Eu4 Explained: Trade Steering

Hopefully 2/5. The quick answer is in the first 70 seconds, past that you get a more in depth explanation. A continuation of a mini guide series where I answer questions in a video instead of repeating myself hundreds of times.
Hopefully the start of me being a Guide Eu4 creator!
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See you next Video!

[@hiptoptoe4847]

Ooh love how some grain shipped to England from canton is much more profitable than grain grown nearby in hull

[@LemonCake101]

What can I say, globalization or something?

[@LibertyMonk]

I mean, that imported jasmine rice is obviously more valuable than oats we use for horse bread. Not to mention that "trade" flows one way, but goods modeled by it flow in both directions. Selling ale made by an English alewife to the bloke down the block won't make as much as shipping IPA to the colonies and charging a huge markup.

[@Arms.Enthusiast]

This is literally how modern trade works.

[@LemonCake101]

@@Arms.Enthusiast I see, so how did America get so rich without owning an end node?

[@Arms.Enthusiast]

@@LemonCake101 by simply controlling the upstream nodes as to reduce trade outflow from Chesapeake obviously

[@LemonCake101]

This was a bit of a project, I hope you enjoy non the less! 2/5 for my goal of 5 guides this week, lets see how they go! As of Patch 1.35 and further Trade Steering order is no longer determined by Tag Order, and instead uses highest trade power.

[@CatNibbles]

Guides on what modifiers actually go is great. There are some that are just very obtuse and really provide no information so how am I supposed to know if I should care to boost it over say something like a national tax increase. If you did a video for every modifier in the game regardless of how long it is I'd watch it.

[@LemonCake101]

@@CatNibbles I mean every modifier in the game... that would be enough 'content' to last a couple lifetimes: eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Modifier_list this list is missing a couple modifiers these days, but its around 95% complete. Its LONG.

[@CatNibbles]

@@LemonCake101 I mean...That's a lot of video ideas :) But maybe only ones that can be changed in some way in game. Like what is trade efficiency vs global trade power. What even is caravan power? I know that discipline is good and gets better as the game goes on but Idk what it does even with my 3k hours in the game. Sure merc displine probably wouldn't need to be explained because it should be the same as discipline but just for your mercs. Or obvious things like sailor recovery rate, because, obviously, plus who cares you never run out of sailors anyways; I've only had trouble with sailors once in my time playing and that was before they changed how sailors worked.

[@LemonCake101]

@@CatNibbles so actually its funny you mention merc discipline since it doesn't really work atm and overall is actually quite bad once you get past the 1550s, but I see your point!

[@CatNibbles]

@@LemonCake101 See, and I would have never known that otherwise.

[@kepler9860]

love the note to credit cards, looking forward to the other videos! wonderful as always

[@LemonCake101]

Glad you enjoyed, thanks for the feedback!

[@Riotdrone]

i just want to know why the projected income from protecting trade with light ships lies to us. like it says i get .54 from stationing the ships in alexandria but i get more overall from genoa despite it saying like .24 or something

[@LemonCake101]

Yeah no that calculation is just straight up a lie and can be safely ignored. I have no idea how the game calculates it, may as well be a random number as far as I am concerned.

[@Riotdrone]

@@LemonCake101 ok good to know ty

[@freelanceMoron]

@@LemonCake101 So, as far as I can tell, the way it works is that it works out the share of ducats that you're affecting in that node with your current trade power and the new trade power from the ships, then it tells you the difference between these two numbers minus the maintenance cost of the fleet. The number is only accurate if you're collecting in that node (and even then, it seems to assume you're not paying maintenance on the ships if they're not protecting trade?) so given the original commenter's issue, they probably don't have 100% in Genoa, so they technically are steering 0.54 ducats towards Genoa, but they're not gaining said money in profit due to the trade share of Genoa they own. They get more money from protecting in Genoa than is displayed, because protecting trade there is covering the cost of the ship's maintenance AND giving the 0.24, which is how much money they gain there from the additional trade power. Basically, that number is almost always completely useless, and as far as I can tell, the best thing to do with trade ships is to protect trade in any competitive node that is one node upstream from a node you dominate, unless you're not dominating your home node, in which case protect there. tl;dr, number it shows is: total money out of node from (your trade power + fleet's trade power) - total money out of node from (your trade power) - maintenance of fleet it has NOTHING to do with how much money you'll make, depsite saying otherwise.

[@LemonCake101]

@@Riotdrone people have accused me of taking the mystery out of the game, but lets be clear, some mysteries, like how the projected income works, will have to remain a mystery.

[@australiananarchist480]

​@@LemonCake101I assumed it was based on the prior trade power, and the projected future trade power. E.g., a node which has 10 trade power total, with you having 5, and other nations having the other 5, and the total trade value of the node is 10. That means you can steer 5 ducats to whatever node you want. But then if you add 10 trade power worth of ships, you have 15 trade power out of 20, allowing you to steer 7.5 ducats. This would then show as gaining 2.5 revenue from the ships, minus the upkeep, giving you the projected total.

