Question about Trade Routes

[Martok]

I was wondering something about trading. I assume (and please correct me if I am wrong) that to set up a trade route to a foreign province, that province does not need a port, trading post, etc, it just needs to have goods to trade and as long as you have the facilities in your province you can make money.

Actually, a foreign province does does need to have a port in order for you to extract trade income from it. (This is why you can make so much money deploying ships in the Adriatic and along the northern & eastern shores of the Mediterranean--because there are ports all over the place.) On the flip side, a foreign province does not need to have trade goods in order to make money off of it; only *your* province(s) has to have trade goods.

My question is must that foreign province be controlled by a faction? i.e. can you set up a trade route with a rebel province?

Yes you can (at least in my experience). As long as there's a port there, it doesn't matter if a province is owned by a faction or if it's independent. Of course, it's pretty rare for a "rebel" province to have a port in the first place, unless it broke away from its original faction.

In my Early-Normal-English campaign, I took over Sweden so I could add it to my trade empire (and come in the HRE's back door of course ), but I was thinking why waste men and time invading Denmark now, if I can just stick a ship in there and make some $$.

Afterall, those vikings seem inordinately tough, I took on 4 60-man viking units with 100 Spears, 2 60 FMAA, 2 Royal Knights and 1.5 units of Archers and only managed to win with a 230-75 Kill to loss ratio. The terrain was nasty, but I figured I should do better than that! But I don't want to keep replaying it, it's tad dull compared to carving up the HRE and building a crusade.

Thoughts?

Simply trading with a province/faction rather than conquering it is often the more economical choice, but it really depends on the situation. In your case, Maharajah, you might very well be better of just plunking down a couple ships in the Skaagerak & Baltic. On the other hand, Denmark does provide a good jumping-off point for an invasion of the HRE, and/or open up a second front against them. So it's really up to you to decide which choice would be more beneficial to you overall. Either way, I wish you luck!