Automatic versus Manual Trade

[Unit 744]

I am relatively new to the game, and I have been reading up on all the game mechanics to help me understand things. One thing on which I have not been able to find much information is the trade system.

It seems many people simply leave the whole thing on automatic and never look at it again. As someone who enjoys these kinds of management games (and play with manual control over everything whenever possible), I am interested to know more about the trading system. Why do people play on automatic? Is full manual unfun or impractical? I have hitherto been unable to find a good guide on manual trading to answer these questions.

Any guidance or links to great guides (text or video) would be greatly appreciated!

[Dan]

Well I sincerely almost never care to look at the trade screen, I let my ministers take care of that and focus on other things, even more so because I almost always play using mods like HFM etc and economy there is a bit different from vanilla (still I haven't figured out exactly how much different it is because I sincerely don't care much lol, but I've read it's better and less prone to crashes like in vanilla).

[Lembley42]

Automatic trade simply buys up the materials as you, the State, needs them.

Manual you can buy in storage. This is great for any Military and Construction good, as when you will build or train things they won’t have to wait a few days each to „gather the materials“ but can take it from Stock immediately.

Simply uncheck Automatic, set Storage of these goods to 2000 and it will try to hold the stock at 2000.


About the trading system in general, it happens in two phases:

1) Production and Demand meet nationally. All lets say domnestically produced Coal being produced will be sold to your national population, to you the state and to your factoriew and artisans.

2) All „leftovers“ supply and demand are gathered on the World Market. Here, Rank #1 may buy first, then #2 can buy and so forth. This is why certain goods aren’t available on the Market for low ranked nations. Once it gets there, its all gone already.
If Supply exceeds Demand on World Market, the price drops by 0.001, if theres more Demand it increases by such. World Market prices are also used by domestic exchanges.

Spheres are very useful as they play into 1), National Market. If you have sphered a nation, you have „first buy“ on its resources.

[Grand ArchDuke]

Trade interface is page 39.


https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/42960/manuals/Victoria2_onlinemanual_English_USA.pdf?t=1589817722