One of the main mechanics making trade goods different in EU4 is the trading in bonus. It adds some strategy to controlling trade in certain trade nodes in order to have a particularly high market share of important trade goods.
Currently one gets the bonus associated to a certain trade good when controlling 20% of the global supply of this trade good.
There are two problems with this:
(i) A small nation will never be able to achieve any of the trading bonuses. Therefore, the mechanic (and with it to some degree the strategic value of different trade goods) does not play any role for a small country.
(ii) A sufficiently large nation can have all trading bonuses at once. Therefore, it is important that each individual trading bonus is not particularly powerful, as having all of them would be problematic, if they were too good. This prevents very powerful bonuses which could make the difference in trade goods and therefore also the strategic value of trade power in certain trade nodes more impactful.
If one were able to fix these problems, one could make the mechanic more relevant at all stages of the game and add more strategy and depth to the trade game.
One possible way to do this is tying the share you need to the amount of development of your country. In this way a nation would get rewarded for being especially involved in the trade of a certain good relative to its size.
For example one could require 2x% of the trade share, where x is the percentage of the countries development of the total development of the world. This would make it impossible for a nation which controls more than 50% of the worlds development to get trading in bonuses. But this might not be a problem, as at this point one does not really need the extra bonuses.
This would then allow to buff the individual trading bonuses, as it is no longer possible to have so many of them at once, which forces you to specialize in certain trade goods and therefore generates some form of choice and strategy in that regard.
Currently one gets the bonus associated to a certain trade good when controlling 20% of the global supply of this trade good.
There are two problems with this:
(i) A small nation will never be able to achieve any of the trading bonuses. Therefore, the mechanic (and with it to some degree the strategic value of different trade goods) does not play any role for a small country.
(ii) A sufficiently large nation can have all trading bonuses at once. Therefore, it is important that each individual trading bonus is not particularly powerful, as having all of them would be problematic, if they were too good. This prevents very powerful bonuses which could make the difference in trade goods and therefore also the strategic value of trade power in certain trade nodes more impactful.
If one were able to fix these problems, one could make the mechanic more relevant at all stages of the game and add more strategy and depth to the trade game.
One possible way to do this is tying the share you need to the amount of development of your country. In this way a nation would get rewarded for being especially involved in the trade of a certain good relative to its size.
For example one could require 2x% of the trade share, where x is the percentage of the countries development of the total development of the world. This would make it impossible for a nation which controls more than 50% of the worlds development to get trading in bonuses. But this might not be a problem, as at this point one does not really need the extra bonuses.
This would then allow to buff the individual trading bonuses, as it is no longer possible to have so many of them at once, which forces you to specialize in certain trade goods and therefore generates some form of choice and strategy in that regard.