Why would I sign a trade agreement?

[mortis7]

Trade agreement seems to shut down tarrifs in exchange of nullying the bureaucracy cost of trade routes.

Unless there is a big problem with bureaucracy points, I don't really see a benefit for signing such agreement. Tarrifs are currently one of the biggest money printers for my nation

[Gilmund]

引用自 mortis7：

Trade agreement seems to shut down tarrifs in exchange of nullying the bureaucracy cost of trade routes.

Unless there is a big problem with bureaucracy points, I don't really see a benefit for signing such agreement. Tarrifs are currently one of the biggest money printers for my nation

It's not just tarifs of your nation but also tarifs of the other nation. Indeed tarifs are good at the beggining but imo there is much to gain from free trade later on ;-)

[Bloodeagle369]

Gilmund could you elaborate regarding free trade? I think protectionism is better.

Trade agreements are a step to increase relation with an country. I would say trade agreement are good if its a country from which you import a lot of goods or if you want to increase you relationship.

[mortis7]

I'm on year 1902 as Afganistan and my income is:
income tax: 140k
head tax (not sure about the name, but from the every working person): 36k
tarrifs: 87k

And I can import/export whatever the hell I want at this point. No idea why would I ever throw away that 87k in tarrifs

[=(FGR)=Sentinel]

Trade Agreements are useful as the precursor for a trade union. Basically you sacrifice tariffs in a nation that produces a lot of what you need and you provide a lot of resources/goods to in the short term to eventually unify your markets and not have to deal with manually adding or removing trade routes. Not only that, but from what I've seen you're able to use the entire market's supply of a resource/good for trade routes, so if you unify your market with someone else you can actually benefit off their surplus and deficit by being the point of arrival or departure from the combined market.

[Anor]

Because it helps if you are export heavy country or if you need more import from a trade route. Tariffs makes trade routes smaller than it should be.

[Silverlock]

Playing as Japan and most of the time money hasn't been a big issue for me but their is never enough bureaucracy points ever. So as Japan I always except trade agreements while using protectionism trade policy.

[curtadamsCA]

Well, bureaucracy points ARE usually a big deal. You have to make them in your government centers, and they're expensive!

[Gilmund]

引用自 Bloodeagle369：

Gilmund could you elaborate regarding free trade? I think protectionism is better.

Trade agreements are a step to increase relation with an country. I would say trade agreement are good if its a country from which you import a lot of goods or if you want to increase you relationship.

Basically look at the free trade tooltip, you have :
+50% volume of your routes which means you can trade more on a same route
-50% bureaucracy cost of your routes which means you can have some much more routes with the same buraucracy. You can double your number of routes.
+50% competitivity of your routes, which means i think other traders are mot likely to chose your routes over others

It's huge.
You're always contained by how much convoys given by your ports and it's not infinite, so you can't expand to a certain extent without implementing free trade.
But free trade only starts only to be interesting when you lead markets with your goods, meaning you're the first producer to 5th producer on certain goods and cheaper than others.
That means what you will loose in customs is compensated by the amount you'll be able to share being in position to fix the price for others. You produce cheaper and still make a profit selling it.
Obivously you better be the leader of the market for that, that's why i'm not joining any bigger market than mine. People come to my market or i export to people.

So playing with customs is an early game thing like the 50 first years but imo you've to get free trade for more volume if you continue expanding your economy and want to give more goods to your pops to expand faster.

[Gilmund]

If you combine free trade law + a trade agreement (no bureaucracy cost at all) with the bigger powers, you have in a nutshell free access to fix the price on their markets without them having the possibility to put customs.

I do free trade agreemets with the bigger powers like Great Britain cause i always have to import things being unable to produce everything myself constatly. It's cheaper.

[Gilmund]

引用自 mortis7：

I'm on year 1902 as Afganistan and my income is:
income tax: 140k
head tax (not sure about the name, but from the every working person): 36k
tarrifs: 87k

And I can import/export whatever the hell I want at this point. No idea why would I ever throw away that 87k in tarrifs

You would be much bigger without customs probly.
In my sicilian game i had 200M GDP around 1900 and a weekly gain of 150k with a pop of 20M growing at 1.5%. That with only 12 states. I reached 4th general score going from a minor state to a big power.
Money breed more standard of living for pop and more standard of living for pop breed more money for more new pop. 25% of my pops are not sicilians.

When you've the better standard of living and the better laws everyone starts to come live in your country to find jobs cause it's better to live there :)

Imo the best part of this game is right there!

[next]

Trade deals are about making your people more wealthy.
High wealth class needs more goods.
This means you can build more factories to fill their needs.
If you have a lot of peasants. Here is a way to convert peasants to higher tax tiers.

[lubed_assassin]

Free trade allows you to buy up cheap input goods and manufacture cheaper goods further out competing other nations, its really a beast with laize faire.