BUG: No income from CoTs on another continent til own a port on own continent

[unmerged(3999)]

Nogai merchant oddities

The part I do understand:
I am playing Nogai, and am unable to send merchants to Astrakhan, instead getting the message "you need a port for your capital", or somesuch. I assume that's because it's considered European, as I get the same message for the Euro COTs. No problem there, although it's only one province over and therefore does seem a little strange.

The part I do not understand:
I diploannexed Astrakhan and became able to send merchants there. The merchants expand my trade, compete and are competed away, show up in the COT display, etc... except I do not receive income from their presence.

Edit: The COT screen shows me receiving 0 ducats, and in the savegame my activity is reported thusly...
merchant = { tag = NOG level = 4.000 value = 0.000 }

Is this working as designed? I have a save game if necessary.

Thanks...

 

[AndrewT]

If you hover your mouse cursor over your shield in the Astrakhan CoT it should give you the calculations to arrive at 0 . Let us know exactly what that says, thanks.

 

[unmerged(3999)]

I'll use show-and-tell...

Er... it would seem the bug forum doesn't allow screenshots. Pity.

So, it reads:

Nogai's 4 merchant(s) generate 0.00 yearly.
76: Total trade in this CoT
4/20: Nogai's share of that trade
x0.54: Nogai's Trade Level
= 0.0 yearly trade income for Nogai from this CoT

 

[AndrewT]

Actually the link worked fine. And it does look like a bug, but I don't understand why you should get it when no-one else seems to have ... OK send me the save (and the screen shot together): zip the .jpg, .eug and .eug.cfg files together and email to ataubman@ducros.com.au .

 

[viper37]

Originally posted by AndrewT
Actually the link worked fine. And it does look like a bug, but I don't understand why you should get it when no-one else seems to have ... OK send me the save (and the screen shot together): zip the .jpg, .eug and .eug.cfg files together and email to ataubman@ducros.com.au .

could it be that he needs a port in Siberia? Use the cheat codes to expand up to Enkan and see if that could be the bug, i.e. you can place merchants in a foreign CoT that belongs to you but you won't get income until you have a port on the same continent as your capital.

 

[unmerged(3999)]

AndrewT,

Just sent the files and screenshot.

viper37,

Good suggestion. I edited the file to give myself a colonial city in Enkan, and after a month's delay I started getting income from Astrakhan (and became able to send merchants to the Euro CoT's).

Note: the month's delay is not the problem now, i.e., I know some calculations get reset upon loading a save but the income doesn't show up when I play the save I sent Andrew for more than one month.

At current colonization speeds I may actually get to the Pacific before the game ends

Thanks to both of you.

 

[viper37]

bug #272
"If you own a CoT that is not on the same continent as your capital, you can place merchants but you won't get any income from them until you have a port."

 

[State Machine]

Viper, to add to the problem (as Carligula knows), "if a land-locked country in Asia knows of a CoT province in Europe, then it cannot send merchants there without having a port". Nogai know of Astrakhan, but Nogai are in Asia and Astrakhan is in Europe (in game terms).

I'm surprised this is not in our bug list. I remember the posts about it clearly. But then, I also remember a conclusion of "it's a quirk of the game".

 

[viper37]

Originally posted by State Machine
Viper, to add to the problem (as Carligula knows), "if a land-locked country in Asia knows of a CoT province in Europe, then it cannot send merchants there without having a port". Nogai know of Astrakhan, but Nogai are in Asia and Astrakhan is in Europe (in game terms).

I'm surprised this is not in our bug list. I remember the posts about it clearly. But then, I also remember a conclusion of "it's a quirk of the game".

I thought it was a feature that you couldn't send a merchant to a foreign CoT... that's why I didn't log a bug back then...

 

[unmerged(6147)]

Why on earth would you need a port?

I just give one example: Have the constructors of the game never heard about the "silkway" (I don't know the exact term in English, in Swedish it is called "sidenvägen"). When silk was transported from China to Samarkand and further on west. The transport vehicle used by these merchants was not normal ships, it was the "ship of the desert", i.e. camels

 

[State Machine]

Originally posted by viper37
I thought it was a feature that you couldn't send a merchant to a foreign CoT... that's why I didn't log a bug back then...

That's right. I remember know. But still...

 

[viper37]

Originally posted by Daniel A
Why on earth would you need a port?

