of Good Hope and instead have it from Java to the Cape. This would represent the fact that using the Roaring Forties to circumvent India in the SEA/Africa route will lead to a return at the Sunda Strait and would be a nice way to represent the difference between Portuguese and Dutch trade and the different roles of Malacca and Batavia.

On the other hand I do not like the idea to eliminate the possibility for Persian to flow to Aleppo in favor of it flowing to Pontus as Aleppo has been the main trading city for Iranian goods heading to Europe for almost the entirety of the EU4 time frame and Damascus and Aleppo have been more important trading cities than Trebizond for the last two millennia. The suggestion on Near East trade also does not consider the addition of the Persia -> Astrakhan connection coming in 1.30.

Instead of separating Senegambia from Timbuktu and shrinking the Ivory coast, I'd just try to allow trade from Katsina to draw from Alexandria, and allow the Ivory coast's trade to be directed to Timbuktu or Morocco. There should be a way for an African hegemon to collect from all parts of the continent in a single node.

A trade route from Alexandria to Katsina is not only problematic from a historical standpoint, as the flow of goods was predominately in the other direction, but also currently impossible to implement as Katsina flowing into Alexandria through Ethiopia would create a loop and crash the game. Pdx also removed the trade route from Katsina to Alexandria quite recently (in 1.26) which shows that they do not seem to consider the trade through this part of the Sahara important enough to represent it via a trade route, instead favoring the Katsina -> Ethiopia -> Alexandria route.

The idea of all African trade being able to flow to a single African node is indeed interesting and I think that a Ivory Coast -> Safi route could be a good idea (While historically not well established, as prior to Portuguese arrival on the Ivory Coast the most plausible route would be Ivory Coast -> Timbuktu -> Safi and later the Moroccans were not able to compete with the Europeans in maritime trade in the area, the Ivory Coast -> Timbuktu -> Safi has its own problems and could use a substitute).
The problem with the Ivory Coast -> Timbuktu -> Safi is that this would exaggerate the influence of West African landlocked states on the maritime trade between SEA and Europe (due to the way caravan power works) and would make an invasion of West Africa almost necessary and therefore extremely likely if the Europeans want to trade in Asia. This would also be the opposite direction of the Atlantic Slave Trade which was important for most of the games time frame.
In my opinion the best candidate for an African node, where you can collect all African trade, would definitely be Alexandria as it was the richest and most developed area in Africa during the games time frame and renowned for its trade. This could be achieved by the Ivory Coast -> Safi route and Safi -> Tunis -> Alexandria routes which would also improve the profitability of an Ottoman conquest of North Africa as it happened historically.

 

[nyetflix]

Adding a lot of trade nodes can depending on connections severely hamper the flow of trade value along certain longer routes. For example the still very important Indian Ocean/Spice Trade currently represented as
Malacca -> Bengal -> Coromandel -> Gujarat for the part dominated by the Gujarati and
Coromandel/Gujarat -> Gulf of Aden -> Alexandria for the Red Sea Trade,
is underrepresented even in vanilla (due to a combination of limited trade range and the way trade power propagation works). Having additional nodes in-between like the new Malabar and Red Sea nodes will make this even worse.

Would you mind elaborating? I don't quite understand what you mean by it being underrepresented, or the flow of trade value being hampered. You mean that trade value would not travel as far due to extra steps being introduced? As in, there is a historical flow that spanned the Indian Ocean, but it's only represented in small pieces because countries will typically not dominate more than one or two nodes if any?

 

[Tempscire]

Regarding the flow of trade value being hampered, consider for example the silk road:

I would argue the main artery of silk road trade is represented as Xi'an -> Yumen -> Samarkand -> Persia -> Aleppo and flowing towards the med from there.
Now typically the nodes are not controlled by a single power downstream but by local powers collecting/steering trade (this is also the situation at game start).
For example if every node had a 50% share collecting and a 50% steering along the silk road (1/2)^5 = 1/32 of the trade value of Xi'an would actually reach Aleppo (the rest would be collected in Xi'an or along the way). If one would now split the Samarkand node in two, connect the two parts via a trade route and leave the other connection as is the share of the Xi'an trade value would be around (1/2)^6 = 1/64 and there is no added value along the way as just splitting trade nodes does not increase the amount of goods produced in any way.
While this example is obviously heavily simplified I think it illustrates the basic concept that adding trade nodes in-between starting points of a trade node will reduce the amount of trade value of the start node reaching the end node as long as the trade nodes are contested. Therefore it should always be a careful balance consideration if you want to add a new trade node. Another example would be the Valencia trade node coming in 1.30: As long as the node is contested the new setup will considerably lower the amount of trade value flowing from Sevilla to Genoa. Only if an Italian power would manage to conquer the entire node the amount of trade value would be the same (actually even more because of the multiple merchant bonus). This does not mean that adding more nodes is bad it just means one should consider this aspect when doing so.

