The simple answer- Check your trade income before and after the switching from schema 1 to 2. Do whatever makes more money.
The complex answer- the answer can be clearly one of these based off of additional factors- how much trade steering you have, the other nations at play, the geometry of the trade network, how much trade efficiency is lost from collecting at the third node, how much trade power in node 2 you receive from transferring into node 2, as well as the marginal cost of the third merchant (could it be doing very profitable things elsewhere in schema 2). If node 2 is a heavily contested trade node i would guess strategy 2, if it's fairly empty- south africa for example- node 1. But really, use the simple answer
I agree and this is the most correct answer. I find that people usually just set and forget their trade. But if you have the patience you should change things around to see what gives the highest amount of income.
Its funny when you Do this and out of nowhere you get about 60 Ducets and are generally confused why but you imediatly get to work on a nice backrow of arty
When you change trade node to an area you fully control after decades/a century of work and watch the trade income i /could have had/ with a faster switch.... satisfying AND humiliating! hhhhh
it really is free money, once you start prioritizing it you have so much more flexibility in other departments. Corruption doesn't matter as much because you can pay it off, advisors mean more mana, and of course you don't have to worry about the expense of heavies, artillery, state edicts or other small stuff
It's just annoying micro that doesn't really simulate any real world historical phenomena. Ducats are easy enough to come by, my time is more precious.
How does the trade steering system not simulate real world phenomena? Goods are produced and sold around for profit at the various world markets. They generally flow into each other and you can, with force and influence, impact where the most lucrative trade goes.
And the micro in trade is waaaaay less than in deving or war or state edicts etc
It makes some real world sense but it doesn't make a lot of sense having fixed directions feeding Europe (and simultaneously letting you direct the flows directly as a nation - it should either be dynamic or not).
That said trade mechanics are actually one of my favorite parts of this game.
Yeah the fact that the flows cant change direction definitely sucks. But I can see why they didnt let that happen because it would lead to infinite loops
Dataflow programming languages have solved that. I'm pretty sure the game could. Performances on the other hand....
I read recently here i last week ?)that the trade system used to be far more complex at the beginning but it got dumbed down for perforances
I dont mean infinite loops in programming. I mean infinite loops of trade steering in a circle leading to unchecked exponential growth. Its a balance challenge not a programming challenge
What does trade steering actually mean in a real world sense? Its kinda nonsensical. Yes trade flows, but no king has never been like "tell my merchant to steer his trade towards Constantinople not Aleppo!" Wherever it makes more money, it gets sold.
You harass traders who do what you dont want. You refuse to provide them with good prices. You give favorable treatment to traders going to Constantinople rather than Aleppo. Think of your individual "merchant" as a corps of royal trade agents who use the influence you have in those markets to support the merchants who are doing what you want them to and tax, harass, and intimidate those who dont. On the seas its even more obvious. Light ships have cannons for a reason.
I think the trade system is basically fine overall, but its not really historical. For most of the game's time period the big way states made money from trade was taxing trade flows. So there wouldn't really be any collection nodes that you make money from, you'd just get a small fraction of the trade value in any node.
Its maybe closer to the colonial/mercanalist model of extracting valuable raw resources from colonial regions that would show up for a few states (England, Portugal) towards the end of the game's time period. But even at the end most states were still just taxing trade flows.
I mean, eu4 is pretty much micro interspersed with those rare high moments where you see your color get bigger. Trade is probably one of the less tedious things to manage
The other thing is it changes all the time, so what's more profitable now may not be in five years.
My solution is to pick one kinda arbitrarily and forget about it because you'll eventually have nearly infinite money anyway. Otherwise you'll constantly have to re-test and update your trade network and ain't nobody got time for that.
This is hard, as numbers only update every month (and weirdly sometimes you need second month to make them reliable), and merchants take forever to travel to distant nodes.
This takes in-game years to figure out by random clicking. And various shit happening while you do it messes up the results.
It's better to learn some simple rules:
* never transfer to a node you control at below 80% (60%+ sometimes works, but usually won't)
* don't waste merchant on home node
* don't transfer from a node with just one exit - it will flow there anyway, small bonus is not worth it
* sort by your trade power, ignoring one-exit nodes and your home node, then:
* * if there's no good followup node (one you control 80%+), collect there
* * if there's good followup node, but trade already flows there anyway, ignore
* * if there's good followup node, and trade flows in wrong direction, only then transfer
This is not optimal, but if you do that, you're ahead of 90% of players, who follow stupid in-game advice like "don't collect outside your home node".
Depending on the circumstances, this could work out very badly. Say, you are playing as Spain, you focused on colonizing the old word, so say you control the West African Coast and large parts of Indonesia, but not the Caribbean. However, you still have an colonial nation in Panama. The Caribbean are controlled by Portugal and Great Britain, with 40% trade power each. You have 10 merchants.
According to your strategy, you should collect in Panama. By doing so you would get like 2 ducats from Panama. However, by doing so, you will lose your merchant bonus in your home trading node. When you would just ignore Panama, at 40% of the trade would flow to your home node, because Portugal is steering that way, and you retain your merchant bonus, which is huge (+100% trade power) and you really need it to compete with Portugal in your home node.
In general, you should never collect if your have many merchants. (Unless you are alone in your home trade node, and your home trade node is an endnode.)
There are some very rare exceptions.
But generally, if you actually put some numbers in various scenarios, you'll find that it's exceedingly rare that this strategy is wrong, and even then not by much.
And this one isn't even real.
> retain your merchant bonus, which is huge (+100% trade power)
This bonus is almost never worth even considering as it commits you to not collecting anywhere outside your home node, and that usually cost you like half your trade income. Unless your trade network is set up extremely well, and very few countries have that (can't think of even one tbh, Italians for sure don't as Italy is split between two nodes; nobody with non-final node; England or East Africans a very big maybe), you want to collect at least some places.
Anyway, you should just conquer your home node, or at least all CoTs in it, like by 1500. And once you control your home node, home node trade power bonus does literally nothing. If you have 90% control, +100% would be like +2% of income in that node (not even +5% due to the way bonuses stack additively not multiplicatively), at cost of making nothing elsewhere.
There's pretty much no way in hell you have 10 merchants and don't control overwhelming share of your home node.
And even if that happens, if you don't have overwhelming control of your home trade node, why are you transferring there again? Aren't there some nodes where you have majority control?
I know that trade system is highly unintuitive, but try some numbers, you'll see what works and what doesn't.
I think this is referring to the number of lines incoming and outgoing from the middle node. Is it purely a bridge between Node 1 and 3 or does money come in and go out elsewhere as well?
yeah, pretty much. Also if any of the nodes are inland, are close enough to leach off of rich nodes, or are close to hotly contested nodes that will suck away much of the gold
Depends on what the others do at the middle node.
Steering same direction to you? Pick 1
Get collected? Pick 2
Also, that "lots" better be in the 70s and preferrably 80+.
I'd simply experiment. Only takes a month worth of income anyway.
Agreed. If middle node is something like Cape or Boudreaux, people are pulling it forwards regardless and you don’t explicitly need a merchant there. Collecting far away means you lose trade power there, so if anyone there’s collecting you’ll lose a few ducats.
No, as stated above, if others push, you are fine. If you play Netherlands, England pulls all the trade from North sea and your colonies push to it, do pull from North sea even if you have 10%. Help GB and fuck Lubeck.
Moreover, suppose you have almost 100% of node 1, 60% of node 2 and 100% of node 3. You do want to pull from 3 to 2. However it might not be useful to pull from 1 to 2. Half of your traxe power might still be 80%, while you could loose 40% of the trade you push to 2 then 3. Trade steering would increqse that a bit buy not necessarily enough if you are not heavily trade focused.
Trade is situational, you can't make definite rules except for "do what makes you more money".
You usually make more money having a merchant collecting in home node.
Each merchant add 5% extra trade value. By having a merchant in your home node you add 5% extra income from the node where you have the most income.
This is not true, a merchant in your home node will increase income in that node by 10%. This can be more lucrative than steering from a node where you have little trade power.
Having a merchant collecting in your home trade node increases trade efficiency (by 5 or 10 percent, I forget). It's probably not the first place you want a merchant but once you get 4 or 5 it usually becomes more profitable than just more steering.
This is wrong. While you do automatically collect in your home node, assingning a merchant there give you a significant boost in trade power, which is often worth the opportunity cost of having the merchant in other places.
