Trade -- What Am I Missing?

[Lord Romanus II]

So, I used to be quite fine with the EU4 trade system and I felt that I did really well with it. But lately, I've found that I don't really get any benefits from trade fleets. One of my friends mentioned that, if I use them where I've got 60% or higher, then they're quite worthless. Even outside of those situations, though, I often find that I rarely make a reasonable profit off of them or at all and that my best chance is to just spam galleys to annoy the AI during wartime, rather than waste money on trade fleets. What am I missing? The only thing I can think of to do is to use them in colonial areas (especially around Africa), but that's all.

 

[Xiahou Mao]

You need to use them either in conjunction with your merchants to steer trade in the direction you want (when there's a choice of which way trade can go), otherwise your trade power will split the trade evenly among the exit routes, which is rarely what you'd want. So if, for example, you're playing as Portugal and want more trade from Genoa, you'd send a trade fleet to protect trade in Genoa along with a merchant. The merchant's presence will enable you to click which outgoing path you want to send trade on, which would be towards Sevilla rather than Champagne. You should notice the difference once you do that. If you don't have enough merchants to place, then consider using your trade fleets as Privateers instead and plunder someone else's rich end node.

 

[Morricane]

If you don't have enough merchants to place, then consider using your trade fleets as Privateers instead and plunder someone else's rich end node.

...and gain that delicious PP to boot!

 

[Ricox]

If you don't see a point or profit to it, then don't use them, but I personally use them even if the fleet has high maintenance as I always add war ships to it so I can wreck any enemy using the trade node during war time and get enormous benefit from the node (ex. recently went to war with Netherlands as France and I annihilated all their fleets with my automatically-patrolling trade fleets, my profits from English Channel node doubled with both the Dutch having lost most of their trade power and the trade fleets boosting it far beyond what the Dutch provinces give through buildings etc.)

I believe that the total investment you put into those fleets - making the ships, replacing losses, upgrading them, is likely way greater than what you get in return from the increased trade profits, but the monthly income addition is what matters the most, in my opinion, not even the long-term gain, since it allows you to quicker stockpile money and allows positive events to give you enormous cash boosts, although many events also make you lose a lot of money then, since they're based on monthly income. I just see anything that increases my monthly income and allows me to handle a powerful army and fleet during wartime with no losses as very, very good, regardless if the methods are very expensive in long-term. You won't always have stockpiled cash to spend, especially if you're going on a deficit due to war, mercenaries, army and fleet (or ex. want to subsidize potential allies/enemies of your enemies, or just want to help a rival get back on its feet to prevent another rival taking its place or you're just so powerful you need to subsidize your rivals in their tough times so they don't collapse and end the challenge).