Trade

[Eevilflamee]

So i think after more time in game the import export part is too weak.....no clear indication of what you need as a country/econemy to what you should trade.

Then unless you read every notification at the top you easily forget a route is no longer any good.


Its like the idea is there to be a great aspect but slightly flawed i hope this gets an update somehow

[Oaks]

You need to look at your market and decide yourself what to import/export.
A surplus usually means time to export, shortage tells you you should import. Stick to the basic items like food and booze, specialize more complicated things later on.

[Eevilflamee]

Yeah i feel the routes become useless way to fast and without the notification there is no real way to know to cancel them.

Also soon as you do, you need to redo another route for the same goods. I just think the trade needs a better overhaul. I still like the game though

[Wenzel]

Note that the profitability of a route does not directly affect your balance.

It does affect the balance of the respective trade center. If the trade route is compensated by other, profitable trade routes, there is no big problem. If it is not compensated, however, the wages of the workers in the trade center will drop, which means that over the long run the workers will lose wealth and become radicals.

And yet, it is still bade to have unprofitbale trade routes. Because they are limited to a small volume (level 1). This is inefficient in terms of bureaucracy (each route costs a fixed amount of bureaucracy to maintain, regardless of the actual volume/level of the route).

[DinoMight]

ermmm you should never trade unless you are 100% sure on what you need and you always know that

for example, if you are not in british or qinq market, you will 100% import opium, you know you have to do that because you cannot produce it, same for silk (as japan you dont have to import silk, you need other stuff)

and when do you need it? well when you get first aid

another example is when, lets say you unlock leaded glass, and thats so early that you probably have no lead, so when you switch to leaded glass, to produce more glass, you dont have to wait for your lead mines to build, you can just import it so your glass factories can work on leaded glass while you wait for your lead mines to build, when they build you get notification that you have inefficient trade route for lead, thats when you turn it off because you dont need it

meaning if you produce everything it means you dont need to import anything
thats why you 100% know what you need 100% of time, you literally know what you lack, thats what you import

and on export, you only do that when you want to increase the price of something on your market because its too cheap and its not essential like building materials or grain, those you want to be as cheap as possible and maybe prevent others from importing those from you (so it remains cheap), meaning you will have to embargo some countries

but if for example luxury clothes are very cheap, export it, so it becomes average again, so your textile workers actually get paid anything so your factories dont start firing their workers because its not worth it for them to work, what they sell is too cheap to be worth it to produce it, so you export it so its worth it again

one good example is again, when you tech into ironclads, your need for clippers and manowars will drop enormously, but that doesnt mean that you shouldnt leave one shipyard making them
why you may ask if its so redundant on my market that is worth pennies?

well you can export those manowars that you dont need anymore to countries that yet dont have ironclads and still need manowars
again, when they tech into ironclads, you will get notif that your export route is inefficient again, so you drop it, and you can safely switch to ironclads entirely now

one last thing with trade is that you shouldnt sleep on tariffs, you should pay attention to them and set them very correctly, it matters if you are free trade or interventionist or mercantilist (all though the latter is rarely worth it to anyone who isnt britain, because they are the only ones who will export in a way that makes mercantilism worth it, yet free trade is still better for them, for the rest of the plebs you need interventionism)

i cannot stress enough how setting up your tariffs correctly is important

the game i learned how to use them, i switched from -25k to +15k just by setting them correctly and realising why every game until that one, my economy would always reach the point where it would crash uncontrolably, it was because stronger powers would "steal" "cheap" resources from my market cause i didnt protect them with tariffs, or if not protect, at least profit from their import

hope that helps

[Eevilflamee]

Originally posted by DinoMight:

ermmm you should never trade unless you are 100% sure on what you need and you always know that

for example, if you are not in british or qinq market, you will 100% import opium, you know you have to do that because you cannot produce it, same for silk (as japan you dont have to import silk, you need other stuff)

and when do you need it? well when you get first aid

another example is when, lets say you unlock leaded glass, and thats so early that you probably have no lead, so when you switch to leaded glass, to produce more glass, you dont have to wait for your lead mines to build, you can just import it so your glass factories can work on leaded glass while you wait for your lead mines to build, when they build you get notification that you have inefficient trade route for lead, thats when you turn it off because you dont need it