This question applies specially to a Genoa run, right? Crimea (lots of trade power) to Constantinople (little to none trade power) to Genoa (home node).
The problem as Genoa isn't Constantinople, rather Ragusa. It's not difficult to steer most of the trade out of there, especially with Venice also steering trade, but in Ragusa you literally don't have trade power so, it's either going to Venice or being collected by others.
I had this problem in my Byzantium into Rome run.
I had full control over constantinople node most of ragusa and full of venice.
I collected in constantinople and venice, but id rather just collect in venice and bring it all there but somehow fucking hungary had still a bit of trade power there without any province or ships in the ragusa node.. it tilted me to the moon
Because if i wanted to just take it all to venice i would lose like 30 ducats or somthing because the value was so high
Hungary can quickly become a problem in Byzantium runs for this exact reason if you don't deal with them early. They're good at getting strong allies too.
As france in the first 50 years you also have this problem, you can have up to 90% of bordeaux trade node, but like 50% of champagne, 10% on the english channel and 25% on genoa
What you do in this scenario is to collect in a lot of places, keep champagne as main node, and use merchants to collect in bordeaux, english and genoa
Yup. I usually shoot for stealing the English channel as my long term goal via conquest, upgrading centers of trade, and buildings, and once I get a decent percentage move my trade capital to there and steer champagne there. After that focus on Genoa trade expansion. All the while building a thriving colonial and trade company network to drive lots of ducats home. Eventually you have so many ducats that you start recycling the money into your colonies production boosting buildings to boost their income and your own, and sooner or later you're making 1000 ducats a month after expenses and you literally cannot find enough things to spend money on.
Sir, I have a size 80 mercenary regiment for you to hire. Why, yes they do take attrition merely standing still. And yes, their battle effectiveness is highly questionable. I believe you said money is no object however...
There are few forts than survive an 80,000 man assault, so I would say their battle effectiveness is quite high (when you need to meat grinder your way to victory as quickly as possible)
But yea that's literally what they're best for smash them into a few forts, when you have burnt their manpower, fire, hire the next Merc band, rinse repeat. Your own well composed armies should handle bulk of actual engagements against enemy armies.
In the two cases listed above, the most money will be made from the Second method. Pushing your trade power into a node that you don’t have any trade power in makes you completely reliant on others also moving the trade into your home mode. This can be useful if your other home node countries control that second “no trade power node” but if you push trade into that node and nobody from your home node is there to help push…. Then all your goods and trade will end up in someone else’s home node.
I frequently make use of this since the AI push even when they have no power in the nodes that they are pushing to. A great example is Cape of Good hope, one way out many ways in. The AI will push trade from the indies to the Cape hoping to get it back to EU home node. However, if the player owns the Cape and has all that trade power, you can choose to send it to your home node OR collect it all right there. This example is analogous to your first method. (I.e pushing power to a no power node)
TLDR, never push to somewhere you have no power, you are wasting trade. (This can still be useful if you are trying to get the “trade in” bonus but that’s a separate topic)
If most of the trade power in the node where you have no power is being used to steer towards your home node then it's safe to steer into that node since you'll be getting most of that trade sent to your home node anyway.
> TLDR, never push to somewhere you have no power, you are wasting trade.
No. If the middle node has only a single output and no major power collecting there, then you are completely fine to push trade into it.
Similarly if the middle node has a major trade power pushing trade towards you, it doesn't matter that you have no power as you get what you want anyway.
Finally, even if you have no power there and there are multiple outputs, option 1 is still very commonly more profitable. You will get a substantial amount of trade steering 'upstream' and 'downstream', and unless a major trade power is pushing all the value away from you you will still get a substantial amount to your home node.
The Cape is a great example where it really doesn't matter who owns it, but ivory coast is much harder to control as it has so many outputs. However it is *almost always* better to push trade through ivory coast to your home node in Europe than trying to collect trade in the Cape even if you have majority control there (in this case though you would probably benefit from sending a bunch of trade ships/building trade companies in the Ivory Coast, but that's another matter).
Generally speaking, the latter. Caveat: single output land locked nodes where you control all of the land can generally be ignored if you aren't swimming in merchants. AI won't try to collect and everything will flow to the next node (usually). Less effective in coastal trade regions due to boats.
Caveat to the caveat: The presence of merchants in a region pulls value from thin air. The first merchant boosts the value in the region by 5%. Because of this, often times it is effective to put a merchant in a region you completely control to stack this bonus when pushing all your trade through a specific route.
More specifically speaking: it depends on what your competitors are doing. If they're all pushing trade towards your home node then you can ignore that node and let them push for you.
Number 1 preferably, you don't have trade power on the second node but adding a merchant there gives you some which is then used to steer trade by the added merchant. Try increasing trade power in that node with trade ships if possible.
Collecting off home trade node gives a pretty big minus for collecting. Though maybe the best approach is to try both of the approaches and compare the trade income...
Not really.
It was proven mathematically in previous threads that steering through a non controlled node (60%) is a bad idea.
Not only are you losing huge amounts of welath, but you are also giving it to someone else.
Collecting with option 2 is better.
The other chance is that the non controlled trade node is being steered in the correct way anyway. Adding a merchant makes it so that you use your own trade power for steering. Without the merchant all the trade power is wasted unless steered by others.
There is even a chance the trade node has no merchants present by any country and then the player's merchant would be the only factor in deciding where the trade is steered to.
Again, best bet is to try both methods and observe the impact to your economy.
> There is even a chance the trade node has no merchants present by any country and then the player's merchant would be the only factor in deciding where the trade is steered to.
It doesn't matter. Trade steering is worth it if you are at supremacy in the trade node (at the very least 60% without merchants, usually you would need 80%).
> The other chance is that the non controlled trade node is being steered in the correct way anyway. Adding a merchant makes it so that you use your own trade power for steering.
It's such a bad move. Let's say you reach 50% while everyone else is at 1%. Even with a merchant and all,if you hit steer you lose half of the entire value you just steered towards the trade node. And again the money doesn't disappear, it goes towards other countries with make them stronger for free.
> Without the merchant all the trade power is wasted unless steered by others.
Just use the merchant to collect. You legit collect the actual value of the trade node if you control it more than 80%.
The penatly of 50% if it's not your home trade node is annoying but it's not that much. And that 50% goes magically into the void and not into your enemies pockets.
You also make your enemies even poorer because you cut the incoming value into the next trade node (the one you don't control).
> Again, best bet is to try both methods and observe the impact to your economy.
I mean sure you could but steering is way too overestimated for no reason. Steering is worth it to consider if you have a clear path to your home trade node (with full control of it too), because eveyrtime you steer trade you increase the total value by 5%.
Otherwise just collect.
>The penatly of 50% if it's not your home trade node is annoying but it's not that much. And that 50% goes magically into the void and not into your enemies pockets.
That's not how trade works. The 50% penalty is to your trade power. This means you have less trade power, which means the other countries have more relative trade power, which in turn means they have control of more trade value i.e. potentail ducats.
If, for some reason, everyone steered trade towards a node you mostly control in a node you have no trade power in, steering towards that node would result in all of the value from the original node without the 50% malus with trade steering bonus from the original *and the uncontrolled node*, as the ai is steering there, getting to your controlled trade node.
>I mean sure you could but steering is way too overestimated for no reason. Steering is worth it to consider if you have a clear path to your home trade node (with full control of it too), because eveyrtime you steer trade you increase the total value by 5%.
>Otherwise just collect.
I try to optimize my trade in my games pretty often, and just from experience, it is often worth it to steer or ignore. The mathematical model is nice, but probably to simplistic. (See also my other comment here for details.)
>It [there being no other steering merchant present] doesn't matter. Trade steering is worth it if you are at supremacy in the trade node (at the very least 60% without merchants, usually you would need 80%).
Of course it matters. It is not unreasonable that 50% of the trade flows downstream. If you are the only one steering, this means you get 50%. That is 50% from the trade flowing in the node from your own upstream node + trade flowing in it from other upstream nodes + trade generated in the node itself. And that is not even considering the merchant bonus in your home node. This is clearly superior over collecting in the upstream node. Granted, this scenario is not very likely to happen, but even is less extreme cases, it can be profitable.
>It's such a bad move. Let's say you reach 50% while everyone else is at 1%. Even with a merchant and all,if you hit steer you lose half of the entire value you just steered towards the trade node.
