Lost link between trade and inventions

[Saladin87]

Will this reflect that trade infraestructure gives less taxes if overwhelmed?

Limiting the number of nations due to trade infraestructure is arbitrary and not helpful for small nations playing tall.

Yeah some sort of malus to trade income if your trade infrastructure is incapable of handling the trade volume you've agreed to.

I meant some sort of limit, say for example, a number of "active trade routes", which is based on your nation's trade infrastructure (idea, provinces, number of citizen pops, national civilization level, ports, marketplaces, roads, trade fleet, finesse skill of your ruler/co-ruler/trader/diplomat/governor characters, civic tech level, innovations or traditions all contributing to this) i.e. capacity to handle volume of trade. This will not necessarily limit the number of nations to trade with but the number of active routes (number of goods) you can have with however many trade partners you have. So tall playing nations can specialize their choices in city building, prioritizing goods production, pop handling, character, tech, fleet, etc. to maximize available trade routes and truly specialize as a trading nation.

I also want to see interesting and realistic situations that will make the player choose their trade carefully, for example, Macedon trading with Antigonid Kingdom but Thrace is hostile towards Macedon. So Thrace chooses to use their legions / fleet to blockade and steal income from this route. Macedon having a penalty to trade income / capital surplus from the affected Antigonid province, can either improve relationship with Thrace to come to a non-aggression pact or invade (new trade conflict casus belli?) and annex them to create a secure trade route. If the blockade is on the sea, Macedon can secure a land route by making friendly relations with other nations on the path and if land is affected, divert to the sea. Worst case scenario, find the goods from another partner with a secure route. I think these would be great for the player to play with specially during the peacetime. These factors will also meaningfully influence the direction of conquest the player will plan to do in the future, keeping in mind the trade aspect with future partners.

 

[IsaacCAT]

I also want to see interesting and realistic situations that will make the player to choose their trade carefully, for example, Macedon trading with Antigonid Kingdom but Thrace is hostile towards Macedon. So Thrace chooses to use their legions / fleet to blockade and steal income from this route. Macedon having a penalty to trade income / capital surplus from the affected Antigonid province, can either improve relationship with Thrace to come to a non-aggression pact or invade and annex them to create a secure trade route. If the blockade is on the sea, Macedon can secure a land route by making friendly relations with nations in the path and if land is affected, divert to the sea. I think these would be great for the player to play with specially during the peacetime. These factors will also meaningfully influence the direction of conquest the player will plan to do in the future, keeping in mind the trade aspect with future partners.

I will try to adapt all of this to the abstraction of trade influence points:

• blockading a port reduces the influence trade points for that nation. In peacetime you can declare blockade to another nation. To make it work, you just need to put your navy in front of the port you want to blockade.
• You can invest with land roads to make for the lost influence trade points. Roads linking cities from different countries will have a bonus. Each city linked to that road network will add more bonus to the influence trade points captured by each nation.
• Blockading by land will require that your country declares blockade to a nation and all the land roads that go through your country to the other nation will stop giving influence trade points to that nation. However, you will loose as well the points and the bonus of those cities that will be cut off by your blockade.
• Blockades affecting other nations will give you a bad diplo opinion to all nations affected.

 

[Saladin87]

I will try to adapt all of this to the abstraction of trade influence points:

• blockading a port reduces the influence trade points for that nation. In peacetime you can declare blockade to another nation. To make it work, you just need to put your navy in front of the port you want to blockade.
• You can invest with land roads to make for the lost influence trade points. Roads linking cities from different countries will have a bonus. Each city linked to a road will add more bonus to the influence trade points captured by each nation.
• Blockading by land will require that your country declares blockade to a nation and all the land roads that go through your country to the other nation will stop giving influence trade points to that nation. However, you will loose as well the points and the bonus of those cities that will be cut off by your blockade.
• Blockades affecting other nations will give you a bad diplo opinion to all nations affected.

I understand where you're coming from. I don't mind the exact mechanic that's used to reflect these issues, I just want them represented in the game in a meaningful way.

 

[MishaTX]

Hmmm... I like this idea. Also, and more importantly (to me at least), it's quite historical. A barbarian region with extensive trade with, say, Rome, would most definitely pick up on ideas etc. from their more advanced trade partners. They very much did so, unless I remember my history wrong.

And it wouldn't need to be more complicated than a passive modifier to research if you're trading with a nation that is vastly more advanced than you are. What "vastly more advanced" means I'll leave as an exercise for the reader. It's not like we don't have a lot of other modifiers, very small but they stack if you have enough of them, so adding another one like that shouldn't be a huge problem for the code to handle.

It would also make trade offer considerations more interesting, particularly if you've chosen to play as a barbarian tribe. Do I sell my fish to my fellow barbarian friends or do I flog it to the Punii instead for a bit of added intellectual input?

It wouldn't help giving the already overpowered nations get even more overpowered either, as they'd usually be so far ahead that they'd gain nothing other than the money. On the other hand, maybe it WOULDN'T be such a good idea all of a sudden to shift all of your surplus goods to the Gauls, thus helping them get stronger before you inevitable turn them into proper civilized people?

I find that, currently, I don't much care where I flog my produce or where I buy it from. Only two "rules" I have (and I violate them every chance I get if I'm hunting a sweet, sweet bonus) is "don't import from nations that are/will become your enemies one day" (because of the gold they'll gain from it) and "don't trade with nations you have plans on annexing" (because I can't be bothered to go reshuffle my trades/bonuses every time I've "enlightened" another region).

 

[IsaacCAT]

I have opened this sugestion to implement an incremental reform to trade. If you wish vote it up or down:

Influence points mechanism for trade

Preface: In this thread a discussion on how to include innovation into trade made me think about an incremental reform of trade Observation: with the trading system as it is, trades are static and it is very difficult to influence or change...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[Yuanshu]

Trade was very important for the diffussion of ideas and innovations.

The game does not reflect on this and for research efficiency only looks at internal factors:

• citizens and nobles vs all integrated pops ratio
• Own researchers skills and traits

We could say that with more citizens and nobles you have more trade routes and there you have the missing link.

However, what if all trades where domestic? How ideas from other cultures/nations will get through?

I would like research efficiency to be affected by the quality of trade routes. That is, having trade routes with diverse and far away countries will give you more research efficiency than domestic or single nation trade routes.

The cum laude will be that high advanced nations will spread knowledge with trading partners, helping them in their more advanced areas and not others. You will actively seek to trade with high advanced nations.

There is also the fact that trade helped to stimulate cultural and religious exchange between peoples, an example of this and Buddhism that took advantage of the "Silk Road" to spread throughout the northern region of India reaching some regions outside it (Ex: Bactria cof cof) we already have a system in which pops can migrate to territories within our territories so that some of them are able to migrate to neighboring countries with which we trade and thus be able to trigger events related to that religion or culture such as trying to spread some religion or culture to a country that we have a lot of commercial contact with and even being able to "steal" some pops through trade, after all people tend to live and places where they are happier and with more rights than that a less developed country that is in constant wars and that probably never will be considered citizens in their country of origin.