Trade: diminishing returns for extra ships?

[Slaists]

I understand, more ships on the anchored trade theater spots generate more trade however, with diminishing returns. Anyone knows how exactly the diminishing returns scale with extra ships?

[Ordani]

You can look at the trade prices of goods returned from the various theaters, the more available the lower the price. I don't think there is a specific DR on the trade fleets themselves.

[Quillan]

There is, but I haven't worked out the specifics. I had a 3 ship fleet on a Straits of Madagascar spot, and I brought in 5 more trade ships. I looked at the value of the trade route from that spot before, added one ship to it (by moving the fleet off the anchor, adding the one ship, then moving it back) and the value increased by exactly 1/3. Thus, going from 3 to 4 merchantmen gave the same value per ship. I think added 4 more ships to it, but the value of the route did not double.

I've heard from people here that anything more than 2 merchant vessels starts giving diminishing returns, and that 4 seems to be the optimal number. I have one fleet with 12, and I'd have to check, but it's around double the value of the adjacent fleet that only has 5 merchants in it.

Also worth noting, than in this game where I hogged the ivory slots, the value of ivory crashed, hard. For a while ivory was cheaper than every other trade good except fur. Since I stopped adding trade ships the value has slowly climbed and now it's tied for most valuable with spices, but it's taken 50 years of the campaign to recover that far.

I'd have to say keep it to 3-4 merchants per fleet, but I haven't sat down and figured out specific numbers on it.

[Warhammer3025]

So if i dominate 80% of the world's trade spots and park 10 indiamen on each, i could make MORE money if i limit it to just 4 per slot instead?

Well damn thats alot of dough on indiamen i coulda saved!

[Quillan]

Not that you'd make more by only having 4 Indiamen per slot than 10, but look at it like this.

***These numbers are pulled right out of my ass and may have no basis in reality.***

Put one merchant vessel on an Ivory Coast trade spot, and you get 20 tusks. Value=20 x market rate on ivory, but you pay 50 gold per turn to maintain the ship. If the market rate on ivory is 22, then you make 22x20-50, or 390 gold per turn profit from one ship.

Put four merchant vessels on the same trade slot, and you only get 70 tusks. At this point you get 1540 from the trade, but you pay 200 per turn in maintenance, so you're making 1340 per turn profit from 4 ships.

Now go up to 10 merchant vessels on the same trade slot, and you get 124 tusks. Now you get 2728 from the trade, but you pay 500 in maintenance, and you're getting 2228 profit with 10 ships.

As you can see, you've gone from making 390 per ship to 222.8 per ship. At 50 maintenance on Indiamen it's not too bad to maintain lots of them, but try that with Fluyts at 150 per or Galleons at whatever they cost to maintain. Dhows are probably pretty cheap if you're one of the eastern factions, but I don't know.

None of this is taking into account crashing the market from oversupply. I don't know how the game figures out the selling price. This game I'm playing the Dutch. I started out building Fluyts in all 4 of my ports (Amsterdam, Dutch Guyana, Curacao and Ceylon) and rushing them off to the Ivory Coast and the Straits of Madagascar. I started with a trade fleet (3-4 Indiamen plus a couple of combat ships, I forget the exact number) in the East Indies. Every 2 turns, I'd build 4 more Fluyts and rush them off. Once I got 6 Fluyts per theater (I ignored the coast of Brazil) I started building Indiamen instead. This is an off the top of my head guess, but I did this for at least the first 6 turns, then stopped building them in Amsterdam, but continued in the other three all the way until 1720. I've probably got 63 or so merchant vessels on 10 trade spots; I have 4/5 in the Ivory Coast and 4/5 in the Straits, while only 2/5 in the East Indies. Ivory got as low as 14 in my game, now in 1774 it's back up to 20.

[katank]

Not much point in building Fluyts for trade long term, actually. The main benefit seems to be the capacity to crank out a few combat worthy ships from trade ports so that you need very few shipyards.

As for Indiamen, it's probably still a net gain to add more since the upkeep is so dirt cheap. The only thing is that the ROI per turn drops. Still, I'd imagine they pay for themselves pretty quickly given that they only cost 530 or so. The only thing is the micromanagement involved in sending them there.

[Quillan]

For me, the main point was to have a half dozen or so combat capable ships in the trade theater in case of enemy or pirate vessels. Fluyts or Galleons can at least earn money while they're sitting there, which is not the case if you park a few frigates with the trade vessels.

