Economy Observations, Tips, Etc.

With the removal of global food supply, what buildings are people specializing in and prioritizing to build an economy? I'm going to just make a bullet list of my observations and thoughts.

1. Trading ports are awesome. 700 wealth + other bonuses is worth it for the price.
2. Farms are better than at first glance. The values listed are for barren fields. Anything above that has a multiplier, up to 3.0x for very fertile fields.
3. Silver/gold mines seem terrible this time around. For their cost, a lot of other improvements provide better bang for the buck.
4. Police stations are a must, especially with modernization and because it takes much longer to convert newly conquered provinces of the opposing faction.
5. At first, I thought the market chain is always better for inns. Now, I'm thinking the gambling den chain is better for later provinces with significant permanent resistance to invaders. By the time you get to a permanent +2 or above, you can be fully modernized already, rendering the minus to modernization pretty irrelevant. The market chain gives better income, growth and enough happiness to offset its modernization penalty. The gambling den chain gives a minus to modernization (irrelevant once you hit the final tier, I think) and up to +5 happiness. That more than offsets the industrial chain.

... and I was wondering why fertility of farms had stopped making a difference!

How about the industry chain?

Gambling Den chain also strikes me as a useful way to prevent modernisation if you want to keep pumping out experience Kachi units at discount prices ;)

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Originally Posted by Peasant Phill

How about the industry chain?

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I'm at around turn 50 in my game and haven't bothered yet. I've been fully modernized for quite a few turns now but haven't researched the +2 happiness/repression techs in the 3rd or fourth tier because there seem to be better stuff to research. I've been mostly building inns (market line) and police stations in my provinces. The next unlock is pretty expensive at this point in the game so I'm upgrading ports, specialty buildings and inns first. Somebody who's better at math could crunch the numbers more to see if the tax increase is actually worth it versus upgrading inns.

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Originally Posted by andrewt

Somebody who's better at math could crunch the numbers more to see if the tax increase is actually worth it versus upgrading inns.

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Which are we talking about here? Craft buildings? Or Inns? Mines? For the latter two, it's always worth it if you're willing to spend the time to wait for the payoff. You say mines are bad, and I say they are great. I had one province making 13000 a turn thanks to its gold mine. A 500 gold increase for 10,000 gold pays itself off in 20 turns, but this is not counting the increase in taxes from a flat percent bonus to your income. The Geisha 10% tax bonus will turn 13000 into 14300. You will see a bigger payoff in that regard depending on the amount the province makes by itself.

For the former (craft buildings), that will depend solely on your trade routes, which can swap hands and change at any given moment during a game. You will get something from Britain, France and the US, but I don't have solid numbers on those.

With 4 "years" (in reality, like 40 turns) from the end of the game, I was making 25000 gold a turn, and had so much money I couldn't spend it all. All I really did was get my towns up to level 2, build a station and a market, and then upgrade whatever trade resource they had, in addition to building a port.

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Originally Posted by Madae

A 500 gold increase for 10,000 gold pays itself off in 20 turns, but this is not counting the increase in taxes from a flat percent bonus to your income.

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Are you referring to a provincial wealth increase of 500 or an actual tax revenue increase, which is a fraction of the wealth? With taxes at 30% the revenue on 500 wealth would be 150, would it not?

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Originally Posted by Madae

Which are we talking about here? Craft buildings? Or Inns? Mines? For the latter two, it's always worth it if you're willing to spend the time to wait for the payoff. You say mines are bad, and I say they are great. I had one province making 13000 a turn thanks to its gold mine. A 500 gold increase for 10,000 gold pays itself off in 20 turns, but this is not counting the increase in taxes from a flat percent bonus to your income. The Geisha 10% tax bonus will turn 13000 into 14300. You will see a bigger payoff in that regard depending on the amount the province makes by itself.

For the former (craft buildings), that will depend solely on your trade routes, which can swap hands and change at any given moment during a game. You will get something from Britain, France and the US, but I don't have solid numbers on those.

