Trade vs Tax.

[Dustman]

While it might sound like a good strategy to take mercantilism and colonize both americas, costs of doing so are enormous, from much lower income during colonization phase, to number of magistrates required to build or these lvl 6 trading buildings. Even with 12 magistrates per year, it will take quite a bit of time. Sure, last 150-200 years will be immensely profitable, but free trader will stay ahead during whole game, and late game trade income will probably be comparable. Count in possible tech lag for a heavy colonizer, and this become even less appealing.

I don't say this is a bad strategy, no. A minor near a blob should secure some land to ensure its existence. Just grab/colonize enough land for manpower and support limits, and dismantle or constrain the blob.

 

[miotas]

That looks beautiful!

Still, income appears strongly correlated with possession of high-production regions.

One thought-experiment: a fully protectionist country able to mantain a 6/7 monopoly on its own CoTs covering its own provinces should be able to make 6/7th of its production income as trade income (if the two efficiencies are the same). So taking 8000 as the free trade term of comparison, whoever has a production value higher than 8000*7/6 = 9000 (roughly) would be better served by being protectionist. Amazingly, in your game it means Portugal and Venice

There is a problem with demand, though: being protectionist reduces starkly the demand for colonial goods. So this needs to be maxed out anyway for the comparison to make sense at all, to the point that being protectionist or free-trader does not matter anymore.

If you go to "Centres of Trade" on that statistics page, you will see that the ottomans (me) and manchu, both mercantiilst powers have cots that add up to more value than the cots of the free traders, but the free traders still have more trade income than we. This is also with us playing in the 5.2 ZZFZ patch where mercantilism was given a massive boost.