State Vs. Trade Company

[Armoguy]

I know the basics of the mechanics of states and trade companies. Up till now, I have strictly kept the entirety of certain trade regions as either full states or full trade companies. It only occurs to me now that I don't necessarily need to keep them separate like that.

Is it more beneficial to state high development areas unless they contain high trade value provinces? I suppose I should always make low developed areas into trade companies to increase trade power in those regions.

Ultimately, my question is: what is a good strategy for stating vs trade companies?

[Medicles]

State everything in your super-region and states with goldmines. Make everything else into trade companies.

[Marquoz]

Agreed, although there is one other exception. That occurs when your nation starts on the boundary of two sub-continents. Manpower and tax income matter in the early game, so you may want to state some of your conquests that are across the line in the non-capital subcontinent for that reason.

But yes, TC everything else. One of the best reasons for this is governing capacity. When you build a Town Hall (the Courthouse upgrade) in a TC province, its GC cost is the absolute minimum, 1% of normal. All the other usual reasons also apply, of course--TC buildings, bonus merchants, ignoring religion, etc.

All of this assumes you plan to seriously expand and aren't roleplaying tall for some reason.

[Kapika96]

TC > State

The only exception being provinces with gold. State those. Otherwise if it's possible to TC it then you should. It's not just to save on governing cost, at their maximum potential TC provinces can outperform state provinces.

[The Merchant Guild]

Originally posted by Medicles:

State everything in your super-region and states with goldmines. Make everything else into trade companies.

What do you mean super region?

[Medicles]

https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Regions#/media/File:Superregion_map.png

Your capital determines your super-region and you cant make provinces of that super-region into trade companies and since you should never have territories, you state everything in your super-region.

But like Marquoz said, there are situations where you may need to state stuff outside your super-region. Ottomans are the best example. Edirne and Constantinople are both in the Easter European region, whereas much of their stuff is also in the Levant regions. The Levant region also offers an easier conquest route early on, so you may want to state some stuff there to increase your manpower.

[Marquoz]

The wiki page has the info you need: https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Regions

Note that super-regions and subcontinents are almost but not quite the same thing. There are a few places where they aren't identical.

[Marquoz]

Originally posted by Medicles:

Ottomans are the best example.

Brandenburg is another good one. The Teutonic Order lands are in eastern Europe, but Berlin is in the west. If a Brandenburg player expands quickly into Teutonic lands (and to keep them out of Polish hands, they should), they'll probably want to state them. Brandenburg's early manpower and tax income situation is pretty dire.

[bri]

Originally posted by Medicles:

since you should never have territories

Hard disagree on this, it should be rare but there are definitely situations where it's not worth the increased gc cost to state/tc a province, at least in the short term, but useful to have the province. For example an early game England land grab of Azores, Gibraltar, the Canaries, and the like to allow earlier useful colonization. Those provinces will never be useful in terms of trade until late stage wc type runs, making them tc just helps your competitors, and 1/1/1 wrong culture will barely make a blip in terms of contributing as a state.

[Medicles]

Originally posted by bri:

Hard disagree on this, it should be rare but there are definitely situations where it's not worth the increased gc cost to state/tc a province, at least in the short term, but useful to have the province. For example an early game England land grab of Azores, Gibraltar, the Canaries, and the like to allow earlier useful colonization. Those provinces will never be useful in terms of trade until late stage wc type runs, making them tc just helps your competitors, and 1/1/1 wrong culture will barely make a blip in terms of contributing as a state.

Sure, but that is super rare and rather specific gameplay. I think it should be a given that stating a mere province of convienience isnt needed. I had some of them myself as well. I was implying having a bunch of territories.

[Preacher]

I was doing a Byz-Rome run and halfway thru I wasn't doing good on manpower, sailors, navy and army limit bc I was TCing everything outside of greece and anatolia. I think there is a balance, but what do I know? I'm not a min-maxer

[Malvastor]

Originally posted by Preacher:

I was doing a Byz-Rome run and halfway thru I wasn't doing good on manpower, sailors, navy and army limit bc I was TCing everything outside of greece and anatolia. I think there is a balance, but what do I know? I'm not a min-maxer

Might need to compensate by pushing more into the Balkans or Italy for land that you'll have to state. Not a bad move anyway because it helps you get control of the Venice node.

[Medicles]

Originally posted by Preacher:

I was doing a Byz-Rome run and halfway thru I wasn't doing good on manpower, sailors, navy and army limit bc I was TCing everything outside of greece and anatolia. I think there is a balance, but what do I know? I'm not a min-maxer

If the Roman Empire was your goal, then you should have switched your capital into the Western European region, preferably into Venice, because it is the nearest trade node you can already feed with much of the Byzantine land.

The Roman Empire has most of their land in western europe, which is also highly developed. Perfectly for stating it. After Italy was under your control, you could have made Anatolia into TCs and after you got much of Iberia and France, Greece could have been made into TCs too.

[Preacher]

Originally posted by Malvastor:

Originally posted by Preacher:

I was doing a Byz-Rome run and halfway thru I wasn't doing good on manpower, sailors, navy and army limit bc I was TCing everything outside of greece and anatolia. I think there is a balance, but what do I know? I'm not a min-maxer

Might need to compensate by pushing more into the Balkans or Italy for land that you'll have to state. Not a bad move anyway because it helps you get control of the Venice node.

That's true, I ended up doing that. I actually had to switch a bunch of TC back to state when I did that.

Originally posted by Medicles:

Originally posted by Preacher:

I was doing a Byz-Rome run and halfway thru I wasn't doing good on manpower, sailors, navy and army limit bc I was TCing everything outside of greece and anatolia. I think there is a balance, but what do I know? I'm not a min-maxer

If the Roman Empire was your goal, then you should have switched your capital into the Western European region, preferably into Venice, because it is the nearest trade node you can already feed with much of the Byzantine land.

The Roman Empire has most of their land in western europe, which is also highly developed. Perfectly for stating it. After Italy was under your control, you could have made Anatolia into TCs and after you got much of Iberia and France, Greece could have been made into TCs too.

Those would be good ideas for my next Byz-Rome run XD I did not even think of that. But if I had developed a lot of Greece with spare MP, would turning them into TC's be a worthwhile investment then? Perhaps it would since I would be conquering more provinces in W Europe to compensate?

[Marquoz]

Originally posted by Preacher:

Those would be good ideas for my next Byz-Rome run XD I did not even think of that. But if I had developed a lot of Greece with spare MP, would turning them into TC's be a worthwhile investment then?

There are no spare MP. Developing provinces is a noob trap in single player. It's always more cost effective to conquer and core or to vassalize and annex. Spend your points on those two things and tech, ideas, stability, generals, and so on.

[Malvastor]

Agreed with Marquoz. Just being pretty rough with numbers, you could spend maybe 400 diplo points adding ~10 points of base production to some of your provinces. Or you could conquer one province from Hungary, release Transylvania as a vassal from that province, reconquer the rest of Transylvania's cores, then annex them- for about the same cost in diplo points.