With 4 "years" (in reality, like 40 turns) from the end of the game, I was making 25000 gold a turn, and had so much money I couldn't spend it all. All I really did was get my towns up to level 2, build a station and a market, and then upgrade whatever trade resource they had, in addition to building a port.

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I think province income is revenue * (tax rate*(1-administrative costs)). When I say mines are bad, I meant in comparison to other buildings. Right now, it costs around 5k to upgrade my gold mine from 800 to 1400 wealth. In comparison, upgrading a port to a trade port adds 700 wealth and assorted other bonuses for around 3k. Upgrading inn to market is around 2k for 360 to 720 and upgrading from 720 to 1260 is around 3k. These have other bonuses as well.

Upgrading the city line increases the tax rate in addition to giving an extra build slot. I was wondering how big of an increase that would be compared to upgrading something else.

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Originally Posted by andrewt

I think province income is revenue * (tax rate*(1-administrative costs)). When I say mines are bad, I meant in comparison to other buildings. Right now, it costs around 5k to upgrade my gold mine from 800 to 1400 wealth. In comparison, upgrading a port to a trade port adds 700 wealth and assorted other bonuses for around 3k. Upgrading inn to market is around 2k for 360 to 720 and upgrading from 720 to 1260 is around 3k. These have other bonuses as well.

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Apples to oranges. You're comparing a first level upgrade (port [no income] -> trading port [700]), where a trading port would be the first level of the income side, to a second level upgrade (800 for first level gold mine -> 1400 for second). How much is it to build a first level gold mine that goes from 0 -> 800? Right off the bat it's making more than a port. Knowing how much that first level is is important information.

I also forget if that trade port can be upgraded further for more income. It would be worthwhile to know what the cost of a trading port -> next level would be, and how much of an income increase that is, which is what you should be comparing that 800 -> 1400 to.

The 720 -> 1260 is another argument altogether. You're sacrificing potential income for other bonuses, which is all fine and dandy, but a gold mine is pure income. The 240 disparity isn't much, but that's what you're paying for when you pay that extra 2k. However, we would also need to know what levels those are. A gold mine has the potential to make, I believe, 2100 (for somewhere between 10-15k). The 1260 is the max level inn or whatever, correct?

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Upgrading the city line increases the tax rate in addition to giving an extra build slot. I was wondering how big of an increase that would be compared to upgrading something else.

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From a purely economical standpoint, there isn't a single thing that can make more money than a gold mine, trade ports and trade notwithstanding.

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Are you referring to a provincial wealth increase of 500 or an actual tax revenue increase, which is a fraction of the wealth? With taxes at 30% the revenue on 500 wealth would be 150, would it not?

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You lost me - math is not my strong point. I was going off a base value, whatever that is, that if you spend 10000 for a revenue increase of 500, it would take 20 turns for that 500 (once the building was completed) to pay off the 10000 by itself. Percent bonuses would factor into it afterwards, such as the 10% bonus from the geisha, which would make it 550 (and 18 turns instead of 20). This is, of course, not counting the other income the province may be making, which would probably benefit more from the 10% as a whole.

I have always assumed that if you spent money to increase the income by 500, that was after taxes, not before. In other words, if that 500 is being taxed and you're really only getting 150, then why go to all the trouble to confuse the builder and just say its a 150 increase?

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Originally Posted by Madae

I have always assumed that if you spent money to increase the income by 500, that was after taxes, not before. In other words, if that 500 is being taxed and you're really only getting 150, then why go to all the trouble to confuse the builder and just say its a 150 increase?

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Because the 150 is a variable outcome. The tax rate is adjustable. At a 20% rate the income from 500 wealth would be 100. At 40%, 200.

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Originally Posted by Nelson

Because the 150 is a variable outcome. The tax rate is adjustable. At a 20% rate the income from 500 wealth would be 100. At 40%, 200.

