Trading

[elzert]

Heya.

I've picked up the budget version of MTW, so no manual or tech tree. It's really annoying, but I feel I'm learning things as I have a go at them.

Except for the trading part. I just can't figure it out. The only available in game information is the little text message you get when you place the cursor over water. From what I understand I should place fleets in sea regions connected to eachother, thus creating a trading route. But nothing happens when I do that.

What am I doing wrong here?

This is some what embarrassing, I'm obviously missing out on something very simple. But this place seems free from elitist mentality, so I guess I'm better off asking then losing money and tearing my hair out.

Thanks in advance.

/e

[IrishMike]

To trade all you need to do is build a port, then a trade post. Then connect your port with ships in every sea province with another port controlled by another faction. Just repeat this process untill you have all the nations you want to trade with, or be like me and spam all the sea provinces next to the land with ships. Soon you will start to see a huge inflow of money.

Also since you game didn't come with a manuel it would be very ideal if you checked out frogbeastegg's excellent MTW guide located here The Guide

Hope this answers your question and welcome.

[Blodrast]

Hi, and welcome to the Org !

I'm pretty sure that if you spend a bit of time in here, you'll realise this is anything BUT elitist, and all of our members here, who range from teenagers (youngest poster I can remember was 10 years old, and a girl at that !) to ...*cough* ancient *cough*, will confirm that !

As a general rule, since you don't have the manual (which I've looked through, but didn't really do much for me), I would highly recommend Frogbeastegg's excellent guides:

The beginner's guide to MTW
and
The Complete Total War Unit Guide

They are both great lectures, and everybody can find useful tidbits in there from time to time.

Anyway, to answer your question more directly, in a brief manner - since you'll get more thorough and complete explanations in the beginner's guide:
You can trade with any neutral countries (i.e., that you're not at war with).
To trade from your province A to foreign (i.e., not yours) province B, you need:
- a port in both province A and province B
- trade post or better in province A
- an uninterrupted "chain" of ships on sea "squares" from province A to province B; a chain is interrupted if you either don't have any ships in one of the squares, or there are enemy ships in any of those squares. If you have VI (the Viking Invasion expansion pack), you can check for this by holding "Shift", IIRC (I may confuse it with "V").
- also, your province must be exporting some goods, at least some of which province B should not export (but usually this is not a concern).

Like I said, this is a somewhat incomplete and very brief answer. There's more, but this should get you started. And I'm sure other members will fill in the gaps.

Once again, welcome to the Org !

edit: Gah, ColdKnight was not so long-winded, and he already answered to some of your issues before I hit the submit button...

[IrishMike]

Gah, ColdKnight was not so long-winded, and he already answered to some of your issues before I hit the submit button...

Hey man two are better than one. Its all good.

[Roark]

@ Elzert

I also got the budget version recently. There was a PDF of the manual on the second disk. Some of Frogbeastegg's material assumes a knowledge of the manual, so I'd be happy to email it to you.

[edyzmedieval]

You should go to Activision, to their website and you can download from there the manual and the tech tree in PDF format...

[elzert]

Thanks guys. I've got it running now, though I still have huge economic issues in my Almohad "empire of many standing armies". Oh well.

I took a look at the guides, I'm sure I'll make good use of them.

I'll hang around here in the future. Seems there's a lot of information to be gained on these forums.

/e