I just give one example: Have the constructors of the game never heard about the "silkway" (I don't know the exact term in English, in Swedish it is called "sidenvägen"). When silk was transported from China to Samarkand and further on west. The transport vehicle used by these merchants was not normal ships, it was the "ship of the desert", i.e. camels

Samarkans and China are on the same continent however

Astrakhan is in Europe

Back then (in the EU period), European countries needed ships to access China. Remember a certain Christopher Columbus? The Ottomans and the Arabs were in control of the middle-east and weren't allowing strangers to walk on their lands so the Europeans needed to go by sea.

Now this make sense for Austria not to access Peking until they have a port but maybe we could think of some exception for Asian landlocked country. Maybe having a port anywhere should be ok instead of having a port on the same continent? After all, who cares where your port is as long as you have one?

 

[viper37]

bug #272:
If you own a CoT that is not on the same continent as your capital, you can place merchants but you won't get any income from them until you have a port on the same continent as your capital.

I've also added a comment in Bugzilla that it should be a port anywhere, not just on the same continent.

 

[unmerged(1302)]

Originally posted by viper37


Samarkans and China are on the same continent however

Astrakhan is in Europe

Back then (in the EU period), European countries needed ships to access China. Remember a certain Christopher Columbus? The Ottomans and the Arabs were in control of the middle-east and weren't allowing strangers to walk on their lands so the Europeans needed to go by sea.

This is not true, the trade went from China to Europe through Samarqand, Sarai and then Russia. Obviously, Chinese didn't travel all the way, but rather sold their goods somewhere midway, and let 10 merchants in the middle to do the same, so those goods arriving in Europe were expensive as hell.

However, putting Astrakhan in Asia would make more sense, after all Astrakhan is an artificial COT, and didn't come into existence until after taken by Russians.

 

[unmerged(6147)]

Originally posted by viper37


Samarkans and China are on the same continent however

Astrakhan is in Europe

All of this is correct, however irrelevant from the "right" perspective which is that the game should be as realistic as possible.

If you are Nogai and want to send a merchant to very nearby Astrakahn (probably 1 or 2 provinces away from your border, no more) it is ridiculous if you cannot do that because of some formalistic rule in the game about being on different continents. That's my point.

If you still want this port-rule to exist you need to look a little bit more into the problem. But I suggest you skip it. If you really want to have it the simple approach is to demand a port for any CoT outside your own country. That is at least easy to explain, and a real challenge when playing inland countries as the small European German states. Would this be unreal? Of course it would, but so is the present rule.

Perhaps you could create subzones within continents and rule that even without any port you are allowed to send merchants to subzones adjacent to your own continent. That would be ideal but a little bit complicated for Johan to implement.

 

[viper37]

Daniel:

I've also added a comment in Bugzilla that it should be a port anywhere, not just on the same continent.

I've also added the comment that the port rule could be removed IIRC.

The port rule does make sense to me as the game is Eurocentric. How can a Spanyard who cannot cross Turkish territory will get to China without a port?

If you want to discuss it further (no port to trade anywhere in the world), I would invite you to start a discussion in EU2 GD

 

[AndrewT]

As part of a cleanup I'm checking into some old unconfirmed bugs; this one was originally reported against 1.04. Can anyone check it against the current 1.08+beta please?

You need to have your capital in Asia, own no port in Asia, and own a CoT in Europe. You should then be able to place merchants in that CoT but get 0 income if the bug still exists. Thanks.

 

[unmerged(15337)]

Andrew, I think the description of the bug, if we can call it that, isn't quite right. This is what happened to me playing the Khazaks in 1.05. First, I couldn't place merchants at Astrakhan at all. After I conquered Astrakhan, I could place there, but got no income. MUCH LATER (250 years!!!) I got Azov, a European port, but still no income. A bit later, I got Kouban, getting me a direct land connection between my capital (Karsak, in Asia) and the port in Azov. Precisely at that point, I began to receive normal trade income from Astrakhan. I never got an Asian port in that game, only Azov. So as far as I know in order to receive income from the COT in a different continent the player needs a port anywhere, but with a land connection to the capital.

 

[AndrewT]

Thanks a lot for the update; yes I would have expected that on thinking about it and I'll update the bug description accordingly.

But can anyone test it with current code? I'm hoping someone has a current game with a power near the Europe/Asia border they can use to test with.

 

[unmerged(3931)]

What jwolf has noticed is that owning any "homeport" will allow you to receive income from CoTs on other continents. A "homeport" is much the same as a province you could potentially receive manpower from. A "homeport" is any port on your continent or land connected to your capital.

Knowing which ports are homeports and which ports are just other ports is also important for knowing ship support limits and how the blockade tax penalty will apply. The ship support limit is affected by homeports. The blockade tax penalty for non-land-connected provinces is based on what percentage of homeports are blockaded. See my naval FAQ (link is in my signature).