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I'm looking at it from 500 as the base, and the 20% is added on to it. 20% = 100 (600), 40% = 200 (700). The tax is going to you, not to someone else. You're assuming someone is taxing you, when in reality you're taxing them from whatever the base value is + the tax bonus.

This is easily solved if you just load up a game, take note of what a province makes, build something, and then see what the total amount would be after it's completed.

Or maybe you're agreeing with me and I'm just confused. Now that I look at it, I think that's the case. The way you worded it was confusing.

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if you spend 10000 for a revenue increase of 500, it would take 20 turns for that 500 (once the building was completed) to pay off the 10000 by itself. Percent bonuses would factor into it afterwards, such as the 10% bonus from the geisha, which would make it 550 (and 18 turns instead of 20).

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Province tax bonus (the global setting in finance) would be afterwards as well. So, yes, it would pay off sooner if you factor in everything.

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Originally Posted by Madae

Apples to oranges. You're comparing a first level upgrade (port [no income] -> trading port [700]), where a trading port would be the first level of the income side, to a second level upgrade (800 for first level gold mine -> 1400 for second). How much is it to build a first level gold mine that goes from 0 -> 800? Right off the bat it's making more than a port. Knowing how much that first level is is important information.

I also forget if that trade port can be upgraded further for more income. It would be worthwhile to know what the cost of a trading port -> next level would be, and how much of an income increase that is, which is what you should be comparing that 800 -> 1400 to.

The 720 -> 1260 is another argument altogether. You're sacrificing potential income for other bonuses, which is all fine and dandy, but a gold mine is pure income. The 240 disparity isn't much, but that's what you're paying for when you pay that extra 2k. However, we would also need to know what levels those are. A gold mine has the potential to make, I believe, 2100 (for somewhere between 10-15k). The 1260 is the max level inn or whatever, correct?

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I'm playing as the Saga faction and I captured the gold mine early on. I'm fairly certain that all the province specialties already come with the first level built in. The only decision is whether to upgrade that gold mine ASAP or upgrade other stuff first.

Whenever I build something, the formula I use is marginal benefit/marginal cost. The gold mine tops out at 2k, but it already starts at 800. Basically, you're spending 5k to add 600 and another 10k to add another 600. If I have 5k, I have the choice of either spending it all to upgrade an 800 wealth gold mine to 1400 or spend 4k to upgrade 2 inns to 2 markets. That's upgrading 2 buildings that give 360 to both of them giving 720 + 2 wealth to town growth each turn.

I'm not yet at the stage in my game that I can upgrade everything. And whenever I think of upgrading something, there's always been something that offers more bang for the buck than upgrading that gold mine. As Saga, the three very fertile lands nearby are just insane. I rushed to commercial farming (1400 wealth) on all three of them immediately. I haven't even researched the last upgrade yet but they're already insane. Very fertile means all three are giving 4200 (1400*3) wealth.

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Originally Posted by andrewt

I'm playing as the Saga faction and I captured the gold mine early on. I'm fairly certain that all the province specialties already come with the first level built in. The only decision is whether to upgrade that gold mine ASAP or upgrade other stuff first.

Whenever I build something, the formula I use is marginal benefit/marginal cost. The gold mine tops out at 2k, but it already starts at 800. Basically, you're spending 5k to add 600 and another 10k to add another 600. If I have 5k, I have the choice of either spending it all to upgrade an 800 wealth gold mine to 1400 or spend 4k to upgrade 2 inns to 2 markets. That's upgrading 2 buildings that give 360 to both of them giving 720 + 2 wealth to town growth each turn.

I'm not yet at the stage in my game that I can upgrade everything. And whenever I think of upgrading something, there's always been something that offers more bang for the buck than upgrading that gold mine. As Saga, the three very fertile lands nearby are just insane. I rushed to commercial farming (1400 wealth) on all three of them immediately. I haven't even researched the last upgrade yet but they're already insane. Very fertile means all three are giving 4200 (1400*3) wealth.

