Trading strategies
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(current with version 1.3)
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[edit] Merchant Competitiveness
In order to reap the vast increases in income possible through trade, you must ensure that your merchants are able to both secure a position in a center of trade and hold it for a long time. Success in either endeavor depends on the relative competitiveness of your merchants which is divided into two parts, the chance to compete out another merchant, and the chance to place a merchant when there is an empty slot.
[edit] Merchant Placement Chance
The chance to fill an empty slot is the sum of these modifiers:
- Base chance: 35%
- Prestige rank (-10% to 10%)
- Stability multiplied by 5 (-15% to 15%)
- Monarch Administrative Skill multiplied by 3 (3% to 18%)
- Trade Efficiency divided by 2
[edit] Merchant Compete Chance
The sum of these modifiers is compared to the "defending" merchant. If they are equal, the chance will be 50%.
- Base: 50%
- Stability (-3% to 3%)
- Monarch Administrative Skill (1% to 9%)
- Trade Efficiency divided by 2
- Badboy points reduce competitiveness in foreign CoTs by 1% each
- Owning a CoTs with non-accepted cultures reduce competitiveness in foreign CoTs by 15% each
(In patch 1.3 this was changed to non core). This penalty is not applied in your own COTs
- Lucky AI nations get an additional 10% bonus to compete chance.
[edit] Trade Efficiency
If you are going through all the trouble and cost of keeping your merchants in CoTs, then you should also make sure that you are maximizing their income. Trade Efficiency is the percentage of your merchants' share of trade that you earn as income. If you look at any CoT, you will see your merchants' share of the total trade. However, only a percentage of that actually gets to you. So, your merchants could be earning 80 ducats - but you will only get 24 of those if your trade efficiency is 30%.
There are several ways to affect your trade efficiency; each trade tech level you attain increases your trade efficiency, the Aristocracy/Plutocracy and Land/Naval domestic policies, as well as the National Trade Policy national idea, diplomatic options, your government type and state religion:
- Refusing trade diplomatic action gives a 3% penalty
- Trade agreement diplomatic action gives a 3% penalty
- Administrative republic has a 5% bonus
- Tribal federation has a 10% bonus
- Reformed state religion gives a 10% bonus
Every percent of trade efficiency increases merchant placement chance and compete chance by 0.5% (as is listed in the Merchant Competitiveness section).
[edit] National Ideas
There are three national ideas that tie in directly with trade:
- Merchant Adventures: +1 merchant/year
- National Trade Policy: +10% trade efficiency
- Shrewd Commerce Practice: +10% merchant compete chance
Of these, National Trade Policy is arguably the best, since its trade efficiency increases merchant competitiveness by 5% and merchant placement chance by 5%, as well as trade income by 10%.
[edit] Trading Goals
In 1453 European nations will be ignorant of many of the world's centers of trade. In this time frame, a good goal for the trading state is to place 5 merchants in each of Europe's centers of trade. Once this is done, new discoveries should begin to reveal trade centers in the rest of the world, and exploration to uncover more markets to trade in may become useful. If you can maintain your competitiveness by continuing to invest in trade technology and also avoid any penalties to your competitiveness, you should be able to place 5 merchants in every center of trade in the world. Once this goal is attained, it is worthwhile to attempt to monopolize wealthier centers of trade. Monopolies are often difficult to sustain and usually it is best to ensure that 5 merchants are maintained in all COT's before pursuing them.
[edit] Monopolies
When you reach level 7 of Trade tech you will be allowed to set up monopolies in centers of trade.
This allows you to put 6th merchant in a center of trade where you have 5 merchants already. After you succeed in this, whole mechanics inside the CoT changes. First of all, arriving AI merchants don't compete with each other anymore. Everybody arriving to the CoT is targetting your merchants and trying to end the monopoly. It makes the game inside much more difficult to you. Maintaining a monopoly is a real challenge. Normally you have to compete only with a few percent of arriving merchants, most of what AI sends fights against each other. After you get a monopoly you have to face every single merchant and this means that even if you have 90% compete chances you will have to work hard to keep the monopoly up and running.
If your trading technology is well ahead and you have both national ideas connected to it, if your prestige is high, if your monarch is competent, finally, if you have 0 BB and no foreign CoTs, you can manage to hold onto a monopoly for longer periods. This allows you to compete out any foreign merchants that are still inside and as you are the one arriving merchants have to compete with, you can reach a point where you will be the only or nearly the only person in the Center of Trade. In such situation your incomes from that center skyrocket to unimaginable levels. You can earn as much as few hundreds ducats if the CoT is very rich.
So certainly it is very important for you to try to get monopolies. Don't listen to people who claim it's pointless and stupid. They are usually the same who claim that one can ignore trade completely in this game and still be fine and then complain that their countries are seriously behind in research.
You just have to do it in a smart way. Don't try to get monopolies everywhere - it is impossible, the science of statistics denies you from achieving that.
It is much easier if the CoT you're sending your merchants to is close to your capital. Also, you need dozens of merchants to keep the monopoly (Free Trade is your friend here, as well as advisors that add to that) and to rule out any competition that's left. So keep sending there every single merchant you have.
You can maintain one or even two monopolies in the wealthiest CoTs in the world. And if you manage to do it, you will have more cash than you can spend.
It costs a lot of effort, a lot of time and lives of many merchants, but is worth doing just to be able to say to yourself that you achieved everything that is to achieve in trade in this game.
Good luck!
