Trade Port Bug?

[Mexlic]

Hi knoddy (and everybody else),

I'm a bit late on this thread, and also new to this forum (this is my first post).

I also have some trouble understanding the trade system correctly. I'm playing Great Britain, short campaign, year is somewhere around 1730. I'm trading with everybody I can trade with, and still not all my ports in England, my capital province, are busy. And I get the same information that MY ports are full, so I can't make new trade agreements. I wonder why I should upgrade my ports anymore, if some of the existing ones do not open a trade route.

But I think I know why it shows all your trade routes as land based. As far as I understood it always shows the connection to your capital province. So if that one doesn't have a port, but it's connected via land route to another province of yours with a port, it is land based. For Great Britain all trading routes are sea based, and I don't think I can get any land based ones, even though meanwhile I own France.

Cheers,
Mexlic

[AussieGiant]

Morning Mexlic, welcome.

I've seen this as well playing Prussia.

I could not trade as I was thinking I should be able to. Then I upgraded my port and suddenly there were options all over the place.

Strange.

[Mexlic]

Morning AussieGiant!

Thanks for the welcome.

Sounds interesting. Will try today evening, when I'm out of office and conquering the world again. I thought upgrading the ports wouldn't make any sense as some of the ports in England already don't open trade routes.

I'm still searching for detailed information about trade, and trying to figure out things on my own as well, of course. This is my first successful campaign, after having a few tries at the beginning, when I had to cancel the campaign because I was about to become bankrupt. The only real difference between those few tries and now is proper diplomacy from the very beginning.

On those first tries I allied with too many countries, and when they went to war (partly between each other) I was in war with too many countries. It wasn't an issue handling their military, but through that I lost trade partners, and those new enemies started pirating most of my trade routes - always at the other end of the world, so I couldn't get rid of them myself.

I really think that diplomacy (and trade, being part of it) is one of the best ways to success in ETW - at least for GB. It's so different to RTW or M2TW, where you would earn your money in the provinces you own plus a little bit of trade. Diplomacy is so much easier now, but also so much more important.

For my current campaign I don't need to optimize anything anymore. I am already so dominant everywhere, and the cash flow is more than sufficient to keep me out of problems. I'm just collecting information to use it in my next campaign, where I will increase the difficulty to VH/VH.