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Balancing modernisation is part of it too, I guess. Everything you do is not out of the norm of what I would do. I typically have all my cities at level 2 and build an inn and station. There probably is a way to "min-max" your economy, but I go for what is just acceptable to me at the time, not what is necessarily the better choice. Again, math is not my favorite subject, and my brain is tickled by big numbers, so gold mines are naturally something I would gravitate towards simply because it sounds like money. But again, it may not be the best. If it's important to know exactly what the best way to go about doing things is, then you'll probably have to find someone else to go into that.

On the other hand, it's easier to defend one great province than several mediocre provinces. I can think of quite a few different reasons why I would focus on one particular settlement as opposed to several.

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Originally Posted by Madae

I'm looking at it from 500 as the base, and the 20% is added on to it. 20% = 100 (600), 40% = 200 (700). The tax is going to you, not to someone else. You're assuming someone is taxing you, when in reality you're taxing them from whatever the base value is + the tax bonus.

This is easily solved if you just load up a game, take note of what a province makes, build something, and then see what the total amount would be after it's completed.

Or maybe you're agreeing with me and I'm just confused. Now that I look at it, I think that's the case. The way you worded it was confusing.

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No, the way it works is that if the tax rate is 20%, you're only receiving 20% of the 500 wealth. 500 is what is added to the economy. What you tax is what you get as income. I believe 30% is the base and the % from towns and from geishas are added in, which makes them pretty potent.

Let's say you have enough provinces that your administrative expense is 25%. If you're upgrading a gold mine from 800 to 1400 wealth, you're getting an extra 600*(30% tax rate*(1-25% administrative expense)) = 135 in tax income every turn.

Now imagine that town with the 800 wealth gold mine also has meagre soil (1.3 multiplier) tenant fields (900 wealth), an inn (360 wealth) and 70 in town wealth. The total economy would be 800 + 1.3*900 + 360 + 70 = 2400 and the tax income would be 2400*(30%(1-25%)) = 540 per turn.

Upgrading that to a large town would change it to 2400*(32*(1-25%)) = 576 per turn. The extra 36 is clearly inferior to the 135 from upgrading the gold mine, even after taking into account that the large town upgrade is around half the price. Of course, the more you upgrade the inn, farms and mine, the better the large town upgrade becomes.

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Originally Posted by andrewt

No, the way it works is that if the tax rate is 20%, you're only receiving 20% of the 500 wealth. 500 is what is added to the economy. What you tax is what you get as income. I believe 30% is the base and the % from towns and from geishas are added in, which makes them pretty potent.

Let's say you have enough provinces that your administrative expense is 25%. If you're upgrading a gold mine from 800 to 1400 wealth, you're getting an extra 600*(30% tax rate*(1-25% administrative expense)) = 135 in tax income every turn.

Now imagine that town with the 800 wealth gold mine also has meagre soil (1.3 multiplier) tenant fields (900 wealth), an inn (360 wealth) and 70 in town wealth. The total economy would be 800 + 1.3*900 + 360 + 70 = 2400 and the tax income would be 2400*(30%(1-25%)) = 540 per turn.

Upgrading that to a large town would change it to 2400*(32*(1-25%)) = 576 per turn. The extra 36 is clearly inferior to the 135 from upgrading the gold mine, even after taking into account that the large town upgrade is around half the price. Of course, the more you upgrade the inn, farms and mine, the better the large town upgrade becomes.

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I'll take your word for it.

I noticed that the "top-tier" specialisations also have a modern and a traditional option. In many cases the modern version gives more growth bonuses but less upfront income in return for modernisation and modernisation-related unhappiness whereas the traditional version gives less growth bonus but more upfront income and no modernisation or modernisation-related unhappiness.

In many cases it seems better to go with traditional over the modern, assuming you have maximised development, although I suppose if you are going for the long haul the growth might be better?

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Originally Posted by Trithemius

In many cases it seems better to go with traditional over the modern, assuming you have maximised development, although I suppose if you are going for the long haul the growth might be better?