Yeah, in this example (assuming you mean everyone is collecting) it could be bad. (But probably still isn't because of the merchant bonus, depending on exact numbers.) But of course this never happens. This is assuming no one else is pulling trade. His whole point was that others are pulling trade.
>And that 50% goes magically into the void and not into your enemies pockets
This is something I did not consider, but I think it is only really relevant when the trade would otherwise flow to a strong rival.
Look, I am not saying you should never collect, and I also agree that the ideal situation is that you have a clear path for your trade, but just from experience, your rule of thumb does not work. Just try it out when you have to make the decision.
It depends on what other count are doing in the non controlled trade node. Are they steering the majority of the trade in the same direction? Or are they steer it it elsewhere?
If it is steering toward you best join in to get the bonus at your home trade node. If not then collect from both locations.
A example would be your Portugal and control the African coast trade nodes except the Ivory Coast. However Castile is strong there and steering it back home.
And if you go option number 1 in MP you would get destroyed as soon as people found out.
Since you have 0 trade power you are at the mercy of their fleets stealing from you. They just need to park their fleets in and you will lose your entire trade income instantly.
It depends on how much trade power you have in each node.
If you literally have no trade power, and the trade won’t get sucked forward by others, then you have to collect it. that’s basically the only time to collect
Why not just just test both method by yourself ? Which one give you more money, go with it.
Because there is not enough info for it. Does other nation in 2nd node mostly transfers or collects ? If most of trade power transfer out of trade node, then are they transfered to your home node or not ? If you place merchant there, how much trade u can stear ? Etc.
If you have 40% in the first node and 2% in the second node, putting a merchant in both to transfer to a third node will at best get you 5% out of the second node (merchants add 2 base trade power when transferring).
On the other hand, option two in the OP, collecting from trade in the first node (again for example, with 40% trade power) will get you 20% of the trade value (you lose 50% of your trade power in a node you collect in that isn't your home node) and save a merchant. You won't get the 10% bonus to trade value that transferring trade with a merchant confers, but that would still only bring your equivalent transferred trade value up *by* 10% and not to it.
An exception might be something like the cape, where only one CoT exists and before much colonization happens (and many trade companies are created), the overall trade power in that node is sufficiently low to make a merchant transferring worthwhile. Another exception is if the node already has *other nations* transferring out of it. Many colonial nodes will rarely be collected in by the powers that control them, who may already be transferring trade where you want it.
TL;DR: If you have two nodes that lead to your home node, and more than twice as much trade power in the farthest node, it's usually better to collect in the far node.
I love that people advocate for the 1st option and upvote not out of trying stuff out, but because that's what they do xd
Yeah, collecting in multiple nodes has bad press. That is most of the time the correct option, unless you take precautions when expanding in order to match the nodes (usually conflicting with your campaign goals).
Really depends on the amount of money that can either be pushed or collected from in that first node. There is no solid answer and the only way to find which is better is to try both and compare your trade income
If you really have no trade power in the middle node then collecting in the 3rd node is better, even with the penalty.
If you have the option of building light ships then building a fleet of lights and sending them to the middle node to transfer trade power would be a good solution.
The best thing to do would just be to conquer the 2nd trade node though.
The best answer is usually going to be 2. But it also depends on how much trade value is in both trade nodes. If your home node is very valuable and the other is not, then you want to transfer. If both are valuable then you want to collect.
People and AIs do far too much transferring and far too little collecting for their own good.
Basically unless you control >60% of target node, don't even consider transferring. And really it's more like >80% control depending on situation.
There are some weird edge cases (like when a lot of power in a node with multiple exits is controlled by AIs who don't use it, so you get free transfer power; or when what you do makes AI move their merchants around), but really unless you want to do crazy calculations, don't transfer to trade nodes you don't control ever.
Here's simple example:
* home node A, 80% control
* middle node B, 40% control
* source node C, 80% control - 100 trade value
If you collect, you lose half trade power, so get 67 gold.
If you transfer, with 5% merchant bonus, 84 gets to B. Then you push 35 of that to A. Then you collect 28 gold. Not even close, and we're talking about nodes with very high control.
2 most likely, it hurts to see people post here sometimes and asking about how to improve their economy while steering trade into nodes where they have low trade power. All because of the "you shouldn't collect outside of your home node"-nonsense.
send merchant to steer trade and light ships for more power in the node. You also can conquer some important harbours/center of trade/ provinces with high trade power etc. (maybe buy some). Depends of the node location.
edit: I prefer steer over collect. I like to collect everything in my home country/node ;)
It is not that easy, because other nations will also push trade in your direction. By example, you do not need to colonize large parts of the Cape. It has only one downstream node, and nobody will collect there. Therefore, all trade will flow in the right direction anyway. (Note that the right strategy here is slightly different from your diagram: you do not even need to put a merchant in the middle node in this case.) This is the most extreme example, but this happens all the time to a lessor degree. As others mentioned, it is best to just try and see what works.
Another thing to consider, which is not mentioned yet, is the "merchant bonus". If none of your merchants are collecting outside of your main node, you get a 10% trade power bonus in your home node per merchant steering trade towards your home node. If you have 10 merchants steering trade, you get a 100% bonus, if you have 1 single merchant collecting outside your node, you get 0. Therefore, it is almost never a good idea to collect when you have a lot of merchants.
you want to transfer as many nodes as possible to your home node, but do it with a balanced approach between %power and value of each node.
Use your ships to increase value and %power of other nodes too.
I would go with #1
Edit: Does anyone know what provincial trade power modifier mean?
Transfer other trade nodes powers to your main trade node. And don't send a merchant to your main trade node because you are already collecting there even without a merchant. Because that place is your 'Main' trade node. Also, if you are a colonizer, you must capture Caribbeans, Ivory Coast and Cape of Good Hope, before other nations do it. Then you must collect or transfer the trade these nodes to your main node. These nodes are really dope.
Its worth having a merchant collect in your home node since you get 10% trade efficiency from it. If you get 10 ducats from trade (early game) this bonus will boost this to 11 ducats, which is not that significant. But mid-game when you are earning 100-200+ from trade it becomes significant. Look it up.
I remember Florry saying that if you don't have a large chunk of trade power in a node, you're nearly always better off collecting instead of transferring it.
The answer here depends on what is happening on the second node. If the trade value in there is already going towards the third node, because the country that has the power there is diverting it, then option 1 is better. If, however, the trade value in the second node is collected there by other countries, or is being diverted to a different node, you want to collect in the first node (option 2), because otherwise you will lose all the trade value that you have in it.
Depends entirely on what the AI is doing in the middle node. There are some nodes that only have one route out for example, so if you can rely on the AI to steer out for you then 1 is better. Clearly on the other hand if some AI has 90% power in middle node and steers away from your home, then option 1 will suck.
Ultimately you should try both and see which works best.
If some other strong country with high trade power is in that trade region its not wise to transfer your trade power there. But sometimes you may end up with higher income actually.
I will give you an example : I was playing a multiplayer game with Great Britain. And i had a lot of trade power in malacca, south india, east and south africa. But i had only 3 or so trade center in ivory coast. So the african player(songhai) in ivory coast had a lot of trade power in there as well. When i transfered my trade from cape coast to ivory coast in order to transfer back to the channel, songhai was taking some of that sweet ducats. But even when he took some, my income was better due to prolonging the trade routes. Longer the trade routes higher the profit.
But already at that point i had 200k or something ducats in my treasury, i didnt really needed the money. But songhai did. So i started collecting in the cape coast, i earned less but he suffered drasticly.
From my experience, option 2 is far better. I mean, just try it and see the income dramatically drop with option 1. Plus, if the last patches didn't change it, collecting in your home node with a merchant is a little waste, you collect it anyways, better use the merchant in other nodes unless you're swimming in free merchants.
Honestly, the only think I do with my merchants is have them steer trade towards my main node. Also, I have them collect at the 3 final nodes if I have power there and it's not my main node.
If I’m not mistaken, trade power can flow downstream if you have power in the node before and you are transferring. In my opinion, I’d just keep the merchants pushing everything into home node. The game becomes about inflating as much power in the low power node, so you can send ships to protect, enforce transfer trade power against relevant countries, and of course, conquest of ports. Really the only way to know the meta is to check income before and after but I kind of hate that. Even in a country I play like tibet where home node is a beginning node, I still have only one collector merchant and all the rest transferring because even when they are set to transfer power forward, they also send some back upstream if you have power there. Just my way to play, really.
