Trade Ship ?'s

[The_Russian]

Can trade ships be "stacked" on each other to increase trade output to your trade partners?

[antisocialmunky]

Kinda...

You could just totally screw up your flet if you do it on one of the circles though.

[Monsieur Alphonse]

You can have a full stack on each node. The first one gives 20 units of trade goods. Every next ship will add 13 extra units of trade goods to the trade lane. The more ships you place on a node the higher your supply of that good becomes. Higher supply means lower prices. Just don't place to many ships at once and slowly increase the amount until prices start to drop. Then you have to stop until prices are rising again or start stabilizing.

There is a bug of course. If you want to remove at least one ship of a stack, remove the stack of the node and split the stack. Next place the remaining ships back on the stack again. If you split a stack while on a node, the remaining ships will become stuck and become useless.

[Didz]

There was some analysis done in an earlier thread which suggested that the benefits gained diminish with each Trade Ship added to the stack. As a result of reading this I try to limit the number of trade ships I place on each Trade Port to five.

Also as Mr.Alphonse has already stated when adding (or removing) ships from a stack, make sure you move the stack off of the Trade Port (the circle) first, adjust its composition and then move it back. Trying to add or remove ships to a stack whilst its on the Trade Port can lead to weird results. At best you will suddenly stop receiving any trade from that fleet, and at worse the fleet will become useless and locked in place so you can't do anything except scuttle it to free up the Trade Port.

[anweRU]

The additional output you get by adding a ship depends on several factors:
- Difficulty level
- Monopoly, i.e. controlling all five nodes in a given trade theater.

I was getting 17 bales/ship pre-patch, up to 10 ships on a node, on VH difficulty, in a theater I monopolized.

[Servius]

I have a 14-ship stack in Madagaskar. The first ship added 20 units. The other 13 ships added 15 units each. There was no diminishing return (after the first drop from 20 to 15). This was as The Knights of St. John on Medium difficulty, only controling a single trade port.

[Didz]

Probably need to redo the analysis then, perhaps they've changed it in a recent patch.

[Slaists]

You can have a full stack on each node. The first one gives 20 units of trade goods. Every next ship will add 13 extra units of trade goods to the trade lane. The more ships you place on a node the higher your supply of that good becomes. Higher supply means lower prices. Just don't place to many ships at once and slowly increase the amount until prices start to drop. Then you have to stop until prices are rising again or start stabilizing.

There is a bug of course. If you want to remove at least one ship of a stack, remove the stack of the node and split the stack. Next place the remaining ships back on the stack again. If you split a stack while on a node, the remaining ships will become stuck and become useless.

The output for ivory is different between the Madagascar Straights and West African Coast. Madagascar straights produce more.

The output also seems to be a function of how many ships you have in the theater altogether (across all nodes). Realize also, that the more ships you have cranking out the commodity the lower will the commodity price drop.

There was some analysis done in an earlier thread which suggested that the benefits gained diminish with each Trade Ship added to the stack. As a result of reading this I try to limit the number of trade ships I place on each Trade Port to five.

Also as Mr.Alphonse has already stated when adding (or removing) ships from a stack, make sure you move the stack off of the Trade Port (the circle) first, adjust its composition and then move it back. Trying to add or remove ships to a stack whilst its on the Trade Port can lead to weird results. At best you will suddenly stop receiving any trade from that fleet, and at worse the fleet will become useless and locked in place so you can't do anything except scuttle it to free up the Trade Port.

Yes, but the diminished benefits come in the form of reduced commodity price (reducing revenue from selling the goods from ALL ships) not so much in reduced product output per ship added to the stack. I just stop adding Indiamen when I see the incremental change in revenue to go down to 100 or so. Usually I have no more than 4 indiamen per trade node, in many cases I have less.

There is another small thing about adding ships that comes along with the necessity to take ships off the node and then back on. The trade distribution (to your trade partners) resets at that point so you can end up with less trade than before adding the extra ship because some of the trade gets re-routed to trade partners whose harbors are being blocked at the time...

[Monsieur Alphonse]

According to Alpaca at TWcenter the first ship gives you 20 units and each extra ship adds 13 units of trade goods. Link: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=262209 see posts 4 and 10.

[Slaists]

According to Alpaca at TWcenter the first ship gives you 20 units and each extra ship adds 13 units of trade goods. Link: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=262209 see posts 4 and 10.

I definitely have seen +15 unit increments post the first ship in Madagascar straights.

[Servius]

I've also seen the first ship only grant 17 units, as GB on Hard campaign setting. My hunch is that 20 for the 1st ship and 15 for all others is the baseline, which is then modified by other factors (campaign difficulty level, perhaps some techs, perhaps trade port levels, who knows).

