Rework for trade advantage / Oceania

[Yumasay]

I’ve taken time to analyze how the new trade system works. It offers a high level of convenience, especially by removing the need to manually manage trade routes.


However, I’ve identified several issues that need attention:

1. Stability Issues​

The game crashes frequently at the beginning, likely due to the overwhelming number of automatically generated trade routes. It seems the system struggles to handle this load properly.

2. Trade Advantage – Structural Problem​

Currently, trade advantage heavily favors countries with large, contiguous market areas. That’s because one of the main factors contributing to trade advantage is the total production volume within a market area.


This approach is problematic. A market area in the game is defined as the full network of connected regions within a country. This means that larger countries, like Russia or the USA, automatically gain a strong trade advantage—even without true specialization or efficiency. Simply being large becomes the dominant factor.


This does not reflect realistic trade dynamics and undermines strategic depth. I believe the concept of trade advantage needs to be reworked.

Example: Sweden and Specialization​

Imagine you play as Sweden and choose to specialize in wood production. You research the relevant technologies, improve production efficiency, and even establish IKEA to increase demand. You build colonies around the world and become the top global wood producer.


Despite all this, Sweden’s trade advantage remains lower than Russia’s or the USA’s—simply because your territories are scattered across disconnected market areas. The game fails to reflect your specialization, productivity, and strategic expansion.

How It Works (Based on Sweden and Russia – See Attached Images)

1. Global Trade Advantage Calculation
   The game first calculates the trade advantage across the entire market area.
   • As you can see in the attached images, all provinces within a market area receive the same base trade advantage.
   • Capitals and centers of commerce receive a small bonus (+25%).
   • In Sweden’s case, Skåne suffers a penalty in 1836 due to infrastructure issues (which I fixed for this test).
2. Local Advantage Computation
   The game then calculates each province’s share of global trade advantage:
   • It multiplies the global trade advantage in that market area by the amount of goods exported from that province. This can be a huge bonus for every province if the production is large
   • This value is then divided by the sum of similar calculations for all provinces worldwide.
   • The result is a relative score in %
3. Price Bonus Allocation
   Finally, the game compares the province's percentage of trade advantage to its share of global exports.
   • If the trade advantage is higher than the export share in %, the exporter receives a price bonus, how much exactly in not clear.

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This system unintentionally causes dispersed colonial provinces to compete against each other, rather than acting as parts of a unified trade empire. Mechanically, it rewards single, contiguous market areas—like Russia’s—more than specialized but scattered empires like Sweden’s.

Suggested Improvements for Trade Advantage​

I propose the following revised basis for calculating trade advantage:

1. Population Involvement
   The percentage of the population working in a specific industry (relative to the world average) should indicate specialization. This could be the primary indicator of trade advantage.
2. Productivity per Worker
   Countries with higher productivity per worker in a specific industry should receive a stronger trade advantage.
3. Throughput and Company Effects
   Throughput represents scale and efficiency. Countries that found companies and achieve higher throughput in a given industry should have this reflected in their trade advantage.
4. Area of Interest vs. Market Area
   Trade advantage should be tied to performance within an area of interest (e.g., a colony or region), not to the overall market area.
   • This would reduce the penalty for colonial nations or island-based economies, which currently suffer because each island is treated as a separate market area.
   • It also creates meaningful strategic choices where to specialize, such as developing industrial metropoles versus agricultural colonies.
   • Finally, it allows smaller or mid-sized countries to compete if they truly specialize and innovate within a given sector.

These changes would make trade advantage more reflective of real specialization and economic focus—rather than just territorial size.

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Additional Request: Pacific Islands and Oceania Formation


Please consider either removing unpassable islands or automatically assigning them to the country with the largest presence in the Pacific region. Right now, I can’t form Oceania due to unclaimable islands blocking the decision. Thank you!

 

[Headshotkill]

This is not how I've experienced the new system, I'm currently doing a 1.9.7 run as Sweden and I'm punching well above my weight in the trade game with a simple export economy based on wood, hardwood and iron.
Even though the system is complicated behind the scenes in practice you don't have to understand all the math, I watched a tutorial so I do understand but here are the simple steps to improve your trade advantage.

1. Identify the biggest IMPORTERS of goods you produce
As Sweden I navigated the world market screens for wood, hardwood and iron, here I saw several European nations consistently topped the list.

