Why keep researching beyond bonuses?

[Headhunter]

I was curious if there was any value in researching into things like infrastructure or trade beyond their bonus levels. For example, I believe the last Trade bonus is Level 4 with monopolies and infrastructure is six with goods manufactory. What bonus do you get by continuing research in those areas? Are your traders apt to be more successful perhaps? It would seem to make goods manufactories useless, as you can't build them until level 6, and then there are no obvious advantages. So I'm sure I'm missing something. Anyone know?

 

[Rex Francorum]

Originally posted by Headhunter
I was curious if there was any value in researching into things like infrastructure or trade beyond their bonus levels. For example, I believe the last Trade bonus is Level 4 with monopolies and infrastructure is six with goods manufactory. What bonus do you get by continuing research in those areas? Are your traders apt to be more successful perhaps? It would seem to make goods manufactories useless, as you can't build them until level 6, and then there are no obvious advantages. So I'm sure I'm missing something. Anyone know?

Trade go beyond 4th level. It improves trade efficiency. In the db folder, there trade.csv. If you read it, you'll see that there is possibly 10 levels. Am I wrong/right? Same for infrastructure?

R.F

 

[Dark Knight]

Yes, there are 10 levels of trade and each level increases the amount of money your merchants pull in, making higher trade tech very valuable. Similarly, higher infrastructure levels increase the production of your provinces.

 

[Jos Theelen]

keep researching

Your income from production and trade depends on that level. It starts at around 20%, but can go above 90%, when you keep researching.

 

[BiB]

Or even over 100% with manufacturies (see the thread on it in General Discussions by Xanadu)

 

[laurent]

I invested a lot in trade research, and investing past the level 4 clearly worth it. You can kick out the other merchants more easily and you earn more money when you get a merchant in a CoT. Sure, some countries tend to beat the crap out of me because I'm quite late concerning military tech, but I compensate it with huge trade income. If you let the pointer on one of your merchant shield in a CoT, you'll see the exact calculation of your income in that CoT. And there's a factor X in this formula (something like CoT value times your share of the market times X) which rise when you achieve higher research level.

 

[unmerged(2134)]

Originally posted by laurent

You can kick out the other merchants more easily and you earn more money when you get a merchant in a CoT.

Sure, I"m at level 10 trade and my 6th merchant I send to my own CoT is invariably successful in giving me a monopoly. But it doesn't last! I invariably get kicked down to 5 merchants within a month.