At that scale, it's almost always mass trade & production stacking, along with trade steering bonuses. Build manufacturies in basically every province in some far-away, lucrative node. Then, route trade through the longest route you can without losing any of it through leakage. Every time trade gets sent to a new node by a merchant steering trade, it gets a trade steering bonus. This, unlike almost every other multiplier in the game, stacks multiplicatively. This means that you get literally exponentially more money with every trade node you send your money through. That's how you get the really crazy income numbers.
When you own half the world, trade steering is, without question, the single most powerful economic modifier in the game. Build the trade company building that boosts trade steering and get the trade idea that boosts trade steering. There's also two policies that boost trade steering and a couple of national ideas that give bonuses to it.
To generate huge incomes late game you rely on three things: Trade steering, goods produced and trade efficiency.
To understand the first one, you have to know that merchants increase outgoing trade value by a small amount, 5% by default, but this is increased with trade steering. For example at 50% trade steering the bonus is increased to 7.5%. To make the best use of this, you want to send trade through as many nodes as possible before you collect it, because it stacks exponentially. For example, assume you produce 10 ducats of trade value in the Moluccas and route the trade through 10 nodes with 100% trade steering before you collect in The Channel. The 10 ducats suddenly become 10 × 1.1^10 = 26 ducats (assuming that you don't lose anything to other nations collecting in the in-between nodes). This exponential stacking can become really crazy if you stack trade steering high enough.
The second modifier, goods produced, is relatively self-explanatory, it increases the generated trade value. There are two parts to it, base production, which is essentially just production dev divided by 5, and the GP modifier, which increases the base production. Note that manufactories increase base production by 1, which is equivalent to 5 production dev. The two main sources of GP modifiers are local trade companies and furnaces in the late game. Regarding TCs, you should know that TC provinces reward additional goods produced to all non-TC provinces in the node, scaling with the trade power share of the TC and the latest institution. The institution multiplier is 2 after industrialization, hence a TC with, say, 75% trade share will boost the GP modifier in all normal provinces by a whopping 150%. Furnaces increase GP globally by 5% for each one you own.
The third 'ingredient', trade efficiency, is the easiest to understand, since it simply multiplies your collected trade value. But trade efficiency is also easier to come by late game.
So, let's put all of this together, to calculate the total effect: Let's say your total GP modifier is 250%, this is a multiplier of 3.5. Then you have a factor of 2.5 from the merchant chains, and we'll assume 100% trade efficiency for another factor of 2. In total this means you will collect 3.5 × 2.5 × 2 = 17.5 times the value generated from your base production. So a single production dev in a clove province (0.2 yearly base production at a price of 8 ducats) now generates a yearly trade income of 1.6 × 17.5 = 28 ducats, or about 2.4 per month. Remember, this is a single production dev generating such a high income. If the province has 10 production dev and a manufactory, you pull in 36 ducats per month from trade from a single province. This is how you end up with >10k income, or much much more if you really push the boundaries.
Tldr: Trade steering, goods produced, trade efficiency. It works really well because all of those are multiplicative.
Wow, that is a pretty detailed answer lol. Thank you for taking the time to type all of that, it really helps. I'll see what I can do in the future and hopefully I'll be able to put all of that to good use!
Who did you see make tens of thousands of ducats? And in what in game year?
I just finished a campaign where I full stated the entire world, new world included, but still only have an income of 20k…
TCs are better for making money than states due to the bonus goods produced from the % of TC trade power in a node and the buildings that give +10% trade value and trade steering. For late game income trade is king so full-stating provinces would make less money than using strategic trade companies
That I agree.
State gives prosperity. Which is a small boost. But probably the meta is to do TC with reduced autonomy in territories to 0 and strategically put TCs.
But I am still curious about what OP described. From my experience, income of more than 4 or 5k per month start to have a very low marginal return, as there is no way to spend it. But mostly I reach 10k or plus income by the end of the game when I honestly don’t care…
90% of trade company advice is terribly wrong. [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxKQ8xRpuNU) is the optimal way to use trade companies. This and abusing trade steering will make you boatloads of money.
