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Rudolf Nechvile II

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Aug 3, 2017
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I was playing an East India campaign this evening, and everything was going well until I saw that I was losing market access in all my states, which was tanking my economy. At first I thought it's some new market change I just didn't understand, but after some Googling I tagged over to GB and lo and behold:

1752283858255.png
1752284584409.png

Britain had a whopping 49% convoy deficit which was causing me a 33% access penalty, and there's nothing I can do about that.

The issue was supposed to be fixed with 1.9.3, so I'm curious if anyone else is experiencing this regularly as well, or if I just got unlucky and the AI has derped out this game? I'm also wondering if someone has experienced it being fixed after 1.9.3, but then broken again after 1.9.6?

Edit: when I tagged over to Britain, the predicted port earnings were a meagre around a meagre 0 despite being having such a large deficit:
1752313368904.png

Why is this? Are convoys not contributing to port profits and only merchant marine? Because the marine price is quite low for them:
1752313753752.png

So perhaps if convoys made a port more profit, or more convoys were produced per port level, the issues would be decreased in the British market. You could then increase the supply demand of armies to offset this a bit, without affecting market access.

Also a bit unrelated, but despite earning 35K a week with most armies raised, the AI still had an empty construction queue.
 
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I don't recall how much of my last campaign was post-1.9.3, but I did have some issues. I think it makes some sense that occasionally there should be problems, that's one of the challenges of being a junior member of a customs union after all, but there's a difference between struggling when your overlord goes to war and Britain neglecting its market entirely. This looks like it might be the latter? Not many of their convoy expenses are for supply routes, but they do appear to be at war. Are they being raided or blockaded by any enemy fleets? Usually when I'd suffer due to Britains convoys it's because they got themselves into a war and got raided.
 
Britain had a whopping 49% convoy deficit which was causing me a 33% access penalty, and there's nothing I can do about that.
I think you can build your own ports, since a portion of your convoys goes to the overlord. Though looking at the breakdown, the entire British Market provides only 1.4k, while 4.2k is from Britain, so it's not a large percentage.
 
AI not building ports despite severe convoy shortages is listed as a known unsolved issue at the moment
Yeah, you're right. I just read the known issues post and it still hasn't been struck off the list. I just wasn't sure how prevalent it still is and was confused because Wiz explicitly stated that it should be fixed wit 1.9.3:
Screenshot_20250712_101913_Chrome.jpg

Since next week 1.9.7 will be the last patch before the summer break, it would a shame if it went unresolved for a while.

I think you can build your own ports, since a portion of your convoys goes to the overlord. Though looking at the breakdown, the entire British Market provides only 1.4k, while 4.2k is from Britain, so it's not a large percentage.
I'm not entirely sure if that would super effective either, because I already have 755 excess convoys, so I don't know if I'll just end up creating a subsidy sink that'll just get worse. I also saw that subjects contribute 50% of their convoys, so I already contribute an additional 755 to them, and I'd need to produce an additional 7K convoys just to meet the current demand!
Not to mention, every unprofitable port I construct means there's one less profitable opium farm or iron mine being built.

Which brings to next issue of why are ports so unprofitable? There's a massive convoy deficit, so by all means demand should be booming, incentivising more construction.

And lastly, despite earning 35K each weak (with most armies raised), Britain's construction queue was completely empty.
 
Yeah, you're right. I just read the known issues post and it still hasn't been struck off the list. I just wasn't sure how prevalent it still is and was confused because Wiz explicitly stated that it should be fixed wit 1.9.3:
View attachment 1332906
Since next week 1.9.7 will be the last patch before the summer break, it would a shame if it went unresolved for a while.


I'm not entirely sure if that would super effective either, because I already have 755 excess convoys, so I don't know if I'll just end up creating a subsidy sink that'll just get worse. I also saw that subjects contribute 50% of their convoys, so I already contribute an additional 755 to them, and I'd need to produce an additional 7K convoys just to meet the current demand!
Not to mention, every unprofitable port I construct means there's one less profitable opium farm or iron mine being built.

Which brings to next issue of why are ports so unprofitable? There's a massive convoy deficit, so by all means demand should be booming, incentivising more construction.

And lastly, despite earning 35K each weak (with most armies raised), Britain's construction queue was completely empty.
Ports are unprofitable because convoys aren‘t a tradable good. Merchant marine (exclusively used by trade centers) is
 
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Ports are unprofitable because convoys aren‘t a tradable good. Merchant marine (exclusively used by trade centers) is
It's kind of ridiculous though, considering the apparent high demand of convoys. Idk what the best solution is, but I do know that it makes playing in the British Market unnecessarily painful and annoying.
 
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It’s a repeat of infrastructure, transportation, and trains. Nearly three years into the game and trains still have to be subsidized in most cases.
Yeah, and it's arguably worse though. At least I can control those things myself to a degree, but I can't control the fact that GB is absolutely refusing to build ports and thereby crushing me economically. I know that the devs have stated that they want to a complete rework of how supply, logistics, and trains work, but I somehow don't think they'll be coming together with the naval rework next year. Especially overland trade/logistics sounds like it's further off. I'd be surprised if we get working trains before 2027.
 
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It's kind of ridiculous though, considering the apparent high demand of convoys. Idk what the best solution is, but I do know that it makes playing in the British Market unnecessarily painful and annoying.
I would say that the solution could be to have the government buy merchant marine to produce convoys. Not sure there’s more to it.
 