[Quillan]

Ok, I decided to do a little investigation of this. What I found is as follows:

1) There is definitely diminishing returns, and it starts after the first ship.
2) It is not consistent, there was quite a bit of fluctuation, sometimes adding one ship to the fleet would actually give a greater number of goods than the previous ship did.
3) The game recalculates the value of the trade good every time you change the number of ships trading it, which made me have to switch tabs every time I rearranged the fleets.

Here's a shot of my biggest fleet when I started the process:


By playing around with things, using Ivory as a base, here is what I found based on the number of ships in a given fleet:

1 Merchant = 20 tusks.
2 Merchants = 33 tusks, an increase of 13.
3 Merchants = 50 tusks, an increase of 17. 3 ships > 2 ships, apparently.
4 Merchants = 65 tusks, an increase of 15.
5 Merchants = 72 tusks, another increase of 17. Again, better to use 5 than 4 it seems.
6 Merchants = 85 tusks, an increase of 13. We'll see this number a lot as it turns out.
7 Merchants = 98 tusks, another 13 increase.
8 Merchants = 110 tusks, only a 12 tusk increase. This was the smallest, so apparently 8 is the worst fleet size you can have.
9 Merchants = 124 tusks, a 14 increase.
10 Merchants = 137 tusks.

You can have up to 14 ships in a fleet. Everything from 10-14 merchants gave a flat +13 to the number of tusks. Give it a try, see what you get, but based on the numbers I have here it would seem that 5 merchants is probably the best fleet to have.

[MikeV]

None of this is taking into account crashing the market from oversupply. I don't know how the game figures out the selling price.

This is a nice feature. A clear, thorough explanation of the trade system mechanics would be most helpful.

[Ordani]

Sounds more like it's doing an average split from a hidden resource pool than applying a DR metric, that the distribution series is converging above the minimum indicates it is not applying a proportional reduction.

[lugh]

On a related note, soemthing I haven't been able to test myself since all my games are currently bugging so as not to be able to generate routes with trade ships, but do you get any kind of a bonus for controlling an entire trade zone, or an entire product, say Ivory if you control both African zones for example.

[Ordani]

There is anecdotal evidence for a monopoly bonus but given how far into the campaign you'd have to be to test that, there's no way to reliably isolate the prices to just that. Basically more trade ships is always better, and looks to always exceeds cost of upkeep on them.

[Maleficus]

Playing as UP, I had two ships on the same spot making me x amount, but when I added a third, it didn't increase my income at all.....

Also, once when playing as Spain, I put a galleon on one of the Ivory spots and it did nothing.

However when playing as France, it all seemed to work properly....

[Kobal2fr]

Playing as UP, I had two ships on the same spot making me x amount, but when I added a third, it didn't increase my income at all.....

Also, once when playing as Spain, I put a galleon on one of the Ivory spots and it did nothing.

However when playing as France, it all seemed to work properly....

Yes, trade spots are a bit glitchy. I noticed for example that splitting a fleet while it's sitting in a trade spot will cause the part of the fleet that remains on the spot to bug majorly : the trade route is cut, and while you can select ships, none can move anymore and you have to destroy them. Similarly, adding a trade ship to a fleet stack sitting in the trade spot will not always update the trade goods sent.

So, whenever you need to tweak your trade fleets, move them from the trade spot first.

[Hosakawa Tito]

Yes, trade spots are a bit glitchy. I noticed for example that splitting a fleet while it's sitting in a trade spot will cause the part of the fleet that remains on the spot to bug majorly : the trade route is cut, and while you can select ships, none can move anymore and you have to destroy them. Similarly, adding a trade ship to a fleet stack sitting in the trade spot will not always update the trade goods sent.

So, whenever you need to tweak your trade fleets, move them from the trade spot first.

I had my overseas supply trade disappear from the trade scroll because of this. I found that by destroying/deleting the fleet captain's ship while they were stuck on the trade spot seemed to fix the problem, the entire fleet didn't have to be destroyed.

[anweRU]

I wouldn't trust the ivory numbers based on my GB name, though I might have discovered a monopoly bonus instead.

I have two I.M. on each spot in both the Ivory Coast and the Straits of Madagascar. Portugal has one slot in IC, while I own all 5 slots in SoM. My fleets-of-two-IM in SoM bring in more tusks/ship than my equivalent fleets-of-two-IM in IC.

I don't remember the numbers. I'll have to look it up when I go home.