Decline of the Spice Trade

[ecrurudesby]

I was about to post this in the main section but I realised it actually warrants posting here.

Skip to the end if you want the actual suggestions.

Trigger:
Is year 1600 or later
Two nations with European capitals have three spice provinces each
Effect:
Spice price -40% for the rest of the game

So, is this too easy to trigger? I think so absolutely. The event text does not logically match the requirements. How is two European nations with three Spice provinces each considered "an increasing amount of competitors"? I mean yes technically speaking two is an "increase" from one, but consider that historically in India and the East Indies during the game's timeframe there were the Portugese, the Spanish, the English, the French, the Dutch, and even the Danish. Then consider that ingame the Ottomans are virtually guaranteed to get three spice provinces probably from Egypt and Arabia but also possibly from the Maghreb and Persian regions, which I don't think is inherently bad. What I do think is a problem is that it means only one Western European has to own three spice provinces for the price to come crashing down.

Speaking of price, is the decrease too drastic? I think it is plainly. It ends up with a permanent price of 3.3, whereas the price of Cloth (which I don't particularly think needs changing) at this point is guaranteed to be 3.75 and will only rise later to a guaranteed 4.05, yet it is clear to everyone that Cloth is more plentiful than Spice even without viewing the goods mapmode. Salt is also at 3.3 which I think is fair enough, but Spices?

My third question is, is this event even warranted? Well, not as it stands it's not. The vague nature of the text leads me to believe this is simply to reduce the ducats in the world. The only references I can find to a significant decline in the Spice trade are of the involvement of the United States in the 18th century. This is not reflected in the game's event whatsoever. I did find a reference to the Dutch restricting their production in the East Indies, but this apparently worked and the price remained high.

Suggestions:

• Push the required date back from 1600 to 1700 (it makes little sense to introduce the global trade institution and then a couple of decades later decimate the price of one of the world's most sought after goods)
  
• Increase the required number of European countries who own spices to at least three considering the Ottoman eligibility. Ideally the number of countries should be increased to five to represent the historical presence of multiple Western-European countries in the regions where Spice is prevalent in the game.
  
• Maybe add a requirement that there is an independant former CN in the Americas with at least 250 development
  
• Reduce the price change from -40% to -25% (giving a final price of 3.75 up from 3.3)

 

[Trin Tragula]

The ones who burned their warehouses historically would be the Dutch, and the prices certainly did decrease.
Spices were really only the main drive behind the India trade in its infancy, when Portugal had a veritable monopoly. Inside Asia (where a lot of the money was actually made for the Europeans) cloth was always in much higher demand, so much so that the Portuguese and everyone else had to first buy cloth in India to then trade it for spices in the East Indies.
Soon enough the Europeans discovered that said cloth was actually far more profitable to bring to Europe as well and that there was only so much room for people to compete with spices. They remained an import from the east throughout the era (and sometimes the source of conflict such as during the nutmeg war, which is around the time id say this "event triggered" historically) but it was only very early on that they could make you as rich as the Portuguese managed.

Now this is not to say that spices became worthless but it's really not in the game either, it's pretty solidly mid tier (yes, unlike cloth which starts mid tier and then moves past the starting high tier, which is linked both to the history of the India trade and the actual birth of commercialism and industrialization over in Europe, it is _the_ trade good in this era).

All that said, if you want to suggest more pricing events I would love to hear it. I think it's great you took this much time to analyze and write something up for this event and I think there is room to add more price events in general
And I also think we could reasonably remove the ottomans from this equation.

 

[3ishop]

It's not just owning the provinces but would also represent the additional trade presence in the spice regions that leads to the competition.

 

[ecrurudesby]

Thanks for the response

And I also think we could reasonably remove the ottomans from this equation.

As in make changes to the event? For example changing:
{ continent = europe }
to
{ super_region = western_europe }

Something to that effect would be most welcome.

 

[3ishop]

I do agree removing the Ottomans from counting as they are right next to the big sources of spices unlike Europe where the trade was really lucrative.