Now the Indian Ocean was home to arguably one of the most interesting trade networks during the time frame as there was already an established trade network in 1444 which saw some radical changes with the arrival of the Portuguese, the Dutch and the establishment of British hegemony over India and opposed to the silk route was not in decline but on the rise during the entirety of the EU4 time frame.
One of the most valued goods traded in the Indian Ocean (especially during the Muslim/Portuguese/Dutch periods) were spices heading from the Moluccas to Europe. During the Muslim period there where two major parts of the route:
One from the Moluccas and Malacca to Gujarat which was dominated by the Gujarati and one from the Indian west coast to the Gulf of Aden and then to Cairo or to Hormuz and then via inland routes to the Levant. These parts were dominated by Arab traders from important ports like Hormuz, Aden or Basra which illustrates why it was so crucial for the Portuguese strategy to conquer these ports when they attempted to control the spice trade.
My point regarding this periods representation is now that while this trade route was quite important and brought large amounts of wealth to the Gujarati and played a large role in revitalizing the state finances of the Mamluk Empire the route is not especially well represented in the game:
The amount of trade value from the Moluccas reaching Gujarat is very small as it has to go through the contested nodes of Malacca, Bengal and Coromandel first and the Muslim states in the Gulf of Aden lack the trade range at the start of the game to reach Coromandel, which dilutes the trade even further.
Now adding more trade nodes along the way would make the route even worse as Malabar would mean one extra hop from the spice islands to Gujarat and the Red Sea trade node would reduce the trade power of the Alexandria trade node undermining the dominant role of Egypt in the spice trade.
One reason this might not be well represented is that the Europeans fail to show up and take over the trade reliably before 1600 which would strengthen the position of the Mamluks considerably and would delay/prevent an Ottoman invasion of Egypt. But were it not for the Portuguese an Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517 would have been far less likely considering the stalemate in the Ottoman-Mamluk war 30 years before.

I will not say more about the later periods as the post is already quite long but as I already said, I think the Java trade node could be very good at representing the differences in the Portuguese and Dutch trade network.

 

[Lightwell]

In my opinion the best candidate for an African node, where you can collect all African trade, would definitely be Alexandria as it was the richest and most developed area in Africa during the games time frame and renowned for its trade.

1.) Wouldn't Alexandria be too exposed? You have to deal with massive amounts of Trade Power from Venice, Constantinople, and Genoa, all at once.
2.) The Malian and Songhai Empires would've been much larger, at an estimated 30-50M people at their heights, compared to the 5M people of the Mamluk Sultanate.

A trade route from Alexandria to Katsina is not only problematic from a historical standpoint, as the flow of goods was predominately in the other direction, but also currently impossible to implement as Katsina flowing into Alexandria through Ethiopia would create a loop and crash the game. Pdx also removed the trade route from Katsina to Alexandria quite recently (in 1.26) which shows that they do not seem to consider the trade through this part of the Sahara important enough to represent it via a trade route, instead favoring the Katsina -> Ethiopia -> Alexandria route.

Are we counting gold as a good? Because West African traders usually exported gold, bronze, and slaves in exchange for goods. The markets drew traders from all over Africa because of this. I'm pretty sure they removed the connection because Katsina doesn't draw from any other nodes, so it represents only direct trade between the Hausa States and Egypt, and I don't see why Katsina's trade is directed to Ethiopia in the first place.

I'd be fine with Alexandria if it was less exposed to the major trade centers of Europe.

 

[nyetflix]

Regarding the flow of trade value being hampered, consider for example the silk road:

