Elven embassy or elven fairground?

[Xanton]

So as with all total war games, as you progress further in the campaign you find you have more space to focus on economy in cities at the center or your terrory.

As the title suggests, I was wondering which one would be best to focus on?

I have about 8k income per turn from trade agreements/resources. What I was wondering is whether the 5% trade tarrif bonus from the embassy stacks or not? Have people had any luck stacking these, or is it better to just pump out elven fairgrounds for more trinket production?

[Fletchard]

I thought at first that some of the buildings stacked their bonuses, but I was wrong.

What I I don't know about is if by trade tariffs it means profits from all goods, or just the tariffs section in the list of each export to your trade partners. If the latter, if it only affects that one item and not the 12+ trade goods, I don't think it beats out the flat 200 of the fairground, so hopefully that's not the case. (Edit: we confirmed it's the latter.)

See the below posts more research!

[Wattynic]

I was wondering the same thing so it prompted some research.

I recorded my trade account details and can confirm that it only affects the tariffs only. So i saw a reduction in tariffs from demolishing one embassy of about 60 gold, then when i destroyed a second embassy in that region i got a reduction of 45 but when i burnt down 17 (which i'll admit, i enjoyed) it was an average of about 80 so i don't know what's going on there, either the trade bonuses stacked or they didn't or the tariffs change a bit per turn. The value of goods produced (profit from all goods) and the long term partnerships remained relatively unchanged (apart from per-turn fluctuations).

I also checked out whether the effects stacked on ports and happy days, they do.

As far a figuring out which is better, if you're exporting 100% of your Elven Trinkets then i would probably build more Fairgrounds, 12 trinkets at about 20g each will fetch you about 240g on top of the 200g base income but you can only sell as many as your marketing team can peddle.
If you have an excess supply of trinkets then i would still consider the fairgrounds just for the 200g base income.
It is unlikely that the effect on trade tariffs will make up for the income even towards the end game (i am currently trading with Hexoatl, Dwarves, Border Kingdoms, Brettonia, Empire, Tlaxtlclanlll and i still only get about 80g at most from each embassy). And the effect from ports will only match the 200g if you have one big port and three little ones.
Of course embassies are worth considering if you have a healthy trade account, excessive trinket production, and a good couple of ports (i would say 3 little ones or 1 big one + one little one = 120g income from ports bonus), but even in this case you would be unlikely to even match the base 200g income from Fairgrounds.

Now i know if you're anything like me you'll also be thinking 'Ok this settlement has a fairground but whats better, embassy or promenade?' i would *consider* embassy if you have at least 2 little ports or one big port in the region (the 80g bonus plus the (40g to 80g endgame) tariff bonus will probably (just) outweigh the 120g income from the Promenade, but then there is the public order bonus to consider, probably really handy if you are colonising some unpleasant or inhospitable climates or have those pesky corruption and rebel uprising problems.

Personally, i am going to go and burn all of my embassies to the ground and build Fairgrounds on the rubble.

Hope this helped anyone pondering the same thing. If i am wrong in anything feel free to correct me, we're all only human. If i don't reply to anything that's because i don't forum much and i am pretty useless at it.

Cheers.

[Empiro]

As far as I understand it, trade tariffs are not the same as selling trade goods. When you look at a trade agreement, there's the amount you get from selling resources, but even if you have 0 resources, you still get some money. That is the tariff part, and the only part you gain from any sort of "increased tariffs" bonus. I *think* the long-term partnership bonus also counts as tariff, but I'll need to test that too.

Case-in-point -- there's a High Elf event that lets you chose something like -50% tariffs. If you choose that, you won't lose that much per turn (certainly not thousands like you'd expect).

[Fletchard]

Thank you guys! As I continued playing my observations matched yours. And Dold, I thought Tillerson was putting the U.S. State Department through the wringer, but 17 embassies replaced with fairgrounds? :-D

[Aenarion]

Fairground: 200 per turn plus trinkets.

Embassy: 5% of tariffs (not total trade, just tariffs). You can check the tariff numbers for your own empire, but for a large trade empire of 10,000 per turn trade you will usually make about 1,000 tariffs, 5% of which is 50 per turn. In addition you make 10% from local ports. So for a zero port province it's 50 per turn total, for a province with one minor settlement port it's 90 per turn, for a province with two minor settlement ports or one capital port it's 130 per turn, and so on.

Entertainment: 60 at level 1, and much cheaper than an embassy.

As you can see, in economic terms (so forgetting about agent effects, public order, etc), there is a clear hierarchy:

Fairground>embassy in province with port(s)>entertainment building>embassy in province without port

[Xanton]

Originally posted by rymeintrinseca:

Fairground: 200 per turn plus trinkets.

Embassy: 5% of tariffs (not total trade, just tariffs). You can check the tariff numbers for your own empire, but for a large trade empire of 10,000 per turn trade you will usually make about 1,000 tariffs, 5% of which is 50 per turn. In addition you make 10% from local ports. So for a zero port province it's 50 per turn total, for a province with one minor settlement port it's 90 per turn, for a province with two minor settlement ports or one capital port it's 130 per turn, and so on.

Entertainment: 60 at level 1, and much cheaper than an embassy.

As you can see, in economic terms (so forgetting about agent effects, public order, etc), there is a clear hierarchy:

Fairground>embassy in province with port(s)>entertainment building>embassy in province without port

nice summary :D thanks!