Mod to change Trade?

[Jagerwulfen]

So I'm just looking to start my 3rd campaign and I was wondering if there was a mod to change how trade works. Namely I'd like to be able to get end nodes wherever I am. I don't like the idea of European nations getting rich just because trade is always in their favor. Any mods like this?

[grotaclas]

Unfortunately eu4's engine does not support changing the trade flow from within the game. So the best that a mod could do would be to have trade node connections which are different from the vanilla game(but still fixed and not changeable unless you change the mod)

[Marquoz]

No idea, but you don't need one of the three end nodes to get insanely rich from trade. Many great nodes have only one exit. They pull in trade from multiple places but have only one outflow direction. If you gain total control of such a node and also take over the outflow node, congratulations! You just created a pseudo-end node. You'll retain almost 100% of the pseudo-end node's trade.

Zanzibar is one example of such a node.

[Narrowmind]

In the Ethiopia thread (I believe), I think you stated your preference for Alexandria vs another nearby node, but I'm not sure why - this node would depend on ships to get 100 percent control, wouldn't it, but you don't use ships. Could you further explain?

[Marquoz]

In the Ethiopia thread, I said I'd either use Zanzibar or Alexandria as my second collection point, depending on how the campaign went. Since I was able to wipe the Mamluks fast, I picked Alexandria--my expansion concentrated on areas that feed it.

Alexandria's not a great node, though, because Europe pulls from it. So I also grew towards Genoa and would have launched my first wars on that node in the 1530s to take it over. Alexandria feeds Genoa, and so does Constantinople and Ragusa. And of course Genoa is an end node.

If heading north hadn't worked out, I would have made Zanzibar a pseudo-end node and routed the trade from India, southeast Asia, and Indonesia there instead.

[Narrowmind]

But even with routing to Genoa, it's it possible to have 100 percent just from controlling the land only? Or are you saying you always play wide enough to push back everyone from even the surrounding nodes so that no one is close enough to bother sending decent number of ships to trade at the node?

[Marquoz]

It's not possible to have 100% from land alone if other nations send ships, but 1) they never send enough ships to really matter and 2) I'll eat them too before long.

[Narrowmind]

Ah, got it. ☺️

[Triple G]

Originally posted by Narrowmind:

But even with routing to Genoa, it's it possible to have 100 percent just from controlling the land only? Or are you saying you always play wide enough to push back everyone from even the surrounding nodes so that no one is close enough to bother sending decent number of ships to trade at the node?

The end nodes have the advantage, that nobody can apply trade power to them by sending it downstream, so it always stays there.

And even if they send ships to privateer there - one could have a couple of ships to do pirate hunting.

Some other node, which has outgoing trade - always has the problem that the node beyond them would apply trade power to it. And Alexandria has like two or three outgoing streams, which on top are usually controlled by countries which have a lot of trade power. You could make Alexandria strong, if You send more trade power into it via a lot of merchants, but imho Aleppo is the better node. It´s further away from the Italians, and You can get the Persian trade into it. Of course it depends where You want to go. And Constantinople is usually a very strong node, because the trade only goes to the Balkans, and chances are that You also have a decent share there as well, so most of the trade also stays in Constantinople, without really optimizing it.

But as far as the player is concerned - You can make almost any trade node work. Exceptions are ones like that in South America, which has no ingoing node, but only two outgoing ones. As long as You can build a chain towards Your trade node, You could apply ridiculous amounts of trade power via stacking merchants.

[Narrowmind]

I knew that the chain would grow value, but I didn't realize it also grows power. Thank you.

[grotaclas]

Chains don't grow trade power. You just get 20% of the trade power of your provinces from one node as "transfer from traders downstream" in the nodes which are directly upstream. E.g. If your provinces in the Genoa node have a total trade power of 100, you get 20 trade power in each of the upstream nodes Alexandria, Champagne, Ragusa, Valencia and Tunis.

If you have the Ship tradepower propagation modifier, the trade power from your ships get propagated in the same way, but it is usually very little, because the 20% is applied here as well(e.g. with 20% trade power propagation and 100 trade power from ships, you would only get 20%*20%*100=4 trade power in the upstream nodes)

[Narrowmind]

Thank you for the further clarity.

[Triple G]

Originally posted by grotaclas:

Chains don't grow trade power. You just get 20% of the trade power of your provinces from one node as "transfer from traders downstream" in the nodes which are directly upstream. E.g. If your provinces in the Genoa node have a total trade power of 100, you get 20 trade power in each of the upstream nodes Alexandria, Champagne, Ragusa, Valencia and Tunis.

