Industrial products: trade goods?

This struck me a while ago but I never posted it for discussion:
1. Shouldn't industrial town production be linked to supply of resources?
2. Why aren't the products of your towns industry tradeable goods, as they were in reality?

I realise that to do the above would open a whole can of worms wrt the current economic and trade system but I'm intrigued as to why it was decided not to implement the above from the word go.

In all honesty, my first thought was: "why can't I sell my industrial goods, as well as my "raw" commodities around the world?" After all, it's what really made Britain wealthy (it wasn't just the opium). :beam:

I assume the decoupling of industrial wealth generation from production and even supply was to simplify the already comparativley (to other TW games) complex economic system. The tax income mechanic seems frankly rather occult to me, but from what i can unravel of it, it is a good-enough model for taxable wealth.

That said, I can't see why one shouldn't be able to trade the manufactured goods of one's empire as much as the spices, sugar and furs "harvested" in it, as well as enjoying the benefits of increased town wealth.

Connecting a reliable supply of cotton, wool, iron and lumber to your factories would also add more strategic depth to empire building and economic development. As in games like CIV, diplomacy, trade and war could revolve around deeper concerns than purely greed for exploitative wealth.

I don't think either of the top two points would take anything away from ETW, but they would add a lot more (and distract you from the ignominy of not just making you cannon shoot at the extremeties of enemy units).

I'm fairly certain that the "Other" trade resource represents factory goods.

I don't think the "other" goods have anyhting to do with your actual production levels. My trade has remained relatively constant, despite upgrading almost all my industrial facilities to their maximum (and with 57 regions, average of two per region, I have a lot of them!).

I agree with anweRU, "other trade goods" I think are just a sort of float value. If not, and they do represent industrial goods then they are far to inconsequential.

Playing a prussian campaign, I had absolutely no trade goods (no nodes or plantations at all). My trade with other factions due to "other goods" never got above ~200-400 + long term trading bonus. Total trade figures grew as my campaign progressed, but I put that down to the trade bonus -not my increased industrialisation (which being as I was maxing out industrial development and in possession of the most productive area in the world should have been far higher if it was counting).