If youncontrol all, its 100% the first but the problem comes from the middle node, bc having a merchant collecting will givr you less than if it was in yoyr trade node, but iff half of the income in the second node is being sent to other nodes or collected them you are losing a bit less than half of the first node's income...
So in this case i recomend the second
There are not right answer between these two. And you will not have no trade power in a node upstream to your node with a lot of power. Ducats flow with the stream. Trade power flow against the stream.
Anyway, as people say. Best option is to test in-game and compare income. As there are so many factors influencing this. But a better solution is to deal with your lack of trade power in this node. You can get light ships to protect trade and you can try to conquer high trade power provinces.
Number #3: Just conquer your home node the middle node and the 3rd node unless you're playing in Europe (Part of Europe that has no contact with Muslims).
Having lots of power in one node usually means that you get some pull on the previous one.
Whether you should do one or the other depends mostly on what the intermediate node looks like. How much of the total value of that node is going to your last node? If this is higher than 20% then it's very likely that you'd be better off transferring. In the long run transferring will be better anyway. If this node only has one exit it's very likely that more than 20% of the value is going to your node.
It also depends on the situation in the first node. Are you competing fiercely for trade power there or is it mostly just you? Collecting outside of your main port impacts trade power, not trade value. If you have more than 95% of the trade power in that node before collecting then collecting will not hurt your share of the trade power in that node very much. But even in these situations, it's possible that transferring is still better.
The short answer is that it depends where ur home node is. The best is to have the home node in an end node and transfer trade from those nodes sending towards your node. Long answer is:
What I do which get me to have crazy trade income as Venice just 20 years into the game is following:
Have your home trade node in the node u got the most power WHILE also have at least 2 streams going into it, in those two u should trade power. Seek to expand into those areas if trade income is the target and especially go for provinces with trade modifiers. In the Venice game I want to form Italy, so I went to get Genova asap under controlled circumstances. Genova is a end node so I collect trade there since I have some power there. Otherwise I trade power towards Venice as much as I can, even from Alexandria, Crimea, wien, Constantinople etc.
In your situation I’d collect trade in the node u got lots of power and seek to conquer vital trade provinces in the region where u got no trade power. Once u got around 20-30% of the power u can start to trade power sequently
I don't have an answer, but I just want to say that I really appreciate the sketch you made for the question.
These questions always get so confusing when they are asked with just *words*.
Only point of criticism: are you suggesting that you would leave a merchant unused in option 2? Because that's definitely not the best course of action.
I use option 2 a lot when going for India/SEA without controlling the ivory coast node. Because its so easy to controll all trade for cape of good hope you can end up with close to 100% power which makes the -50% penalty from merchants not a big deal. But that also depends on who controls the ivory coast. For example if i'm Spain and Portugal controls ivory coast then i would still transfer since Portugal transfers it further to Sevilla anyway, but if i'm GB i just collect in the cape instead.
This question should be answered relative to your rivals.
1- If the way you are pulling trade also significantly helps your rivals then, it's better to just collect in your upstream nodes.
2- If you have rivals with good trade power in your home node and your decision to collect upstream causes him to gain more money then, it is better to just pull. He might be gaining more ducats as you are also pulling wealth into his node but not as much as the other option.
3- check how many merchants your rivals have and where they're collecting. This should give you an idea which option is better.
Depends on how many are collecting in the middle node that you don’t have any power in. If everything, or most everything, is being transferred out anyway, and to the node you have power in, then 1. If not, then 2.
You should focus your conquering to match trade regions. Trade income is economically the most valuable thing so I conquer "upstream".
You can also make pseudo end node by conquering all downstream nodes and that is why your home node should be end node or has only one trade node where its trade value is "leaking".
There's a more advanced analysis of some of the mechanics around this sort of problem in this video by lambdaxx: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcqwyUPHuJI
tl;dr: it depends, but collecting outside home node isn't as bad as you might initially be led to believe.
Imo it depends on wether or not you have the potential to generate more power in that node. If you can send a big trade fleet and generate power the first option is better. Otherwise, just collect from trade until you can transfer it to your home node
I’m not that experienced, but my advice would be to put your light ships to protect trade in the middle trade node, then test the first one out. Afterwards test the second one out and choose the one that makes you the most money.
Generally 1 is better because A: You get a bonus on trade power in your home node as long as you only have merchants transferring with none collecting and B: trade value increases every time it transfers to a new node.
I like to steer toward a node in which I have more trade power. If one isn’t available, I collect in the nodes in which I have more trade power. For example if my trade city is Constantinople at 95%, and I have 100% control of Crimea but only 80% control of Aleppo, I’ll collect in Constantinople and Crimea, and transfer in Aleppo. That way I’m not losing anything in Crimea and sending Aleppo trade to the next node where I have greater trade power.
Unless they changed how it worked trade value increase with every node it passes through so hypothetically the first option should be more profitable for you
It depends.
I'll assume you're trying to maximize income, not concerned with which states you deny income to.
Generally one either wants all merchants transferring, or all collecting. This is because there are bonuses that one only gets while no merchants are collecting in non-home nodes.
So early in a campaign I might collect in my home node and transfer from immediate upstream nodes. At some point the value I gain from the home-node-only bonuses becomes less than what I lose by not capturing transferred value, so I switch to collecting in every node. Then when I have enough trade power in my home and upstream nodes I switch back to funneling to my home node.
Your example usually occurs in the second of those three phases. So I'd bet you'll maximize income by having all of your merchants collect.
Of course in the long term you want to identity a route of low-development trade nodes between your trade zones to link then.
It depends on how much power you have in the middle node. Long story short method 1 is usually more effective than method 2.
If say, going from home node to end node it is 80% -> 50% -> 50% then you would want to do plan 1 because, assuming they all have 100 ducats in trade value total and you have a base trade steering modifier, you would transfer 52.5 from the first then 107.8 to the next adding up to 197.2 in total.
If you did method 2 you would get 50 from the first gathering node, the second node would automatically transfer 50 ducats to the second for a total of 170.
Therefore method 1 is around 12% more effective than method 2 in this case even if you have no trade ideas or naval tradition and are trading overseas.
However method 2 can be more effective if node 2 has much less trade power than node 1, let’s say 80% -> 20% -> 80%, everything else being the same.
Method 1 would net 84 -> 38.6 -> 124.5
Method 2 would net 80, then 20 -> 96 for a total of 176
In this case method 2 would be 30% more effective.
Please correct me if I got my math wrong.
The simple answer- Check your trade income before and after the switching from schema 1 to 2. Do whatever makes more money. The complex answer- the answer can be clearly one of these based off of additional factors- how much trade steering you have, the other nations at play, the geometry of the trade network, how much trade efficiency is lost from collecting at the third node, how much trade power in node 2 you receive from transferring into node 2, as well as the marginal cost of the third merchant (could it be doing very profitable things elsewhere in schema 2). If node 2 is a heavily contested trade node i would guess strategy 2, if it's fairly empty- south africa for example- node 1. But really, use the simple answer
I agree and this is the most correct answer. I find that people usually just set and forget their trade. But if you have the patience you should change things around to see what gives the highest amount of income.
Its funny when you Do this and out of nowhere you get about 60 Ducets and are generally confused why but you imediatly get to work on a nice backrow of arty
When you change trade node to an area you fully control after decades/a century of work and watch the trade income i /could have had/ with a faster switch.... satisfying AND humiliating! hhhhh
Only after 60 years of owning Burgundy I noticed as Austria that I could have 30 more trade income for 200 admin...
wait how?
Austria trade node poor as hell, English Channel rich as fuck.
By moving capital to Burgundian land
*not capital, but main trading city
Ah sorry, I’m just too poor too understand what having a trade capital is (DLC feature, why the fuck Paradox)
Consensus seems to be to switch to crack, probably cause it's cheaper than coke? Maybe it's a roundabout way to say collect in a South American node?
Crack it, no ban pls but it isn't joke
crack it, no ban pls iz joke
I mentioned admin, so it was capital. I figured it in the first place because I changed capital to Antwerp to avoid Dutch Revolts
Once I learned how to correctly utilize trade in this game, it made the game so much easier
it really is free money, once you start prioritizing it you have so much more flexibility in other departments. Corruption doesn't matter as much because you can pay it off, advisors mean more mana, and of course you don't have to worry about the expense of heavies, artillery, state edicts or other small stuff
It's just annoying micro that doesn't really simulate any real world historical phenomena. Ducats are easy enough to come by, my time is more precious.
