A Brief Economy Building Guide (Steam, No Manual! Argh!)

[coman]

So I'm off and busy playing RTI part IV and writing this between turns (about 40 seconds). Here are some opening suggestions for getting your economy rolling; please post yours and other helpful tips.

1. Build your infrastructure.
2. Ensure you have adequate government buildings before investing in taxable items in your regions.
3. Increase technologies and political structures that benefit your nation in the next few turns; pay special attention to technologies that increase all aspects of your economy.

4. Avoid technologies you don't absolutely need right away; it's better to be rich and cowardly when starting, than bullish and unable to afford ammunition and replacements.
5. Build buildings and factories in highly populated areas that provide "Other Town" bonuses to income or productiveness.

More as they occur/I find them.

Please post helpful and concise advice and correct any of my mistakes.

Yours,

coman

[Hans-Wurst]

So I'm off and busy playing RTI part IV and writing this between turns (about 40 seconds). Here are some opening suggestions for getting your economy rolling; please post yours and other helpful tips.

1. Build your infrastructure.
2. Ensure you have adequate government buildings before investing in taxable items in your regions.
3. Increase technologies and political structures that benefit your nation in the next few turns; pay special attention to technologies that increase all aspects of your economy.

4. Avoid technologies you don't absolutely need right away; it's better to be rich and cowardly when starting, than bullish and unable to afford ammunition and replacements.
5. Build buildings and factories in highly populated areas that provide "Other Town" bonuses to income or productiveness.

More as they occur/I find them.

Please post helpful and concise advice and correct any of my mistakes.

Yours,

coman

That will be most helpfull. Thank you

[Taer]

I also found that building up Merchants (even as Prussia) and sending them to the trade posts is a good way of earning money through trade.

Edit: I see the poster above me has found it to be the same.

[parazun]

I also found that building up Merchants (even as Prussia) and sending them to the trade posts is a good way of earning money through trade.

Hello i have the retail version of Empire but the manual isnt to torough about the trade scene , how do you get merchants in empire? ive played for 2 days straight now and i cant seem to get em .
And question two is about the indiamen i was wondering if theres a limit to how many indiamen are making money on one spot ect do if u have 5 indiamen on one spot are they all making money or just one of em ?

[Kewpur]

Hello i have the retail version of Empire but the manual isnt to torough about the trade scene , how do you get merchants in empire? ive played for 2 days straight now and i cant seem to get em .
And question two is about the indiamen i was wondering if theres a limit to how many indiamen are making money on one spot ect do if u have 5 indiamen on one spot are they all making money or just one of em ?

I think indiamen and merchants are the same thing. I'm not sure though.

[Taer]

Hello i have the retail version of Empire but the manual isnt to torough about the trade scene , how do you get merchants in empire? ive played for 2 days straight now and i cant seem to get em .
And question two is about the indiamen i was wondering if theres a limit to how many indiamen are making money on one spot ect do if u have 5 indiamen on one spot are they all making money or just one of em ?

Indiamen ships = merchants (my bad for not making that clear). As others have said, you may put more then one Indiaman ship in each location -- although I have only 2 in each of my spots. I'm not sure about the rate of diminishing returns.

My strategy was to take all my Indiamen to the Spice Islands Trade theater and put 2 of them into each gold anchor circle. I also made an escort fleet of 6th rates to station in that theater -- ie not in the gold circles -- the idea was to protect all my indiamen from Pirates and hostile fleets. So far this has worked in keeping all my ships alive.

Sweden cut my trade route when we were at war by putting naval ships on the route in Denmark (They flashed between the Sweedish flag and the Pirate flag) and when I moused over the route, it said it was being blocked. Same thing happened later in the Campaign to a Southern Trade Route I had going with Spain. What this means, is that the trade that flows through that route is deminished; each time the route was blockaded I lost about 1/3 of my revenue from that route.

[Elderorb]

Hello i have the retail version of Empire but the manual isnt to torough about the trade scene , how do you get merchants in empire? ive played for 2 days straight now and i cant seem to get em .
And question two is about the indiamen i was wondering if theres a limit to how many indiamen are making money on one spot ect do if u have 5 indiamen on one spot are they all making money or just one of em ?

I've been toying around with my merchant fleet for a while, and apparently it makes no difference if you send 1, 4 or 20 ships to the same spot, the amount you get is the same with all these numbers. Neither does it matter if you send indiamen or a fluyt

Edit: hmm strange that i'm getting different results then the other people, back to toying around for me it is i guess.

[finian1712]

no the more indiamen on a spot the less the income increases when you add another.

[coman]

TRADE ROUTES, OMFG!

Here's basic overview:

The game world is broken down into theaters and then trade regions. Trade regions are micro-level sandboxes called "Trade Theaters" with a small number of expensive resource trading points, all you have to do is - SAIL there (and protect it). No fancy graphics, no whiz bang, gee-wiz. Each point provides a fluctuating amount of exotic or even mundane goods. Sure you can grow tobacco in Virgina, but what about reselling Ivory at a massive profit?