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I'm not so sure. Granted I haven't tested this but I was under the impression in earlier games that growth was more benificial than upfront income.
This should definetly be looked at.

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Originally Posted by Peasant Phill

I'm not so sure. Granted I haven't tested this but I was under the impression in earlier games that growth was more benificial than upfront income.
This should definetly be looked at.

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Well, it would take +2 town wealth/turn 50 turns to match an extra +100 wealth, while generating 50% of the taxation (at the point when wealth becomes equal). So that would mean it takes, um, around 65 turns for +2 town wealth to break even with +100 wealth, after which it becomes more profitable.

EDIT: Maths is wonky. See andrewt's post below.

Quite right, early on the Modern buildings are useful - but I think this gets less so as the game end approaches. There is also the issue that income from buildings will not be seriously comprised if the province changes hands, whereas town wealth seems to take a beating.

If you're talking about the province specialty buildings, I don't think the "modernized" versions are currently useful. The traditional option generally has +200 income while the modern one has +2 growth. That means it will take 100 turns for it to be equal and another 100 to get back the lost income.

You also get an unhappiness penalty in exchange for more modernization points. However, by the time you get there, you'll be too close to max modernization for it to be worthwhile.

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Originally Posted by andrewt

If you're talking about the province specialty buildings, I don't think the "modernized" versions are currently useful. The traditional option generally has +200 income while the modern one has +2 growth. That means it will take 100 turns for it to be equal and another 100 to get back the lost income.

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Ach, that is correct. I can evidently no longer do maths. :whip:

I guess I am really milking my game for turns? :)
I have gotten over +200 out of my modern buildings on Satsuma now, but I wouldn't bother building them anywhere else based on the pure numbers and the sensitivity of the accrued benefits to invasion. I do tend to get carried away with roleplaying though myself... my generals seem to enjoy burning down gambling parlours and dojo - the cultureless wretches!

I wonder if the following is a valid strategy or simply out gaming the game? You may or may not remember that, in the first Shogun, taxes in the form of Koku were only collected once a year in the fall. All one had to do to maximize their income was to raise the the tax level to the highest level on that particular turn and then lower the rate down to nothing for the other three turns. Since you weren't collecting anything for those turns anyway, it kept the peasants happy.

Of course in Shogun II, one collects taxes every turn. What I have taken to doing in my current campaign is raise the taxes to high for every other turn. Needless to say, this gets me the message that everybody is about to revolt, so then I simply lower the taxes on the next turn to put all the happiness level indicators back to green, or at least yellow. Everybody is happy for a turn, so I rinse and repeat.

What this gains is an extra 25% or more in income every other turn. Now I know that the higher taxes also impedes overall growth, but that extra revenue can mean the difference in getting something like a port started a full turn earlier than if I left things alone.

Given the returns on some of the long term investments like ports, farms, etc., I'm wondering if this tactic more than offsets the extra loss in growth every other turn. Once my economy is up and going, I usually stop doing this since it is also easy to get distracted by other game aspects and forget to lower taxes on that next turn. It's an unpleasent surprise when every province revolts on a single turn.

Does the extra income, which allows earlier starts on the more profitable long term investments, offset the minor growth loss in the short term---and, is this simply an exploit or a valid tactic that a savy Diamyo would use?

Thoughts?

'I usually stop doing this since it is also easy to get distracted by other game aspects and forget to lower taxes on that next turn. It's an unpleasent surprise when every province revolts on a single turn.'

yeah tell me about it, i had taken to raising and lowering taxes to squeeze every penny but once i had just had a long battle and when it came back to the campaign screen i forgot that i had had the taxes on high as i had lowered them before the battle so ramped em up, revolts everywhere!!!! thats what u get for 'playing' the tax game!

There's actually an additional local growth penalty applied when the tax increase results in negative public order in a region. It's applied on the following turn and is labeled 'discontent' in the tooltip when you mouse over 'other' factors for town growth. So growth gets hammered 100% of the time if you cycle maximum tax every other turn in any region that goes red. The follow-up discontent penalty is -10 I believe, though I think I've seen it at -25 (have to check). That may be a catch-all penalty for any turn-to-turn dip into the red for public order (have to check that too) but either way, you may be crippling growth much more than you think by employing this strategy at regular intervals.

