Quote Originally Posted by ArchieGremlin
I did a bit of digging in order to work out what effect the various trade buildings have on the value of a settlement's trade routes and I thought you might like to see the results.

The short answer is that anything in the building browser with the property "Increase in tradeable goods" will increase your trade income by 10% or 20% of the base value.

It's hard to tell how much extra money you'll make when you're choosing which building to construct next. However, the increase in trade value will affect all land trade and sea export routes in the settlement with the new building. It will also increase the value goods imported from this settlement by other settlements.

For example, if Bruge exports cloth to London then upgrading Bruge's Market to a Fairground will increase the value of London's sea import route from Bruge. (But not the other import routes in London.)

I you want to work out a settlement's total trade bonus then just add the bonuses for each building together. For example, if London has a Shipwright, a Great Market and a Merchant's Guild then the trade bonus is 90%. (30% + 50% + 10%) This means that the value of each trade route is 190% of the basic value. (i.e. 1.9 x base value) The bonuses are all listed in the table below.

Note that the bonuses aren't multiplied together. If you add Merchant's Wharf to London then the value of each trade route won't increase by 20%; it'll increase by a factor of 210/190. (about 10.5%)

A good strategy for maximising your income is build ports first and then the other improvements starting with the cheapest.

I don't know what determines the base value for each trade route.

I haven't looked at the effect of roads on trade.




The buildings listed in this table are the ones that are shown in the game with the property "Increase in tradeable goods". (This matches the "trade_base_income_bonus bonus" property in export_descr_buildings.txt.)

* I've checked the behaviour of most buildings but the ones I couldn't check are marked with a *.

# The "Sea Trade" buildings have the property "Trade fleets available x". As far as I can tell this has no effect on the value of trade. Does anyone know if this property does anything at all? (It maps to the "trade_fleet" property in export_descr_buildings.txt.)

enjoy,
Archie
Thanks Archie