[@sammeargaming9967]

I love the incredible graphics for the explaination!

[@LemonCake101]

Glad you enjoyed!

[@kingpredator117]

Love your content lemon

[@LemonCake101]

Glad you enjoyed!

[@Alorand]

What exactly are the overflow limits for ducats? Is the limit to gold you have available, or monthly income? I think I vaguely remember Zlewikk doing over a million monthly income on an Aragon run that had some overflow.

[@LemonCake101]

Well, the money cap of a million tends to prevent the overflow, to actually do it you need to be at money cap and make enough to hit 2 point something million in a month.

[@LibertyMonk]

I thought ducats were only tracked to the hundredth, but I guess they track to the thousandth. It's Max Int divided by 1,000, would be what I assume. So, 2,147,483.647.

[@LibertyMonk]

And the game will just set you to 1,000,000.000 at most, so you need to earn 1.15 million per month, which gets added to 1 to see if you lost money, it sees a negative number so big you should probably be bankrupt.

[@LemonCake101]

@@LibertyMonk ^ this

[@Froggyjtgg]

Just curious, do you need a merchant in each node to get the steering boost? Let’s say I’m doing an Indian Ocean trade to England, do I need a merchant in the cape to get the trade steering multiplier?

[@LemonCake101]

Yes - no merchant = no base 5% trade steering buff. If you have enough trade power and no AI, it will still transfer it upstream, but without the multiplication.

[@corrinlone4813]

thanks for the explanation!

[@LemonCake101]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@mateusziii2067]

While counting trade nodes you missed 2 nodes but added 2 merchants between rheinland and champagne

[@LemonCake101]

Yes… I noticed in editing. Counting hard, but I didn’t record a second take since I was quite tired and I arrived at the correct answer anyway.

[@woodie-beracer]

where do you get the backgrounds for the videos are they ai or something

[@LemonCake101]

for the videos inside the videos, I google 'fantasy xyz' like fantasy castle, fantasy room etc etc and find something on google that isn't copyrighted. For the thumbnails, I tend to zoom in on an Eu4 Loading Screen and call it a day.

[@lgnobil]

@@LemonCake101 good work

[@LemonCake101]

@@lgnobil thanks!

[@amilavxilmen5632]

I learned quite abit

[@LemonCake101]

Glad to be helpful!

[@vinsonli302]

maximum trade steering guide when?

[@LemonCake101]

Its on the list, but there's actually very few things that give out trade steering in the grand scheme of things, it will be a 3 min video assuming the same min and half intro I usually have.

[@erso5172]

Nice video! I gotta say though your microphone is extremely echo-y and it makes it really difficult to understand what you're saying and I'm a native English speaker. I don't know, maybe it is my hearing/speaker setup, but just thought I would give you some constructive criticism. Again, really nice video! Very helpful

[@LemonCake101]

No the microphone feedback is valid, I've had it from others, its not just you, and at the moment I am trying my hardest to avoid both the bumping sounds and the echos. Usually that involves doing 3/4 takes for each statement, and editing the least terrible one. I should open a patreon or something to fund a new microphone at this point, but until I do get a new one, yeah its not the best. Sorry you had to endure it, but I hope you managed to enjoy the video non the less!

[@erso5172]

@@LemonCake101 right on, mate 👌

[@LemonCake101]

@@erso5172 but thanks for the feedback!

[@Faehen]

how does trade actually work? is it that all goods in a node are converted to moneys and put in a node and all countries get a % of trade? Does anyone actually buy anything?

[@LemonCake101]

No buying happens with trade. The goods produced you... produce in a node turns into 'trade value', and that gets sloshed around. I have plans for a complete guide to trade, I am just not sure how many people would watch a 1 hour Lemon Cake video.

[@greenshirtiv4n211]

BASED ACCOUNT 🎉🎉🎉

[@LemonCake101]

Thanks?

[@greenshirtiv4n211]

@@LemonCake101 no problem:D

[@LeastPatrioticIsraelbelike]

now i just got to dev very node to 100 duckets...

[@LemonCake101]

Make sure you have the manus and stuff like that built up too. Honestly, that’s gonna do a lot of the heavy lifting, and you will end up with a lot more then 100 ducats a node overall!

[@LeastPatrioticIsraelbelike]

@@LemonCake101 will try

[@LemonCake101]

@@LeastPatrioticIsraelbelike good luck!

[@satnaav]

:)

[@LemonCake101]

:) hi again!

[@felipemoreno90]

Had to watch it at 0,75 speed. Difficult to follow for a non English mother language speaker.

[@LemonCake101]

Thank you for letting me know, I will bare that in mind, I do tend to speak too quickly sometimes and that is something I am working on.

[@felipemoreno90]

You are welcome!!!😎