If you aren't playing hyper-wide (this guide is for WC, so obviously not the goal here), then you can build both manufacturies (manpower and goods produced) by expanding infrastructure.
Underrated - most players aren't actually WCing, and when you're not (either by choice or because you get yourself trapped by coalitions etc) Expanding Infrastructure can be really great for developping into Instituions, upgrading your great works, building manuf + other big building, etc
When the music kicked in.....i wondered if i had a different video open anywhere.....and i was seriously confused. other than that: thank you again and again for the guide vids. even after playing the game for 8 years i still learn things with your vids. quite a lot in fact :)
wow another amazing video explaining mechanics that i believed to have understood completely but in reality i was just scratching the surface. please keep it up with the amazing content
Hey Budgetmonk! Your videos are super helpful and concise which is great! However I felt like the music is a bit loud compared to your voice and had trouble hearing at times, maybe try a rebalance?
I don't think it was loud , but the music really clashed with what he was saying: Peaceful piano music, soft and sad undertones Monk: MAKE MONEY FAST! Banks hate him!
Literally I was watching it with headphones on in a cafe and I thought dude stop the music I cant hear the guy its so loud. It took me a while to understand it was coming from the video itself 😂
dude i love it i really want to master trading now, ima about to play chilly otto game where i play with trading companies thanks Monk for all the work!
Dont Know If you have planed this for this series but i believe it would be useful to cover the different modifiers helping you achiev eco-heg, like the different trade-idea policies, national ideas(portugese ones are perfect for eco-heg rush), prosperity(which you mentioned) and so on
Hi BudgetMonk, ty for these guides, i really enjoy and learn with them. Just one thing, don't you worry about the governing capacity? It is a huge land and as Byzantium I start to struggle despite taking Admin ideas when im much less of this size. Maybe you will cover governing capacity in further videos
You may want to expand via subjects early on, while building your power base with building and trade company investments. Then, when you’re ready, go super wide.
It can also help as byz to collect in ragusa node to compare it to collecting in home. After integrating athens and conquering the balkans and ragusa collecting there, even it being not connected to our homenode, can net more income than the 10% bonus from the merchant in home. Should always be checked, and less money that flows out of ragusa means less for the potential enemies like austria and venice
i disagree. merchants are hard to come by and i would much rather focus on siphoning trade from the rich areas you intend to conquest like aleppo, alexandria, basra, persia, crimea. you are economically weakening every nation in those nodes by having a merchant there and it can make your conquests slightly easier. ragusa is way too much of a liability of a node because it has multiple outputs to endgame nodes. i would have a fleet focused on protecting ragusan trade rather than use a merchant which allows you so many more options like choosing WHERE to steer trade (entirely useless for a node that goes to 2 end nodes) and using merchant policies each merchant also gives a static +2 trade power to the node which is a complete waste because you could be collecting that in constantinople. not to mention the "linked merchant bonus" of having up to 5 merchants in a row making the involved nodes objectively better than they would be if your merchants were not arranged like that. i can see doing it in a niche situation but personally if i am playing a long campaign i would never station a merchant in ragusa unless i was collecting in genoa.
If you've successfully made Constantinople into a pseudo-end node, there shouldn't be much (if any) money leaving. And if Austria and Venice are giving you trouble just take half their trade power and war reps.
Not enough people utilize monopoly privileges for estates. You still get the majority of the cash from the production (80%), but it's up-front, letting you immediately reinvest it (which means it will ROI faster, so it's like an uber loan without interest or having to pay it back). It also gives 10% loyalty to estates, which means you don't have to give them influence (more crownland), and lastly, each individual one gives you 1 mercantilism. Meaning you can easily cap out mercantilism in around 100 years.
I found this by looking at the playlist on the mobile app. As far as explanation, I think it would be easier for a newish player (like myself, only 400 hours in) if you used the names for the improvements consistently through the video, like the names of the TC improvements in particular. It's hard to keep it all straight in my head and I have to rewatch a lot to make sure I understand. I think for folks who aren't familiar with manufactures, an explanation of their value might be important---do all manufacturies gain you goods produced or just the first one on the left? It would also be nice to have some zoom-in added when you're pointing out something small, like the numbers of trade value or the particular TC investments. From watching a few times, here's what I understand. Downstream from collection, you want to have trade power, and then use the manpower TC investments once you monopolize the downstream node. Upstream, you want trade value---and you want trade power if that upstream node doesn't go only into your collection area. Use the various TC investments to accomplish these tasks. Also, don't forget to spend diplo points on valuable resource production in your collection node and all monopolized upstream nodes. I'll watch again to see what I missed.
I agree with your feedback on how these guides can be improved. And in regards to the takeaways from the video, I think yeah, that’s pretty much it. If I’m not mistaken you want to create a pseudo end-node, where you’ll be collecting (in this case it’s Anatolia region/ Constantinople). But because countries from the downstream nodes can pull trade power from the upper trade node, you want to monopolise those nodes as well (like in this case, countries in Ragusa would be stealing money from Anatolia, that’s why he monopolised Ragusa as well). And another point (not mentioned in the video, but I think BudgetMonk talks a lot about it) is that you usually build manpower manufactures on grain, stock-live (or whatever it’s called in the game, there are cows in the icon) and fish producing provinces). And develop provinces producing valuable goods (cotton, cloth, gems, gold, and so own). Btw, gold isn’t added to trade, it directly goes to your treasury. So it makes sense to develop those provinces too.
I love your videos, but you're choosing music which frequencies overlap (in this case the piano) with the human voice making it harder to understand you. You can adjust the frequency spectrum of music with an equalizer to filter those frequencies out so you can still use that music and we can better understand what you are saying. But it would be better to avoid music which frequencies clash with your voice. Just friendly advise 🙂.
