Removal of the early indian trade.

On thing that bothers me in AOD2 over vanilla is the modeling of the early trade with the natives. In AOD2 i have really found that bringing anything at all to the natives is not worth it. I really liked the design where you could chose to bring them guns and horses, but the drawback was that they were much stonger if you wanted to fight them.

I do agree that thr profit margin in vanilla is too big, but going from a 200% profit marging in vanilla to somewher around 10% in AOD2 is just too much of a change. I even found instanced where I couldnt get the europe purchase price for my guns

Arming the natives, making a fortune, and then seeing them kick the other european nations buts is really one of the things I miss when playing AOD2. Is that just me?

I agree.. AoD2 more or less killed trade with the natives for me.

Trade is still profitable, you just need to pick your targets. No longer does selling guns to any tribe result in a profit.

Like every other good, guns and horses now result in profits at Natives demanding them, and toss of the coin at all the others. If anything I fixed a flaw which was being used as an exploit in the trading system.

Does this apply to manufactured goods?

So, how exactly is the trade mechanic supposed to function? The indians never buy raw materials and unless you have totally tanked the european prices for cloth/cigars/rum, they never give a better price for those either. So just grind out a narrow profit with guns and horses?

Further, how would you know what they will or will not buy? Load up your ship with stuff, sail to the village and if denied profit, sail back to your city and try again with something else? That seems like a dreadful waste. I did read some article on the breakdown of the underlying calculations, but trying to keep track of those seems ridiculous even by Col's already high micromanagement requirements. This doesnt have much to do with AoD though, i would say this part (coupled with not being able to change the selling/buying quantity) was gravely broken in the game anyway and is one of the major reasons i dont really play it very often anymore.

this came out a little more ranty than was intended, but i'd still be interested in the answers

asdad said:

So, how exactly is the trade mechanic supposed to function? The indians never buy raw materials and unless you have totally tanked the european prices for cloth/cigars/rum, they never give a better price for those either. So just grind out a narrow profit with guns and horses?

Further, how would you know what they will or will not buy? Load up your ship with stuff, sail to the village and if denied profit, sail back to your city and try again with something else? That seems like a dreadful waste. I did read some article on the breakdown of the underlying calculations, but trying to keep track of those seems ridiculous even by Col's already high micromanagement requirements. This doesnt have much to do with AoD though, i would say this part (coupled with not being able to change the selling/buying quantity) was gravely broken in the game anyway and is one of the major reasons i dont really play it very often anymore.

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As I recall, you just look at the native city and on the right side it has a picture of what they will trade.
Perhaps this is only visible after choosing a certain option from the options menu. I don't recall since I would have ticked any such box before even playing vanilla for the first time.

well yeah, they show a small icon of the desired good. however, this is often some manufactured item that they will pay well under european price for (even when "desired"). but again, you dont really find out until you load up your ship and take the time to sail over there. and no clue as to what they might pay/ask for other goods.

One advantage to trading with natives is that the volume of goods traded does not count towards tax increases. If you try to trade *exclusively* with natives, and never or at least very rarely with Europe, your tax rate will rise much more slowly.

It's hard to evaluate just how much you gain or lose from this strategy, but my gut impression is that you lose a bit in initial short-term cash, but probably end up with similar or better long-term gains from the lower tax rate. Of special importance to me is keeping the tax rate low until I have sold off all available treasure from exploration. Does this compensate for lower purchase prices from natives for cigars, cloth, coats and rum? Hard to say, since each game is different, and I have never tried to keep track of total income generated over time.

As I understand it, every unit of goods sold or bought from Europe counts towards tax increases. It's been interesting trying to avoid buying or selling goods, and it is certainly a viable alternative. I suspect it may slow initial growth, however, and as we all know initial growth is key to success in most civ-type games.

Cheers, --- Wheldrake

I for one very much like this change. In vanilla it wasn't an interesting choice or clever strategy - just send ships, arm all the natives to the teeth who don't border you, therby ensuring that the crappy other european powers ai was even more handicapped. Further, in doing so you'd completely drain the treasuries of the natives, so they never had enough money to buy any other the other goods you might produce. Thus, in truth, vanilla killed trade with the natives, by reducing it the a very one dimensional exploit.

