A chill video for the old school homeboys. Give me a warm welcome home lads. I have not been making content in the recent past due to it simply not being rewarding. Please if you enjoy this content show some support by at least hitting the like button. Thank you very much. You can catch me streaming here : www.twitch.tv/budgetmonk119 Or become apart of my discord community here. discord.gg/mWFGtgt
hey there i'm a casual eu4 player ( about 3k9 hours by now ) and i do realy enjoy watching " old " playtrouth, idk what do you mean by " not being rewarding", but i do realy belive your content is one of the premium ones of all the eu4 youtube content, wish you'll continue adding more, cheers
Hey man, it's okay to feel burnt out but when you feel like this channel is not rewarding, remember how far you've come. You almost have 30k subs. Think them like it's enough people to fill a mid-size stadium. You have almost 9 million views. It's bigger than population of some countries. Don't forget that you are doing good. This channel is really a big achievement, be proud of it! Don't underestimate yourself.
"me trying to flex for my own good as to how skilled at the game I am, as a result, the content is too advanced for people" Ah yes I too am extremely humble
The thing is, I'm 90% sure what he is saying here is not very accurate. He is applying the upstream to the percentage, but that would only be true if there total developments in the regions are the same. Usually Italy ends up being much more developed and they would take 80% of Ragusa just with their upstream trade power.
Venice will not even have 0.6 TP in constantinople, but exactly 0. This is because you need at least 10 PROVINCIAL trade power in a node to get trade power in the nodes upstream from it. Since venice does not have 10 provincial trade power in Ragusa (they have no provinces after all), they will not get any trade power in constantinople.
I remember accidentally doing this the other day, i think instead of constantinople i was 100% persia or some other node in the middle east, basically taking the entire asia's trade, and i have no idea how i accomplished it, with this video i finally understand and can replicate it in other area now
After all this time I finally understood why they inserted the Valentia trade node. I remembered having to conquer all of the Genoa trade node as Spain to make actual good colonial money.
My and my friend's favorite pseudo end node is the Zanzibar one next to Madagascar. If you colonize the Cape, or at least the coastline to prevent others, then everything that feeds into it is yours. And you can force trade straight from India through Sind, alongside the Gulf of Aden. Once we push for the Gold coast and hold all of that area, we move our trade capital to the South-African Cape and we basically do the same as above, but also pull from Cormandel and straight from the Malacca's, which is one of our next conquest areas. All in all, almost none of the Asian trade ever makes it to Egypt or Anatolia, or goes around into Sevilla. We do this early on enough to starve out some of the big guys early on.
Glad to witness your return to youtube. I have 6k hours in eu4 but I did not know about the 10% pull power regarding trade. Will definitely check out your other guides for such neat pieces of information.
Great tip. I always subconsciously did this since I got to know early on that having Level 3 centers of trades give you trade power on upstream nodes (So lvl 3 center of trade in Ragusa means you get trade power in Constantinople for example). People talk about how there are only 3 'End-nodes' but don't realize how easy it is to retain trade in other nodes through the method in this video.
I recall how disappointed I was to learn that Persia now flows into another mode for that reason alone. Before it was relatively easy to make Persia into an end mode since you had only one region to control but now ......... it becomes really tedious to cross the Caucasus and take borderline worthless provinces and add Russia to your enemies for that endeavor
I think Zanzibar is one of the best example for it since you experience the trade struggle along expansion much more as an asian/african nation, only large downside is that you do need to war one or two colonizers or rush colonizing 100% of south africa.
another great pseudo-endnode is Zanzibar, namely you need the Cape of Good Hope to lock it down which is laughably easy as a player, as there is only one CoT and all provinces are uncolonised meaning you don't get aggressive expansion penalty... I used it to great extent as Mutapa in a multiplayer game to starve the western powers of Indian riches
Great pseudo end-nodes and nations that can easily dominate the downstreams areas like Sevilla as Castile, Lubeck as Denmark, Constantinople as Ottomans, Novgorod as Russia, Zanzibar as Kilwa, Persia as Persia/Timur, Hormuz as Oman, Malacca as Malaya.
@@ammarhaziq919 Not sure if I'm understanding correctly, but why would Lubeck be a good choice as Denmark? In order to prevent trade from flowing to the English Channel, you'd have to own the entire English Channel. But if you already own the English Channel, which is an end node, why not just move your trade capital there and collect the additional trade income generated in the English Channel (which itself tends to be a rich area)? There's a tradeoff in play when doing this. You are taking land that won't naturally be picked up by your trade port, which means that all trade value there is either lost or requires an extra merchant to collect. In some cases, like Zanzibar, this is a negligible cost - there's nothing in Cape to start and if you dominate it you simply keep it all as territory and don't waste your time developing it. In others, like Novgorod->Baltic Sea the area contains a LOT of development and higher value trade goods you'd really rather just collect, so moving your trade port downstream probably makes more sense. If you did decide to just assign a merchant to collect in Baltic Sea rather than moving your tradeport and forwarding from Novgorod to the Baltic with that same merchant, you do retain the trade value from the Baltic (though you will get less of it due to collecting not in home) but you missed out on the multiplier for forwarding all the trade that ended up in Novgorod one more time. If your trade steering is high enough to multiply the value coming from Novgorod by 10% you're gaining even if you lose some of it due to imperfect control of the Baltic.
This mechanic is absolutely critical and crucial for playing outside of Europe. You are obviously not going to be dominating the English Channel as Ryukyu or India or something, so you need to know how to create your own end nodes. Great intermediate-advanced player video!