This video really opened my eyes when it comes to building up my economy. On the other hand, when am I supposed to add all the provinces in a trade node to my trade company, as opposed to keeping only trade centers... Do you mind clarifying?
Fantastic. One question: at what point (if ever?) is it beneficial to move your psuedo-end node downstream? In the context of the video, if you've been devaluing trade value in Ragusa/Venice would you ever consider moving your main trade port to either of those nodes?
What is the earliest that one can generally get the economic hegemon? I have started a Ottogame after your first guide. It is now 1630s and I have monopolized all the way to Gujarat, but I am still only halfway at the hegemon. I didn't build that many manufactories, but it still seems so far away. On a second note, even with the monopolizing, the AI still manages to steal trade. They send in traders that move trade away even though they don't even collect in the following nodes, it is really weird. And last last note, you often add in randoms E's in local names like Basra and Astrakhan Edit: I just tried it out in the Ottogame. When I use the increased trade value in Basra (14g local, 71g incoming, with 78% control (even though I control all direct downstream provinces), it gives me 15.4g local and thus slight increase in propagated. If I use the 50% trade steering increase for the TC region, then I get a whopping 8g increase in propagated value, thus I think the trade steering is super important, which you didn't bring up in the video.
Yeah, using console commands in the first 15 years of the game does NOT represent the player experience. The AI steals so much trade value from every node with Light Ship Trade Power Propagation. That problem doesn't exist in the Age of Discovery. These videos aren't all that helpful in addressing that.
The 1k trade value investment isn't that great as a general "place this everywhere to get money" choice. Cos what it does is increase the amount of all local trade value by 10% (which is great, but not ideal imo) because it doesn't affect the incoming trade at all. You should use the trade value investment for money in only a few circumstances: 1.) an end node (or psuedo end node), 2.) a source node or 3.) a node that has its local income as > 3x its incoming income. This is because the 50% trade steering investment translates to a 2.5% increase to ALL trade value leaving the node, so if (1.1*local + incoming) < (1.025* (local + incoming)) then the trade steering is better. Obviously this is complicated by other bonuses to trade steering, but usually it's not that far off the "pure" calculation in my experience. Also, with the 1k investements in general, it's a good idea in my opinion to put them in the smallest and/or least valuable area in a node, like the area that's just a pair of islands in the ivory cost node, this is so you can remove them from the TC which then deletes the investment, allowing you to put it (or another one) elsewhere while only getting the 5 year penalty for leaving a TC to a relatively insignificant area. Saying this, it does bother me that you can't have more than one 1k investment in each node, it makes sense from a balance point of view, but it still annoys me.
how is it 5% increase? I thought that a merchant (the first, obviously, which is what you would have in monopoly situations, one merchant in the node) pulling trade onwards gave you 5%, and then trade steering modified THAT. So 50% trade steering would be 50% of 5%, or 2.5%. Am I misunderstanding how that works?
Few things. Having a whole trade region as TC makes no sense at all ever, because you lose the bonus production from having a tc there. I am too lazy to make a video, but if monk makes alleppo into no tc land states everything except lets say alleppo(city) he will have roughly +60% goods produced on fully stated land which is much better than using tc's and their investment. Easy way to test this is play castille, tc tangier monopolize Castille node and delete all trade centers in europe. It will generate insane money. Next thing is, trade power generally is pretty useless in these cases with alexandria/persia, they become outdated once you monopolize and the good produced in the regions are generally weak if you dont build it up first. manufactories will double the value in a node most of the time, so its better to make the trade node worth something before you take the trade power. +50 trade power on nothing is still nothing so who cares.
1-on your first point : I would say that the amount of provinces to TC in a said trade region depends on whether or not you want to state those provinces or not, although I absolutely agree that putting all provinces in a TC is Wholly inefficient for a bunch of reasons,i still disagree with you on these points : -if you want to state the provinces, do as you said and focus on one province to be the trade powerhouse of the trade region, this way you get both the "TC present" bonus and the prosperity bonus -Now if you don't plan on stating the provinces : you should actually TC one province in each state, the one with the most trade power and the least trade value, and assign the goods produced company investment, this way you maximise goods produced in the node 2-While I agree that in the scope of this video it would be better to augment the trade value before the trade power (as you can use your lightships to breach the gap anyway) I would stay that focusing on trade power on those nodes brings another benefits that nobody is talking about : -the ability to lenghten your trade chain, as you must know, each merchant steering trade will give a bonus to the trade value of said node, and a lot of people sleep on this effect, but it has an exponential value, if you get trade defensive and expansion ideas while having 100 navy tradition, it can quickly sky rocket you to economic hegemon (I once got Eco hegemon with portugal in 1529 thanks to those principles) This will allow you to chain the value in aleppo (which is gonna be quite high by this point with persia, hormuz and basra) to alexandria before it gets to constantinople, multiplying it by 1.15, which has the potential to be huge (imagine a 15% increase of income instantanuously)
@@moncefbens4342 first point is exactly the example i gave, with aleppo as the "powerhouse". Putting 1 province of each state into a tc is basically a micro optimisation, since i would add most trade center anyway, so most states have 1 province in the tc anyway. Looking if its better to add a 5 dev province or 20 dev province from said state is optimisation beyond anything reasonable to be honest, because you could argue for both in different scenarios. pretty sure base trade steering is 5% boost so first of all i dont really know where 15% is coming from, but i kinda dont see the point of this argument. Trade steering becomes more effective the bigger you are but trade power becomes worse the bigger you are. 15% extra on a trade route is worse than 20% good produces from trade and quantity. so you would need 2 stations to make reasonable profit of it and you need 100% in 3 nodes. Essentially trade steering becomes useful at a point where you are too rich to care, if you are eco hegemony as portugal in 1529 why the fuck do you care about the last 200 ducats out of the 1000 you make, you just dont, because there is nothing you can invest it into. Only good thing kinda is getting the hegemony, but then again, just take admin instead of trade and you are also getting the gov cap.