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I once got annoyed enough to get investment rights in GB and build their ports for them (although actually doing this enough to fix the problem was more construction work than I was really willing to put in as Haiti)
 
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I believe the British colonies in India, Canada, South Africa and Australia should be granted their own markets, but the UK should be the one controlling tariff rates in those market areas and there should be tariff free trading between the UK and her colonies. Btw I think the devs should introduce country specific tariffs, so the UK can also set the tariff rate between her and her colonies
 
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I tried playing as Gb and following the Opium war with china I immediately was at -2000 deficit of convoys resulting in 65% market access in the entire empire. Having played many GB campaigns in the past, the problem seems to have gotten considerably worse. I would have to put all of my construction into ports for several years to solve this problem, which makes the titular nation of the game, GB, virtually unplayable...
 
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The convoy usage at the moment is just insane in the GB market. Looking at the 3.3K deficit, GB would need approximately 30 port levels, as they only get approximately 100 convoys per level. And that's not even taking into account the shipyards necessary to keep up with clipper demand.

The 1.9.7 beta is supposed to help with AI building more ports to address shortages, but I'm not sure if that's a sufficient solution. Does anyone have any experience with whether things are better in the beta?
 
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I believe the British colonies in India, Canada, South Africa and Australia should be granted their own markets, but the UK should be the one controlling tariff rates in those market areas and there should be tariff free trading between the UK and her colonies. Btw I think the devs should introduce country specific tariffs, so the UK can also set the tariff rate between her and her colonies

It’s a repeat of infrastructure, transportation, and trains. Nearly three years into the game and trains still have to be subsidized in most cases.

It's a big change, but I think these two comments really suggest a way forward to improve things in conjunction with the 1.9 trade rework. Merchant marine are in most regards superior to convoys as a good in-game, because they're integrated with the economy in a way convoys are not.

To take advantage of this, I would suggest:

1) Every country gets their own market.

2) The existing port/convoy upkeep cost is paid in government buy orders of merchant marine. It'll be much smaller for nations like GB now, because now ports in subjects won't count towards it.

3) Trade centers gain the ability to establish trades directly between a subject and a master. Instead of tariffs and subventions, there's just a trade advantage value set by the master. More trade advantage for the subject improves relations and decrease liberty desire, and vise-versa.

4) By default, subjects cannot trade with the world market. The "grant own market" clause now becomes "grant access to world market".

5) Naval dockyards consume merchant marine, reflecting auxiliary ships and reserving troop transport capacity.

Wither convoys, then? They're just your merchant marine's HP pool. Max HP scales with your quantity of merchant marine buy orders, and your trade center trade capacity and ability to supply overseas armies scales down according to the ratio between your current convoy count and your maximum convoy count as raiding decreases it.
 
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I believe the British colonies in India, Canada, South Africa and Australia should be granted their own markets, but the UK should be the one controlling tariff rates in those market areas and there should be tariff free trading between the UK and her colonies. Btw I think the devs should introduce country specific tariffs, so the UK can also set the tariff rate between her and her colonies
If trade between market areas is possible without going through the world market, it would be a good thing.
Otherwise, it would not be much different from enforcing trade laws and granting market control rights.
 
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The convoy usage at the moment is just insane in the GB market. Looking at the 3.3K deficit, GB would need approximately 30 port levels, as they only get approximately 100 convoys per level. And that's not even taking into account the shipyards necessary to keep up with clipper demand.

The 1.9.7 beta is supposed to help with AI building more ports to address shortages, but I'm not sure if that's a sufficient solution. Does anyone have any experience with whether things are better in the beta?
I think they changed the convoy cost in 1.9 but didn't balance for GB properly (GB is an outlier, but an important one). With the current calculation where the convoy cost scales with number of sea nodes, it takes 4 convoys to support 1 built infrastructure in India. So one Cargo Port supports 25 Infrastructure consumption on the Indian subcontinent, which includes the 30 princely states all with their own construction queue. Australia is probably just as expensive. In another thread closer to release, building the Suez canal only saves you a couple of sea nodes, which comes out to a 15% convoy consumption reduction.

It should be taxing for Britain to maintain its growing network...later in the game, but not in 1840. Building all the ports in India where you only contribute 50% of your convoys is also inefficient (one of your India ports can only support 12.5 Indian Infrastructure consumption) as you have to outbuild the growth across the entire British market. And that's before AI GB goes on a war spree conquering/vassalizing countries around the world (increasing total convoy demand) or sending their troops overseas (which also costs extra convoys).

As a subject it sucks because there's not a whole lot you can do about it. It's difficult to get GB to give you your own market unless things are really dire, so you're just stuck suffering 60% market access for most of the game. You used to be able to benefit a bit from the infrastructure provided by ports, but with even that nerfed, ports aren't all that great to build as a subject.

(Keeping up with clipper demand isn't so bad as you can fully contribute your shipyard output to the market, or the world market can supply the extras.)
 
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Really, this would at least be partially solved by having an additional layer beyond state-national-world markets. Add "common" or "overlord" market between national and world markets. With 100% market owner convoys, national market is equivalent to overlord market. At 75%, you take the average of orders weighted as 75% overlord market and 25% national market, and use that in place of the national market. Once you hit 0%, only your own national market matters. This way even if the overlord goes to 0% convoys, your states are at least not cut off from each other.
 
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