So thats why i collect from cape and not any other node while dominating africa and india. Good job at explaining hidden mechanic i unintentionally used all those years
Actually, it argueably works worse on an inland node, since anyone who puts a merchant there gets a free 50(+) trade power from caravan power, which can easily be up to 20-25% for a group of nations doing that. Also, the maths doesn't really work like that, since it is 10% of your trade power that gets transferred. It would only really work like that if both notes have the same total trade power, which they usually have roughly similar total powers due to balancing, but some, especially endnodes or high dev areas like germany can have much greater trade power totals than the upstream nodes. The point is still very valid though, very little trade power can get up to your pseudo end-node.
Tldr for newer platers, a power from one node is expressed to upstream nodes (trough provincial trade power) so if he owns all provincial trade trade power in a downstream node, there is no leaking. For constantinopole trade node this is easy to get as it only has one downstream node (ragusa) which for ottomans isnt hard to conquer. Persia is one of the stronger nodes but since the last patch, in order to make it an end node you need to conquer all of aleppo and astrakhan.
Great video! Gave me a new appreciation for dominating trade in a downstream node that I hadn't fully considered. Those pesky Caravans kept siphoning my income... Your straightforward explanation will also help me explain trade strategy to a friend I've been introducing to the game. I would love to see more of this kind of content!
I'm very glad to see the more simple explanations, well thought out, well articulated and nicely formatted, it'll make it a lot easier to get people into EU4 with more of these.
That's a great video, I haven't heard this topic talked about often enough. It is vital to understand for MP, or else you will find yourself getting outstripped economically by all the end node nations. Looking forward to more videos in this series!
Ever since your discussion of trade in your Brandenburg series I've been able to reliably snipe Global Trade in most of my campaigns by focusing on the right trade nodes. Or in my Kale Campaign deny Global Trade so I could cheese the time limit. Thanks Monk!
So basically if you dominate the nodes that are fed by the node that you want to collect from, you can effectively stop trade bleeding from the node you want to collect in? That’s pretty cool!
I had kind of speculated or hypothesised about this idea, but had never put it into practice. All in all, a very detailed and yet interesting video! You covered all your bases, starting from the basics and then expanding on the concept with increasing complexity, thereby giving the viewer a great insight into trading as a whole. I also think it is of a good length, as elaborating on every example would take too long and the viewer would become bored, but any shorter and the video might feel rushed and the viewer might not fully grasp the concepts.
This was great and insightful, even for people (like myself) with thousands of hours in the game. Also, this pseudo end node is really great for when Global Trade institution triggers, as you will likely get it, because your pseudo end node is the highest valued trade node.
The background music in the first minutes has those three-five notes that make me feel like there is a Skype call to be answered. Can barely keep my attention on the video because of that
Ty for this video. I am just beginning to figure out trade. I started playing Norway and I'm using trade steering to pull all the trade from China through Hawaii/panama then up the east coast and across the pond to the north sea and then bypass to Lubeck and then collect in the channel. It only works because I colonized every node. Managed to become the holy Roman emperor in the process as well. I think I'm getting the hang of this game 🎯
This should be compared to just, moving to the second node you control. Abandoning an entire node just to get 10% more control of another node seems like it may often be worse.
Cheers Monk, great video. Personally I would love to see another one in this series that covers late-game trade company investment and building slot strategy.
2500ish hours into this wonderful game, and I hadn't really thought about this.... Nice strategy
3 ปีที่แล้ว +1
Quality content. Florry used to make such great tutorial content, but he stopped, and there's not been much since (just tons of low quality crap like L&H's). Some video ideas (things I'm still not sure about; since it's new stuff): * what is even absolutism strategy in 1.30? none of old strategies work anymore * is spamming 100% mercantilism via estates worth the hassle? * how the hell estate land even works - obvious strategy is always annex asap, and never sell; but it drops when you expand, so maybe that's wrong? * is there any reason to ever pick medium colonization policy? * 0cav armies and intentionally switching cav to most obsolete type to nerf own rebels - is that legit or just a meme strategy?
I wouldn't say I enjoy every single one of your vods, yet I'm glad you are back. It's sad to hear that content making is not rewarding enough for you to keep it up, but for us plebs it's always cool to see new content, especially when it's from a hardcore veteran like you. I sincerely wish that you can keep your content up as much as possible. Peace bro.
I truly appreciate you making noob friendly content. Hopefully you'll slowly build up the videos to the point where I'm able to do all the crazy challenges you are able to do. You've earned at least 1 new subscriber from this initiative :D
I sometimes do this with cape of good hope, as you can basically collect all indian ocean trade before it gets split between european powers at the ivory coast, all you have to do is conquer the ivory coast which isnt too difficult as most of europe ignores west africa for the first hundred years and instead focus on the americas. It is also a necessary strategy for any african powers that want to dominate trade as the ivory coast is impossible to dominate due to how many nodes it flows into.
If your home node is upstream from the downstream node then u gain trade power in the downstream node even if you don't control any of the provinces in that node and provincial trade power comes into play here because that's what gives the "Transfers from downstream" trade power, basically controlling provincial trade power in Ragusa as Ottomans gives you provincial trade power in Ragusan TN which in turn gives you "Transfers from downstream" trade power in Constantinople and if no nation has provincial trade power in Ragusa then "Transfers from downstream" doesn't come into play in Constantinople except for Ottomans of course
I did something similar to this before with the Persia node as the Mughals. More than 90% of trade was staying in my home node and I was even redirecting a lot of trade from the gulf of Aden so that Europe wasn't getting any early game trade from Asia.