2. Declare interest in these countries and secure trade deals
This step is absolutely nescessary and gives massive bonusses to your trade advantage, without this your trade will always suck.

3. For good shortages in your market identify the biggest EXPORTERS of the goods you need
For example I had a severe shortage of furniture and saw France was the biggest exporter.

4. Same as step 2, declare interest and secure trade deals

5. Keep up with trade volume by scaling up your trade centers and merchant fleet production
The capital state gives a 25% bonus to trade centers, just the size of the trade center also seems to contribute to a bigger advantage.
Remember trade advantage is calculated for a certain trade center, not your whole country, if you let the private AI take care of building trade centers they'll automatically focus on expanding the most profitable (biggest trade advantage) trade centers of your country.

6. Influence your trade through tariffs and subventions, reduce trade deficit
This is a MASSIVE tool you have to tweak the trade game, if you have to import a lot of goods you'll likely end up with a trade deficit. This means more money is flowing out of your country than in because your country is importing goods in exchange for money at a higher rate than it is exporting goods and receiving money from abroad.
You can easily check your trade balance by hovering your mouse over your market on the right side of the screen, this is also what I use to quickly identify the biggest imports and exports of my market. The best way to reduce import of a good is to start producing it within your market, if you quickly need an input good for a new industry you're starting you can put a subvention on it to improve acces to this good for your industry.
A very usefull thing I've discovered is putting high tariffs on luxury goods once my elite pops become very rich as a cheap alternative to consumption taxes if you're importing a lot of these.

I'll end with this, YOU ARE NOT YOUR TRADE CENTERS, they are just buildings which can be profitable or not like any other industrial building, it sounds logical to me that some trade centers in a far flung colonial state may not be as profitable as others. I think this is one of these things where the AI often knows best and will automatically build them in the best states. All you need to do is manage your market as a whole.

 

[Yumasay]

That is fine that you are doing well. I have noted that trade privileges are important.
My issue is rather that I found that calculation of trade privileges is not really representing how advantages of countries should be calculated. It seems for me that it must be done by a reason like skale and efficiency and countries with large single market advantage because of it. I believe it does not represent industrial era soul of Vic 3.

But I am not sure that it is quite real issue now. I have still managed to obtain 1.3 GDP by 1920 as Portugal which is slower than in 1.8. Probably, it is because of nerf of universities -> technologies are obtained on a slower pace.
Other issue is that the game definitely cannot sustain two world wars with more that 3k troops. It got so laggy that I won't run that campaign anymore.

 

[FinlayMcNally]

This is not how I've experienced the new system, I'm currently doing a 1.9.7 run as Sweden and I'm punching well above my weight in the trade game with a simple export economy based on wood, hardwood and iron.
Even though the system is complicated behind the scenes in practice you don't have to understand all the math, I watched a tutorial so I do understand but here are the simple steps to improve your trade advantage.

1. Identify the biggest IMPORTERS of goods you produce
As Sweden I navigated the world market screens for wood, hardwood and iron, here I saw several European nations consistently topped the list.

2. Declare interest in these countries and secure trade deals
This step is absolutely nescessary and gives massive bonusses to your trade advantage, without this your trade will always suck.

3. For good shortages in your market identify the biggest EXPORTERS of the goods you need
For example I had a severe shortage of furniture and saw France was the biggest exporter.

4. Same as step 2, declare interest and secure trade deals

5. Keep up with trade volume by scaling up your trade centers and merchant fleet production
The capital state gives a 25% bonus to trade centers, just the size of the trade center also seems to contribute to a bigger advantage.
Remember trade advantage is calculated for a certain trade center, not your whole country, if you let the private AI take care of building trade centers they'll automatically focus on expanding the most profitable (biggest trade advantage) trade centers of your country.

6. Influence your trade through tariffs and subventions, reduce trade deficit
This is a MASSIVE tool you have to tweak the trade game, if you have to import a lot of goods you'll likely end up with a trade deficit. This means more money is flowing out of your country than in because your country is importing goods in exchange for money at a higher rate than it is exporting goods and receiving money from abroad.
You can easily check your trade balance by hovering your mouse over your market on the right side of the screen, this is also what I use to quickly identify the biggest imports and exports of my market. The best way to reduce import of a good is to start producing it within your market, if you quickly need an input good for a new industry you're starting you can put a subvention on it to improve acces to this good for your industry.
A very usefull thing I've discovered is putting high tariffs on luxury goods once my elite pops become very rich as a cheap alternative to consumption taxes if you're importing a lot of these.