@@siinuxxblume5123 1-This is mainly done to get the goods produced flat boost from TC investments 2-Base trade steering is 5%, but getting 200 to 300% trade steering is easy, and will net you from 15 to 20% trade steering which is huge. 3-your last two sentences confuse me, but I want to say that Trade steering is a LOT better than goods produced as a modifier if you play around it, let me give you a situation : I- I focus on goods produced : if i get a 10% increase, my production income will rise by 10% and my trade income by a bit more than 10%, it is very linear as long as you don't pair it with trade steering II- I focus on trade steering : imagine I have 20% trade steering, and that i get for the sake of example 1 ducats from Lahsa, and chain it to the english channel, this one ducat can theoratically become 1*1.2^22 (since you can chain it 22 times at most) which is equal to 55 ducats, now I will give you a table to show you how much this ducat is worth as you change the node downstream in the chain : 22 : 55 21 : 46 20 : 38 19 : 31 ... 16 : 18 (molucca node with cloves, you'll have enormous amount of base ducats here, not just one) ... 8 : 4.2 (this is still a 4.2 times MULTIPLICATION, you'd need 320% goods produced to recreate this, even this close to your end node) ... and so on, but even on your LAST NODE you will get a multiplication of 1.2, as you can see, theoratically, you'd only need one ducats or so to reach economic hegemon now imagine if you pair that with SOME goods produced and develop the production of your bottom nodes ? it can grow insane, that's how you see millions in trade income 3-I care about the last 200 ducats because I want to be Eco hegemon as fast as possible, and so I care a LOT about them (they can be either the easiest or the hardest, i even pop the golden era for them) 4-the importance of eco hegemon and being affluent beyond thinking : the moment you get eco hegemon, you get the most busted modifiers there is (only comparable to military hegemon) : -minimum autonomy in terrritory, goods produced, gov capacity, dev cost and mercenary buff once you get eco hegemon, you can be sure that you're never gonna lose it. and so with absurd amount of money you can pretty much have infinite of everything, manpower, navy, buildings (forts ?), +65 relation with everybody, force limit etc once you reach eco hegemon you can even change your idea grouops later to make it more conquest oriented (with level 5 advisors you can manage the loss of mana) also imagine if you change your capital to new world, you'd be able to make a lot of colonies at the same time, considerable speeding up the process of world conquest. and the sooner you get all of this the better, that's why the last 200 ducats are important it's a milestone
@@moncefbens4342 1 - Yes, it is better in some states without trade centers(which i would add anyway), but even then adding a province in a 3 province state to a tc loses you 70-100% goods produced in that province, which is a case by case study if that is worth it. Most of the time it is probably worth tho. 2 - Dont think 300% trade steering is realistic. 3 - I know how it works, but you need 100% trade power from Lahsa to the english channel to make this actually play out. 4 - I just dont care about economic hegemon, The only real way to rush it is tc's and territories. I dont think giving up reformprogress is worth the bonus of economic hegemon. This is purely a world conquest based view, since the last tiers of Monarchy reforms are too good to delay and 250 gov cap is usually more than what eco hegemony will give you at the time. If i have 800 ducats monthly in 1550s i already dont know what to spend money on, especially since you can take loans at this point and your vault is basically a million every time anyway. All that being said, if it comes to only maximizing income you are more on point than monk about almost anything, so you should make a guide rather than him ;)
@@siinuxxblume5123 2-300% is perfect, but from 200 to 300 is definetely achievable : .100% from navy tradition + 20 from bengal monument + 70 from trade defensive expansion + 50 TC investment + 55% british missions (or 35 for portugal) 3- granted I'm being overly optimistic, but that's done purposefully, because in a real game, you'd pull a lot more than one ducat, and we strife to have > than 85%/90% in each node (which is definetely possible when we stack the global trade power mofidier) plus trade steering helps you steer the trade in your direction, and lastly the last fact that will push your in the positive direction, is that trade steering from merchants stack, so if you're not the only one steering from the node, it will be multiplicated more than once (can be negative when you are being put second or worse) 4-since my strategy relies on mostly getting COT, you won't feel a big hit in reform progress growth (granted that your home node is fully integrated) also, getting eco hegemon early will lower the minimum autonomy anyway, which will allow you to get much much more from territories instead of having to state eveyrthing Well thank you, but i'm sure i'm a newbie compared to Monk, I only play recreationally lol
I wish you would've delved deeper into trade steering and trade value multiplication, I also notice that you didn't use the longest chain to optimise your traide in this video, with the trade steering company investment, you could potentially make much more money.
Since trade income is the biggest contributor to economic hegemon, you should only add the estuaries/trade centers to trade company as the rest of the region gets a goods produced % bonus from it. This can be worse in some instances because of religion penalties. However, since most wc runs include religious ideas or if you are going for one faith, you will convert all non tc provinces, removing the religion penalty to goods produced completely. I´m convinced you'd earn more money by only tc'ing estuaries/trade centers, upgrading them to lvl 2, building marketplaces in those provinces only and finally getting the flat +4 trade power bonus in them which will only affect the tc province. Please explain why you don't do this as you are flat out missing out on a lot of income. The situation you are describing would only be realistic when you have townhalls available due to government capacity. If that is the case I understand why you add everything to tc to get more manpower, production income etc. But its not optimal if your sole goal is getting economic hegemon asap as you have repeatedly stated is the goal. Finally, since you once again state that economic hegemon is the goal, why not abuse trade companies in anatolia? Following my suggestion you would get a whopping 50% goods produced modifier in every province outside ragusa. Edit: tc in estuaries/trade centers and one per state is optimal.