Awesome content! I always appreciate these videos because despite having > 2000 hours I still learn new things about this game. A little constructive criticism; for being a video meant for basic understanding of Eu4 a 16 minute video is a bit long and overwhelming. Maybe try to write a script and then record audio and later record gameplay showing your examples. Can’t wait to see more!
Hey BudgetMonk this sounds like it's gonna be a great series! Thank you for making this, truly. I'm not much of a new player anymore, but I would have really appreciated this video back in the day. However, even after 3000 hours, there is still at least one subject of the game that I really don't know much about and would love a video about: Trade Companies. Specifically when to use them outside of a colonial perspective. I totally get using them in Africa and South Asia as Portugal or something, but I've always found it hard to understand the usage of trade companies in nodes where you might not usually make them, like Egypt, Siberia, or China. When to do so, why, and what are the benefits? Why not just core and state Siberia as Russia?
You can make two different end nodes in Africa this way. By colonizing/conquering all of Cape you make Zanzibar an end node, and the better one is having all of Ivory Coast makes Cape an end node. Plus all the gold mines in the area fuel colonies to settle the coasts. With Cape an end node all the money from Indonesia/Phillipines/China is yours, and the Europeans can't get through your navy while you take their colonies in Africa. And if you spawn Colonialism they'll focus on colonial nations to get the institution and not Africa. Kilwa, Butua, Adal, Rassids start in good spots to conquer down eastern Africa and colonize. Or by colonizing an island or two and fighting through Madagascar you can get there from Indian nations or Indonesian nations.
I personally have found a lot more fun not playing for optimal expansion. My current game of Genoa, I am just trying to have the largest trade league possible, and make the Genoa node as valuable as possible. Currently my only stated land is Provence, Lingurian coast, and Tuscany. And Venice and Padua. You have to abuse mechanics like trade steering to get anything done without blobbing. Dunno if it’d work for TH-cam content. My point is simply that objectives other than the gigablob catch my interest.
Nice to see you back Monk, this was a really interesting! No doubt that you're right about this strategy, but I feel like I missed a key point here about why the pseudo end-node strat is better than progressively moving your trade capital further and further downstream. You talked about it a little at the end but I didn't quite get it! Am I right that the downside of this strategy that all the trade value in your 'blocker' node go completely to waste? I can kinda see that in the Constantinople & Ragusa example that you might make more money by letting that slide and focusing on building up your main trade capital, but the other two examples seemed less so. On the Novgorod example, if you're conquering the entire Baltic Sea region that seems like a hell of a lot of trade value to pay for in AE/Admin/etc that you're only going to let flow away. And because you've spent to many resources expanding West you've kinda had to deprioritise expanding into the steppes, which is what's going to build up the trade value you want in Novgorod. The spanish example is kinda the same, in that Valencia is usually fairly built up, and it seems a shame to let all that trade value flow away to be wasted. But it does seem way better than in Russia, as you're naturally expanding into the new world and planning on dragging half the globe's trade value into Sevilla, so I can see why making it a pseudo end-node would be really valuable. Another area I can see this working really well would be playing in China. The nodes surrounding Beijing are relatively weak, so you wouldn't mind losing them too much and you've got a whole lot of trade value you want to protect. But could you say the same for your southern border, and conquer both Malaya and the Philippines just to stop your trade value flowing south from Canton etc? As indonesia has some of the juiciest trade value in the game, I'd be really tempted to just shift my TC to Malaya and deal with the leakage into India and Africa! I'd be interested to hear you talk a bit more about how you'd judge these decisions. Is there a tipping point where it's just worth moving downstream? Is it ever worth setting up a secondary trade collection point to capture a bit of the value in your 'blocker' trade regions? You do you though :) I'd rather you keep having fun with your videos and make the content you want to than get bogged down in an endless debate about trade strategies! Once again, thanks for the video and nice to hear from you.
Let's be honest, my friend. EU4 is that game where you're always learning something new. I would have loved to have had a tutorial like this to understand trade when I first started playing last year. I'm just now understanding it better at 900 hours in. also you're the guy that made Byzantium accessible, please do more
Loved the video but as a mathematician I cannot help but try to clear up the confusion about the trade node propagation not matching expectation. First there is an issue of confusion between absolute values and percentages. If you have 40% of the trade power in the node due to having 400 trade power out of the 1000 total and you transfer 10% of that 400 trade power to a node which has 800 total trade power then you will have 40/800 trade power in the new node which is 5%. However it seems like the 10% in an adjacent trade node is not correct in addition to that problem. Some scenarios at the start of the game showing trade power in home node and in an adjacent node with no provinces, also no merchants stationed in the adjacent node. Country: Home Node Absolute Trade Power(percent in node) - Adjacent Node Absolute Trade power (percent in node)[percent of home] Costal - Costal England: English Channel 179.539(45%) - Champagne 36.209(6%)[20.1%] - Lubeck 38.234(7%)[21.3%] Spain: Sevilla 181.274(49%) - Safi 30.349(15%)[16.7%] - Tunis 30.349(12%)[16.7%] Portugal: Sevilla 126.257(34%) - Safi 21.075(10%)[16.7%] - Tunis 20.075(12%)[16.7%] Genoa: Genoa 81.401(21%) - Alexandria 13.536(3%)[16.6%] - Tunis 13.563(5%)[16.7%] - Valencia 14.503(8%)[17.8%] Costal - Inland Novgorod: Novgorod 84.754(30%) - Kazan 13.295(8%)[15.7%] - Kiev 13.295(8%)[15.7%] Inland - Inland Kazan: Kazan 76.625(53%)- Astrakhan 10.363(3%)[13.5%] Inland - Costal Jaunpur: Doab 109.275(17%) - 12.848(2%)[11.8%] Oirat: Yumen 67.063(27%) - Beijing 5.284(3%)[7%]** So it looks like around 16~17% of the absolute trade value in the node gets transferred. Weirdly for Spain and Portugal the amount of trade power transferred was the same between nodes but for England and Genoa it was not. If anyone with better understanding of EU4 trade than me has any idea why I would be interested. Edit: Realized that I only did costal home nodes connected costal nodes so I added examples of the other combinations. ** Beijing is out of trade range for Oirat.