Used sparingly, though, it's certainly a valid and effective means of generating cash for emergencies or rush building, Also, in the beginning when growth is marginal anyway, it's probably worth it to stockpile cash for business buildings and such things that will quickly recoup your lost wealth. That's been my take thus far.


edit: The discontent penalty applied to town wealth is -25. I was playing a mod (The Rights of Man) where that penalty is reduced to -10, presumably to help the AI which has a tendency to tax the bejeezus out of itself when it runs into trouble.

forgive my ignorance but how important exactly is growth, i assume it effects the wealth producing capability of the province? the more growth the more cash generated? is this linked to trade as i will be going republican in my latest satsuma campaign and once i go republican no one trades with you so if it is linked to trade then it might not be so important in republican campaign?

hallo
The next unlock is pretty expensive at this point in the game so I'm upgrading ports, specialty buildings and inns first. Somebody who's better at math could crunch the numbers more to see if the tax increase is actually worth it versus upgrading inns.

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Originally Posted by 47thlegion

forgive my ignorance but how important exactly is growth, i assume it effects the wealth producing capability of the province? the more growth the more cash generated? is this linked to trade as i will be going republican in my latest satsuma campaign and once i go republican no one trades with you so if it is linked to trade then it might not be so important in republican campaign?

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Extremely important to the long term strength of your economy.

The total wealth of your province is split into 3 main catergories - Farming, Commerce, Town wealth

Farming is determined by the level of farming withing your province multiplied by the fertility. High fertility regions can have some insane levels of wealth as a result. Commerce is a combination of every other building you build including trade ports, workshops, inns, etc. that add wealth to your province.

Farming and Commerce are fixed values that only change when you build or upgrade a building, or can be temporailiy reduced if for example your farming or port is damaged by a raid or bombardment. Once repaired the Farming and Commerce will return to exaclt yhte same levels as before.

Town wealth is completely different and is in a constant state of flux based on your economic growth. Evey province starts with a given amount of town wealth - larger, more important towns such as Edo can have quite significant starting Town wealth. Over the course of the game this figure will change each turn, based on the growth rate, either positive or negative - the absolute minimum is 0, while there is no theoretical maximum that I am aware of. Factors that improve growth are certain buildings i.e. markets, high level farms, railway stations in particular give a large boost to growth (+8 per turn) from memory. you also get a town wealth boost from having a Geisha present - at higher levels this can be in the order of +15 per turn which is pretty significant. Over 100 turns that Geisha has boosted your town wealth by 1500 which is like having an upgraded gold mine in your province!! Things that will decrease town wealth include unrest, high taxes, and quite importantly looting a city. If you loot a city it will tell you how much the town wealth will take a hit - I think the town wealth also has an impact on how much you get when you loot a city. Key thing is that you don't want the enemy to capture one of your high growth provinces then loot it - because all that growth you have built up over the course of the game can be wiped out. If you focus on developing town wealth from early in the game you can have some incredibly wealthy provinces. It is feasible with the right province, and the right buildings & characters to get your town wealth growing by 30-40 per turn, which is pretty awesome when you think about it.

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Originally Posted by 47thlegion

forgive my ignorance but how important exactly is growth, i assume it effects the wealth producing capability of the province? the more growth the more cash generated? is this linked to trade as i will be going republican in my latest satsuma campaign and once i go republican no one trades with you so if it is linked to trade then it might not be so important in republican campaign?