´what about making 1 trade company in the anatolian state that has less provinces that way for 1 thousand ducats you can get the 10% trade value in constantinople trade node in your stated provinces. You sacrifice prosperity in one state for 10% goods produced in main node i think it's worth it.
Let's say you would be playing timurids/mughals. even if you own allepo and the other trade note that persia flows into you cant make it an end trade node because its an inland trade node. should you just spam trade power in the node to keep as much as possible? is it even worth conquering allepo at that point?
The fact is that you can push nations out of trade range so they cannot palace merchants. Also What helps nations pull trade from Persia? control in Aleppo. The more you control Aleppo yourself, the more you will monopolize Persia. The answer is yes it is worth conquering.
Hey quick question, wouldn't the trade steering lvl 3 TC investment be better than the prod. bonus lvl 3 TC in Alepo? As it will apply a multiplicative modifier to the outflow of the trade going to Constatinople?
Hey Monk, I am currently doing my first wc attempt with the mughals and so far the game is going great. I have one problem however. I cannot contain the trade in the persia node even though i have every single province in persia, astrakhan and allepo (with the exeption of cyprus). Somehow the memeluks out of all have 15% !!! of the trade power in persia. Even though they have less than 50% in their own node in alexandria. I do not understand where that comes from and how to stop it (game says something about caravans, but I never understood how they work). I dont think this is how it should work. The mameluks have no provinces in either allepo or persia.
so if we aim for the hegemony we don't care anymore how long it takes for a building to pay itself off? Or does it still apply for non manufactures/ marketplace buildings?
That thought is redundant for manu/market places imo. I would say if you have many options and not as much money to invest, then you care in regards to other buildings. But also keep in mind that it is your income which grants eco hedgemon not returns. Meaning you could spend money at 1600 which will not give returns until 1690 but you still grands you the hedge.
Hey, monk. Thanks for the great vid. So… If I don’t TC all provinces, but just CoTs, I save gov cap, right? And if I don’t have the funds to put manufactories in TC provinces, should I just steer through more nodes, getting money through pure steering and mercantilism? I mean that in an expansionist way, obviously
Byz actually has a great set up for 2 reasons. 1 is that you can dominate trade without owning that much land on your subcontinent. Therefore you don't NEED to state all that much or have worthless territories that cannot be TC. 2 You can actually TC nearby, western European provinces like Italy. This means Venice and Genoa can generate a merchant and you will gain more tradepower for the amount of land owned in the lovely end node!
If you have all the Ragusa's provinces why is not a good idea to move your home trade there? You still have all control in Constantinople and have the benefits from the new provinces. Second question, why not moving your capital to western europe so you can make more TCs in Ragusa and Constantinople area?
Because Ragusa is impacted by the trade power in Venice (trade power 'upstreams' one node). Because there's generally a TON of trade power happening in Venice, you would then leak a lot out of Ragusa, whereas you don't leak out of Constantinople because you dominate Ragusa.
yo can you remove the music? Or at least put on something more fitting. Otherwise, good video and thanks for the tips. I'm going for my first wc as Mughals rn and it's going well.
there is a way to increase this even more. if you dont put every province in the node into the TC and only put the COT and estuaries into a TC. leave everything else as a territory or a state if you feel like. you will then start to get goods produced to all of your provinces that arent in the TC building markets in the TC/upgrading the COT/the local trade power investment. will further increase this bonus having the latest institution embraced incraeses this doing it this way you can have at 1600 bonuses of around 50-100% goods produced bonus depending on the TC control of the node to every province not within it. you can further this buy stating some inbetween for the extra 25% goods produced from prosperity doing it this way also means it isnt so costly on your gov cap as its mostly territories not TC you dont have to spend so much on investments and it has the added bonus of scaling through the game. as any time you embrace an insitution your income just magically gets increased nation wide
8:54 Omg, I've been playing this game for years and I didn't know this. Thank you so much Monk, this one tip makes the entire video worth it for me.
im loving your guides man, keep em coming
I feel the same. For me the joy is in The optimization. Doing things as well as they can be done so this is always great.
If you aren't playing hyper-wide (this guide is for WC, so obviously not the goal here), then you can build both manufacturies (manpower and goods produced) by expanding infrastructure.
Underrated - most players aren't actually WCing, and when you're not (either by choice or because you get yourself trapped by coalitions etc) Expanding Infrastructure can be really great for developping into Instituions, upgrading your great works, building manuf + other big building, etc
When the music kicked in.....i wondered if i had a different video open anywhere.....and i was seriously confused. other than that: thank you again and again for the guide vids. even after playing the game for 8 years i still learn things with your vids. quite a lot in fact :)
wow another amazing video explaining mechanics that i believed to have understood completely but in reality i was just scratching the surface. please keep it up with the amazing content
Hey Budgetmonk! Your videos are super helpful and concise which is great! However I felt like the music is a bit loud compared to your voice and had trouble hearing at times, maybe try a rebalance?
maybe a small thing, the music is too loud monk
though spotify had somehow started the music at first lol
I don't think it was loud , but the music really clashed with what he was saying:
Peaceful piano music, soft and sad undertones
Monk: MAKE MONEY FAST! Banks hate him!
Yeah quite distracting
Literally I was watching it with headphones on in a cafe and I thought dude stop the music I cant hear the guy its so loud. It took me a while to understand it was coming from the video itself 😂
dude i love it
i really want to master trading now, ima about to play chilly otto game where i play with trading companies
thanks Monk for all the work!
