Assigning Light Ships To Trade

[Finarfin]

Instead of trying to figure it all out, is it safe to just use the tooltip when assigning ships to protect trade? Should you just always go with the best positive value? Playing as Castile my home trade node is Seville. But if I want to assign ships to protect the trade there it shows that it will actually be a negative value. Bordeaux shows a much higher positive value even though I have no merchants there. Is that where I should be sending my ships?

[Marquoz]

The tooltip is notoriously inaccurate, I'm afraid. The best way to evaluate things is to check your current trade income. Then assign the ships, wait for the next monthly tick (when the game recalculates things like trade), and compare the two values. Then send the ships to a different node and repeat the process until you find the most profitable result. It's annoying, but it works.

Also, note that diminishing returns play a role. If you already have 75% trade power in a node, sending a light ship fleet there isn't going to accomplish much. They're most useful in nodes where you have very little trade power.

[tonypa]

If you have no merchants in the node then your ships will not really help. Unless trade flows from that node into next node where you have merchant, then the ships may steer more trade toward you.

In case of Castile, unless you have stationed merchant in Bordeaux your ships are no good in there. You can assign ships into any trade node that flows into Sevilla node, and they will give you some extra trade. If the ships cost more than they increase the trade, leave them in the port for now.

If you would have merchant in Bordeaux or English Channel trade node, your ships in Bordeaux would increase your trade.

[Azunai]

as castille your best bet will usually be to protect in the sevilla node early on. later on it may be more worthwile to protect in caribean or ivory coast if those are heavily contested.

if you follow your mission tree it may also be worthwhile to move your home node to genoa later on once you control enough of valencia and genoa trade centers.

alternatively if you're rivals with someone, it can be worthwhile to privateer their home node with your tradeships. lowers their income and creates power projection for your country.

either way - ignore the tooltip. it's so useless, the game would be better if the devs just removed it altogether.

[Finarfin]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. It really helps. My own tests have shown that the tooltip didn't reflect reality, which is why I asked. It seems like the only reliable method is to assign, review, repeat. It's a bit more of a nuisance, but I'm not in a position to just throw away income!

[LSD]

Never trust tooltips in Paradox games. They're always hopelessly inaccurate.
Bordeaux won't give you much of anything, because France has all the trade power there.

Safi is your best bet early-game. Once you discover the rest of the world, Ivory Coast is the absolute best place to concentrate trade ships.

For money, try to place trade ships in areas with high trade value where no one nation has all the power (i.e., all the trade bonus nodes). Protecting trade in your home node is almost never worthwhile, because you'll usually have most of the nodes, and as mentioned, diminishing returns come into play.

What you definitely should be doing as Castile, though, is getting "Hunt Pirate" fleets protecting Seville. North Africa will raid you into the dirt otherwise.

[bri]

Safi is your best bet early-game. Once you discover the rest of the world, Ivory Coast is the absolute best place to concentrate trade ships.

Utterly wrong and maaaaayyyyybe. Safi is a trash node only fed by other trash nodes and until you own 100% of Seville AND Valencia you want more power in Seville to stop the ducats from bleeding out or being sniped by the competition. Once that situation is handled then the Ivory Coast might be the best option but it depends on the situation there and in some other key nodes.

[Finarfin]

What's a good target percentage to strive for in my home node? I've between 50-60% at this point.

[Tulduil Iphukiir]

Originally posted by LSD:

Never trust tooltips in Paradox games. They're always hopelessly inaccurate.
[...]

I would not say "never" and "always hopelessly inaccurate". From my experience by far the most tooltips are correct or at least only slightly incorrect. Of course there are some inaccurate tooltips (like this thread's Protect Trade benefits) in prominent places but that is far from "always".

Originally posted by LSD:

Safi is your best bet early-game. Once you discover the rest of the world, Ivory Coast is the absolute best place to concentrate trade ships.

Safi is a very bad Node to Protect early game:
It has only one exit (Sevilla) so Trade flows that direction anyway. Enough Trade Power Portugal's and Castile's massive Privincial Trade Power in Sevilla is propagated upstream (it doesn't matter whether "foreign" Trade Power in Safi is contributed by Castile or Portugal).
It is much better to Protect in Sevilla early game because there the real competition between Portugal and Castile happens. You want as much Trade Power there as you can get.

Originally posted by LSD:

[...] Protecting trade in your home node is almost never worthwhile, because you'll usually have most of the nodes, and as mentioned, diminishing returns come into play. [...]

"Almost never" is, in my opinion, bad advice. Of course, once you have the majority of Trade Power in a Node you may better use your Light Ships elsewhere.
However, dominating your Home Node may not be that easy and sometimes even impossible early game (or even mid game) and simply not wanted (roleplaying etc): E.g. As England conquering the Dutch provinces in English Channel can be hard because the HRE and AE, as a small German nation you may not be in a position to dominate Lübeck for quite some time, uniting Japan takes time and if Korea is allied to a strong Ming controlling Nippon takes time, if Castile/Spain keeps Portugal as a PU for faster colonization Sevilla stays heavily contested for some time (you cannot demand Trade Power from Juniors, only from Vassals/Marches).

