Trade Ship ?'s

[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.