There is the Coast of Brazil, Ivory Coast, Straights of Madagascar and the East Idies. To look at these regions; click on the globe on the lower right hand side of the minimap (left side of the HUD). The brass globes below the regional theaters are your Trade Theaters.

First build a commercial port. This allows the creation of Indiamen, or the famous fast, armed merchantman that plied the old global sea trades. Then find the regional theater exit points; which are white boxes on the edge of the regional sea maps.

Send your ship to the white box, which will then ask for your destination. Sending a ship across the ocean takes SIX months and a year total to sail to West Africa from America, or a whole 2 stinking turns. You'll get a notice when it arrives in case you forget.

I've only sent one ship so far, but it's pulling back 660 worth of Ivory. I intend to send six to the trade theaters with a Sixth rate and a few brigs as protection.

More as I find it.

Yours,

coman

[Kewpur]

Thanks this'll help me a bunch

[Billie Joe]

Useful info,

Id also add that its worth buying a few indieman (sorry for spelling) ships to send straight to trade spots in the trade theatres. It can get you a nice load of income pretty quickly.

[Faris_Elghoul]

I have to trade routs in brazil. Where can you see how much gold they earn for you?

[Battleroar]

If you hover the mouse over a trade route, you kan see how much you ((and everyone else using the route)) profits from it.

[Billie Joe]

you can also find out by opening up the government tab, then clicking on trade

it should tell you how much your getting from each theatre and how much your exporting to other countries
which ive found very useful to know

[wicked21juggalo]

Do i send 1 trade ship to one of them gold trade spots or do i have a bunch on 1 spot?

[parazun]

Do i send 1 trade ship to one of them gold trade spots or do i have a bunch on 1 spot?

yeah thats what i was wondering about too , does it make any difference if i got 6 ships at 6 differents spots or can i have 6 in one spot and make the same money

[wicked21juggalo]

yeah thats what i was wondering about too , does it make any difference if i got 6 ships at 6 differents spots or can i have 6 in one spot and make the same money

Yeah I've asked that numerous times the last few days and havent got one reply

[parazun]

Yeah I've asked that numerous times the last few days and havent got one reply

i think the truth is nobody else knows either :/ the manual was verry scarce with information all an all in empire i must say

[hugorune]

More trade ships on one stop will definitely give you more income than just one though, won't it?

I'm still confused about the 'trade bug'. Are there more than two bugs? This is what I've heard...

a) Certain factions (Sweden?) can't trade in trade spots at all while others (England, Prussia, Netherlands) can.

b) If you need to break up/merge/split a trading fleet, you need to move it temporarily off the trade spot, do what you need to do, then move it back when you're done, otherwise it will bug it.

[Gregorovitch]

Yeah I've asked that numerous times the last few days and havent got one reply

I believe a) u can stack up to about 5, maybe six trade ships on one trade slot and the extra income added will usually come to more than the maintenance costs of the extra trade ship (in other words up to about 6 trade ships on a single slot the marginal costs work in your favour over time) , b) the amount gained per turn per slot per ship seems to be variable from turn to turn, perhaps reflecting some underlying economic/market model, so it is difficult to give a definitive answer to the question.

Other things I've noteced about trade areas:

If you build as many sloops as u can from turn 1 u can send them to the trade areas and reserve lots of empty trade slots but u must be quick because they will not remain empty for long. Once u own a slot no one seems to attack it directly, so u can build many trade ships later (as they take longer to build) and send them over to start earning big money at liesure.

The income from trade if you follow this approach and get 5 or six trade slots can be huge - almost as much as your tax income.

But it will have some political consequences that make the game interesting. Since factions u are at war with will gleefully raid your trade routes, sometimes in the trade mini-theaters themselves, u can loose an awful lot of money by picking the wrong war. You need to to get your navy ready to crush your enemy's navy quickly if u decide to attack a faction with serious naval capability.

Factions that have interests in the American theater (GB, Spain, France etc) will find themselves at war with the pirates at some stage. The blighters will then send "super strength" pirate fleets to the trade theaters and raid your trade routes. You will need a serious fleet to get these guys off your trade routes, these jokers are not easy to defeat. I think I tried a full stack of 10 6th rates against about seven of them them once and auto-resolved the battle and still lost. You need naval tactical nouce and play the battle yourself to do it.

If this happens early enough, u can try sending a large fleet of 6th rates to tackle them before they get too strong (brigs and sloops are useless against them I think). If you manage to defeat them, u can capture some of their ships which are often 60 gun galleys and 40 gun flyuts sometimes with 2 or even three stripes - very handy early in the game.

On the other hand if u play a central European faction the pirates seem to work in your favour. When I played Prussia I never had any trouble with pirates at all since I was never at war with them (no American interests and I didn't attack one of their trade slots). I think they handily wiped out any of my enemy's fleets that tried to block my trade routes in a mini-theater into the bargain.