A quick comment, it's 10% of the absolute value that is transferred up streams, i.e. if you have 200 trade power in Venice you will have 20 in Ragusa regardless of your relative power in Venice. Which matters since not all trade regions are equal, which will become painfully obvious if you ever go for the Frozen assets achievement.
I'm pretty sure, the upstream trade is applied to the trade power, and not trade power percentage. As of, if Ragusa has 10 trade power in it (less development) and Venice has 100, then Venice would have 50% control exerted on Ragusa, and not 10.
Well, this is intuitive. What would be really nice is if you explained how CNs affect your trade share in a node, and if it is worth to upgrade their centres, for example.
If I'm not mistaken, near the endgame it becomes hard to compelitely make it "end node". Big colonizers with multiple can easely put a merchant in constantinople and pull trade out. This only works in your example because all the nation have 2 merchants and almost no trade range at the start.
Also you said it would be flawless in an inland aread, that is false as caravan power is then applied that is relative to developpment. It is actually harder to retain trade in an inland node as caravan power is not a percentage but a flat trade power amount
In one game I play Castille and I reached 20+ local income trade lnly by developing and building factories, in 1600 I was the richest nation with almost 200 incomes per month, and without controlling Valencia node, I mean, developing is a powerfull tool to grow in peace, with sexual results
Im assuming you simplified it for the sake of basics, but when you said that 10% of trade power was gained in upstream nodes at 9:00 , and that venice would have 0.6% trade power in constantinople at 9:45 , this was incorrect. The trade power a nation has upstream without any provinces, ships, caravans, or merchant, is 20% of every province with at least 10 trade power. This only applies to the upstream nodes that directly connect to the node the provinces are in. So without any provinces in ragusa, venice has no trade power in constantinople without ships, merchants, or caravans to help.
You made a mistake by saying an inland node would be flawless as a pseudo end-node (10:10). Caravan power would suck out a lot of trade power if the AI places a merchant in the node. Also, even without light ships a merchant still provides an insane 2 trade power in a node.
A chill video for the old school homeboys. Give me a warm welcome home lads.
I have not been making content in the recent past due to it simply not being rewarding.
Please if you enjoy this content show some support by at least hitting the like button. Thank you very much.
You can catch me streaming here : www.twitch.tv/budgetmonk119
Or become apart of my discord community here. discord.gg/mWFGtgt
It's healthy to take a break from things! Failure to rest results in burnout and dissatisfaction.
hey there i'm a casual eu4 player ( about 3k9 hours by now ) and i do realy enjoy watching " old " playtrouth, idk what do you mean by " not being rewarding", but i do realy belive your content is one of the premium ones of all the eu4 youtube content, wish you'll continue adding more, cheers
Hey man, it's okay to feel burnt out but when you feel like this channel is not rewarding, remember how far you've come. You almost have 30k subs. Think them like it's enough people to fill a mid-size stadium. You have almost 9 million views. It's bigger than population of some countries. Don't forget that you are doing good. This channel is really a big achievement, be proud of it! Don't underestimate yourself.
I know it is pretty off topic but does anyone know of a good place to watch new tv shows online ?
@Thomas Samuel i watch on Flixzone. You can find it on google :)
"me trying to flex for my own good as to how skilled at the game I am, as a result, the content is too advanced for people"
Ah yes I too am extremely humble
i mean he isnt wrong, the vast majority of EU4 players i have come across just dont understand core mechanics of the game.
The thing is, I'm 90% sure what he is saying here is not very accurate.
He is applying the upstream to the percentage, but that would only be true if there total developments in the regions are the same.
Usually Italy ends up being much more developed and they would take 80% of Ragusa just with their upstream trade power.
@@sinomirneja771 *downstream not upstream
@@micharespondek1172 that's counter intuitive! So the arrows are pointing towards the upstream? Because the effect goes against the arrows.
@@sinomirneja771 OK I think I misunderstood you. I thought you were saying Venice is upstream from Ragusa.
Whenever I drift away from playing, videos like this from yourself always get me interested and pull me back. Keep up the good work!
Like a wise man once said "just when i thought i was out they pull me back in"
1.31 and leviathan dlc on the 27th
Venice will not even have 0.6 TP in constantinople, but exactly 0. This is because you need at least 10 PROVINCIAL trade power in a node to get trade power in the nodes upstream from it. Since venice does not have 10 provincial trade power in Ragusa (they have no provinces after all), they will not get any trade power in constantinople.
I remember accidentally doing this the other day, i think instead of constantinople i was 100% persia or some other node in the middle east, basically taking the entire asia's trade, and i have no idea how i accomplished it, with this video i finally understand and can replicate it in other area now
Before persia got nerved there was only 1 way out (to aleppo) it was in my opinion the second best trade node with all the asian trade
After all this time I finally understood why they inserted the Valentia trade node. I remembered having to conquer all of the Genoa trade node as Spain to make actual good colonial money.
Damn, true! What, you want a chill colonial game as Spain? Better conquer the entire western Mediterranean to profit from it bro. Much better now
Super insightful! ~2k hours in the game, and I’ve always had trouble getting the most out of trade in the mid-game... this is what I was missing. Haha
Love this. I have over 4k hours but your guides really are the best. Thanks monk, nothing but 5head moves.