meaning if you produce everything it means you dont need to import anything
thats why you 100% know what you need 100% of time, you literally know what you lack, thats what you import

and on export, you only do that when you want to increase the price of something on your market because its too cheap and its not essential like building materials or grain, those you want to be as cheap as possible and maybe prevent others from importing those from you (so it remains cheap), meaning you will have to embargo some countries

but if for example luxury clothes are very cheap, export it, so it becomes average again, so your textile workers actually get paid anything so your factories dont start firing their workers because its not worth it for them to work, what they sell is too cheap to be worth it to produce it, so you export it so its worth it again

one good example is again, when you tech into ironclads, your need for clippers and manowars will drop enormously, but that doesnt mean that you shouldnt leave one shipyard making them
why you may ask if its so redundant on my market that is worth pennies?

well you can export those manowars that you dont need anymore to countries that yet dont have ironclads and still need manowars
again, when they tech into ironclads, you will get notif that your export route is inefficient again, so you drop it, and you can safely switch to ironclads entirely now

one last thing with trade is that you shouldnt sleep on tariffs, you should pay attention to them and set them very correctly, it matters if you are free trade or interventionist or mercantilist (all though the latter is rarely worth it to anyone who isnt britain, because they are the only ones who will export in a way that makes mercantilism worth it, yet free trade is still better for them, for the rest of the plebs you need interventionism)

i cannot stress enough how setting up your tariffs correctly is important

the game i learned how to use them, i switched from -25k to +15k just by setting them correctly and realising why every game until that one, my economy would always reach the point where it would crash uncontrolably, it was because stronger powers would "steal" "cheap" resources from my market cause i didnt protect them with tariffs, or if not protect, at least profit from their import

hope that helps

Thankyou for your reply i understand what you mean.....how to put tariffs on stuff?

In game i have played Belgium, USA, Japan.

Especially in belgium play Britain took all my trade and i wasnt sure how when i never exported the goods to them

[DinoMight]

oh and paying attention on those notifs about inefficient trade routes is kind of part of the gameplay
PDX games are so called "excell spreadsheet" games, clicking on notifs is what you do

you probably just get to many of them because you set random and pointless routes

in general, you actually can even predict when you will get that notif, in my lead mine example, you know you will get it when your mines finish building, so you can anticipate that

its not like you have to stare at those notifications all the time

sometimes you will have to keep that inefficient trade route because thats your only source of that goods on your market, you can right click on that good

another example is start of the mexico
you have inefficient artillery route, at the start you have no arms factories to produce it yourself
and if you check the market, usually all offers are inefficient, probably even more so than british export, except the american offer, but the thing is, you cannot take it because they will soon embargo you when they come after those sweet sweet american states they historically conquer from mexico, so again you have to stick with british inefficient arty trade route until you get your own production going, to prevent the shortages

[DinoMight]

Originally posted by Eevilflamee:

Thankyou for your reply i understand what you mean.....how to put tariffs on stuff?

In game i have played Belgium, USA, Japan.

Especially in belgium play Britain took all my trade and i wasnt sure how when i never exported the goods to them

no probs man

and about those tariffs, i had the same problem finding them
when you click on the market tab on the left, and its panel opens
you have three tabs, the one where the trade routes are, on top of your every goods trade route icon, there are like 3 little orange boxes, with pictures of orange and blue boxes, they represent on which side you force your tariffs, when you hover over it, it will tell you how much you profit from said change

[Eevilflamee]

Originally posted by DinoMight:

Originally posted by Eevilflamee:

Thankyou for your reply i understand what you mean.....how to put tariffs on stuff?

In game i have played Belgium, USA, Japan.

Especially in belgium play Britain took all my trade and i wasnt sure how when i never exported the goods to them

no probs man

and about those tariffs, i had the same problem finding them
when you click on the market tab on the left, and its panel opens
you have three tabs, the one where the trade routes are, on top of your every goods trade route icon, there are like 3 little orange boxes, with pictures of orange and blue boxes, they represent on which side you force your tariffs, when you hover over it, it will tell you how much you profit from said change

Ah yes ibsee them

So i put tariffs for export on stuff i dont want to sell and lower tarrifs on stuff i want rid of?

[DinoMight]

you put export tariffs on stuff you export and import tariffs on things you import, it usually will tell you which is the correct one because it will have "green" balance