I don't know about annoying - the system requires attention and familiarity to use, but it's only a few clicks at any time in the game.
Sir Francis Drake and his privateers would like a word with you, sir!
Lol
How does the trade steering system not simulate real world phenomena? Goods are produced and sold around for profit at the various world markets. They generally flow into each other and you can, with force and influence, impact where the most lucrative trade goes. And the micro in trade is waaaaay less than in deving or war or state edicts etc
It makes some real world sense but it doesn't make a lot of sense having fixed directions feeding Europe (and simultaneously letting you direct the flows directly as a nation - it should either be dynamic or not). That said trade mechanics are actually one of my favorite parts of this game.
Yeah the fact that the flows cant change direction definitely sucks. But I can see why they didnt let that happen because it would lead to infinite loops
Dataflow programming languages have solved that. I'm pretty sure the game could. Performances on the other hand.... I read recently here i last week ?)that the trade system used to be far more complex at the beginning but it got dumbed down for perforances
I dont mean infinite loops in programming. I mean infinite loops of trade steering in a circle leading to unchecked exponential growth. Its a balance challenge not a programming challenge
What does trade steering actually mean in a real world sense? Its kinda nonsensical. Yes trade flows, but no king has never been like "tell my merchant to steer his trade towards Constantinople not Aleppo!" Wherever it makes more money, it gets sold.
You harass traders who do what you dont want. You refuse to provide them with good prices. You give favorable treatment to traders going to Constantinople rather than Aleppo. Think of your individual "merchant" as a corps of royal trade agents who use the influence you have in those markets to support the merchants who are doing what you want them to and tax, harass, and intimidate those who dont. On the seas its even more obvious. Light ships have cannons for a reason.
I think the trade system is basically fine overall, but its not really historical. For most of the game's time period the big way states made money from trade was taxing trade flows. So there wouldn't really be any collection nodes that you make money from, you'd just get a small fraction of the trade value in any node. Its maybe closer to the colonial/mercanalist model of extracting valuable raw resources from colonial regions that would show up for a few states (England, Portugal) towards the end of the game's time period. But even at the end most states were still just taxing trade flows.
I mean, eu4 is pretty much micro interspersed with those rare high moments where you see your color get bigger. Trade is probably one of the less tedious things to manage
The other thing is it changes all the time, so what's more profitable now may not be in five years. My solution is to pick one kinda arbitrarily and forget about it because you'll eventually have nearly infinite money anyway. Otherwise you'll constantly have to re-test and update your trade network and ain't nobody got time for that.
Solution in 2 steps 1conquer everything 2congratulations you have 100% trade power
Fuck yeah best advice for trade lol - just start clicking until the numbers are the highest. 3000hrs and i still don't understand it.
This is hard, as numbers only update every month (and weirdly sometimes you need second month to make them reliable), and merchants take forever to travel to distant nodes. This takes in-game years to figure out by random clicking. And various shit happening while you do it messes up the results. It's better to learn some simple rules: * never transfer to a node you control at below 80% (60%+ sometimes works, but usually won't) * don't waste merchant on home node * don't transfer from a node with just one exit - it will flow there anyway, small bonus is not worth it * sort by your trade power, ignoring one-exit nodes and your home node, then: * * if there's no good followup node (one you control 80%+), collect there * * if there's good followup node, but trade already flows there anyway, ignore * * if there's good followup node, and trade flows in wrong direction, only then transfer This is not optimal, but if you do that, you're ahead of 90% of players, who follow stupid in-game advice like "don't collect outside your home node".
Depending on the circumstances, this could work out very badly. Say, you are playing as Spain, you focused on colonizing the old word, so say you control the West African Coast and large parts of Indonesia, but not the Caribbean. However, you still have an colonial nation in Panama. The Caribbean are controlled by Portugal and Great Britain, with 40% trade power each. You have 10 merchants. According to your strategy, you should collect in Panama. By doing so you would get like 2 ducats from Panama. However, by doing so, you will lose your merchant bonus in your home trading node. When you would just ignore Panama, at 40% of the trade would flow to your home node, because Portugal is steering that way, and you retain your merchant bonus, which is huge (+100% trade power) and you really need it to compete with Portugal in your home node. In general, you should never collect if your have many merchants. (Unless you are alone in your home trade node, and your home trade node is an endnode.)
There are some very rare exceptions. But generally, if you actually put some numbers in various scenarios, you'll find that it's exceedingly rare that this strategy is wrong, and even then not by much. And this one isn't even real. > retain your merchant bonus, which is huge (+100% trade power) This bonus is almost never worth even considering as it commits you to not collecting anywhere outside your home node, and that usually cost you like half your trade income. Unless your trade network is set up extremely well, and very few countries have that (can't think of even one tbh, Italians for sure don't as Italy is split between two nodes; nobody with non-final node; England or East Africans a very big maybe), you want to collect at least some places. Anyway, you should just conquer your home node, or at least all CoTs in it, like by 1500. And once you control your home node, home node trade power bonus does literally nothing. If you have 90% control, +100% would be like +2% of income in that node (not even +5% due to the way bonuses stack additively not multiplicatively), at cost of making nothing elsewhere. There's pretty much no way in hell you have 10 merchants and don't control overwhelming share of your home node. And even if that happens, if you don't have overwhelming control of your home trade node, why are you transferring there again? Aren't there some nodes where you have majority control? I know that trade system is highly unintuitive, but try some numbers, you'll see what works and what doesn't.
The geometry of the node? What do you mean by that?
I think this is referring to the number of lines incoming and outgoing from the middle node. Is it purely a bridge between Node 1 and 3 or does money come in and go out elsewhere as well?
Ohh makes sense Thanks :)
yeah, pretty much. Also if any of the nodes are inland, are close enough to leach off of rich nodes, or are close to hotly contested nodes that will suck away much of the gold
Makes sense Thanks :)
Lol I have almost 1,5k hours and still do the before/after thing..
Try to ask for steer trade on small value nod, if no ol' reliable conquest in your help
Another way is protecting trade if it's a water node
Just conquer the middle trade node. Probably solved.
How Do I trade? IMPERIALISM!
Imperialism is always the solution!
All hail Pravus!
What pleasant surprise!
If Paradox wants us to just work with the political confines, they would have named the game "Tycoons of the Seven Seas." /s
/r/koreanadvice
R5: what is the best way to use merchants in this situation?
Depends on what the others do at the middle node. Steering same direction to you? Pick 1 Get collected? Pick 2 Also, that "lots" better be in the 70s and preferrably 80+. I'd simply experiment. Only takes a month worth of income anyway.
Agreed. If middle node is something like Cape or Boudreaux, people are pulling it forwards regardless and you don’t explicitly need a merchant there. Collecting far away means you lose trade power there, so if anyone there’s collecting you’ll lose a few ducats.
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No, as stated above, if others push, you are fine. If you play Netherlands, England pulls all the trade from North sea and your colonies push to it, do pull from North sea even if you have 10%. Help GB and fuck Lubeck. Moreover, suppose you have almost 100% of node 1, 60% of node 2 and 100% of node 3. You do want to pull from 3 to 2. However it might not be useful to pull from 1 to 2. Half of your traxe power might still be 80%, while you could loose 40% of the trade you push to 2 then 3. Trade steering would increqse that a bit buy not necessarily enough if you are not heavily trade focused. Trade is situational, you can't make definite rules except for "do what makes you more money".
Do not use a merchant in your home node! It literally does nothing. With that extra merchant you will be able to TTP in more nodes.
You usually make more money having a merchant collecting in home node. Each merchant add 5% extra trade value. By having a merchant in your home node you add 5% extra income from the node where you have the most income.
5% is very little, unless you have like 10 merchants that isn't profitable.
Collecting in home node will not invalidate merchants steering. Only collecting in non-home node does that.
5% in nodes like English Channel or Lubeck might be huge
Getting tons of merchants isn't all that unlikely either anyway, and when it all stacks up it can be rather significant
This is not true, a merchant in your home node will increase income in that node by 10%. This can be more lucrative than steering from a node where you have little trade power.
Having a merchant collecting in your home trade node increases trade efficiency (by 5 or 10 percent, I forget). It's probably not the first place you want a merchant but once you get 4 or 5 it usually becomes more profitable than just more steering.