I would argue the main artery of silk road trade is represented as Xi'an -> Yumen -> Samarkand -> Persia -> Aleppo and flowing towards the med from there.
Now typically the nodes are not controlled by a single power downstream but by local powers collecting/steering trade (this is also the situation at game start).
For example if every node had a 50% share collecting and a 50% steering along the silk road (1/2)^5 = 1/32 of the trade value of Xi'an would actually reach Aleppo (the rest would be collected in Xi'an or along the way). If one would now split the Samarkand node in two, connect the two parts via a trade route and leave the other connection as is the share of the Xi'an trade value would be around (1/2)^6 = 1/64 and there is no added value along the way as just splitting trade nodes does not increase the amount of goods produced in any way.
While this example is obviously heavily simplified I think it illustrates the basic concept that adding trade nodes in-between starting points of a trade node will reduce the amount of trade value of the start node reaching the end node as long as the trade nodes are contested. Therefore it should always be a careful balance consideration if you want to add a new trade node. Another example would be the Valencia trade node coming in 1.30: As long as the node is contested the new setup will considerably lower the amount of trade value flowing from Sevilla to Genoa. Only if an Italian power would manage to conquer the entire node the amount of trade value would be the same (actually even more because of the multiple merchant bonus). This does not mean that adding more nodes is bad it just means one should consider this aspect when doing so.

Now the Indian Ocean was home to arguably one of the most interesting trade networks during the time frame as there was already an established trade network in 1444 which saw some radical changes with the arrival of the Portuguese, the Dutch and the establishment of British hegemony over India and opposed to the silk route was not in decline but on the rise during the entirety of the EU4 time frame.
One of the most valued goods traded in the Indian Ocean (especially during the Muslim/Portuguese/Dutch periods) were spices heading from the Moluccas to Europe. During the Muslim period there where two major parts of the route:
One from the Moluccas and Malacca to Gujarat which was dominated by the Gujarati and one from the Indian west coast to the Gulf of Aden and then to Cairo or to Hormuz and then via inland routes to the Levant. These parts were dominated by Arab traders from important ports like Hormuz, Aden or Basra which illustrates why it was so crucial for the Portuguese strategy to conquer these ports when they attempted to control the spice trade.
My point regarding this periods representation is now that while this trade route was quite important and brought large amounts of wealth to the Gujarati and played a large role in revitalizing the state finances of the Mamluk Empire the route is not especially well represented in the game:
The amount of trade value from the Moluccas reaching Gujarat is very small as it has to go through the contested nodes of Malacca, Bengal and Coromandel first and the Muslim states in the Gulf of Aden lack the trade range at the start of the game to reach Coromandel, which dilutes the trade even further.
Now adding more trade nodes along the way would make the route even worse as Malabar would mean one extra hop from the spice islands to Gujarat and the Red Sea trade node would reduce the trade power of the Alexandria trade node undermining the dominant role of Egypt in the spice trade.
One reason this might not be well represented is that the Europeans fail to show up and take over the trade reliably before 1600 which would strengthen the position of the Mamluks considerably and would delay/prevent an Ottoman invasion of Egypt. But were it not for the Portuguese an Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517 would have been far less likely considering the stalemate in the Ottoman-Mamluk war 30 years before.

I will not say more about the later periods as the post is already quite long but as I already said, I think the Java trade node could be very good at representing the differences in the Portuguese and Dutch trade network.

I see now, thanks for explaining. You seem to know a fair bit about historical trade, so correct me if I'm wrong, but the Indian Ocean trade could frequently go directly between Sumatra/Malaysia and south India, particularly the western coast. I mean, the ultimate goal is to basically get the spices from the Moluccas all the way to the Mediterranean, no particular sense in making extra stops. So, why doesn't the game have a route that goes directly from Malacca to Coromandel (or with my proposal, Malabar)? Trade has to flow to Bengal first. The game even has a route for Coromandel to Aden, skipping over Gujarat despite the fact that as you said, Gujaratis were very prominent, certainly more than Bengalis/Odias. In fact the only way for trade from Malacca to reach Gujarat is through North India, over land, and there is no way at all to simulate trade between Gujarat and Coromandel.

Here's a map of a possible compromise. Trade flows from Malacca directly to Malabar, from whence it can flow either to Aden or Gujarat. Red Sea node doesn't have to exist. Also included is your suggestion about Java.

You were talking from the standpoint of how to reasonably get long distance trade going significantly. The trade nodes I sketched out were made with a different goal in mind, which was about asking which provinces would it make sense to have to control in order to have influence in a particular area, and which distinct "trade regions" could be said to exist. A bit abstract but still. You mentioned that Alexandria, Hormuz etc were very important cities to the trading network, which makes sense. Cities like Jeddah, Halaib or Suakin had their place but were not really of a larger importance, thus the Red Sea node could be excluded for the good of the larger network. Kerala on the other hand was very important for its spices and had a few cities that were really influential like Kochi and Quilon, and lying on the western coast meant that they had different interactions compared to Tamil Nadu/Andhra/Sri Lanka.

Tell me if I'm historically illiterate.

