Trading

[laxnsailin]

I am not new to this game (MTW), but came looking for more advanced strategies, every one on the site says how you must trade. Okay, I know this is a stupid question, but how do I tell the ships to trade? I have built a large navy up, and I have some ports what do I do next? I always just built large farms to bankroll my army but this sounds way easier.
~Matt

[Dutch_guy]

well build ports-shipwrights-dockyards ( you need these )

Build ships like there is no tomorrow , then place ships in all the seazones forming an uninterrupted line to the place you would like to trade with ( use the V key to check which sea zones you control ; green ,adn which ones you don't ; red, blockaded and yellow , controlled by a neutral force )

Also , you need a trading posts , or higher to trade.

right click on the trade post or merchant guild etc. to see how much money it is making.

Also the more ships the better, try to get at least one ship in each sea zone.
That way making money is becomes very easy.

[EatYerGreens]

Note that the maintainance costs of each ship/fleet will increase according to how many sea zones distant it is from a port that you own. To see that they are all earning their upkeep, clicl on the 'coins' icon, to open up the economy parchment and scroll down to see the costs of each sea zone. Then click on the names of each of your exporting provinces to see how much income they generating, where they export to and where not (if another faction's province produces the same goods you're trying to export, you get no income for that item).

Be careful not to expand the size of your armies in proportion to the increased income - because if someone goes to war with you and they have fleets in the right places to blockade your entire trade income, you can quickly find yourself with negative cashflow. Even if they have no ships, a war status means they no longer accept your export goods at the ports they own.

Use the excess income to improve your infrastructure and always keep it high enough that you can expand trade posts to Merchants, Merchants to Traders and so on, which is how you hit the bigtime earnings. You'll need to advance the level of castles to get the next size trader facility though, so cashflow kept in the thousands per year will help immensely.

Note that, when you build ports in provinces with no goods to export, you're actually helping the AI factions make income from their fleets by exporting goods to you (you'll see a tiny trickle of import income on the economic info parchment). There are times when you want them in place anyway, so as to move troops about - just don't overbuild ports unless you WANT the opposition to be tougher!