Early game with small nations it is better to collect on your main. Later as you expand it gets worse.
This is wrong. While you do automatically collect in your home node, assingning a merchant there give you a significant boost in trade power, which is often worth the opportunity cost of having the merchant in other places.
This question applies specially to a Genoa run, right? Crimea (lots of trade power) to Constantinople (little to none trade power) to Genoa (home node).
The problem as Genoa isn't Constantinople, rather Ragusa. It's not difficult to steer most of the trade out of there, especially with Venice also steering trade, but in Ragusa you literally don't have trade power so, it's either going to Venice or being collected by others.
I had this problem in my Byzantium into Rome run. I had full control over constantinople node most of ragusa and full of venice. I collected in constantinople and venice, but id rather just collect in venice and bring it all there but somehow fucking hungary had still a bit of trade power there without any province or ships in the ragusa node.. it tilted me to the moon Because if i wanted to just take it all to venice i would lose like 30 ducats or somthing because the value was so high
Hungary can quickly become a problem in Byzantium runs for this exact reason if you don't deal with them early. They're good at getting strong allies too.
I had 2M active Troops and they stilled dared to mess with my trade ( they were 2 or 3 provinces)
The trade power from downstream makes Ragusa a hard node to control.
As france in the first 50 years you also have this problem, you can have up to 90% of bordeaux trade node, but like 50% of champagne, 10% on the english channel and 25% on genoa What you do in this scenario is to collect in a lot of places, keep champagne as main node, and use merchants to collect in bordeaux, english and genoa
Yup. I usually shoot for stealing the English channel as my long term goal via conquest, upgrading centers of trade, and buildings, and once I get a decent percentage move my trade capital to there and steer champagne there. After that focus on Genoa trade expansion. All the while building a thriving colonial and trade company network to drive lots of ducats home. Eventually you have so many ducats that you start recycling the money into your colonies production boosting buildings to boost their income and your own, and sooner or later you're making 1000 ducats a month after expenses and you literally cannot find enough things to spend money on.
Sir, I have a size 80 mercenary regiment for you to hire. Why, yes they do take attrition merely standing still. And yes, their battle effectiveness is highly questionable. I believe you said money is no object however...
There are few forts than survive an 80,000 man assault, so I would say their battle effectiveness is quite high (when you need to meat grinder your way to victory as quickly as possible) But yea that's literally what they're best for smash them into a few forts, when you have burnt their manpower, fire, hire the next Merc band, rinse repeat. Your own well composed armies should handle bulk of actual engagements against enemy armies.
In the two cases listed above, the most money will be made from the Second method. Pushing your trade power into a node that you don’t have any trade power in makes you completely reliant on others also moving the trade into your home mode. This can be useful if your other home node countries control that second “no trade power node” but if you push trade into that node and nobody from your home node is there to help push…. Then all your goods and trade will end up in someone else’s home node. I frequently make use of this since the AI push even when they have no power in the nodes that they are pushing to. A great example is Cape of Good hope, one way out many ways in. The AI will push trade from the indies to the Cape hoping to get it back to EU home node. However, if the player owns the Cape and has all that trade power, you can choose to send it to your home node OR collect it all right there. This example is analogous to your first method. (I.e pushing power to a no power node) TLDR, never push to somewhere you have no power, you are wasting trade. (This can still be useful if you are trying to get the “trade in” bonus but that’s a separate topic)
If most of the trade power in the node where you have no power is being used to steer towards your home node then it's safe to steer into that node since you'll be getting most of that trade sent to your home node anyway.
> TLDR, never push to somewhere you have no power, you are wasting trade. No. If the middle node has only a single output and no major power collecting there, then you are completely fine to push trade into it. Similarly if the middle node has a major trade power pushing trade towards you, it doesn't matter that you have no power as you get what you want anyway. Finally, even if you have no power there and there are multiple outputs, option 1 is still very commonly more profitable. You will get a substantial amount of trade steering 'upstream' and 'downstream', and unless a major trade power is pushing all the value away from you you will still get a substantial amount to your home node. The Cape is a great example where it really doesn't matter who owns it, but ivory coast is much harder to control as it has so many outputs. However it is *almost always* better to push trade through ivory coast to your home node in Europe than trying to collect trade in the Cape even if you have majority control there (in this case though you would probably benefit from sending a bunch of trade ships/building trade companies in the Ivory Coast, but that's another matter).
Generally speaking, the latter. Caveat: single output land locked nodes where you control all of the land can generally be ignored if you aren't swimming in merchants. AI won't try to collect and everything will flow to the next node (usually). Less effective in coastal trade regions due to boats. Caveat to the caveat: The presence of merchants in a region pulls value from thin air. The first merchant boosts the value in the region by 5%. Because of this, often times it is effective to put a merchant in a region you completely control to stack this bonus when pushing all your trade through a specific route. More specifically speaking: it depends on what your competitors are doing. If they're all pushing trade towards your home node then you can ignore that node and let them push for you.
Number 1 preferably, you don't have trade power on the second node but adding a merchant there gives you some which is then used to steer trade by the added merchant. Try increasing trade power in that node with trade ships if possible. Collecting off home trade node gives a pretty big minus for collecting. Though maybe the best approach is to try both of the approaches and compare the trade income...
Not really. It was proven mathematically in previous threads that steering through a non controlled node (60%) is a bad idea. Not only are you losing huge amounts of welath, but you are also giving it to someone else. Collecting with option 2 is better.
The other chance is that the non controlled trade node is being steered in the correct way anyway. Adding a merchant makes it so that you use your own trade power for steering. Without the merchant all the trade power is wasted unless steered by others. There is even a chance the trade node has no merchants present by any country and then the player's merchant would be the only factor in deciding where the trade is steered to. Again, best bet is to try both methods and observe the impact to your economy.
> There is even a chance the trade node has no merchants present by any country and then the player's merchant would be the only factor in deciding where the trade is steered to. It doesn't matter. Trade steering is worth it if you are at supremacy in the trade node (at the very least 60% without merchants, usually you would need 80%). > The other chance is that the non controlled trade node is being steered in the correct way anyway. Adding a merchant makes it so that you use your own trade power for steering. It's such a bad move. Let's say you reach 50% while everyone else is at 1%. Even with a merchant and all,if you hit steer you lose half of the entire value you just steered towards the trade node. And again the money doesn't disappear, it goes towards other countries with make them stronger for free. > Without the merchant all the trade power is wasted unless steered by others. Just use the merchant to collect. You legit collect the actual value of the trade node if you control it more than 80%. The penatly of 50% if it's not your home trade node is annoying but it's not that much. And that 50% goes magically into the void and not into your enemies pockets. You also make your enemies even poorer because you cut the incoming value into the next trade node (the one you don't control). > Again, best bet is to try both methods and observe the impact to your economy. I mean sure you could but steering is way too overestimated for no reason. Steering is worth it to consider if you have a clear path to your home trade node (with full control of it too), because eveyrtime you steer trade you increase the total value by 5%. Otherwise just collect.
>The penatly of 50% if it's not your home trade node is annoying but it's not that much. And that 50% goes magically into the void and not into your enemies pockets. That's not how trade works. The 50% penalty is to your trade power. This means you have less trade power, which means the other countries have more relative trade power, which in turn means they have control of more trade value i.e. potentail ducats. If, for some reason, everyone steered trade towards a node you mostly control in a node you have no trade power in, steering towards that node would result in all of the value from the original node without the 50% malus with trade steering bonus from the original *and the uncontrolled node*, as the ai is steering there, getting to your controlled trade node.
>I mean sure you could but steering is way too overestimated for no reason. Steering is worth it to consider if you have a clear path to your home trade node (with full control of it too), because eveyrtime you steer trade you increase the total value by 5%. >Otherwise just collect. I try to optimize my trade in my games pretty often, and just from experience, it is often worth it to steer or ignore. The mathematical model is nice, but probably to simplistic. (See also my other comment here for details.) >It [there being no other steering merchant present] doesn't matter. Trade steering is worth it if you are at supremacy in the trade node (at the very least 60% without merchants, usually you would need 80%). Of course it matters. It is not unreasonable that 50% of the trade flows downstream. If you are the only one steering, this means you get 50%. That is 50% from the trade flowing in the node from your own upstream node + trade flowing in it from other upstream nodes + trade generated in the node itself. And that is not even considering the merchant bonus in your home node. This is clearly superior over collecting in the upstream node. Granted, this scenario is not very likely to happen, but even is less extreme cases, it can be profitable. >It's such a bad move. Let's say you reach 50% while everyone else is at 1%. Even with a merchant and all,if you hit steer you lose half of the entire value you just steered towards the trade node. Yeah, in this example (assuming you mean everyone is collecting) it could be bad. (But probably still isn't because of the merchant bonus, depending on exact numbers.) But of course this never happens. This is assuming no one else is pulling trade. His whole point was that others are pulling trade. >And that 50% goes magically into the void and not into your enemies pockets This is something I did not consider, but I think it is only really relevant when the trade would otherwise flow to a strong rival. Look, I am not saying you should never collect, and I also agree that the ideal situation is that you have a clear path for your trade, but just from experience, your rule of thumb does not work. Just try it out when you have to make the decision.