Cheers for that brother. Thank you.
Despite having about 1000 hours in the game, I’ve never bothered to fully learn trade! This was an eye opener! Good to have you back on TH-cam.
2000 hours and same lol
You should watch reman’s paradox’s video on trade. He goes into extreme depth on how trade works, but not so much about exploits like budget monk.
Over 4k hours, same.
My and my friend's favorite pseudo end node is the Zanzibar one next to Madagascar. If you colonize the Cape, or at least the coastline to prevent others, then everything that feeds into it is yours. And you can force trade straight from India through Sind, alongside the Gulf of Aden.
Once we push for the Gold coast and hold all of that area, we move our trade capital to the South-African Cape and we basically do the same as above, but also pull from Cormandel and straight from the Malacca's, which is one of our next conquest areas.
All in all, almost none of the Asian trade ever makes it to Egypt or Anatolia, or goes around into Sevilla. We do this early on enough to starve out some of the big guys early on.
Glad to witness your return to youtube. I have 6k hours in eu4 but I did not know about the 10% pull power regarding trade. Will definitely check out your other guides for such neat pieces of information.
Great tip. I always subconsciously did this since I got to know early on that having Level 3 centers of trades give you trade power on upstream nodes (So lvl 3 center of trade in Ragusa means you get trade power in Constantinople for example). People talk about how there are only 3 'End-nodes' but don't realize how easy it is to retain trade in other nodes through the method in this video.
I recall how disappointed I was to learn that Persia now flows into another mode for that reason alone. Before it was relatively easy to make Persia into an end mode since you had only one region to control but now ......... it becomes really tedious to cross the Caucasus and take borderline worthless provinces and add Russia to your enemies for that endeavor
@@sephikong8323 yeah its a bit annoying now tbh
I think Zanzibar is one of the best example for it since you experience the trade struggle along expansion much more as an asian/african nation, only large downside is that you do need to war one or two colonizers or rush colonizing 100% of south africa.
another great pseudo-endnode is Zanzibar, namely you need the Cape of Good Hope to lock it down which is laughably easy as a player, as there is only one CoT and all provinces are uncolonised meaning you don't get aggressive expansion penalty...
I used it to great extent as Mutapa in a multiplayer game to starve the western powers of Indian riches
Great pseudo end-nodes and nations that can easily dominate the downstreams areas like Sevilla as Castile, Lubeck as Denmark, Constantinople as Ottomans, Novgorod as Russia, Zanzibar as Kilwa, Persia as Persia/Timur, Hormuz as Oman, Malacca as Malaya.
Hey, that's where the Sultan of Oman lived
@@ammarhaziq919 hey you! Thanks for listing them all. I’ll go have a blast now with quantity/trade😍😄
@@ammarhaziq919 Not sure if I'm understanding correctly, but why would Lubeck be a good choice as Denmark? In order to prevent trade from flowing to the English Channel, you'd have to own the entire English Channel. But if you already own the English Channel, which is an end node, why not just move your trade capital there and collect the additional trade income generated in the English Channel (which itself tends to be a rich area)?
There's a tradeoff in play when doing this. You are taking land that won't naturally be picked up by your trade port, which means that all trade value there is either lost or requires an extra merchant to collect. In some cases, like Zanzibar, this is a negligible cost - there's nothing in Cape to start and if you dominate it you simply keep it all as territory and don't waste your time developing it. In others, like Novgorod->Baltic Sea the area contains a LOT of development and higher value trade goods you'd really rather just collect, so moving your trade port downstream probably makes more sense.
If you did decide to just assign a merchant to collect in Baltic Sea rather than moving your tradeport and forwarding from Novgorod to the Baltic with that same merchant, you do retain the trade value from the Baltic (though you will get less of it due to collecting not in home) but you missed out on the multiplier for forwarding all the trade that ended up in Novgorod one more time. If your trade steering is high enough to multiply the value coming from Novgorod by 10% you're gaining even if you lose some of it due to imperfect control of the Baltic.
This mechanic is absolutely critical and crucial for playing outside of Europe. You are obviously not going to be dominating the English Channel as Ryukyu or India or something, so you need to know how to create your own end nodes. Great intermediate-advanced player video!
So thats why i collect from cape and not any other node while dominating africa and india. Good job at explaining hidden mechanic i unintentionally used all those years
Actually, it argueably works worse on an inland node, since anyone who puts a merchant there gets a free 50(+) trade power from caravan power, which can easily be up to 20-25% for a group of nations doing that.
Also, the maths doesn't really work like that, since it is 10% of your trade power that gets transferred. It would only really work like that if both notes have the same total trade power, which they usually have roughly similar total powers due to balancing, but some, especially endnodes or high dev areas like germany can have much greater trade power totals than the upstream nodes. The point is still very valid though, very little trade power can get up to your pseudo end-node.
Tldr for newer platers, a power from one node is expressed to upstream nodes (trough provincial trade power) so if he owns all provincial trade trade power in a downstream node, there is no leaking. For constantinopole trade node this is easy to get as it only has one downstream node (ragusa) which for ottomans isnt hard to conquer. Persia is one of the stronger nodes but since the last patch, in order to make it an end node you need to conquer all of aleppo and astrakhan.
Very cool, glad to see another Budget Monk upload
This is brilliant! I'd only ever considered collecting in my furthest downstream node I have power in, but this makes a tonne of sense
Great video! Gave me a new appreciation for dominating trade in a downstream node that I hadn't fully considered. Those pesky Caravans kept siphoning my income... Your straightforward explanation will also help me explain trade strategy to a friend I've been introducing to the game.