Dont Know If you have planed this for this series but i believe it would be useful to cover the different modifiers helping you achiev eco-heg, like the different trade-idea policies, national ideas(portugese ones are perfect for eco-heg rush), prosperity(which you mentioned) and so on
Super helpful monk! Thanks for this series
The music makes me aspire to create a trade powerhouse out of Oman
Hormuz is excellent for that. They can make a trade league.
@@edgarbm6407 yeah, I've really been eying the third way achievement though hehe
Hi BudgetMonk, ty for these guides, i really enjoy and learn with them. Just one thing, don't you worry about the governing capacity? It is a huge land and as Byzantium I start to struggle despite taking Admin ideas when im much less of this size. Maybe you will cover governing capacity in further videos
Don't state everything you take lol.
Sure but then your government reform rate would be lower
@@miquelmauri5277 expand at the same rate of governing capacity until all gov reforms then explode
You may want to expand via subjects early on, while building your power base with building and trade company investments. Then, when you’re ready, go super wide.
Only state your home node essentially. You want to TC everything else
It can also help as byz to collect in ragusa node to compare it to collecting in home. After integrating athens and conquering the balkans and ragusa collecting there, even it being not connected to our homenode, can net more income than the 10% bonus from the merchant in home. Should always be checked, and less money that flows out of ragusa means less for the potential enemies like austria and venice
i disagree. merchants are hard to come by and i would much rather focus on siphoning trade from the rich areas you intend to conquest like aleppo, alexandria, basra, persia, crimea. you are economically weakening every nation in those nodes by having a merchant there and it can make your conquests slightly easier.
ragusa is way too much of a liability of a node because it has multiple outputs to endgame nodes. i would have a fleet focused on protecting ragusan trade rather than use a merchant which allows you so many more options like choosing WHERE to steer trade (entirely useless for a node that goes to 2 end nodes) and using merchant policies
each merchant also gives a static +2 trade power to the node which is a complete waste because you could be collecting that in constantinople. not to mention the "linked merchant bonus" of having up to 5 merchants in a row making the involved nodes objectively better than they would be if your merchants were not arranged like that.
i can see doing it in a niche situation but personally if i am playing a long campaign i would never station a merchant in ragusa unless i was collecting in genoa.
If you've successfully made Constantinople into a pseudo-end node, there shouldn't be much (if any) money leaving.
And if Austria and Venice are giving you trouble just take half their trade power and war reps.
I too, think Arrest-a-Khan is in a less than ideal position if you want to monopolize samarkand. ;) Love you man :)
Not enough people utilize monopoly privileges for estates. You still get the majority of the cash from the production (80%), but it's up-front, letting you immediately reinvest it (which means it will ROI faster, so it's like an uber loan without interest or having to pay it back). It also gives 10% loyalty to estates, which means you don't have to give them influence (more crownland), and lastly, each individual one gives you 1 mercantilism. Meaning you can easily cap out mercantilism in around 100 years.
Nice music in the background.
Wow, this Monk guy got so large by 1445, I'm watching this!
World Conquest before 1500!
@@edgarbm6407 didn’t that chinese guy on reddit do that?
I found this by looking at the playlist on the mobile app.
As far as explanation, I think it would be easier for a newish player (like myself, only 400 hours in) if you used the names for the improvements consistently through the video, like the names of the TC improvements in particular. It's hard to keep it all straight in my head and I have to rewatch a lot to make sure I understand. I think for folks who aren't familiar with manufactures, an explanation of their value might be important---do all manufacturies gain you goods produced or just the first one on the left? It would also be nice to have some zoom-in added when you're pointing out something small, like the numbers of trade value or the particular TC investments.
From watching a few times, here's what I understand. Downstream from collection, you want to have trade power, and then use the manpower TC investments once you monopolize the downstream node. Upstream, you want trade value---and you want trade power if that upstream node doesn't go only into your collection area. Use the various TC investments to accomplish these tasks. Also, don't forget to spend diplo points on valuable resource production in your collection node and all monopolized upstream nodes.
I'll watch again to see what I missed.
I agree with your feedback on how these guides can be improved. And in regards to the takeaways from the video, I think yeah, that’s pretty much it. If I’m not mistaken you want to create a pseudo end-node, where you’ll be collecting (in this case it’s Anatolia region/ Constantinople). But because countries from the downstream nodes can pull trade power from the upper trade node, you want to monopolise those nodes as well (like in this case, countries in Ragusa would be stealing money from Anatolia, that’s why he monopolised Ragusa as well).
And another point (not mentioned in the video, but I think BudgetMonk talks a lot about it) is that you usually build manpower manufactures on grain, stock-live (or whatever it’s called in the game, there are cows in the icon) and fish producing provinces). And develop provinces producing valuable goods (cotton, cloth, gems, gold, and so own). Btw, gold isn’t added to trade, it directly goes to your treasury. So it makes sense to develop those provinces too.
Fantastic
Awesome video. Just wanted to mention be careful with the music. This song crescendos and starts getting really loud by around 2:23
I love your videos, but you're choosing music which frequencies overlap (in this case the piano) with the human voice making it harder to understand you. You can adjust the frequency spectrum of music with an equalizer to filter those frequencies out so you can still use that music and we can better understand what you are saying. But it would be better to avoid music which frequencies clash with your voice. Just friendly advise 🙂.
good stuff
The Merchants Guild would be pleased
This video really opened my eyes when it comes to building up my economy.
On the other hand, when am I supposed to add all the provinces in a trade node to my trade company, as opposed to keeping only trade centers... Do you mind clarifying?
Ty! Great video!
Fantastic. One question: at what point (if ever?) is it beneficial to move your psuedo-end node downstream? In the context of the video, if you've been devaluing trade value in Ragusa/Venice would you ever consider moving your main trade port to either of those nodes?
