Trade

[Marcus Caelius]

I have some questions:

is it worth building additional trading ports in other provinces connected by land to your capital:

e.g prussia takes antwerp, is it worth it for prussia to build a trading port there?

If you have a colonial province producing e.g. tobacco in Virginia, can these goods get back to London if there is no trading port in Virginia?

How does the price of commodities vary?

[Prussian to the Iron]

you should always build trade ports, escept for maybe a couple major naval bases. they help alot with the income.

I'm not sure if virginias goods will go to another port, or just not do anything.

[Xipe Totec]

Extra trade ports connected to the capital allows you to make extra sea trade deals with other factions. It's basicly loads of money that just grows and grows without you having to do anything. They also bring in income you can tax and contribute to the growth of town income which you will tax in the future.

Early game you may be better building fishing ports in some provinces to grow the towns, if trade routes are not more important.

Trade goods from plantations are potentially a huge source of income. Merely producing them by building a plantation etc. adds considerable income to the province which you can tax. But to really get the most out of it you have to ship the goods back to your capital through a port. This can be in the region itself or in a neighbouring region, but often you won't have enough port capacity for all the goods that can be produced, until later in the game when you can upgrade your ports and build extra ports. Once the goods get back to your capital they are shipped back out to your trade partners for extra income directly to you at full value (i.e. you get 100% unlike with taxes). . If you right click on the trade good icons in your town's income breakdown display it will tell you how much you are exporting. You can compare this with what the plantation can produce by right clicking on the picture of the current plantation level, and how much you will get from upgrading it below. There is a big difference in how productive they are too, from abundant to meagre.

The biggest potential problem with sea trade is when your home ports are blockaded which can devastate your trade income. Piracy from enemies anywhere on the route will usually just take a chunk out of it, but sometimes the actual caribbean pirates can take most of it with a large stack of good ships. All in all the pirate nation are best exterminated as soon as you can like the vermin they are. Don't try and fight it out with them on the high seas, unless you like losing or are particularly 'fond of sailors' .

It's best to invade their bases in the caribbean with a pest control mission. It's easy to scout beforehand to see what you need to take with you. They provide lots of sugar income too.

[Servius]

In short, yes, usually... :-)

Trade usually generates the majority of your income. You'll probably want 1-2 shipyards to build fighting ships quickly, in order to protect your trade routes. After that, you can choose between Trade and Fish ports.

In terms of property taxes, Fish Ports are more cost-effective, because the level 1 Trade port and the level 1 Fish port both grant the same taxable property value, but the Fish ports are cheaper to build.

In terms of gross income though, Trade routes are very lucritive. Trade ports grant you trade fleets. One fleet gets used up every time you sign a Trade Agreement with a nation that does not share a land border with you. (Trade over land is not affected by Trade ports).

Before you make your decisions about what kind of port to build, go to the Diplomacy screen and look at the other nations you do not currently have a trade agreement with. To the right of each nation will be an icon of a ship with gold coins on top of it. If that icon is lit up you have a trade agreement. If it's greyed out a bit, you don't have an agreement but could. If it's got a red X over it, you can't establish a trade agreement at the moment. Put your cursor over the ones with the red Xs on it to see why. Sometimes you can't establish a trade route to a nation because you don't have a spare trade fleet available, but sometimes you DO have a spare trade fleet available but the other nation doesn't. When it's your fault, you need to get some spare trade fleets. When it's their fault, there's nothing you can do but wait for them to go to war with a trade partner, or for one of their partners to get killed off, which will free up one of their slots.

You can increase the number of trade fleets by:
a) Building more level 1 trade ports (level 1 ports grant you 2 fleets each)
b) Upgrading existing level 1 trade ports to level 2, 3, etc. (each upgrade grants you 1 additional fleet)

[Marcus Caelius]

Good answers, thanks

So some questions:

How does the game calculate the value of trade with other powers, and also how does the market value of commodities vary?

Is it possible to mod in other commodities too?

[Servius]

1a) The value of a trade relationship with another nation is based primarily on the value of the commodities you trade with them. So, if you trade 10 units of spices, and each unit of spice is worth $10, then you got $100 for that trade relationship each year. Added to the value of the commodities traded is the value of "Other" goods. I have no idea how the quantity or value of this is calculated, but I do know that the value increases each turn you maintain a trade relationship. Thus, it's to your advantage to maintain trade relationships as long as possible as they become more valuable over time.

1b) There is some calculation in the background, probably based on a base unit value for each commodity (maybe modified by population) which is then modified by supply. The greater global supply of a given commodity, the lower the unit price. That being said, it still takes a while (a LOT of production) to hit a point of diminishing marginal returns. At least I think so.

2) Can't help you there. I bet if it is possible, it would be a big pain to implement, seeing as how you'd have to tweak the interface that shows each trade good on the Trade window, and you'd have to create new buildings and resource nodes, and then create new towns/plantations on the map to produce those trade goods. The mod forum would probably be the best place to ask this question.

[pevergreen]

The mod forum would probably be the best place to ask this question.

Noooo! Don't ask me to do actual work!

[Hermann the Lombard]

Regarding shipping resources home, how do you determine the capacity of the existing colonial trade ports? Is it "X" number of units total, "X" number of units per good, "+Y" units for upgrading a port...?

[Servius]

I haven't ever bothered to try to find out what the export capacity is of each level of trade port for shipping goods back to the motherland for resale to foreign trade partners. I just know that, when I upgrade my plantations to produce more trade goods, I check the Region Wealth bar to see if all of the trade goods are being shipped back to London. If not, I upgrade the trade port.

I think there's just a fixed maximum number of goods (of any/all types) that each level of trade port can ship back to the home region. When a region produces more than 1 trade good, the AI automatically shifts the distribution so that you export as much as the more valuable resources as possible before it will try to ship less valuable ones.