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I would add to the above (very nice) breakdown on wealth growth, that there is no direct relationship between growth and trade income. The numerical growth bonus from the port itself goes straight into town wealth which is taxable income. Trade income comes from goods sold and tariffs and is therefore reported separately. However, as you upgrade your ports, you also increase export capacity alongside the local growth bonus. That allows you to sell more of your goods to fewer partners, which is important when trade partners become scarce or expensive to acquire. Have a look by mousing over each resource in the trade panel to see how much of what you produce actually gets traded. Owning more than one region with the same resource (and/or having fully upgraded facilities) will often lead to surplus supply. Surplus goods are consumed locally at reduced prices. Increasing export capacity to avoid that is a better solution than adding more trade partners due to the volatility of those agreements.

As for tariffs, they seem to increase (somewhat marginally) over time as the value of each trade agreement increases either due to adding goods or to growing prosperity (e.g. your partner expands, thus increasing demand). Not entirely certain what the mechanic is there, but they do grow. You can increase tariffs by a percentage bonus with the smuggling specialty buildings and some later civil techs. The techs are better, but I believe the building bonuses stack and there are 5 such regions, so you could make a game out of going after those. Smuggling buildings also provide a growth bonus to town wealth (+12 max?).

It's nice that some of the less emphasized elements of trade in S2 have a bigger role in FotS. Victory conditions require that the majority of regions be of your political persuasion, so it's to your benefit to help create strong allies with lots of holdings (rather than conquer everything). Maximizing those fewer, more reliable trade agreements by increasing export capacity and boosting tariffs gives that part of the game some needed depth.

many thanks chaps, my ignorance is a thing of the past, where do get all this info? the manual? i've never looked at it but it doesn't look meaty enough to have this level of detail in? anyhow il be making more of an effort to keep my provinces in the green from now on!

since you seem to be so well versed in the mechanics of the game, why is it that sometimes other clans will trade with and sometimes not, eg: you might be very friendly with a clan but they still wont trade or only with cash incentive, i thought it might be to do with the resources, like if u had copper and they didnt say, they would be willing but if you have something that they already have then they won't trade as ports/ trade lanes are limited?
also sometime when i have provinces with a port, sometimes even a trading port no trade lane appears and i dont have the option to open trade with another clan, it says that all the trade slots in my home province are full??

cheers, if you dont have time to explain all that maybe you could put a link to somewhere for info?

As to whether they will trade or not it can be a number of factors - firstly the 'balance' of the agreement - i.e. how much they will make out of it vs how much you will make out of it. You can see this by mousing over the trade route in question on the strategy map and it will give you a breakdown of how much each clan is earning from any given trade route per turn. If they do not go for an agreement sometimes a little bit of cash to sweeten the deal and offset any one-sided trade deals will make it work. As a general thing, the more trade goods you have the more money you will make from trade agreements therefore the less likely other clans will want to trade with you - a bit of a Catch 22!!

The other thing which does seem to be a factor is if the AI wants a certain trade good - a great exampe is the cotton from vanilla STW. Cotton is required for advancing the Yari dojo building chain, and the only source of cotton in the game is from a trade node. So if you control that trade node you have a monopoly. I don't have any concrete proof but my experience tells me that if the AI decides it wants cotton, it will pay an enormous amount of money to get it from you. I've sold trade agreements for a lump sum of 17,000 koku - which is crazy, but it can happen.

The final question about port availalbility - for a trade route to be established you must have a free trade port that is connected to your captial by land. This causes problems for Chosokabe who are stuck on an island with only a handful of tradeports and none of their tradeports overseas will ever work for them! Also, your propective trade partner must also have a free slot in atrade port - so often the reason you cannot trade is because your potential trade partner does not have the ports available.

I've seen some oddities occur with trade routing that may play into sea lanes being reported as unavailable when it looks like they're open. In my current FotS campaign as Saga, I had Fukuoka as a vassal and a trade agreement via sea lane. Later, I gained the province next to Nagasaki (Saga starting capital) which allowed for a land route to be established. The route subsequently switched to land and I verified that by checking the trade panel icon as well as noting the route itself on the map. However, I noticed that Fukuoka's imports were reporting as unavailable (reddened icons in the trade panel). I was still earning income from the agreement, but they apparently were not. Nor were they trading with anyone else along their newly opened sea lane. I noticed their port was damaged (the one through which our common trade lane formerly ran) and a sea lane still connected with my capital showing 0 income. Apparently the AI export route had not switched to land and the agreement became BOTH land and sea (with me on the lucky side). I could see where a similar occurrence between AI clans might result in sea lanes being reported as unavailable. They actually are unavailable, but there is no way you'd ever see that through the limited UI.