I would love to see more of this kind of content!
I'm very glad to see the more simple explanations, well thought out, well articulated and nicely formatted, it'll make it a lot easier to get people into EU4 with more of these.
That's a great video, I haven't heard this topic talked about often enough. It is vital to understand for MP, or else you will find yourself getting outstripped economically by all the end node nations.
Looking forward to more videos in this series!
Ever since your discussion of trade in your Brandenburg series I've been able to reliably snipe Global Trade in most of my campaigns by focusing on the right trade nodes. Or in my Kale Campaign deny Global Trade so I could cheese the time limit. Thanks Monk!
Great video, I always learn so much from you. It's like we play entirely different games. ^^
10,000 hours? So you’re just getting started then 😉
Awesome video dude, one of my favorite things about EU4 is the diversity of strategies that can be used
Thanks for such tutorial. I spent many hours in Eu IV but never understood those bleeding nodes works!
So basically if you dominate the nodes that are fed by the node that you want to collect from, you can effectively stop trade bleeding from the node you want to collect in? That’s pretty cool!
This is a great video and made me think about the game in a way I never had before, so thanks.
I had kind of speculated or hypothesised about this idea, but had never put it into practice.
All in all, a very detailed and yet interesting video! You covered all your bases, starting from the basics and then expanding on the concept with increasing complexity, thereby giving the viewer a great insight into trading as a whole.
I also think it is of a good length, as elaborating on every example would take too long and the viewer would become bored, but any shorter and the video might feel rushed and the viewer might not fully grasp the concepts.
This was great and insightful, even for people (like myself) with thousands of hours in the game.
Also, this pseudo end node is really great for when Global Trade institution triggers, as you will likely get it, because your pseudo end node is the highest valued trade node.
The background music in the first minutes has those three-five notes that make me feel like there is a Skype call to be answered. Can barely keep my attention on the video because of that
Brilliant video, used it in my ayutthaya game taking all land in Malacca and making Siam an end node.
Ty for this video. I am just beginning to figure out trade. I started playing Norway and I'm using trade steering to pull all the trade from China through Hawaii/panama then up the east coast and across the pond to the north sea and then bypass to Lubeck and then collect in the channel. It only works because I colonized every node. Managed to become the holy Roman emperor in the process as well. I think I'm getting the hang of this game 🎯
Never paid attention to the trade mechanics of the game thanks for the info now I'll have to try it in my next eu4 game.
I had completely misunderstood the trade meta. Thanks for this.
Just wanted to let you know this vid came up in my recommended, so you are doing something right
This should be compared to just, moving to the second node you control. Abandoning an entire node just to get 10% more control of another node seems like it may often be worse.
Cheers Monk, great video. Personally I would love to see another one in this series that covers late-game trade company investment and building slot strategy.
Bro I love this I've never fully understood trade & how to use it effectively this helps a lot
Glad to be of help. You might like my next vid brother.
This is super helpful for even players with lots of hours, I have 12k hours and still don't entirely understand the trade system lol
Damn this is really smart. Makes me understand why my trade is sometimes so good and sometimes I get nothing out of it
2500ish hours into this wonderful game, and I hadn't really thought about this.... Nice strategy
Quality content. Florry used to make such great tutorial content, but he stopped, and there's not been much since (just tons of low quality crap like L&H's).
Some video ideas (things I'm still not sure about; since it's new stuff):
* what is even absolutism strategy in 1.30? none of old strategies work anymore
* is spamming 100% mercantilism via estates worth the hassle?
* how the hell estate land even works - obvious strategy is always annex asap, and never sell; but it drops when you expand, so maybe that's wrong?
* is there any reason to ever pick medium colonization policy?
* 0cav armies and intentionally switching cav to most obsolete type to nerf own rebels - is that legit or just a meme strategy?
This made me understand trade so much more. My games will prob be better now. Thank you monk!
I wouldn't say I enjoy every single one of your vods, yet I'm glad you are back. It's sad to hear that content making is not rewarding enough for you to keep it up, but for us plebs it's always cool to see new content, especially when it's from a hardcore veteran like you. I sincerely wish that you can keep your content up as much as possible. Peace bro.
This is what I need, I knew about pseudo endnodes, but I didn’t know how to make them.
I truly appreciate you making noob friendly content. Hopefully you'll slowly build up the videos to the point where I'm able to do all the crazy challenges you are able to do. You've earned at least 1 new subscriber from this initiative :D
Thanks for doing this series!
Man playing eu 4 makes you think about all the big stuff but rarely will we realize how the mechanic is supposed to be used
1000 hours played and I learned quite a lot from this video, please deliver us more knowledge very good video
I sometimes do this with cape of good hope, as you can basically collect all indian ocean trade before it gets split between european powers at the ivory coast, all you have to do is conquer the ivory coast which isnt too difficult as most of europe ignores west africa for the first hundred years and instead focus on the americas. It is also a necessary strategy for any african powers that want to dominate trade as the ivory coast is impossible to dominate due to how many nodes it flows into.
I rly liked the idea of basically eu4 and I wish I will see more of that content
If your home node is upstream from the downstream node then u gain trade power in the downstream node even if you don't control any of the provinces in that node and provincial trade power comes into play here because that's what gives the "Transfers from downstream" trade power, basically controlling provincial trade power in Ragusa as Ottomans gives you provincial trade power in Ragusan TN which in turn gives you "Transfers from downstream" trade power in Constantinople and if no nation has provincial trade power in Ragusa then "Transfers from downstream" doesn't come into play in Constantinople except for Ottomans of course
I did something similar to this before with the Persia node as the Mughals. More than 90% of trade was staying in my home node and I was even redirecting a lot of trade from the gulf of Aden so that Europe wasn't getting any early game trade from Asia.