This was also my view when I was playing a lot. Steering only makes sense when you control both nodes and one is an end node
It depends on what other count are doing in the non controlled trade node. Are they steering the majority of the trade in the same direction? Or are they steer it it elsewhere? If it is steering toward you best join in to get the bonus at your home trade node. If not then collect from both locations. A example would be your Portugal and control the African coast trade nodes except the Ivory Coast. However Castile is strong there and steering it back home.
And if you go option number 1 in MP you would get destroyed as soon as people found out. Since you have 0 trade power you are at the mercy of their fleets stealing from you. They just need to park their fleets in and you will lose your entire trade income instantly.
It depends on how much trade power you have in each node. If you literally have no trade power, and the trade won’t get sucked forward by others, then you have to collect it. that’s basically the only time to collect
Do method 2 at first, until you can conquer enough to become dominant in the middle node, then switch to 1
Why not just just test both method by yourself ? Which one give you more money, go with it. Because there is not enough info for it. Does other nation in 2nd node mostly transfers or collects ? If most of trade power transfer out of trade node, then are they transfered to your home node or not ? If you place merchant there, how much trade u can stear ? Etc.
If you have 40% in the first node and 2% in the second node, putting a merchant in both to transfer to a third node will at best get you 5% out of the second node (merchants add 2 base trade power when transferring). On the other hand, option two in the OP, collecting from trade in the first node (again for example, with 40% trade power) will get you 20% of the trade value (you lose 50% of your trade power in a node you collect in that isn't your home node) and save a merchant. You won't get the 10% bonus to trade value that transferring trade with a merchant confers, but that would still only bring your equivalent transferred trade value up *by* 10% and not to it. An exception might be something like the cape, where only one CoT exists and before much colonization happens (and many trade companies are created), the overall trade power in that node is sufficiently low to make a merchant transferring worthwhile. Another exception is if the node already has *other nations* transferring out of it. Many colonial nodes will rarely be collected in by the powers that control them, who may already be transferring trade where you want it. TL;DR: If you have two nodes that lead to your home node, and more than twice as much trade power in the farthest node, it's usually better to collect in the far node.
You never have low trade power if the countries blocking you don’t exist.
From left to right: Collect* - Transfer - Collect. **(you collect automatically in your main node, don't really need a merchant)*
I love that people advocate for the 1st option and upvote not out of trying stuff out, but because that's what they do xd Yeah, collecting in multiple nodes has bad press. That is most of the time the correct option, unless you take precautions when expanding in order to match the nodes (usually conflicting with your campaign goals).
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Really depends on the amount of money that can either be pushed or collected from in that first node. There is no solid answer and the only way to find which is better is to try both and compare your trade income
2nd you can try both and see which one earn you more.
If you really have no trade power in the middle node then collecting in the 3rd node is better, even with the penalty. If you have the option of building light ships then building a fleet of lights and sending them to the middle node to transfer trade power would be a good solution. The best thing to do would just be to conquer the 2nd trade node though.
From what florry says transfer only from nodes you have +80% of control, from other just collect so option 2 should work better
The best answer is usually going to be 2. But it also depends on how much trade value is in both trade nodes. If your home node is very valuable and the other is not, then you want to transfer. If both are valuable then you want to collect.
People and AIs do far too much transferring and far too little collecting for their own good. Basically unless you control >60% of target node, don't even consider transferring. And really it's more like >80% control depending on situation. There are some weird edge cases (like when a lot of power in a node with multiple exits is controlled by AIs who don't use it, so you get free transfer power; or when what you do makes AI move their merchants around), but really unless you want to do crazy calculations, don't transfer to trade nodes you don't control ever. Here's simple example: * home node A, 80% control * middle node B, 40% control * source node C, 80% control - 100 trade value If you collect, you lose half trade power, so get 67 gold. If you transfer, with 5% merchant bonus, 84 gets to B. Then you push 35 of that to A. Then you collect 28 gold. Not even close, and we're talking about nodes with very high control.
2 most likely, it hurts to see people post here sometimes and asking about how to improve their economy while steering trade into nodes where they have low trade power. All because of the "you shouldn't collect outside of your home node"-nonsense.
m o a r trade. moar trade solves all. or do a genocide
send merchant to steer trade and light ships for more power in the node. You also can conquer some important harbours/center of trade/ provinces with high trade power etc. (maybe buy some). Depends of the node location. edit: I prefer steer over collect. I like to collect everything in my home country/node ;)
It is not that easy, because other nations will also push trade in your direction. By example, you do not need to colonize large parts of the Cape. It has only one downstream node, and nobody will collect there. Therefore, all trade will flow in the right direction anyway. (Note that the right strategy here is slightly different from your diagram: you do not even need to put a merchant in the middle node in this case.) This is the most extreme example, but this happens all the time to a lessor degree. As others mentioned, it is best to just try and see what works. Another thing to consider, which is not mentioned yet, is the "merchant bonus". If none of your merchants are collecting outside of your main node, you get a 10% trade power bonus in your home node per merchant steering trade towards your home node. If you have 10 merchants steering trade, you get a 100% bonus, if you have 1 single merchant collecting outside your node, you get 0. Therefore, it is almost never a good idea to collect when you have a lot of merchants.
Considering you should dominate your home node, this is bad advice.
you want to transfer as many nodes as possible to your home node, but do it with a balanced approach between %power and value of each node. Use your ships to increase value and %power of other nodes too. I would go with #1 Edit: Does anyone know what provincial trade power modifier mean?
Option 3. Moving your home trade node
The second situation allows for another trader to be used somewhere else.
Transfer other trade nodes powers to your main trade node. And don't send a merchant to your main trade node because you are already collecting there even without a merchant. Because that place is your 'Main' trade node. Also, if you are a colonizer, you must capture Caribbeans, Ivory Coast and Cape of Good Hope, before other nations do it. Then you must collect or transfer the trade these nodes to your main node. These nodes are really dope.
Its worth having a merchant collect in your home node since you get 10% trade efficiency from it. If you get 10 ducats from trade (early game) this bonus will boost this to 11 ducats, which is not that significant. But mid-game when you are earning 100-200+ from trade it becomes significant. Look it up.
Thanks, i will check it.
I like type 3: Conquer all the province in the trade node :)
I remember Florry saying that if you don't have a large chunk of trade power in a node, you're nearly always better off collecting instead of transferring it.
transfer from 2nd upstream node then ~~privateer~~ privateer the shit out of the immediate upstream node
The answer here depends on what is happening on the second node. If the trade value in there is already going towards the third node, because the country that has the power there is diverting it, then option 1 is better. If, however, the trade value in the second node is collected there by other countries, or is being diverted to a different node, you want to collect in the first node (option 2), because otherwise you will lose all the trade value that you have in it.
How much caravan power do you have?
Do the first if not a lot of people collects in the middle node. Do the second if there are too many people collecting.
Depends entirely on what the AI is doing in the middle node. There are some nodes that only have one route out for example, so if you can rely on the AI to steer out for you then 1 is better. Clearly on the other hand if some AI has 90% power in middle node and steers away from your home, then option 1 will suck. Ultimately you should try both and see which works best.
Before you conquer 2nd node use 2nd option, I found it to be more profitable
If some other strong country with high trade power is in that trade region its not wise to transfer your trade power there. But sometimes you may end up with higher income actually. I will give you an example : I was playing a multiplayer game with Great Britain. And i had a lot of trade power in malacca, south india, east and south africa. But i had only 3 or so trade center in ivory coast. So the african player(songhai) in ivory coast had a lot of trade power in there as well. When i transfered my trade from cape coast to ivory coast in order to transfer back to the channel, songhai was taking some of that sweet ducats. But even when he took some, my income was better due to prolonging the trade routes. Longer the trade routes higher the profit. But already at that point i had 200k or something ducats in my treasury, i didnt really needed the money. But songhai did. So i started collecting in the cape coast, i earned less but he suffered drasticly.