 

[Tempscire]

I see now, thanks for explaining. You seem to know a fair bit about historical trade, so correct me if I'm wrong, but the Indian Ocean trade could frequently go directly between Sumatra/Malaysia and south India, particularly the western coast. I mean, the ultimate goal is to basically get the spices from the Moluccas all the way to the Mediterranean, no particular sense in making extra stops. So, why doesn't the game have a route that goes directly from Malacca to Coromandel (or with my proposal, Malabar)? Trade has to flow to Bengal first. The game even has a route for Coromandel to Aden, skipping over Gujarat despite the fact that as you said, Gujaratis were very prominent, certainly more than Bengalis/Odias. In fact the only way for trade from Malacca to reach Gujarat is through North India, over land, and there is no way at all to simulate trade between Gujarat and Coromandel.

Here's a map of a possible compromise. Trade flows from Malacca directly to Malabar, from whence it can flow either to Aden or Gujarat. Red Sea node doesn't have to exist. Also included is your suggestion about Java.
View attachment 573294

You were talking from the standpoint of how to reasonably get long distance trade going significantly. The trade nodes I sketched out were made with a different goal in mind, which was about asking which provinces would it make sense to have to control in order to have influence in a particular area, and which distinct "trade regions" could be said to exist. A bit abstract but still. You mentioned that Alexandria, Hormuz etc were very important cities to the trading network, which makes sense. Cities like Jeddah, Halaib or Suakin had their place but were not really of a larger importance, thus the Red Sea node could be excluded for the good of the larger network. Kerala on the other hand was very important for its spices and had a few cities that were really influential like Kochi and Quilon, and lying on the western coast meant that they had different interactions compared to Tamil Nadu/Andhra/Sri Lanka.

Tell me if I'm historically illiterate.

On the routes:
I think a route from Malacca to south India is indeed a good idea, as the route was used by the Portuguese (Malacca->Goa) and has actually quite favorable winds, especially during the summer monsoon.
The Moluccas->Malacca route is not needed, see the post of BalticM for this.
I would also get rid of the Malacca->Cape of Good Hope route as the only route direct route from the Cape to Indonesia at that time was the clipper route using the 40° westerlies in the Ferrel cell to sail towards the east which needed the orientation of the Australian landmass for the northwards turn and therefore ended in the Sunda Strait, representing a Java->Cape route. Use this map as a reference:

This also emphasizes the difference between Batavia which really became important after the clipper route had been discovered and Malacca which was far more reliant on preexisting trade networks and therefore the connection to the Indian subcontinent.
Regarding the role of Jeddah, I would argue that while important during the time frame it had a similar role as Aden (acting as a fortified city for the Indian Ocean traders against Portuguese attacks) and adding the whole Mecca area to the Gulf of Aden seems plausible. Halaib and Suakin were not that important and I am not sure they warrant a special trade node.
The west east split of south India is still interesting. For example the role of Sri Lanka changed quite a bit when Europeans came in.

1.) Wouldn't Alexandria be too exposed? You have to deal with massive amounts of Trade Power from Venice, Constantinople, and Genoa, all at once.
2.) The Malian and Songhai Empires would've been much larger, at an estimated 30-50M people at their heights, compared to the 5M people of the Mamluk Sultanate.

1.) I think this is actually desirable. From a logical perspective it makes sense as the position at the intersection of multiple large trade networks makes Alexandria a very good node for trade to go too, as Europeans and Asians also trade there. And from a gameplay perspective as this would to more conflict and interesting interactions between a possible large African power and Europeans/Middle Eastern/Indian countries. You would also still have the option of Tunis which does not get the trade from Ethiopia,Aden and Alexandria but is more protected (One could very well cut the Tunis->Seville route as it does not have much of a historical basis).
Also in order for all African trade to flow towards Timbuktu it would need to be an end node and inland end nodes are highly questionable from a balance perspective.
2.) I am not discussing estimates of historical populations with you.

Are we counting gold as a good? Because West African traders usually exported gold, bronze, and slaves in exchange for goods. The markets drew traders from all over Africa because of this. I'm pretty sure they removed the connection because Katsina doesn't draw from any other nodes, so it represents only direct trade between the Hausa States and Egypt, and I don't see why Katsina's trade is directed to Ethiopia in the first place.

I'd be fine with Alexandria if it was less exposed to the major trade centers of Europe.