Just about control. You need to own Pest and Genoa in order to prevent Ragusa from bleeding out. Then move too Venice.
What is the earliest that one can generally get the economic hegemon? I have started a Ottogame after your first guide. It is now 1630s and I have monopolized all the way to Gujarat, but I am still only halfway at the hegemon. I didn't build that many manufactories, but it still seems so far away.
On a second note, even with the monopolizing, the AI still manages to steal trade. They send in traders that move trade away even though they don't even collect in the following nodes, it is really weird.
And last last note, you often add in randoms E's in local names like Basra and Astrakhan
Edit: I just tried it out in the Ottogame. When I use the increased trade value in Basra (14g local, 71g incoming, with 78% control (even though I control all direct downstream provinces), it gives me 15.4g local and thus slight increase in propagated. If I use the 50% trade steering increase for the TC region, then I get a whopping 8g increase in propagated value, thus I think the trade steering is super important, which you didn't bring up in the video.
Yeah, using console commands in the first 15 years of the game does NOT represent the player experience. The AI steals so much trade value from every node with Light Ship Trade Power Propagation. That problem doesn't exist in the Age of Discovery. These videos aren't all that helpful in addressing that.
The 1k trade value investment isn't that great as a general "place this everywhere to get money" choice. Cos what it does is increase the amount of all local trade value by 10% (which is great, but not ideal imo) because it doesn't affect the incoming trade at all. You should use the trade value investment for money in only a few circumstances: 1.) an end node (or psuedo end node), 2.) a source node or 3.) a node that has its local income as > 3x its incoming income. This is because the 50% trade steering investment translates to a 2.5% increase to ALL trade value leaving the node, so if (1.1*local + incoming) < (1.025* (local + incoming)) then the trade steering is better.
Obviously this is complicated by other bonuses to trade steering, but usually it's not that far off the "pure" calculation in my experience.
Also, with the 1k investements in general, it's a good idea in my opinion to put them in the smallest and/or least valuable area in a node, like the area that's just a pair of islands in the ivory cost node, this is so you can remove them from the TC which then deletes the investment, allowing you to put it (or another one) elsewhere while only getting the 5 year penalty for leaving a TC to a relatively insignificant area.
Saying this, it does bother me that you can't have more than one 1k investment in each node, it makes sense from a balance point of view, but it still annoys me.
how is it 5% increase? I thought that a merchant (the first, obviously, which is what you would have in monopoly situations, one merchant in the node) pulling trade onwards gave you 5%, and then trade steering modified THAT. So 50% trade steering would be 50% of 5%, or 2.5%. Am I misunderstanding how that works?
@@timmietimmins3780 you're right, I thought merchants were 10% for some reason, will edit
Few things.
Having a whole trade region as TC makes no sense at all ever, because you lose the bonus production from having a tc there. I am too lazy to make a video, but if monk makes alleppo into no tc land states everything except lets say alleppo(city) he will have roughly +60% goods produced on fully stated land which is much better than using tc's and their investment.
Easy way to test this is play castille, tc tangier monopolize Castille node and delete all trade centers in europe. It will generate insane money.
Next thing is, trade power generally is pretty useless in these cases with alexandria/persia, they become outdated once you monopolize and the good produced in the regions are generally weak if you dont build it up first. manufactories will double the value in a node most of the time, so its better to make the trade node worth something before you take the trade power. +50 trade power on nothing is still nothing so who cares.
1-on your first point :
I would say that the amount of provinces to TC in a said trade region depends on whether or not you want to state those provinces or not, although I absolutely agree that putting all provinces in a TC is Wholly inefficient for a bunch of reasons,i still disagree with you on these points :
-if you want to state the provinces, do as you said and focus on one province to be the trade powerhouse of the trade region, this way you get both the "TC present" bonus and the prosperity bonus
-Now if you don't plan on stating the provinces : you should actually TC one province in each state, the one with the most trade power and the least trade value, and assign the goods produced company investment, this way you maximise goods produced in the node
2-While I agree that in the scope of this video it would be better to augment the trade value before the trade power (as you can use your lightships to breach the gap anyway) I would stay that focusing on trade power on those nodes brings another benefits that nobody is talking about :
-the ability to lenghten your trade chain, as you must know, each merchant steering trade will give a bonus to the trade value of said node, and a lot of people sleep on this effect, but it has an exponential value, if you get trade defensive and expansion ideas while having 100 navy tradition, it can quickly sky rocket you to economic hegemon (I once got Eco hegemon with portugal in 1529 thanks to those principles)
This will allow you to chain the value in aleppo (which is gonna be quite high by this point with persia, hormuz and basra) to alexandria before it gets to constantinople, multiplying it by 1.15, which has the potential to be huge (imagine a 15% increase of income instantanuously)
@@moncefbens4342 first point is exactly the example i gave, with aleppo as the "powerhouse".
Putting 1 province of each state into a tc is basically a micro optimisation, since i would add most trade center anyway, so most states have 1 province in the tc anyway. Looking if its better to add a 5 dev province or 20 dev province from said state is optimisation beyond anything reasonable to be honest, because you could argue for both in different scenarios.
pretty sure base trade steering is 5% boost so first of all i dont really know where 15% is coming from, but i kinda dont see the point of this argument. Trade steering becomes more effective the bigger you are but trade power becomes worse the bigger you are. 15% extra on a trade route is worse than 20% good produces from trade and quantity. so you would need 2 stations to make reasonable profit of it and you need 100% in 3 nodes.
Essentially trade steering becomes useful at a point where you are too rich to care, if you are eco hegemony as portugal in 1529 why the fuck do you care about the last 200 ducats out of the 1000 you make, you just dont, because there is nothing you can invest it into. Only good thing kinda is getting the hegemony, but then again, just take admin instead of trade and you are also getting the gov cap.