As said above, the diminishing return is not caused by a decrease in the number of units produced by each additional ship, but rather by the decrease to the market value of the good as more become available for export. I have also found that prices usually rebound after a few turns. This may be by design or simply as a function between number of units available and the population of your trade partners. If their population increases at a faster rate than your trade good exports, the price should go up.

[Skott]

Alpaca stated at the end in that 10th post:

"I play with a house rule to not allow me more than 2 spots per trade theatre so I'll always build as many Indiamen as I can. Don't use Fluyts or Galleons by the way, they're far less cost-effective than Indiamen."



I been putting 3-4 (usually 4) India Men per trade node in as many trade nodes per theatre as I can. All of the nodes in fact as I take out other nations. This is based on early game theories that more than 5 ships per node is not cost effective. I'll admit I've never ran the numbers to see what the cost value is overall, just going by what others have discovered and suggested, but after seeing that last line in Alpaca's post I'm wondering if his method would be better? Anyone else try his method and determine if its better or not?

[Slaists]

Alpaca stated at the end in that 10th post:

"I play with a house rule to not allow me more than 2 spots per trade theatre so I'll always build as many Indiamen as I can. Don't use Fluyts or Galleons by the way, they're far less cost-effective than Indiamen."



I been putting 3-4 (usually 4) India Men per trade node in as many trade nodes per theatre as I can. All of the nodes in fact as I take out other nations. This is based on early game theories that more than 5 ships per node is not cost effective. I'll admit I've never ran the numbers to see what the cost value is overall, just going by what others have discovered and suggested, but after seeing that last line in Alpaca's post I'm wondering if his method would be better? Anyone else try his method and determine if its better or not?

It's not better "per se". Alpaca is just trying to 'help the AI factions out' by allowing them to trade as well to make his game more interesting. That's what the house rule is for.

As said above, the diminishing return is not caused by a decrease in the number of units produced by each additional ship, but rather by the decrease to the market value of the good as more become available for export. I have also found that prices usually rebound after a few turns. This may be by design or simply as a function between number of units available and the population of your trade partners. If their population increases at a faster rate than your trade good exports, the price should go up.

Trade prices rebound (as long as supply stays the same) with general (AI + the player) town wealth increases and town development. Someone did an experiment destroying all town developments in his own empire: as a result, commodity prices collapsed right away.

[Didz]

"I play with a house rule to not allow me more than 2 spots per trade theatre so I'll always build as many Indiamen as I can. Don't use Fluyts or Galleons by the way, they're far less cost-effective than Indiamen."

Thats an interesting idea. I must admit that once I realised the importance of the Trade Ports for future in-game revenue generation I've been racing to secure (if not monopolise them) becuase once a Trade Port is grabbed by a faction it seems to remain with that faction for the rest of the game.

So, the early part of my games now is usually a trade race to grab as many Trade Ports as possible. I stick anything that floats on them, (quite a good use for all those sloops and brigs) just to deny them to the opposition until I can build a trade ship to get to them.

Likewise the only thing being churned out from my shipyards in the early game are trade ships.

The net result is usually that I end up holding most of the Trade Ports in the game, and ships on them are immune to enemy attack, so even though they might block the trade route they can't destroy your trade fleets. The only way I've seen an Trade Port freed up during the game is when the faction operating it is elminated and there are usually several factions with trade ships hovering in the theatre like vultures waiting to grab it, so you need to be quick to get there first.

Deliberately, not grabbing Trade Ports (or limiting those you do grab) is a bit counter-intuitive but presumalby means that the other factions have more reasons to fight over trade routes. So, presumably you get more naval actions as a result.

[Fisherking]

It is interesting that some of you report 17 and 15 per ship.

Every time I have checked I am still getting 20 and 13.

It may be a very specific thing down to a single trade spot in a particular theater or it may be faction specific.

Perhaps it is the minor factions, which are usually AI controlled, that I have not yet played.

I guess we just need more examples.

[Ishmael]

It is interesting that some of you report 17 and 15 per ship.

Every time I have checked I am still getting 20 and 13.

It may be a very specific thing down to a single trade spot in a particular theater or it may be faction specific.

Perhaps it is the minor factions, which are usually AI controlled, that I have not yet played.

I guess we just need more examples.

Has anybody checked whether the number of current trade partners matters?

[anweRU]

As I mentioned before it depends on several factors, monopoly, difficulty level and some theaters are better than others. As Slaists said, for some rason Madagascar is better than Ivory Coast - you get one additional bale per ship after the first ship in MS vs IC.

PS: Corrections
I just loaded up a VH game and an H game. Here is what I found:
Madagascar Straits: Gives 15 bales per additional ship beyond first, regardless of difficulty level or monopoly status.
East Indies: Gives 17 bales per additional ship beyond first, regardless of difficulty level or monopoly status.

@ Ishmael: # of trade partners does not affect output. However, it does indirectly affect prices - i.e. the population that can buy your goods.