Thanks for this very useful inforamtion. I was always pushing trade to the furthest trade node.
This is a fantastic series, Monk!
Understanding trade ans trade nodes is key to having a strong economy mid game and is also how you win in MP
Great video, this was a great idea for a series!
Oh boy, glad your back. Was w8ng for u since 1444
Awesome content! I always appreciate these videos because despite having > 2000 hours I still learn new things about this game.
A little constructive criticism; for being a video meant for basic understanding of Eu4 a 16 minute video is a bit long and overwhelming. Maybe try to write a script and then record audio and later record gameplay showing your examples.
Can’t wait to see more!
Hey BudgetMonk this sounds like it's gonna be a great series! Thank you for making this, truly. I'm not much of a new player anymore, but I would have really appreciated this video back in the day.
However, even after 3000 hours, there is still at least one subject of the game that I really don't know much about and would love a video about: Trade Companies.
Specifically when to use them outside of a colonial perspective. I totally get using them in Africa and South Asia as Portugal or something, but I've always found it hard to understand the usage of trade companies in nodes where you might not usually make them, like Egypt, Siberia, or China. When to do so, why, and what are the benefits? Why not just core and state Siberia as Russia?
You can make two different end nodes in Africa this way. By colonizing/conquering all of Cape you make Zanzibar an end node, and the better one is having all of Ivory Coast makes Cape an end node. Plus all the gold mines in the area fuel colonies to settle the coasts.
With Cape an end node all the money from Indonesia/Phillipines/China is yours, and the Europeans can't get through your navy while you take their colonies in Africa. And if you spawn Colonialism they'll focus on colonial nations to get the institution and not Africa.
Kilwa, Butua, Adal, Rassids start in good spots to conquer down eastern Africa and colonize. Or by colonizing an island or two and fighting through Madagascar you can get there from Indian nations or Indonesian nations.
I personally have found a lot more fun not playing for optimal expansion. My current game of Genoa, I am just trying to have the largest trade league possible, and make the Genoa node as valuable as possible. Currently my only stated land is Provence, Lingurian coast, and Tuscany. And Venice and Padua.
You have to abuse mechanics like trade steering to get anything done without blobbing. Dunno if it’d work for TH-cam content. My point is simply that objectives other than the gigablob catch my interest.
Blobbing is the most boring thing because its so easy imo
I always love the roleplaying or doing challenges like yours
I've played a lot of eu4 but i didn't know that this works that way, i always thoutht that no matter what some countries will try to steer trade away.
Nice to see you back Monk, this was a really interesting!
No doubt that you're right about this strategy, but I feel like I missed a key point here about why the pseudo end-node strat is better than progressively moving your trade capital further and further downstream. You talked about it a little at the end but I didn't quite get it!
Am I right that the downside of this strategy that all the trade value in your 'blocker' node go completely to waste? I can kinda see that in the Constantinople & Ragusa example that you might make more money by letting that slide and focusing on building up your main trade capital, but the other two examples seemed less so. On the Novgorod example, if you're conquering the entire Baltic Sea region that seems like a hell of a lot of trade value to pay for in AE/Admin/etc that you're only going to let flow away. And because you've spent to many resources expanding West you've kinda had to deprioritise expanding into the steppes, which is what's going to build up the trade value you want in Novgorod.
The spanish example is kinda the same, in that Valencia is usually fairly built up, and it seems a shame to let all that trade value flow away to be wasted. But it does seem way better than in Russia, as you're naturally expanding into the new world and planning on dragging half the globe's trade value into Sevilla, so I can see why making it a pseudo end-node would be really valuable.
Another area I can see this working really well would be playing in China. The nodes surrounding Beijing are relatively weak, so you wouldn't mind losing them too much and you've got a whole lot of trade value you want to protect. But could you say the same for your southern border, and conquer both Malaya and the Philippines just to stop your trade value flowing south from Canton etc? As indonesia has some of the juiciest trade value in the game, I'd be really tempted to just shift my TC to Malaya and deal with the leakage into India and Africa!
I'd be interested to hear you talk a bit more about how you'd judge these decisions. Is there a tipping point where it's just worth moving downstream? Is it ever worth setting up a secondary trade collection point to capture a bit of the value in your 'blocker' trade regions?
You do you though :) I'd rather you keep having fun with your videos and make the content you want to than get bogged down in an endless debate about trade strategies! Once again, thanks for the video and nice to hear from you.
Just remember to build manufactories, to increase the local trade value, in Constantinople trade node provinces and not in Ragusa.
I'm planning to play as Malaya right now. I guess I'll try this out by conquering Bengal node.
Definitely a video about governing capacity be nice
Most people start playing eu4 with Ottomans. An interesting guide can be realy detailed Ottoman guide. Both for advanced and new players.
Unless Moscovy and Poland team up to protect Byzantum.
England's White Sea trade company event kinda make novgorod hard to psudo end node
Let's be honest, my friend. EU4 is that game where you're always learning something new.
I would have loved to have had a tutorial like this to understand trade when I first started playing last year. I'm just now understanding it better at 900 hours in.
also you're the guy that made Byzantium accessible, please do more
I learned the importance of promoting cultures just yesterday after realizing I had no idea why they mattered at all. Apparently it is a big deal.
Intuitively I mass doing the same, but now I know exactly why. Great video!