Incidentally, on exploitive native behavior, is it possible results for meeting native chiefs are a bit overdone? I seem to remember not being quite so interested in meeting everybody in the original colonization, wheras on certain maps settings it seems the natives have so much gold there's little use to doing much else in the early game.

You may think it's weird, but try to get all the FFs which increase crosses, bells and hammers from tax.

Get a 99% tax.

Then trade only with indians...

I miss the bargaining with them we use to do in Col1. It was a bit of a guess how much you could ask. If you crossed the line, they scuppered the deal and I think you had to wait a bit until they calmed down before you could try again.

I miss being able to manipulate the Silver market to recover its value. It just sucks you crank out silver, but it rapidly loses value to the point you might as well ship food to sell in Europe.

I still think trade with natives is useful. Why?
- Sometimes I am unable to get the right harvester colonists, say for skins or sugar. I can often find native villages that will sell those goods to me. Skins and ore are often sold at *very* low prices.
- As I mentioned above, selling to natives means that your tax rate will rise more slowly. This can bring great dividends if you bring back a lot of treasure carts from far corners of the map. Keeping a zero % tax rate for 100 or 150 turns is possible - if you never sell or buy goods in Europe. Until later.
- I can't be certain, but I think buying & selling goods in native villages improves relations with those tribes. I hate it when the natives go to war too early and wipe out half my cities because I was unable to build or buy enough guns to equip 1-2 soldiers per city.

The big drag with natice commerce is their limit on total gold available. If you have only one tribe in reach of your cities and wagons, that can blow your commerce plans out of the water by mid-game.

Cheers, --- Wheldrake

Wheldrake said:

I still think trade with natives is useful. Why?Keeping a zero % tax rate for 100 or 150 turns is possible - if you never sell or buy goods in Europe. Until later.

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In my current game (Large Faireweather map) I took a mixed approach early on, selling some goods in Europe and some to the natives and still had only about a 15% tax rate when I was done selling treasures. Early on I feel like I don't have enough production to get enough gold from the natives to pay for the critical galleon. I ended up selling raw materials in Europe and FG in the New World.

Wheldrake said:

- I hate it when the natives go to war too early and wipe out half my cities because I was unable to build or buy enough guns to equip 1-2 soldiers per city.

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PrinzMyshkin taught me that with a decent population it's better to defend without guns, just pull your colonists out of town to defend with fists (maybe torches and pitchforks, always dangerous!). Soldiers defend to the death before anyone else lifts a finger, and if in town they just go down without a fight. Outside the town, each member of the mob takes some damage and cycles down the stack leaving a fresh colonist to fight the next native. It takes a lot of natives to take down a stack of colonists. [Exploit? What exploit?]

Wheldrake said:

The big drag with natice commerce is their limit on total gold available. If you have only one tribe in reach of your cities and wagons, that can blow your commerce plans out of the water by mid-game.

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On a big map the tribes are big with heaps of gold (20K+) and seem to replenish their stock faster than tribes on small maps. In the mid 17th Century my tribes are still over 20K each, and the fact that they're still Pleased suggests that you're right about improving relations through trade. I haven't been giving them anything, just selling, though I've been buying moderate quantities of raw materials.

When it comes to trading with the natives, I think Dale has done a really good job. There is still a lot of profit to be made if you know were to look. In general:

Trading Horses to natives who desire them will generally net a 40% profit on average, though I have seen up to 65%. I can't comment on guns, since I never trade them to the natives unless I'm the French, which I never am.

Buying Trade Goods in Europe and selling them to the natives is a way to net some money. When you start out you will probably see a 10-15% profit on all trade goods, even when the settlement does not desire them(they very rarely do anyway). It's not much, but its better then sailing back from Europe with empty cargo holds.

Natives sell silver at very, very low prices, usually about 3 or 4 gold per silver, which can be sold in Europe for 19 or 20. I rarely set up silver mining operations myself, instead I focus on getting rum/cloth/cigar factories up and running, then send a caravel down to the north/south and buy my silver from natives.