Trading posts
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Trading posts are an inexpensive form of colonization that connect a province to the trading system without settling it.
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Creating and Expanding Trading Posts
To create a new trading post or expand an existing one, you must have a colonist available, and sufficient funds in your treasury. Other conditions also apply; see below.
How to Create/Expand a Trading Post
You can create a trading post only in an empty province. The province must be coastal, or adjacent to one of your existing settlements or trading posts. Only one colonization attempt at a time is allowed per province; if some other country (or you) is attempting to build a colony or trading post there, you can't. (There is an exception: if a country is attempting to expand or colonize an existing trading post, and it gets burned, then you can attempt to colonize or send a trader; in this case it will be a race.)
To expand a trading post, a country must own it, and a human-played country must also control it.
If all the preconditions are OK, when select the province you'll notice that the "Send Trader" button is active. If you click it, a colonist is subtracted, money is spent, and an "man chopping wood" icon appears on the province to signify that you are attempting to build or expand a trading post. The trader will take a while to arrive, usually several months. If the attempt is a success, a new level 1 trading post is created, or on expansion the existing trading post is one level larger than before. I.e. a level 3 trading post is expanded to level 4. Level 6 trading posts are the maximum size, and cannot be further expanded.
Costs and Chances
The costs and percentage chances for creating or expanding a trading post are based on several factors: the difficult for colonization of the province, the presence and aggressiveness of natives, and the admin value of the monarch. More work needs to be done here to quantify this, but generally speaking creating a trading post usually costs about 15 ducats, whereas expanding it costs about 10 minus its level.
In addition, there is a special bonus to the success chance of +50% (yes, it's huge) for a country if, at the start of the month, it had a trading efficiency greater than 100%.
Limits on Small Trading Posts
A country may own any number of trading posts. However, when a country owns too many small trading posts (level 1 or 2), it gets penalized on creating new ones. You get a certain number of small posts without causing the penalty. After that, every small trading post not offset by a larger-than-average one (level > 3) will create a -1% penalty on the chance to create new trading posts.
The exact way this works is as follows. The levels of all of your trading posts are added together along with your monarch's administrative rating. Then 3 times the number of trading posts is subtracted. If the resulting number is still less than zero, it becomes the malus on later trading post attempts.
For example, a country's monarch has admin 7, and it has 11 trading posts with the following sizes: level 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 3, 5, and 6. To calculate the malus in this case, we add all the levels up along with the admin rating: 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+3+5+6, +7 = 30. Then we subtract 3 times the number of trading posts, that is, 33. The resulting number is -3; a malus of -3 applies to the percentage chance of any new trading post creation attempts. This country should expand three trading posts before attempting new ones.
Effects of Trading Posts
The primary effect of trading posts is their creation of trade income. They create trade taxes for their owning country, and send generated trade to their center of trade, but otherwise yield no income. The amount of both kinds of trade is dependent on the level of the trading post.
Trading posts assert an ownership claim on their province. Other countries cannot colonize the province, and countries without access to the owning country cannot move military units into it. The owning country also gains any adjacent waters as national waters.
Trading posts increase the supply in their province.
Trading posts have a population of 10 men per level. Their population is exceptional in that it neither grows nor shrinks via normal population growth. The only effect of the population is when a province with a trading post is colonized: the men in the trading post are added to the 100 colonists in the level 1 colony when it is created. This gives the colony a small head start in population.
In places with a bad climate (tropical Central America and all of Africa), it is often a good idea to send a trading post to a province first, even though you intend to colonize immediately. These places have negative growth rates for colonies. Sending a trader first gives the colony an extra 10 men, cheaply. Thus, even with negative growth, the colony will require only 10 colonists, instead of 11, to become a city.
Burning Trading Posts
Any time a country controls an enemy trading post, it has the option of burning it. For the human player to do so, select the province screen: the "Burn Trading Post" button is at the bottom. When you burn a trading post, you lose the 1% warscore it was worth. The province becomes unowned, and anyone may colonize it.
AI countries always burn trading posts the day after they capture them. (There is always time for one try at peace.) Rebels never burn them. Natives often destroy trading posts when they rise, but if they don't, they do not burn them. Low aggression natives will usually just knock down the trading post a level or two.