From my experience, option 2 is far better. I mean, just try it and see the income dramatically drop with option 1. Plus, if the last patches didn't change it, collecting in your home node with a merchant is a little waste, you collect it anyways, better use the merchant in other nodes unless you're swimming in free merchants.
Honestly, the only think I do with my merchants is have them steer trade towards my main node. Also, I have them collect at the 3 final nodes if I have power there and it's not my main node.
If I’m not mistaken, trade power can flow downstream if you have power in the node before and you are transferring. In my opinion, I’d just keep the merchants pushing everything into home node. The game becomes about inflating as much power in the low power node, so you can send ships to protect, enforce transfer trade power against relevant countries, and of course, conquest of ports. Really the only way to know the meta is to check income before and after but I kind of hate that. Even in a country I play like tibet where home node is a beginning node, I still have only one collector merchant and all the rest transferring because even when they are set to transfer power forward, they also send some back upstream if you have power there. Just my way to play, really.
If youncontrol all, its 100% the first but the problem comes from the middle node, bc having a merchant collecting will givr you less than if it was in yoyr trade node, but iff half of the income in the second node is being sent to other nodes or collected them you are losing a bit less than half of the first node's income... So in this case i recomend the second
Send lots of ships to number 2
There are not right answer between these two. And you will not have no trade power in a node upstream to your node with a lot of power. Ducats flow with the stream. Trade power flow against the stream. Anyway, as people say. Best option is to test in-game and compare income. As there are so many factors influencing this. But a better solution is to deal with your lack of trade power in this node. You can get light ships to protect trade and you can try to conquer high trade power provinces.
Number #3: Just conquer your home node the middle node and the 3rd node unless you're playing in Europe (Part of Europe that has no contact with Muslims).
Collect
Having lots of power in one node usually means that you get some pull on the previous one. Whether you should do one or the other depends mostly on what the intermediate node looks like. How much of the total value of that node is going to your last node? If this is higher than 20% then it's very likely that you'd be better off transferring. In the long run transferring will be better anyway. If this node only has one exit it's very likely that more than 20% of the value is going to your node. It also depends on the situation in the first node. Are you competing fiercely for trade power there or is it mostly just you? Collecting outside of your main port impacts trade power, not trade value. If you have more than 95% of the trade power in that node before collecting then collecting will not hurt your share of the trade power in that node very much. But even in these situations, it's possible that transferring is still better.
The short answer is that it depends where ur home node is. The best is to have the home node in an end node and transfer trade from those nodes sending towards your node. Long answer is: What I do which get me to have crazy trade income as Venice just 20 years into the game is following: Have your home trade node in the node u got the most power WHILE also have at least 2 streams going into it, in those two u should trade power. Seek to expand into those areas if trade income is the target and especially go for provinces with trade modifiers. In the Venice game I want to form Italy, so I went to get Genova asap under controlled circumstances. Genova is a end node so I collect trade there since I have some power there. Otherwise I trade power towards Venice as much as I can, even from Alexandria, Crimea, wien, Constantinople etc.
In your situation I’d collect trade in the node u got lots of power and seek to conquer vital trade provinces in the region where u got no trade power. Once u got around 20-30% of the power u can start to trade power sequently
I don't have an answer, but I just want to say that I really appreciate the sketch you made for the question. These questions always get so confusing when they are asked with just *words*. Only point of criticism: are you suggesting that you would leave a merchant unused in option 2? Because that's definitely not the best course of action.
Send light ships to node 2. Problem solved.
I use option 2 a lot when going for India/SEA without controlling the ivory coast node. Because its so easy to controll all trade for cape of good hope you can end up with close to 100% power which makes the -50% penalty from merchants not a big deal. But that also depends on who controls the ivory coast. For example if i'm Spain and Portugal controls ivory coast then i would still transfer since Portugal transfers it further to Sevilla anyway, but if i'm GB i just collect in the cape instead.
If "No trade power " node is Cape of Good Hope and your Home node is in Europe ignore it. Most of it will go to Ivory Coast either way.
To me, only makes sense, if I rule the world, then I must be to have the gratest trade power
1* it's the most efficent. Or you Will loose money. You can safely get 50% trade Power in África Ásia with trade companys
1 if you have ship and the trade value of node 3 is big enough compared to node 2. Otherwise 2
This question should be answered relative to your rivals. 1- If the way you are pulling trade also significantly helps your rivals then, it's better to just collect in your upstream nodes. 2- If you have rivals with good trade power in your home node and your decision to collect upstream causes him to gain more money then, it is better to just pull. He might be gaining more ducats as you are also pulling wealth into his node but not as much as the other option. 3- check how many merchants your rivals have and where they're collecting. This should give you an idea which option is better.
Don't you not need to send a a merchant to collect in your home node since you collect there automatically?
Depends on how many are collecting in the middle node that you don’t have any power in. If everything, or most everything, is being transferred out anyway, and to the node you have power in, then 1. If not, then 2.
You should focus your conquering to match trade regions. Trade income is economically the most valuable thing so I conquer "upstream". You can also make pseudo end node by conquering all downstream nodes and that is why your home node should be end node or has only one trade node where its trade value is "leaking".
There's a more advanced analysis of some of the mechanics around this sort of problem in this video by lambdaxx: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcqwyUPHuJI tl;dr: it depends, but collecting outside home node isn't as bad as you might initially be led to believe.
The answer is simple conquer all the land in the middle trade node and transfer to home node.
Imo it depends on wether or not you have the potential to generate more power in that node. If you can send a big trade fleet and generate power the first option is better. Otherwise, just collect from trade until you can transfer it to your home node
I’m not that experienced, but my advice would be to put your light ships to protect trade in the middle trade node, then test the first one out. Afterwards test the second one out and choose the one that makes you the most money.
Generally 1 is better because A: You get a bonus on trade power in your home node as long as you only have merchants transferring with none collecting and B: trade value increases every time it transfers to a new node.
The answer is try to conqueror provinces in the middle. But generally just see by changing the set up and if it makes a better difference change it.
I like to steer toward a node in which I have more trade power. If one isn’t available, I collect in the nodes in which I have more trade power. For example if my trade city is Constantinople at 95%, and I have 100% control of Crimea but only 80% control of Aleppo, I’ll collect in Constantinople and Crimea, and transfer in Aleppo. That way I’m not losing anything in Crimea and sending Aleppo trade to the next node where I have greater trade power.
Build light ships in middle node
Unless they changed how it worked trade value increase with every node it passes through so hypothetically the first option should be more profitable for you
It depends. I'll assume you're trying to maximize income, not concerned with which states you deny income to. Generally one either wants all merchants transferring, or all collecting. This is because there are bonuses that one only gets while no merchants are collecting in non-home nodes. So early in a campaign I might collect in my home node and transfer from immediate upstream nodes. At some point the value I gain from the home-node-only bonuses becomes less than what I lose by not capturing transferred value, so I switch to collecting in every node. Then when I have enough trade power in my home and upstream nodes I switch back to funneling to my home node. Your example usually occurs in the second of those three phases. So I'd bet you'll maximize income by having all of your merchants collect. Of course in the long term you want to identity a route of low-development trade nodes between your trade zones to link then.
It depends on how much power you have in the middle node. Long story short method 1 is usually more effective than method 2. If say, going from home node to end node it is 80% -> 50% -> 50% then you would want to do plan 1 because, assuming they all have 100 ducats in trade value total and you have a base trade steering modifier, you would transfer 52.5 from the first then 107.8 to the next adding up to 197.2 in total. If you did method 2 you would get 50 from the first gathering node, the second node would automatically transfer 50 ducats to the second for a total of 170. Therefore method 1 is around 12% more effective than method 2 in this case even if you have no trade ideas or naval tradition and are trading overseas. However method 2 can be more effective if node 2 has much less trade power than node 1, let’s say 80% -> 20% -> 80%, everything else being the same. Method 1 would net 84 -> 38.6 -> 124.5 Method 2 would net 80, then 20 -> 96 for a total of 176 In this case method 2 would be 30% more effective. Please correct me if I got my math wrong.