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diegoami

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The trade screen seems to be confusing for a lot of people, therefore this thread.

Some introductory information :

From Avindian's AAR
 
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Trade Screen - the Basics

Please let the game run some days after loading it to get usable statistics !

Let's have a look at the trade screen. This is the global picture

G4.jpg


There are four kind of goods

  • Raw Materials : they come from RGOs, but some of them (like dye and oil) can later be produced
  • Industrial Goods : obviously, produced by factories and artisans, and in turn used mostly by factories again
  • Consumer Goods : used mostly by Pops, can be both RGOs and goods produced by factories and artisans
  • Military Goods : used mostly by the Government, and produced by factories and artisans.


Let's look first at the top-right part of the trade screen, and specifically at dye.

G5.jpg


If you hover on the price(1), you will learn about Global Supply and Demand for that good. "Actual Bought" can be different from the Demand, because not everybody who wants that good can actually afford it. If you click on the price, the good will be selected and more information will be shown on the right (4).

If you hover on the good (in this case dye) icon(2), you will find out who are the biggest producers of that good. If you click on the icon, a popup window will open, which we will call the Production Window.

A short look at the Production Window...


G2.jpg


Now this window is pretty straightforward and there is no information hidden behind tooltips AFAIK. You can learn what is your percentage of world production (A), what is the total production of your country (B), how much of that good your country is using (C), who is producing (D) and who is using it (E) in your country. Statistics here do not include your spherelings.

Now if you select the good, you can see more information on the top-right part of the trade screen.

G6.jpg


Here too there is no hidden information. In (4) you can learn about the exact price of that good and how it evolved over the last 36 months. If you click on "Details" (5) the Production Window we just explained will open.

In (7) you will learn about the Domestic demand of that good. Note that Demand will always higher than the actual quantity of that good that will be bought, because pops and factories may not be able to afford that good. Demand from your Producers does not include artisans' demand.

(8) is the "Available for our country" statistics, which is the quantity of that good our country has direct access to (your production+the production of your spherelings+your stockpile), and does NOT include what can be imported from the global market. I alread talked about it extensively in another thread.

If (6) is checked and set to "Automatic", the AI will decide automatically whether it will buy that good for the stockpile. If you uncheck it and set it to "Manual", you can select how much of that good you want you in your stockpile (9) and then confirm the trade (10) - now the AI will try to buy that quantity and then stay there. If you later want to sell some of it, select sell (11) and the new quantity you want (9) and confirm trade again (10). The AI will start selling that good till the new quantity is reached - and stay there.

G7.jpg


Now let's move on to the bottom part of the trade screen.

G8.jpg


Now, from left to right, we have Needs, Market Activity, Stockpile and Common Market.

Needs (12) is what your government, factories and population need of each good. Here too, Domestic Domand will usually be higher than what is going to be consumed. Just to make sure you know that: clicking on the "Need" column header, for instance, in the Government Needs sections (16) will sort the goods by amount needed. If you click on the "Goods" column header it will show the goods in the same order as they are shown in the top-left section of the trade screen, and clicking on the good icon will select the good in the top-right section.

Market Activity (13) is an interesting statistics, which you can sort by "Activity" and "Cost". As far as I could tell, it is how much of that good your common market (you+your spherelings) has exported (if the numbers are positive) or imported (if they are negative). I think this statistics tells you how much of that was effectively sold and not how much of it was available for export - that would explain why for instance for steel we have an activity of 986 but we are exporting 1.2K. But these statistics can be pretty confusing and hard to track if you have spherelings.

Stockpile (14) is, obviously, how much of each good is in your stockpile. You can sort this table by "Stock" and "Increase". You can also check the icon on the right of "Stockpile" if you want your Pops to be able to buy from the stockpile, but some say this feature is broken.

Common Market (16) is NOT the Global Market, but the Market that includes you and your spherelings. "Available" is how much of that good is in your Common Market, then "Increase" since yesterday and "Exported", or rather "Available for Export": how much of that good, which was produced in your common market, could not be consumed domestically.
 
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For God's sake, please put this in the FAQ section!

I've found it by accident...
 
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That is a very nice guide, would you upload it to the new wiki?
If you do that more people can find it.
 
Hrmm... thank you for the feedback.

I don't have the permission to post in the FAQ question, and I think the Wiki has a somewhat different purpose and would have to adapt the content to make it fit there. I will think about it.
 
I was hoping to find a reason to care about the trade screen in here. Anyone got one?
A very simple reason why the trade screen is important: On the trade screen you can see which goods are cheap and which are expensive. Using this information to create an industry that will use cheap goods to produce expensive goods is way better than random factory building, as your industry will make profits instead on decifits.
Another pretty simple one about the goods: If a good you need is very cheap (oil) then you should buy large amount of oil now and stockpile it for when needed. Otherwise you could and up buying oil while your enemies do as well and extra demand should make the price rise.

So in short because if you don't you could end up losing a lot of money unneeded.
 
A very simple reason why the trade screen is important: On the trade screen you can see which goods are cheap and which are expensive. Using this information to create an industry that will use cheap goods to produce expensive goods is way better than random factory building, as your industry will make profits instead on decifits.
Another pretty simple one about the goods: If a good you need is very cheap (oil) then you should buy large amount of oil now and stockpile it for when needed. Otherwise you could and up buying oil while your enemies do as well and extra demand should make the price rise.

So in short because if you don't you could end up losing a lot of money unneeded.

Except that cappies with a bit of intervention already do a reasonably good job in PDM so, uh, I still have no reason to give a shit about it.
 
You can go on not giving a shit about the trade screen and be fine, but some people like to understand what's going on.
 
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You can go on not giving a shit about the trade screen and be fine, but some people like to understand what's going on.
Exactly. I wasn't going to say anything, but really, there's no need to pop in to random threads and say "This thread does not interest me"
 
As diegoami pointed out, this thread is a prime candidate for an article on the new Victoria II Wiki. I started working on a "Trade" article today onto which I will integrate the Trade screens explanations.

But before doing so, I wrote a few paragraphs on how Trade is handled in Victoria II through national, internal & World markets. I am no expert in describing the complexity of the fundamental mechanism at the core of Trade in Victoria II, so can I ask some of the well versed people in here to double check my article on Trade on the wiki ? If there are errors, you can edit the text directly, you don't need to post changes here. If you think of more informations that can be added to this article (I'll be working on inserting the trade screen's explanations in the next few days), then please do tell me or add these informations yourself.
 
A very simple reason why the trade screen is important: On the trade screen you can see which goods are cheap and which are expensive. Using this information to create an industry that will use cheap goods to produce expensive goods is way better than random factory building, as your industry will make profits instead on decifits.
Another pretty simple one about the goods: If a good you need is very cheap (oil) then you should buy large amount of oil now and stockpile it for when needed. Otherwise you could and up buying oil while your enemies do as well and extra demand should make the price rise.

So in short because if you don't you could end up losing a lot of money unneeded.

Does stockpile last infinitely, if nothing consumes the product in normal times? I mean, you could stockpile oil, from world market, much sooner, before there's any practical demand for that stuff (people used oil lamps back in the day but that was about it for the demand for oil). Until cars and stuff were invented obviously... with modern technology came more products and increased demand.
 
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