The merchant actions are called "transfer trade power", and "collect from trade".

The trade value is connected to the trade power.

And i haven´t looked into it - but when i have more merchants steering into my home node, my trade share rises, without doing anything.

I mean steering it forward - not the part which applies to the upstream node.

Edit: i don´t have a save right now (only very early game, when it doesn´t make a difference really), but one could check it with simply collecting in the node before the home node to see if the trade power changes. I guess it would go down, and the share is lower. (not meaning the 10% bonus which goes away as soon as You collect elsewhere)

[grotaclas]

Originally posted by Triple G:

The merchant actions are called "transfer trade power", and "collect from trade".

That's just a bad wording in the game. You are using your trade power to transfer trade value, but you don't transfer any power.

Originally posted by Triple G:

The trade value is connected to the trade power.

Not really. Your trade power decides how much of the trade value in a node you can steer/collect with a merchant, But how much trade power you generate is independent from the amount of trade value which you generate. And it doesn't matter if you generate/steer trade value or if somebody else does it. Your merchants operate on an amount of trade value relative to your share of the trade power in their node(trade steering modifiers influence your trade power when calculating to which nodes the value is steered, but it does not change how much trade value leaves the node), no matter where that value came from.

Originally posted by Triple G:

And i haven´t looked into it - but when i have more merchants steering into my home node, my trade share rises, without doing anything.

That's unrelated to the chain. If you don't collect in any non-home node, your home node gets a +10% trade power modifier for each merchant which is transferring trade(see https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Trade#Merchant_bonus ). It doesn't matter if the merchant transfers trade towards your home node or if he transfers the trade away from your home node. And it also doesn't matter how much power you have in the nodes with the merchants.

Originally posted by Triple G:

I mean steering it forward - not the part which applies to the upstream node.

But that's the only way in the game how trade power from one node influences the trade power in another node.

Originally posted by Triple G:

Edit: i don´t have a save right now (only very early game, when it doesn´t make a difference really), but one could check it with simply collecting in the node before the home node to see if the trade power changes. I guess it would go down, and the share is lower. (not meaning the 10% bonus which goes away as soon as You collect elsewhere)

You will only lose the 10% bonus and nothing else. You can check the tooltips in the trade node windows to see where all the trade power comes from and that "transfer from traders downstream" is the only source of trade power which is influenced by other nodes

[Triple G]

Originally posted by grotaclas:

That's unrelated to the chain. If you don't collect in any non-home node, your home node gets a +10% trade power modifier for each merchant which is transferring trade(see https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Trade#Merchant_bonus ). It doesn't matter if the merchant transfers trade towards your home node or if he transfers the trade away from your home node. And it also doesn't matter how much power you have in the nodes with the merchants.

Which is what i meant. (i haven´t looked into it for longer as said before)

Like it doesn´t make sense to steer the trade anywhere else except Your home node, if You want to make use of this modifier. Of course You don´t really need the modifier if You already have 99% of the trade power in the node.

"If no merchant is currently collecting outside the home node, then the home node receives a +10% bonus to trade power for each merchant who is steering trade."

So if You have 10 merchants steering to it, You have 100% more trade power in Your home node.

In some simple example with Alexandria - without any other modifiers and easy numbers - it would be that way that You have 50% trade share, if You only have the provinces, which is bad, but if You have 10 merchants steering into it, You´d have 67%, which is better - but usually You´d have 20+ merchants if You do the merchant game, or play wide on purpose...

But thanks for clarification. What i said before was somehow wrong. Now we have figured it out. :o)

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

Originally posted by Triple G:

Like it doesn´t make sense to steer the trade anywhere else except Your home node, if You want to make use of this modifier. Of course You don´t really need the modifier if You already have 99% of the trade power in the node.

There are some use cases, albeit rare. For example, in my current Papal States game, I have 95% trade power share in my home node of Genoa, but 100% share in neighboring end node Venice (I've conquered the Venice node provinces from Austria, but have yet to challenge Spain for Sardinia-Corsica). As such, it makes more sense for me to transfer nodes towards Venice rather than Genoa where applicable - such as Alexandria, which doesn't get filtered through Ragusa first - though the difference in gains is still rather minimal. And since I'd be collecting in both nodes either way, moving my main trade node over would also be a waste.