At the start of a new game Protecting in your Home Node is often the best use for Light Ships. Steering more Trade towards your Home Node doesn't help if you cannot collect it.

[Finarfin]

I think I really need to spend some more time on understanding trade. I want to figure out how to understand how much trade gets forwarded, e.g. Safi to Sevilla.

[Tulduil Iphukiir]

Originally posted by Finarfin:

What's a good target percentage to strive for in my home node? I've between 50-60% at this point.

Ideally you want 100%.
This is possible easiest in the three End Nodes English Channel, Genoa and Venice because no Trade can flow out of those.
If you own all provinces in an End Node you have 100% there (or close to 100% if other nations still have Merchants and/or Light Ships there).

You can create "Pseodo End Nodes" by completely conquering one Node A and completely conquering all Nodes downstream of A. In that case it is possible to get 100% (or close to 100%) in a non End Node.
Best suited for Pseudo End Nodes are Nodes with only one exit, worst suited Nodes with many exits.
Classical Pseudo End Nodes are Zanzibar (if you own Cape), Beijing (if you own Yumen), Sevilla (if you own Valencia), Constantinople (if you own Ragusa), ...


In reality you goal should be the increase your share as much as possible. Sometimes more than 50% is not possible at the moment but you should find ways to increase that.

I personally am content with >75% and then no longer concentrate on increasing Trade Power as number 1 priority (I will still try to increase it more if given the chance). I then rather concentrate on increasing Trade Value in my Home Node (e.g. through conquering upstream provinces).
Example: As Denmark completely dominating Lübeck can be hard: HRE CoTs like Lübeck/Hamburg/Bremen/etc, England and Dutch Nations propagating from English Channel, ...
If I own approximately 75% (through Light Ships, buildings, conquest of some North German provinces, Transfer Trade Power relationsships, ...) I will focus on Baltic/Novgorod/... Nodes (increase Trade Value steered to Lübeck) instead of "wasting" soldiers/ships/money on the immediate conquest of Britain.
Of course, conquest of Britain and the Netherlands and moving the Main Node to English Channel should be the mid/longterm goal.


Something similar is true for Nodes which cannot be dominated without massive conquests: As Mamluks dominating Alexandria is extremely hard or even impossible because Venice, Genoa and Constantinople propagate much Trade Power upstream.
Increasing your Trade income by steering more Trade to Alexandria will be cheaper than ensuring that you keep more of the Trade Value that arrives at Alexandria.


So rule of thumb:
The less exits a Node has the easier it is to dominate and the higher should be the Trade Power share you should go for short/mid term.

[Tulduil Iphukiir]

Originally posted by Finarfin:

I think I really need to spend some more time on understanding trade. I want to figure out how to understand how much trade gets forwarded, e.g. Safi to Sevilla.

I'd like to recommend Reman's Guide to Trade:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edjLVFMjPyo

Some parts are outdated nowadays (e.g. some Trade Node connections did change over several patches) and things like Merchant Policies are missing (because they were introduced later) but the underlying rules and calculations did not change and thus the video is still very helpful.

For the Safi->Sevilla part check the 5:30 mark for Trade Power Propagation and the Trade Steering section with the example calculation starting at 8:00.

But the whole video is worth watching several times.

[Marquoz]

Originally posted by Finarfin:

What's a good target percentage to strive for in my home node? I've between 50-60% at this point.

Before I unpause any game of EU4, I ask myself a series of trade-related questions that dictate the course of much of my game:

1) What is my current collection node?
2) Will I collect there all game? If so, I want to control 100% of the provinces in that node and dominate everything that feeds it. If not...
3) What will be my eventual collection node? How do I expand to gain 100% control of that node as fast as possible and dominate everything that feeds it?

Once you understand how trade works, it becomes the most important part of your income by the mid game. You can literally make four figures per month through trade alone when you combine the extra merchants you get from colonial nations and TCs with the effects of province and TC buildings, but only if you plan your expansion intelligently.

[LSD]

In my last Castille game, simply by upping all the nodes to level 2 and putting a marketplace on them, there was enough power in Seville to have a 75% share.
9d in Safi is better than the ~4 in Tunis. Since the AI in this patch doesn't build buildings, it means Portugal is 0 threat to Seville, and though Morocco has all the nodes in Safi, their total power is very low. So a fair number of ships can compete with their total power and pull in an extra bunch of ducats.

Until you get to Mexico, there's not much else left for Spain in terms of protect trade. You should have all the Caribbean, which gets both 100% of the CNs power +20% of Seville's.

As Ivory Coast is where everything in the Indies will travel through, it's undoubtedly the best option for Spain. It's extremely rich as it is, but once you get the Zanzibar, you're talking a good hundred ducats in that zone going straight to your home zone.

[Finarfin]

Originally posted by LSD:

Since the AI in this patch doesn't build buildings,

Is this true? That seems like a major part of the game that's being ignored.

[bri]

Originally posted by Finarfin:

Originally posted by LSD:

Since the AI in this patch doesn't build buildings,

Is this true? That seems like a major part of the game that's being ignored.

The ai builds buildings, they just don't often build trade (or other economy improving) buildings choosing instead to gimp themselves and trigger debt problems.