The Katsina->Tunis, Katsina->Alexandria and Katsina->Ethiopia trade routes represent the eastern part of trans-Saharan trade and while not as important as the western gold-salt trade are all justifiable and were important for the Kanem-Bornu. Pdx just chose to represent only two of the three. There could also be made an argument to reverse the Katsina->Timbuktu route as there were a variety of goods, especially slaves reached Cairo from West Africa. But this would weaken the Timbuktu trade node.
Regarding the role of gold as a trade good I think one could let the West Africans handle gold differently. Instead of the usual way gold works in EU4 it could be a very high value trade good as long it is under West African control to represent their different relation to gold (compared to other old world states and also the new world ones as they were not able to trade with old world states prior to colonization), less as a currency and more as a trade good. This would make the role of gold in the region different (not worse or better) and would allow to increase the number of gold provinces/their base production to represent the large amounts of gold found in the region while also making it a far better region for trade. The trade gold would change to normal gold, if conquered by someone from another tech group or if the West African nation fulfills a certain requirement (maybe embracing global trade?) representing a change in their use of currency as they are more integrated in the world economy.

 

[Lightwell]

1.) I think this is actually desirable. From a logical perspective it makes sense as the position at the intersection of multiple large trade networks makes Alexandria a very good node for trade to go too, as Europeans and Asians also trade there. And from a gameplay perspective as this would to more conflict and interesting interactions between a possible large African power and Europeans/Middle Eastern/Indian countries. You would also still have the option of Tunis which does not get the trade from Ethiopia,Aden and Alexandria but is more protected (One could very well cut the Tunis->Seville route as it does not have much of a historical basis).
Also in order for all African trade to flow towards Timbuktu it would need to be an end node and inland end nodes are highly questionable from a balance perspective.

In general, I'd just like an option that doesn't leave African trade horribly exposed to two of the following: Genoa, Venice, Constantinople, or Sevilla. Genoa is an extremely bad one, as fighting it requires a massive fleet, or that you try to control Italian and French lands.

2.) I am not discussing estimates of historical populations with you.

Do as you will. My point is just that the Timbuktu node would be richer than the Alexandria node.

Regarding the role of gold as a trade good I think one could let the West Africans handle gold differently. Instead of the usual way gold works in EU4 it could be a very high value trade good as long it is under West African control to represent their different relation to gold (compared to other old world states and also the new world ones as they were not able to trade with old world states prior to colonization), less as a currency and more as a trade good. This would make the role of gold in the region different (not worse or better) and would allow to increase the number of gold provinces/their base production to represent the large amounts of gold found in the region while also making it a far better region for trade. The trade gold would change to normal gold, if conquered by someone from another tech group or if the West African nation fulfills a certain requirement (maybe embracing global trade?) representing a change in their use of currency as they are more integrated in the world economy.

I kind of like this, but believe there should be a way for West Africans to continue using the gold as a product for export, even after modernizing.

 

[Ashvin]

Indian Ocean Trade Route is not well represented. Malacca - Coromandel should be in the game as it has been one of the most prominent Trade Routes since Chola days when Chola Empire was spread from Tamil Nadu, Coastal Andhra, Coastal Orissa in the North to Malaysia & Java in the South-East. After Chola this route became again an important one with the coming of Dutch and Portuguese - Eastern, Tamil Coast were important for Clothes while Western, Malabar for Spices.

Part of the problem also lies that Western Ghats Hill Ranges are not shown in Indian West coast that made western coast of India from Kanyakumari deep in the South to well up till Surat a kind of cut from Deccan mainland cultivating its own culture, custom and language.

Coromandel, Deccan and Gujarat node should be redistributed making a way for Goa node as it was before. Both Konkan & Malabar coast should be part of this Goa node - Goa was most famous for trade with Arabs - Vijayanagari Spices - Gems - Iron Vs Arabian Horses.

Gujaratis were prominent in Goa and Gujarat areas while Tamil & Malayali Chettis and Shresties were prominent in Coromandel and Goa area, Deccan mainland trade were taken by Jains and other Merchant class in Karnataka. It will be wrong to think that in India only the Gujaratis as merchant were important ignoring the importance of South Indian Traders who were as good.

Malacca - Coromandel should be made available.
Coromandel - Cape, Aden and Goa
Goa to Cape, Aden & Gujarat
Gujarat to Hormuz, Aden, Zanzibar (in reality Zanzibar should flow to Gujarat, Aden and Cape but this will not be accepted - Gujaratis bought a lot of trade from Zanzibar to Gujarat - Devs wont allow this opposite flow.)

Aden to Alexandria remained an important trade route in the era and the Arab world controlled it and to by-pass this was the whole idea of searching for a new route to India which later was paved as bypassing trade directly from India to Cape.