@@siinuxxblume5123 1-This is mainly done to get the goods produced flat boost from TC investments
2-Base trade steering is 5%, but getting 200 to 300% trade steering is easy, and will net you from 15 to 20% trade steering which is huge.
3-your last two sentences confuse me, but I want to say that Trade steering is a LOT better than goods produced as a modifier if you play around it, let me give you a situation :
I- I focus on goods produced :
if i get a 10% increase, my production income will rise by 10% and my trade income by a bit more than 10%, it is very linear as long as you don't pair it with trade steering
II- I focus on trade steering :
imagine I have 20% trade steering, and that i get for the sake of example 1 ducats from Lahsa, and chain it to the english channel, this one ducat can theoratically become 1*1.2^22 (since you can chain it 22 times at most)
which is equal to 55 ducats, now I will give you a table to show you how much this ducat is worth as you change the node downstream in the chain :
22 : 55
21 : 46
20 : 38
19 : 31
...
16 : 18 (molucca node with cloves, you'll have enormous amount of base ducats here, not just one)
...
8 : 4.2 (this is still a 4.2 times MULTIPLICATION, you'd need 320% goods produced to recreate this, even this close to your end node)
...
and so on, but even on your LAST NODE you will get a multiplication of 1.2, as you can see, theoratically, you'd only need one ducats or so to reach economic hegemon
now imagine if you pair that with SOME goods produced and develop the production of your bottom nodes ? it can grow insane, that's how you see millions in trade income
3-I care about the last 200 ducats because I want to be Eco hegemon as fast as possible, and so I care a LOT about them (they can be either the easiest or the hardest, i even pop the golden era for them)
4-the importance of eco hegemon and being affluent beyond thinking :
the moment you get eco hegemon, you get the most busted modifiers there is (only comparable to military hegemon) :
-minimum autonomy in terrritory, goods produced, gov capacity, dev cost and mercenary buff
once you get eco hegemon, you can be sure that you're never gonna lose it.
and so with absurd amount of money you can pretty much have infinite of everything, manpower, navy, buildings (forts ?), +65 relation with everybody, force limit etc
once you reach eco hegemon you can even change your idea grouops later to make it more conquest oriented (with level 5 advisors you can manage the loss of mana)
also imagine if you change your capital to new world, you'd be able to make a lot of colonies at the same time, considerable speeding up the process of world conquest.
and the sooner you get all of this the better, that's why the last 200 ducats are important it's a milestone
@@moncefbens4342 1 - Yes, it is better in some states without trade centers(which i would add anyway), but even then adding a province in a 3 province state to a tc loses you 70-100% goods produced in that province, which is a case by case study if that is worth it. Most of the time it is probably worth tho.
2 - Dont think 300% trade steering is realistic.
3 - I know how it works, but you need 100% trade power from Lahsa to the english channel to make this actually play out.
4 - I just dont care about economic hegemon, The only real way to rush it is tc's and territories. I dont think giving up reformprogress is worth the bonus of economic hegemon. This is purely a world conquest based view, since the last tiers of Monarchy reforms are too good to delay and 250 gov cap is usually more than what eco hegemony will give you at the time. If i have 800 ducats monthly in 1550s i already dont know what to spend money on, especially since you can take loans at this point and your vault is basically a million every time anyway.
All that being said, if it comes to only maximizing income you are more on point than monk about almost anything, so you should make a guide rather than him ;)
@@siinuxxblume5123 2-300% is perfect, but from 200 to 300 is definetely achievable :
.100% from navy tradition + 20 from bengal monument + 70 from trade defensive expansion + 50 TC investment + 55% british missions (or 35 for portugal)
3- granted I'm being overly optimistic, but that's done purposefully, because in a real game, you'd pull a lot more than one ducat, and we strife to have > than 85%/90% in each node (which is definetely possible when we stack the global trade power mofidier) plus trade steering helps you steer the trade in your direction, and lastly the last fact that will push your in the positive direction, is that trade steering from merchants stack, so if you're not the only one steering from the node, it will be multiplicated more than once (can be negative when you are being put second or worse)
4-since my strategy relies on mostly getting COT, you won't feel a big hit in reform progress growth (granted that your home node is fully integrated) also, getting eco hegemon early will lower the minimum autonomy anyway, which will allow you to get much much more from territories instead of having to state eveyrthing
Well thank you, but i'm sure i'm a newbie compared to Monk, I only play recreationally lol
Nice
I wish you would've delved deeper into trade steering and trade value multiplication, I also notice that you didn't use the longest chain to optimise your traide in this video, with the trade steering company investment, you could potentially make much more money.
Basara and Aristocan rock😂
You're kind of my hero
Great stuff i did not use trade companies like that
Since trade income is the biggest contributor to economic hegemon, you should only add the estuaries/trade centers to trade company as the rest of the region gets a goods produced % bonus from it. This can be worse in some instances because of religion penalties. However, since most wc runs include religious ideas or if you are going for one faith, you will convert all non tc provinces, removing the religion penalty to goods produced completely.
I´m convinced you'd earn more money by only tc'ing estuaries/trade centers, upgrading them to lvl 2, building marketplaces in those provinces only and finally getting the flat +4 trade power bonus in them which will only affect the tc province. Please explain why you don't do this as you are flat out missing out on a lot of income.
The situation you are describing would only be realistic when you have townhalls available due to government capacity. If that is the case I understand why you add everything to tc to get more manpower, production income etc. But its not optimal if your sole goal is getting economic hegemon asap as you have repeatedly stated is the goal.
Finally, since you once again state that economic hegemon is the goal, why not abuse trade companies in anatolia? Following my suggestion you would get a whopping 50% goods produced modifier in every province outside ragusa.
