Trading Strategy

[calvinhobbeslik]

I'm playing the Netherlands, and it's almost 1700. I'm fully Plutocratic/Free Trade, but I can't seem to get monopolies anywhere. I have set every single COT in the world to autosend level 3. I have 4 monopolies, almost all of the rest at 5 merchants, and a few COTs with fewer merchants. I have NTP and SCP. I'd like to get monopolies in more COTs. Is there anything I can do (that doesn't involve micromanaging)? I get "only" 9 merchants per year, so it's hard to maintain myself at all thesse COTs. Is there anything I can do to get more merchants or increase my compete chance, beyond what I've already done?

 

[cmgreven]

Things you can do to get more merchants:

• Keeping stability at +3 gives you +3 merchants a year
• Try to conquer or create CoT's. For every CoT you own, you get an additional 0.5 merchants/year. If any province you own trades in a CoT and the overall value of trade is over 800, you can make that province your national focus, and create your own CoT there. In my opinion a 4 point infamy hit is well worth it to conquer an established CoT.
• National Decisions: East India Trading Company gives +1 merchant/year.
• National Decisions: House of trade gives 0.05 merchants/year.

Things you can do to increase Compete chance:

• Keep infamy extremely low.
• Keep prestige high.
• National Decisions: East India Trading Company gives +10% merchant & compete chance
• National Decisions: The Joint Stock Companies Act gives +3% compete chance

There's many more, take a look over here for more information: http://www.paradoxian.org/eu3wiki/Trade#Merchant_Compete_Chance

 

[ktx2skd]

To begin with, unless the CoTs you're talking about have empty slots, and excluding the +1 merchant/year from a monopoly (which doesn't stack), a monopoly will only serve as 6 merchants, in addition to exposing yourself to competers, since competers will usually seek competing out the monopoly before competing each other.

So, if getting more than one monopoly will take place in CoTs that do not have empty slots, and will make you have less than 5 merchants in other CoTs that you care about, you might actually benefit more from not getting these extra monopolies. Of course, there's into account the trade good domination thingy and the difference of power between various CoTs, so there's no hard-rule on what's right.

- I never saw the decentralization thing you're talking about.
- The game is designed such that the more merchants you have around the world, the less your compete chance will become, thus the more CoTs you wanna involve yourself in the harder stuff will become.
- It's true that more CoTs that you own, the more merchants you get, but previous point also applies and in some cases more CoTs could prove counter-beneficial.

Four things you need more of: Compete chance, placement chance, trade efficiency, and yearly merchants.
- Compare various types of governments.
- Compare possible state religions.
- See about buildings & national decisions, also national modifiers.
- See about advisors & ruler.
- Avoid infamy & war, max stability & prestige.
- The less nations who can trade in a certain CoT, the easier it is for you to control.

 

[ryu2999]

In a monopoly the merchant of the nation holding it is the one that must be competed out first.

 

[cmgreven]

- I never saw the decentralization thing you're talking about.

Sorry I edited that out very quickly, as I was basing that off information off the top of my head which was wrong.

- It's true that more CoTs that you own, the more merchants you get, but previous point also applies and in some cases more CoTs could prove counter-beneficial.

At some point it is better to switch to mercantilism if you own many CoT's, although I'm not really sure where that cutoff would be. I wish there was a mouseover somewhere that told me what effected my compete chances when trying to get into a CoT.

 

[Stadhouder]

- Build custom houses until you've maximized your trade efficiency (it's capped in 5.2), if you play an older version, just keep building them every where.
- Have a Trader advisor to improve compete chance, and Colloectors if you TE isn't maxed yet.
- Focus on the most important CoT's. Set some of the lesser important CoT's to max 2 merchants, so you get the trading in trade good bonus, but still keep your merchants number a little lower, because of the point ktx2skd made.
- Get into trade agreements with your most important trading rivals. If it are one or two countries that keep competing you away t can safe you a lot of merchants if you sign that non compete clause. Be careful though, this also means you can't break their monopolies, and TA do give you lower TE.
- Go for reformed faith if you aren't yet.
- If you're a republic, go for administrative candidates.
- Speaking of which, be an administrative republic

 

[ryu2999]

There is definitely something that seems to put a complete ceiling on the number of merchants you can have out in the world at any time. You will get to a level where placing one merchant will cause you to have one competed out elsewhere.

