Commodity prices: Comparative Study

[Slaists]

So if I understand this correctly trade depends on town wealth depends on population, so population growth is critical, which means tax on peons should be lowest , farms and fisheries should be built as all contribute to town growth...

Do people agree with this statement on basic strat?

Nope. CA has separated population growth from wealth growth. If you open your province summary sheet you will see whether your town wealth growth is positive or negative. Below that display there is a population display, which shows whether the population growth is positive or negative. Within the wealth growth diagram, wealth and it's growth is broken into components: none of which relate to population growth.

In short, the following contribute to wealth growth: roads, ports, town developments (such as weaveries and smiths), mines, farms, plantations, fur traders, etc. + trade itself. Enlightenment techs and industrial techs compound the wealth growth from all the previous (accelerate it).

Another important factor is taxes of the noble class: if the nobles are taxed heavily, wealth starts to shrink. I usually leave the noble tax where it is by default (in the middle) achieving what's in my opinion optimum between short term cash income (taxes) and long term wealth growth (eventually resulting in higher tax and trade income).

The only place where population growth helps you is developing new towns within your provinces. Once all the villages of a province have been developed population growth becomes completely irrelevant for the economic side of the game.

You should have done those little intersecting supply and demand curves

I think, that's what CA has used in designing the economic engine for ETW (They've done a pretty good job in modelling actually). I was just trying to explain what contributes to shifts in those supply and demand curves in the game context.