Please continue this series man I learn so much even tho I have 2600 hours playing EU4.
Budget I’ve spent many many hours watching you on stream, I’m glad you revive your TH-cam channel, I’ll be there too
LMAO I just discovered this myself with Zanzibar today. Then I see this video!
Loved the video but as a mathematician I cannot help but try to clear up the confusion about the trade node propagation not matching expectation.
First there is an issue of confusion between absolute values and percentages. If you have 40% of the trade power in the node due to having 400 trade power out of the 1000 total and you transfer 10% of that 400 trade power to a node which has 800 total trade power then you will have 40/800 trade power in the new node which is 5%.
However it seems like the 10% in an adjacent trade node is not correct in addition to that problem.
Some scenarios at the start of the game showing trade power in home node and in an adjacent node with no provinces, also no merchants stationed in the adjacent node.
Country: Home Node Absolute Trade Power(percent in node) - Adjacent Node Absolute Trade power (percent in node)[percent of home]
Costal - Costal
England: English Channel 179.539(45%) - Champagne 36.209(6%)[20.1%] - Lubeck 38.234(7%)[21.3%]
Spain: Sevilla 181.274(49%) - Safi 30.349(15%)[16.7%] - Tunis 30.349(12%)[16.7%]
Portugal: Sevilla 126.257(34%) - Safi 21.075(10%)[16.7%] - Tunis 20.075(12%)[16.7%]
Genoa: Genoa 81.401(21%) - Alexandria 13.536(3%)[16.6%] - Tunis 13.563(5%)[16.7%] - Valencia 14.503(8%)[17.8%]
Costal - Inland
Novgorod: Novgorod 84.754(30%) - Kazan 13.295(8%)[15.7%] - Kiev 13.295(8%)[15.7%]
Inland - Inland
Kazan: Kazan 76.625(53%)- Astrakhan 10.363(3%)[13.5%]
Inland - Costal
Jaunpur: Doab 109.275(17%) - 12.848(2%)[11.8%]
Oirat: Yumen 67.063(27%) - Beijing 5.284(3%)[7%]**
So it looks like around 16~17% of the absolute trade value in the node gets transferred. Weirdly for Spain and Portugal the amount of trade power transferred was the same between nodes but for England and Genoa it was not. If anyone with better understanding of EU4 trade than me has any idea why I would be interested.
Edit: Realized that I only did costal home nodes connected costal nodes so I added examples of the other combinations.
** Beijing is out of trade range for Oirat.
you know, trade nodes sure are a lot like territory bonuses in risk. i never really considered this
15:19 that chapter vibes
A quick comment, it's 10% of the absolute value that is transferred up streams, i.e. if you have 200 trade power in Venice you will have 20 in Ragusa regardless of your relative power in Venice. Which matters since not all trade regions are equal, which will become painfully obvious if you ever go for the Frozen assets achievement.
I'm pretty sure, the upstream trade is applied to the trade power, and not trade power percentage.
As of, if Ragusa has 10 trade power in it (less development) and Venice has 100, then Venice would have 50% control exerted on Ragusa, and not 10.
Well, this is intuitive. What would be really nice is if you explained how CNs affect your trade share in a node, and if it is worth to upgrade their centres, for example.
Thanks for this. Considering a Mutapa campaign where I’ll collect from the Cape now😁
The idea is that if you dominate the Cape then you can 100% Zanzibar as it only leads into the Cape.
@@BudgetMonk got you. Thank you
Almost makes me want to play eu4 again, sadly I don’t have $200 to dump into dlc and vanilla + 2/3 random dlcs isn’t enough to make the game playable
There is the 5$ a month subscription for people like you
We are all Basic EU4 Boyz, Cheers for the content monk!
If I'm not mistaken, near the endgame it becomes hard to compelitely make it "end node". Big colonizers with multiple can easely put a merchant in constantinople and pull trade out. This only works in your example because all the nation have 2 merchants and almost no trade range at the start.
Also you said it would be flawless in an inland aread, that is false as caravan power is then applied that is relative to developpment. It is actually harder to retain trade in an inland node as caravan power is not a percentage but a flat trade power amount
bruh, you blew my mind with this shit. 1000 hours in and I don't know shit
Baltic is a pseudo end mode as well.
Learning new thing after 3 years of playing
I have +2k hours into this game and this most important fact i didn't know
In one game I play Castille and I reached 20+ local income trade lnly by developing and building factories, in 1600 I was the richest nation with almost 200 incomes per month, and without controlling Valencia node, I mean, developing is a powerfull tool to grow in peace, with sexual results
Im assuming you simplified it for the sake of basics, but when you said that 10% of trade power was gained in upstream nodes at 9:00 , and that venice would have 0.6% trade power in constantinople at 9:45 , this was incorrect. The trade power a nation has upstream without any provinces, ships, caravans, or merchant, is 20% of every province with at least 10 trade power. This only applies to the upstream nodes that directly connect to the node the provinces are in. So without any provinces in ragusa, venice has no trade power in constantinople without ships, merchants, or caravans to help.
you heard it here first folks, it takes 10k hours to understand trade
This video was great. Thanks a ton.
Love this content. I always liked your guides. I seldom watch your twitch stream due to my sched, but I always watched your YT vids 🙌
My first time playing the Ottomans I actually thought it was an end node because I managed to keep 100% of its trade income
Same
You made a mistake by saying an inland node would be flawless as a pseudo end-node (10:10). Caravan power would suck out a lot of trade power if the AI places a merchant in the node. Also, even without light ships a merchant still provides an insane 2 trade power in a node.
Another example is Hormouz Basra