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Originally Posted by 47thlegion

cheers, if you dont have time to explain all that maybe you could put a link to somewhere for info?

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Unfortunately, the manual isn't all that specific with actual game mechanisms. There are a number of helpful threads here at the ORG (see Tea House -> Confucian Academy) as well as over at TWCenter which attempt to uncover things through meticulous testing and observation. Trade, economics and diplomacy are some of the harder nuts to crack. Modding the game also can be informative as you can observe what happens when changing key variables. So a lot of the more specific information is littered about, unfortunately, and still open to speculation.

Frogbeastegg's guide is likely the most comprehensive resource and Darkside's Economy guide for S2 (at CA's forums) also has some good information. What we really need though is someone from CA to come by and do a Q&A regarding some of the more mysterious game mechanics. A nice fellow called Thamis (Jan van der Crabben) used to drop by at TWCenter back when Empire was released an posted quite a bit of the finer points of how the economic systems worked. He was the developer responsible for much of the economic systems inherited by Shogun, I believe, but has since departed.

Making certain you've moused over absolutely every last bit of text and icon elements in the UI is also surprisingly informative. There are a number of useful things hidden away there as well as some misleading information on game mechanics. For example, one tooltip for public order implies that happiness (vs repression) has a positive effect on growth. Unless there is some hidden bonus, this appears to be an abandoned concept. Instead, disorder leads to negative growth and happiness and repression are effectively equal (at least as far as the economy goes).

Also, remember that in the TW series the tooltips work on a time delay. There are usually about three different bits of info that loop, so keep hovering.

Having a horrible/fun time trying to play the Aizu has taught me a lot of things:

1. Castle upgrades are great for defense AND repression, especially compared to buying (or being stuck stationing) troops for extended periods of time.

And they don't hurt you economically like they do in Shogun 2, besides the fact that they cost money up front but they do tend to work forever afterwards to DEFEND your other investments.

Police stations are basically JUST for repression (and the agents), so I tend to install them everywhere only after inns and cottage industries start becoming a happiness problem.

2. Waiting for an enemy to finish an expensive upgrade that you want (like especially when they're one turn away from upgrading their settlement) saves you the cash AND the time it'd take to do it yourself.

3. Draining your neighbors of cash by selling them military access early in the game WILL make them weaker and slower (and give you a jumpstart on your own economy) but that could be bad or good for you depending on what is going on with the clans around them and what they would've normally done (to you or for you) if you didn't drain them a bit.

Its basically free money aside from that, though, since its so easy to get the AI to attack you by "boxing them in" when they're all programmed to expand at all costs.

4. Ships cost a lot of cash to keep running every turn, so try to avoid Huge Navy Stuff (if you can) until you are richer.

5. Learning the natural tendencies of your neighboring clans for growth and avoiding "the head of their snake" can save you cash by not making you fight battles on more than one front at once and you can start using that knowledge to your advantage (taking weakly defended or war-ravaged places with the minimum size army necessary to do it efficiently, letting them block or weaken your enemies for you, etc).

That's actually very economic heh.

5. A 2% bump from a settlement upgrade (plus more economic buildings) is a big deal per turn when you are taxing folks at the minimum rate of 10% to improve growth, and not something you'd feel so much if you were used to a 30% tax rate.

6. Entertaining noble geisha are great for cranking up the cash on a province and your police agents can get bonuses to repression (saves you time and money with newly aquired properties by not having to station troops).

7. There's a lot of ridiculously good tech tree upgrades for your economy.

8. Farms are good, fertile farms are great, very fertile farms are unfair haha.