It also seems to me that I lose a lot of placed merchants everytime I am close to gaining a technology level in Trade, although I can't see why this would be the case and may be unrelated.

EDIT: The only reason I can think of for this is that some other nation's reach the new tach level before you enabling them to compete you out with their increased chance before you catch up.

 

[cmgreven]

There is definitely something that seems to put a complete ceiling on the number of merchants you can have out in the world at any time. You will get to a level where placing one merchant will cause you to have one competed out elsewhere.

I don't think that's true that there is a limit. Here's a screenshot from my last game where I had about 200 merchants successively placed throughout various CoT's:

The only caveat is that I owned all those CoT's and had mercantilism maxed instead of free trade.

 

[ktx2skd]

I don't think that's true that there is a limit. Here's a screenshot from my last game where I had about 200 merchants successively placed throughout various CoT's:

Spoiler

The only caveat is that I owned all those CoT's and had mercantilism maxed instead of free trade.

There isn't a hard limit, it's just that your compete chance gets weaker and weaker by a flat amount in relation to the amount of merchants you have around the world. In theory, if your # of merchants worldwide approaches infinity, your chance would plummet down to zero, assuring you getting competed out.

You can see in post #7 in this link that there's -17% chance on the player from his own merchants:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?461392-Answers-on-trade-leagues-and-compete-chances&p=10798496

In reality there's a finite amount of CoTs, surely less than 50 (in typical games), and thus there's surely less than 300 slots for you to fill, assuming you want 50 monopolies. Thus your compete chance would reduce by 300 x "dat flat amount".

 

[ktx2skd]

Sorry I edited that out very quickly, as I was basing that off information off the top of my head which was wrong.



At some point it is better to switch to mercantilism if you own many CoT's, although I'm not really sure where that cutoff would be. I wish there was a mouseover somewhere that told me what effected my compete chances when trying to get into a CoT.

I posted a thread in last month, I think I found out that owning more than 55% of the CoT's power would make merchantalism better for that CoT, in terms of compete chance that is.

 

[diegoami]

One caveat : each uncored COT gives a -15% penalty on trading on foreign COT, and it is cumulative. Therefore conquering COTs is not a good strategy for a nation who wants to trade everywhere.

Apart from what has been already told: An advisor to improve compete chances or trade efficiency will also help.

 

[unmerged(465279)]

How good is being in a trade league as a nation that can't top the trade tech sldiers yet, I'm currently in a league with Novgorod and probably have over 50 trade stations throughout my nation so far (including North America) and I'm nearly full Free Trade. I;'m quite weary about declaring war on Novogord even if they own some Scandinavian lands because I don't know how much of a hit my economy will take.

Sorry for the hijack.

 

[chgrogers]

How good is being in a trade league as a nation that can't top the trade tech sldiers yet, I'm currently in a league with Novgorod and probably have over 50 trade stations throughout my nation so far (including North America) and I'm nearly full Free Trade. I;'m quite weary about declaring war on Novogord even if they own some Scandinavian lands because I don't know how much of a hit my economy will take.

Sorry for the hijack.

Declare and join Another Trade league. Once the war is over. You can return to Novogord or just stay with the new league. Trade stations close at the end of the month.

 

[cacra]

dont declare and then leave, leave first and join another one. they could kick you out at any time in the month, if i was you i would pause the game

 

[spyroware1]

The problem is that free trade just sucks. It's only useful early game when global trade efficiency is low, though to the point of being imbalanced for those lucky to start with good sliders. But after a while you wont be able to reliably outcompete mercantilist nations in their primary CoTs.

Even if you conquer a CoT chances are the region will stop trading in that CoT (different religion being the main reason for this), dramatically reducing its value. Also another CoT can automatically pop up somewhere nearby if the the number of provinces per existing CoTs is too high. The only way to avoid this is to actually own the provinces that trade through a CoT. So the only real long-term trade strategy is to go mercantilism and actually own the provinces with the good trade goods. That way you can have many developed provinces trading through fewer, better-managed CoTs:

You spam your merchants in those CoTs until theyre 6/13/1 [6 merchant for your monopoly/13 empty slots/1 merchant from any random nation since if you have 14 empty slots everyone and their dog will send merchants to it] This can be maintained for a couple years until the free traders in your game manageto break in but in the meanwhile you will have generated rediculus amounts of money. Then you just outcompete again and any leftover merchants can be used for random CoTs around the world where you have high compete chance.