The color line determines the charter in Colonial and Trade Regions map mode. I tend to push OE and AE early then whilst they cool mainly nab single provinces and trade concessions from defeated enemies. Basically, the penalty to collecting affects your trade power, not your trade income. You must log in or register to reply here. Where to put merchants depends entirely on who you are and what the world looks like. Is tech the only way to improve that? Total Beginner player's guide []. Each trade company needs a unique name, which begin the entry. You need to colonize Africa (or the far east) as a European nation. A place to share content, ask questions and/or talk about the grand strategy game Europa Universalis IV by Paradox Development Studio. When you own provinces there you can assign them to the trade company, which gives the following modifiers: +50% trade power, +0.5 Naval Force Limit, -100% Manpower, -50% Tax, as well as higher production depending on how much of the overall trade the company controls. It was last verified for, /Europa Universalis IV/common/trade_companies, https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/index.php?title=Trade_company_modding&oldid=124771, Articles with potentially outdated sections. And how about trade efficiency? It's simply not worth the state slots is the main thing. What does that mean? Trade efficiency both increases how much you get when collecting, and how much trade power you have (and having a higher share of the power also increases how much money you get). A country that owns a province in a trade node that is not in their home node but is in a trade company region can add it to a trade company. EDIT: Just noticed sth. Note that, in Vanilla, trade companies match trade nodes. In theory, no you do not need to core this land, however not coring it still gives you a high autonomy floor, which defeats the advantage trade companies have of ignoring the unstated floor. In other words, you'll still get your trade money, but the production income will be heavily reduced. Alexandria -> Venice Starting value 1.4 steering trade wth a merchant means 1.728 (because 1.44*1.2 = 1.728) trade value will arrive in Venice. I believe you are correct; you probably don't want to send a merchant to a node that isn't where you have provinces or isn't connected to your capitol's trade node. Everytime a trader steers trade forward he increases the trade volume by 20 %. If you are the only nation with any trade power in a node, then halving your power will still give you a 100% share of that node, so it won't affect your income. India -> Aden Starting value 1 steering trade wth a merchant means 1.2 trade value will arrive in Aden. bump...i recently annexed territory on the indian subcontinent, but the option to form trade company is grayed out... Isnt Byzanitum eastern? The provinces section should include all the provinces you want to see included in that trade company. It's my understanding, and general practice, to not pay much attention to trade duing early game because you can't squeze that much out of it. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. Two trade methods that work for me. The one state is wherever you want to move your trade city to, and then you still add all the others.