Unconnected Trading ports?

[HEAVY FIRST RATE]

I have been playing Total War games since the first Shogun title and have 2472 hours invested in the Empire: Total War ( my favorite of all the Total War series), so I am not exactly unfamiliar with how the trade ports in the game work, but, and especially in my last game, I accumulated several territories whose trading ports never get the green connection line to my home port. I understand that in some cases, such as when you play Great Britain, that trading port in Ireland never seems to connect to your home port, so I assume that even though Ireland is an island, trade is occuring overland through Scotland. So one of my questions is, is that Irish trade port worthless as opposed to say a fishing port, or is it producing unseen trade income?
My last game I played as the Dutch and by the 1790's I have all of Spain's new world colonies, all of India, Spain, France and Portugal's homelands, Spain's Mediteranean colonies and Morroco, Norway, and all of Sweden thru Karelia on the west edge of Russia when I began to notice that even though I have reasearched the entire tech tree and my home port is fully upgraded, there are several ports in every theater that seem to have no connection to my home port (via the grreen trade route lines). This brings up several questions I cannot seem to get a handle on such as: Does the number of permitted trade routes per your home port upgrade level apply only to your trade agreements with other nations or does it also include your colony trade ports routes? I kind of thought that colony trade ports had to go thru the home port so there was no limit to those connections but maybe I am totally wrong about this!

[HEAVY FIRST RATE]

When I took over France, the French trading port connected to the Dutch home port even though I own Belgium also and thus have an overland connection, yet when I captured Spain, the trade port there never made a connection! Also no port connection when I captured Italy and Venice and a couple of ports in India never made a route hookup! When I captured Constantinople likewise no port to port connection!

[Grumpy Old Vet]

from what i have seen, is you only see trade lines comming from ports that have some sort of trade resource like cotton or coffee and they need to be connected to the capital otherwise you wont see any. Best example of this is the bahammas for great britan when you start out there is no trade comming from the port but when you build the plantation one appears. As far as whether it is useless or not i cant say. I always turn that trading port in ireland into a fishing port for faster growth.

[Snizzlet]

I always thought that's what the +number of trade routes was... each port can only handle so many connections, so even if you have a certain port that's free, if no connections are available, it will not show the green lines.

[HEAVY FIRST RATE]

Draconus and Snizzlet- your answers gave me ideas to check out and here is what I believe now to be the way trade ports work. Trade ports only deal with the eight items listed on the world trade market list ( Coffee, Tea, Cotton, Tobacco, Sugar, Spices, Fur, and Ivory). Of these, Ivory is unique in that the only way to get Ivory is through a trade node in Africa. Gold, Silver, Iron, Gemstones, Cloth, Wine, and Farm Produce apparently do not go through the trade port except maybe in the form of wealth during trading between two nations so YOUR COLONIES with non market list goddies serve you no purpose to have a trading port except maybe the stated increase in income listed in it's description. Every type of port has some amount of income increase listed for the colony it is built in. Each level of trading port has a listed limit of trade routes available with the highest being the Global Trading Company port topping out at five - so in the case of the Dutch, who have only the one home port, as opposed to Great Britain, who have five or six total home ports, this limit has to refer to sea trade routes between nations as obviously it is possible for the Dutch to have way more than five colonies producing one or more of the eight items listed on the Market List. So, if your colony DOES NOT produce one of the seven items (not Ivory) indicated on the World Trade Market List, you may benefit more from a fishing port or military port if you can only have one port there. So now the question is - since the trading port in Ireland does not deal in goods from the World Market List, does it in fact increase the number of International sea trade routes Great Britain can have, i.e. the SUM of all the trade routes allowed by the total number of home trade ports built in Great Britain? That's my story and I'm sticking to it - at least until one of you people out there come up with something better! LOL
So now that I have the perfect answer to how the trade ports work - WHY does a trading port in France, which is now my colony and does not produce any items from the World Market List connect to my home port with a green line when Spain which is in the same situation does not ( as per my above theory)???????????????? WTH!!!!!!!

[Grumpy Old Vet]

i believe its because spain is right next to france so any goods are being sent to france instead of using a trade route. Trade routes are weird in this game cause they do not update properly. Like when the trade port in france next to great britain is blockaded the game wont send them to the one in the Mediterranean.

[HEAVY FIRST RATE]

AH-HAH !!! Mr. Draconus, your suggestion now points me to the theory that trading ports in territories that you capture which were once the original home country of one of the original major nations from the trading list sometimes do not follow the logical rules! Surely sir, you are not suggesting that there are things in my beloved game that are broken! Woe is me, woe is me, is there no hope to one day receive the perfectly functioning Total War game from the developers?? LOL

[Grumpy Old Vet]

lol

[Lord of the Lemmings]

Simple. Some are for trade, others for shipbuilding, and others still for fish and food. Then there is the idea that your home port is full and these ports are not connected to it because of that. Or it is just a glitch. I remember I had a glitch where my arty charged and wrecked two regiments of line infantry. I so should have recorded that.