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This is my take on it, too. I only build them to complete missions or fulfill estate agendas. Otherwise, if I care about a zone, I conquer that zone. Why compete for a slice of the pie? Take the whole pie instead.
If you own the provinces with high trade power and put them in trade companies you will already control almost all the trade, massively buff goods produced and then it barely matters who owns the provinces with low trade power and you can conquer the rest when ever it fits your schedule.
Of course if You want to play every game the same, and expand as much as possible, and conquer the same trade nodes all over again, and put everything into a trade company - they´re not worth to build, because they only add to the trade power - and You´re the richest and strongest nation due to having the most dev anyway.
But if You compare the goods produced in a trade company - for provinces which are part of it, and provinces which aren´t part of it - You´might see that missing modifier for every province which is in the trade company. Which is even higher with that investment, which gives goods produced to every province in the area.
Of course in single player it doesn´t matter - and if You put everything in there, You need to wait till the tech which gives You the courthouse upgrade to have them for free (government costs). The normal territories work with the basic one - if that´s the issue.
The only thing which stands in the way of the min man approach here is that the UI will always tell You that You can fully core provinces, or that You can make states. There´s no way to ignore certain areas or provinces.
And if You want the whole share of a node by conquering, You also need to conquer all bordering nodes, so nobody applies trade power from a down- or upstream node, and make sure that the AI doesn´t send ships there. Else You have like 70 - 80% of the share, while You have not much less if You only have the CoTs with a market, while the markets still give You a higher trade share even if others apply their trade power from other nodes, or send pirates. But it also depends on the node. In general this is nothing which You would do if playing tall.
Also for production it isn´t too obvious, as it also makes the trade value, so it basically gives money twice. One time for production, and one time for the goods produced times the good value. While the trade is usually more valuable, as You can further amplify the income from it outside of the province.
TL;DR:
It´s always worth it. While of course the manufacturies are best if it´s about generating money, as they add like 5 levels of dev points in goods produced, which can get buffed up to 200% if You don´t add them to trade companies. So if You add everything to the trade companies, You only get a third of the money You could get.
Also true, but at some point You might have more money than You can spend anyways as the player vs the AI. Which is probably why even people like Marquoz don´t recommend the optimal strategy, but instead a sub-optimal one, which is more convenient and leads to a clean UI. Which is also why i think that doing the most optimal thing isn´t always worth it, while some would say that this is sub-standard thinking. For me it doesn´t matter much how big the gap to the second rated nation is, or how fast i get to the point in which i dominate the game and probably only click buttons to get some achievement done from there on...
It's not about competing for a slice of the pie - it's about making the pie bigger.
I must confess I have not run the math on whether this is worth it or not. A 1k-ish upfront investment for a 20-40% goods produced (depends when you are in the game) in a whole trade node sounds pretty worth it intuitively, but not 100% sure.
Lowering minimum local autonomy is something I do as a matter of course--it's no effort. Expansion is one of my top idea groups, and that's 10%. Decentralized bureaucracy and regional representation are another 10% on top of that. That lowers it to 70% right there, and some nations/religions bring it down even further.
As for half stating, I don't build markets when I half state either. I conquer entire nodes either way. Markets are a waste unless I'm playing a tall game. They only provide trade power and (again, unless I'm playing tall) don't pay for themselves before I get total control through conquest.
Good for you. But i am not waiting for idea groups to lower autonomy when I can have 50% autonomy for half coring cost day 1. Your advice is suboptimal and you are teaching players bad habits.
Unsure which turns out to be worth more in the long run, but a 1k-ish up-front investment for that much Goods Produced in the entire trade node is certainly a faster return on investment than 800 ducats per area for 100% Production Efficiency and a flat 0.3 Goods Produced for just that area.
Let´s say You have global trade - it´s 100% goods produced. But those who are in the trade company don´t get this modifier. Hence only the CoTs, but with market places to get the merchant.
The trade company investments, which are for the whole area - only add further to this. To make the said pie more biggerer.
The goods produced bonus is proportional to the share of trade power that's in the TC. So building marketplaces in the TC do in fact raise the goods produced bonus.
What I am not sure is whether the additional GP from this pays back for building the marketplaces in a reasonable timeframe.
(Also, as a sidenote, I generally prefer to TC just 1 or 2 states and do everything I can to concentrate the trade power there, so I can (half-)state the rest of the region. Though doing just the CoTs is good too, just not my favoured approach.)
At the northern end it´s the same with trace, building market places in all these four provinces (including Constantinople) will also give You the merchant, simply because Constantinople is so strong, and a buff for the rest of the Anatolia node, which are core provinces. And in the South it´s the same with Aden, while there it works with only adding the African CoTs to the trade company. The only trade areas which doesn´t work like this are Egypt and Aleppo, as they have no provinces outside of the Levant subcontinent. (for that subcontinent)
And i didn´t half state everything, but let it as territories, and had no autonomy thingies going on, except for the trade company building for the 5% and some state houses after i had built factories everywhere and some still had an open spot. I would expand the infrastructure in (some few) paper / gem / whatever provinces once to have the building slot for a second manufactory, as it costs 15 flat, but the state house gives 20. So i ended the game with 730 government capacity (out of 2.2k or something), but 5k or 6k dev without vassals. I made 1.5k per month, and like 1k+ was from trade, without taking trade ideas or anything which buffs it. In the end i only had Persia on that side, and a bit of India. The parts South of Aden, and West of Alexandria didn´t really contribute much, as they´re downstream. I just committed to this idea to see if it´s still okay - and i still was by far the richest nation, while most of my possessions where territories with 85% autonomy. I added all gold provinces and all CoTs / estuaries to the trade companies, and left all others out, even if it´s better to add one province per area, so all the other get the bonus from the trade company investments as well, but then You can´t state them anyways...
Here i did it for the sake of it, even if i had the capacity - else i would either add them to a trade company or fully state them. I don´t like half states very much, as they always show the button to fully core them. Usually i would add them to a trade company for that reason alone. But with a half states i would have had triple the amount of manpower, tax income, and production income.
And i personally don´t build anything that it pays back, but to afford the upkeep and to get an income, while it somehow skyrockets in the later stages anyways, while it´s super tight in the early game. I´m personally fine, when i have like 500 income, so i could build a manufactory every month. Once it passes this amount, it´s usually the way that You can´t spend all the money at some point. Like here i also built everything in every province, even for my two small vassals, when i fast forwarded the game to get the 1k dev in Arabia, but i didn´t use up my force limit, and only had like 420k, and not my fleet limit, like 200 out of 600, only like 30 of which were trade ships, because i captured them.
Perish the thought