I'll end with this, YOU ARE NOT YOUR TRADE CENTERS, they are just buildings which can be profitable or not like any other industrial building, it sounds logical to me that some trade centers in a far flung colonial state may not be as profitable as others. I think this is one of these things where the AI often knows best and will automatically build them in the best states. All you need to do is manage your market as a whole.

Why is having a trade defect bad in this game? It's all one currency.

 

[Headshotkill]

Why is having a trade defect bad in this game? It's all one currency.

Because "wealth" is being siphoned from your market, ultimately all goods are consumed and dissapear into the void but wealth remains and pools up in countries (markets) which export more goods than they import. There's a couple nuances like if you got gold mines which directly produce a lot of wealth within your country or if you're minting an insane amount of new money then it could compensate the trade deficit but usually you'll want to work towards fixing this. Just recently there was the massive news coverage of Trump imposing harsh tariffs on countries with whom the USA had a trade deficit, he wants these countries to buy more stuff from the USA or he'll put harsh tariffs on their goods to discourage USA importers from buying goods out of these countries.

 

[Prob32]

OP- I see your points. It’s definitely a flaw in the purity of the system if you will that large market areas overperform in trade advantage.

However. I disagree with your proposed solutions, I think that they’re a bit to artificial and tacked on/ don’t really make narrative sense in what trade advantage is supposed to be.

The elephant in the room here is that trade advantage is missing a companion feature “market advantage” which negatively impacts local market prices significantly of underdeveloped and underconnected countries, compounding with large sprawling market areas like Russia

 

[TitaniumMan91]

Why is having a trade defect bad in this game? It's all one currency.

It's not. Letting the AI invest can be a double edged sword, but trade isn't zero sum. I typically technically run trade deficits, importing more than I export, but who cares when you're importing raw goods and exporting higher up the value chain? Russia is never going to have tons of rubber unless you go out of your way to colonize Africa/conquer all the way to SE Asia, but importing 30k rubber to export 20k cars is still a good deal.

 

[Citizen Caen]

It's not. Letting the AI invest can be a double edged sword, but trade isn't zero sum. I typically technically run trade deficits, importing more than I export, but who cares when you're importing raw goods and exporting higher up the value chain? Russia is never going to have tons of rubber unless you go out of your way to colonize Africa/conquer all the way to SE Asia, but importing 30k rubber to export 20k cars is still a good deal.

What you’re describing doesn’t sound like a trade deficit. You can import more goods than you export. But if the valuation of those goods is higher In exports than your imports you have a trade surplus. I’d be curious to check your world market screen and see if your trade values were positive

Setting aside real life for a moment, in game it’s difficult to tell what exactly the effects of a trade deficit is. Certainly I think it suppresses max GDP. Your traders are only capturing the arbitrage off their trades (local market sell price - World market buy price) as opposed to industries who get the full value of the good at sell. But I find it difficult to tell whats exactly happening. With the country’s overall wealth.

 

[Yumasay]

Why is having a trade defect bad in this game? It's all one currency.

I will say that, with my style of playing, I try to improve the average Standard of Living (SoL), since population growth is highest at SoL 20. If you tariff basic goods and raw materials, you effectively tax the population and reduce their SoL. However, tariffing luxury goods may not be a bad thing. The upper strata usually have an SoL well above 20, and their demand rises exponentially. Some tariffs and taxes bring their SoL down, but not drastically.
Secondary, foreign companies cannot kick out your local factories in Vic 3. If the are being technogolically behind then MAPI will help. If you block import of the goods your economy does not produce enogh then you drop SoL practically.
Therefore, I think mercantilism is a bad choice — especially when playing as a small nation — because you’ll never be able only to export. Protectionism is better, as it doesn’t punish prices, but it doesn’t offer any advantages either. Free Trade is the best: it gives a 25% trade advantage in both directions, and tariffs don’t really matter, as I’ve explained. Subsidies are more useful for encouraging imports of goods you desperately need, and they are still possible under Free Trade.