The goals of the Trade minigame are twofold:
- Get the most tradepower in your home tradenode
- Get the most tradepower in nodes that point to your trade node
The tradepower formula is fairly complex, but the important modifiers are: Local Provincial Tradepower, Mercantilism and Trade Efficiency. Any event that gives Mercantilism needs to be taken at all costs. It's amazing. Seriously. 1.00 Merchantilism can mean the difference of 3 duckets/month.
Merchants are the Envoy for trade. You start off with 2 and get one from Expansion Ideas, 2 from Trade Ideas, 1 from Merchant Republic, 1 for every major trade company, and 1 from Thalassocracy. Merchants can do two things: Collect from tradenode and transfer trade power.
You get money from nodes you're collecting from. To increase the amount of money you make from that node you need to increase your trade power. Each node has a maximum amount of money it generates. You get a percentage of that based on trade power.
Each nation's capital is in a specific trade zone. This is your Home Trade Zone, and one you automatically collect in. You can identify it by it being the only zone you can't transfer from. By clicking on the node you'll see "We collection
Using a merchant to Collect From Trade gives you a percentage of the money generated from the node. It's usually very small and rarely worth it, unless you have no choice.
tl;dr: Nodes generate ducets/month, you get % based on Trade Power, by default you collect from your Home Trade Node.
A majority of Trade Nodes have inward and outward flows. You can use a Merchant to transfer trade on an outward node. Some really amazing nodes are called End Nodes, and have no Outs. They make the most money, and are of course in England, France, and Spain. Good luck taking those.
When you transfer power it TAKES trade power from the node and GIVES it to the upstream node. Think of this like electricity on a electric power network.
This can be good for two reasons:
- It reduces the tradepower of the node you're taking it from, possibly "stealing" money from a competitor nation.
- It gives power to an upstream node, which is either your capital node (the one your collecting from), a node you collect from, or a node you transfer further to one you collect from, and makes you more money (by giving you that trade power.
You can use Light Ships to Protect Trade. It basically beefs up the amount of Trade Power you're transfering. Think of it like an amplifier. It works less effective if you're collecting from a trade node and more effective if you're transfering power (this is obvious in context, you're litterally protecting your merchants).
Privateering is a little better, as in addition to simply amplifing your trade power it actively removes others trade power. This can be DEVASTING for opponents. This is also why it gives your opponents a casus belli (Trade Dispute).
Anti-privatering is a new feature in El Dorado, basically to reduce privetering instead of going to war you can shove heavies at the problem. This is nice because it's passive and heavies generally blow up light ships, costing your enemy money.