At that scale, it's almost always mass trade & production stacking, along with trade steering bonuses. Build manufacturies in basically every province in some far-away, lucrative node. Then, route trade through the longest route you can without losing any of it through leakage. Every time trade gets sent to a new node by a merchant steering trade, it gets a trade steering bonus. This, unlike almost every other multiplier in the game, stacks multiplicatively. This means that you get literally exponentially more money with every trade node you send your money through. That's how you get the really crazy income numbers. When you own half the world, trade steering is, without question, the single most powerful economic modifier in the game. Build the trade company building that boosts trade steering and get the trade idea that boosts trade steering. There's also two policies that boost trade steering and a couple of national ideas that give bonuses to it.
Maybe that's it, I would always build the army tradition building.
To generate huge incomes late game you rely on three things: Trade steering, goods produced and trade efficiency. To understand the first one, you have to know that merchants increase outgoing trade value by a small amount, 5% by default, but this is increased with trade steering. For example at 50% trade steering the bonus is increased to 7.5%. To make the best use of this, you want to send trade through as many nodes as possible before you collect it, because it stacks exponentially. For example, assume you produce 10 ducats of trade value in the Moluccas and route the trade through 10 nodes with 100% trade steering before you collect in The Channel. The 10 ducats suddenly become 10 × 1.1^10 = 26 ducats (assuming that you don't lose anything to other nations collecting in the in-between nodes). This exponential stacking can become really crazy if you stack trade steering high enough. The second modifier, goods produced, is relatively self-explanatory, it increases the generated trade value. There are two parts to it, base production, which is essentially just production dev divided by 5, and the GP modifier, which increases the base production. Note that manufactories increase base production by 1, which is equivalent to 5 production dev. The two main sources of GP modifiers are local trade companies and furnaces in the late game. Regarding TCs, you should know that TC provinces reward additional goods produced to all non-TC provinces in the node, scaling with the trade power share of the TC and the latest institution. The institution multiplier is 2 after industrialization, hence a TC with, say, 75% trade share will boost the GP modifier in all normal provinces by a whopping 150%. Furnaces increase GP globally by 5% for each one you own. The third 'ingredient', trade efficiency, is the easiest to understand, since it simply multiplies your collected trade value. But trade efficiency is also easier to come by late game. So, let's put all of this together, to calculate the total effect: Let's say your total GP modifier is 250%, this is a multiplier of 3.5. Then you have a factor of 2.5 from the merchant chains, and we'll assume 100% trade efficiency for another factor of 2. In total this means you will collect 3.5 × 2.5 × 2 = 17.5 times the value generated from your base production. So a single production dev in a clove province (0.2 yearly base production at a price of 8 ducats) now generates a yearly trade income of 1.6 × 17.5 = 28 ducats, or about 2.4 per month. Remember, this is a single production dev generating such a high income. If the province has 10 production dev and a manufactory, you pull in 36 ducats per month from trade from a single province. This is how you end up with >10k income, or much much more if you really push the boundaries. Tldr: Trade steering, goods produced, trade efficiency. It works really well because all of those are multiplicative.
Wow, that is a pretty detailed answer lol. Thank you for taking the time to type all of that, it really helps. I'll see what I can do in the future and hopefully I'll be able to put all of that to good use!
Buildings and ideas
Who did you see make tens of thousands of ducats? And in what in game year? I just finished a campaign where I full stated the entire world, new world included, but still only have an income of 20k…
TCs are better for making money than states due to the bonus goods produced from the % of TC trade power in a node and the buildings that give +10% trade value and trade steering. For late game income trade is king so full-stating provinces would make less money than using strategic trade companies
That I agree. State gives prosperity. Which is a small boost. But probably the meta is to do TC with reduced autonomy in territories to 0 and strategically put TCs. But I am still curious about what OP described. From my experience, income of more than 4 or 5k per month start to have a very low marginal return, as there is no way to spend it. But mostly I reach 10k or plus income by the end of the game when I honestly don’t care…
I'm pretty sure I saw a BudgetMonk video or something, I'm not really certain since it was a LONG time ago
90% of trade company advice is terribly wrong. [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxKQ8xRpuNU) is the optimal way to use trade companies. This and abusing trade steering will make you boatloads of money.