Edit: tc in estuaries/trade centers and one per state is optimal.
I think he said to not tc all provinces in the trade company video, but probably he just forgot about the goods produced buff in this guide
Positive tolerance will remove penalties in non tc territory, so you don't have to convert in many cases
Love the guide, what would be a feasible time to be an eco hegemon ?
I depends on the nation. I would say for very powerful nations late 1500s for weak nations early 1600s. Just do you best an get it asap.
:note: :note: :note:
´what about making 1 trade company in the anatolian state that has less provinces that way for 1 thousand ducats you can get the 10% trade value in constantinople trade node in your stated provinces. You sacrifice prosperity in one state for 10% goods produced in main node i think it's worth it.
No mention of workshops seems a bit weird when talking about trade and trade value.
Workshops only effect production income
great video but the music is a miss I think, watching at 2x speed makes it much harder to hear your words clearly
Let's say you would be playing timurids/mughals. even if you own allepo and the other trade note that persia flows into you cant make it an end trade node because its an inland trade node. should you just spam trade power in the node to keep as much as possible? is it even worth conquering allepo at that point?
The fact is that you can push nations out of trade range so they cannot palace merchants. Also What helps nations pull trade from Persia? control in Aleppo. The more you control Aleppo yourself, the more you will monopolize Persia. The answer is yes it is worth conquering.
@@BudgetMonk Thanks bro
Hey quick question, wouldn't the trade steering lvl 3 TC investment be better than the prod. bonus lvl 3 TC in Alepo? As it will apply a multiplicative modifier to the outflow of the trade going to Constatinople?
Both are great. They both have advantages and disadvantages. However I advise "Trade Value" early and "Trade steering" later on.
Hey Monk, I am currently doing my first wc attempt with the mughals and so far the game is going great. I have one problem however. I cannot contain the trade in the persia node even though i have every single province in persia, astrakhan and allepo (with the exeption of cyprus). Somehow the memeluks out of all have 15% !!! of the trade power in persia. Even though they have less than 50% in their own node in alexandria. I do not understand where that comes from and how to stop it (game says something about caravans, but I never understood how they work). I dont think this is how it should work. The mameluks have no provinces in either allepo or persia.
so if we aim for the hegemony we don't care anymore how long it takes for a building to pay itself off? Or does it still apply for non manufactures/ marketplace buildings?
That thought is redundant for manu/market places imo. I would say if you have many options and not as much money to invest, then you care in regards to other buildings. But also keep in mind that it is your income which grants eco hedgemon not returns. Meaning you could spend money at 1600 which will not give returns until 1690 but you still grands you the hedge.
Hey, monk. Thanks for the great vid. So… If I don’t TC all provinces, but just CoTs, I save gov cap, right? And if I don’t have the funds to put manufactories in TC provinces, should I just steer through more nodes, getting money through pure steering and mercantilism? I mean that in an expansionist way, obviously
Yes, adding provinces to a TC increases gov cost.
If you don't have money for manufactories, just wait or take some loans :)
@@edgarbm6407 nope. No loans for manufactories in provinces with 90% autonomy. Literally worst advice ever
@@nikolaitregouet yw
@@nikolaitregouet I mean, you asked, man. And even if the return isn't high, paying off loans isn't that hard unless your economy's horrible.
@@lys_mara yeah, right, taking loans for manufactories that give 0.05 ducats a month. Amazing advice. The inflation alone will make it not worth it
is this series going to be continued?
Are there better subcontinents for your main capital, if you plan to TC everything else?
Byz actually has a great set up for 2 reasons. 1 is that you can dominate trade without owning that much land on your subcontinent. Therefore you don't NEED to state all that much or have worthless territories that cannot be TC.
2 You can actually TC nearby, western European provinces like Italy. This means Venice and Genoa can generate a merchant and you will gain more tradepower for the amount of land owned in the lovely end node!
When do you state territories?
If you have all the Ragusa's provinces why is not a good idea to move your home trade there? You still have all control in Constantinople and have the benefits from the new provinces.
Second question, why not moving your capital to western europe so you can make more TCs in Ragusa and Constantinople area?
Because Ragusa is impacted by the trade power in Venice (trade power 'upstreams' one node). Because there's generally a TON of trade power happening in Venice, you would then leak a lot out of Ragusa, whereas you don't leak out of Constantinople because you dominate Ragusa.
yo can you remove the music? Or at least put on something more fitting. Otherwise, good video and thanks for the tips. I'm going for my first wc as Mughals rn and it's going well.
Wtf. He didn’t even delete the fort in Morea…
The music makes it a bit hard to understand what you're saying
Sorry but the music is way too loud at times
I would like to watch the entire video, but the music a bit too loud for me. I could not concentrate on your majestic voice.
Monk please, I love your content but please just don't put music in your videos mate. As far as I'm concerned it doesn't add anything.
ARISTAKHAN lol
What is this music lol
music spoils the content :(
there is a way to increase this even more. if you dont put every province in the node into the TC and only put the COT and estuaries into a TC. leave everything else as a territory or a state if you feel like. you will then start to get goods produced to all of your provinces that arent in the TC
building markets in the TC/upgrading the COT/the local trade power investment. will further increase this bonus
having the latest institution embraced incraeses this
doing it this way you can have at 1600 bonuses of around 50-100% goods produced bonus depending on the TC control of the node to every province not within it.
you can further this buy stating some inbetween for the extra 25% goods produced from prosperity
doing it this way also means it isnt so costly on your gov cap as its mostly territories not TC
you dont have to spend so much on investments
and it has the added bonus of scaling through the game. as any time you embrace an insitution your income just magically gets increased nation wide
????
The music is annoyingly loud, didn't watch the entire video because of it :-(