A Complete Guide to EU4's Trade System

Check the pinned comment for anything I missed, or comment your questions below.

0:00 Intro
0:48 Trade Nodes
3:08 Trade Power
9:13 Merchants
11:12 Transferring Trade
13:16 Trade Steering
18:54 Trade Value
20:58 Trade Companies
23:57 Privateering
24:45 Mercantilism
25:10 Examples
28:50 Outro

[Quarbit]

The run I'm showcasing was a streamed Norse 1Faith and Norse 1Culture attempt that I never finished, if you're wondering.
I will not be answering questions that are answered by watching the video.

Apparently caravan power also applies if you're steering towards or away from an inland node (or collecting in your home node if it's inland)

"If it's so simple, why's the video 30 minutes long?"
I added at least 10 minutes of examples to help visual learners.
Also please uninstall TikTok.

Things I missed will be added here:
REALLY IMPORTANT "Ship Trade Power Propagation" (the age ability in Age of Reformation) is not trade power per ship. It allows your ships to apply the "transfers from traders downstream" modifier basically. Upstream nodes get X% of the ship trade power you have in a node.
Privateering advice: worth it for high value nodes that have a low chance of stopping your pirates like Beijing or Constantinople. Also good for treasure fleet interception, which can be done at any node along the line. The Caribbean is good for this, and so is Sevilla usually.
Embargoes: reduces that country's trade power mostly in your domestic nodes (based on provincial trade power). Reduces your trade efficiency though, unless it's against a rival. Sometimes worth it even without a rival, but rarely.
You can only have as many level 3 trade centers as you have merchants.
The transfer trade power peace deal does what it says. They give you 50% of their trade power in nodes you both have power in. (I think the peace deal option tells you this) Anyway, useful against Lubeck, Hamburg, etc. where annexing them makes everyone angry. Not as much against larger countries, who you could just take land from.
Steer trade peace deal makes the country use their merchants to steer their trade towards your home node. Their home node will still collect, however. Results are mixed and generally not worth it over just war reps.

TRADE COMPANIES ARE DLC APPARENTLY I'M GONNA LOSE MY MIND PDX
Take trade ideas if you don't have Wealth of Nations or Dharma

Any other questions? Put them below!

[WhiskyKnight]

One time I was playing a multiplayer game with some friends and we stopped so one of them could explain how trade worked in the game…it took 2hrs💀💀
Thank you Quarbit. Thank you

[jormun]

5:20 "trade power per ship" includes ALL ships afaik, so it can be very powerful when you add your idle galleys and transports to your trade fleet.

[mpmmuirhead]

On Mercantilism:

Mercantilism was important in the early days of eu4 before trade companies existed. On release, it was considered important to get to 100% mercantilism. Once trade companies showed up, mercantilism became mostly redundant

There have also been various patches through the lifespan of the game where some cheesey strat emerged to get to 100% mercantilism and those were always nice patches to run an economy in.

[anti-spiral]

Trade in every Paradox games is like trying to explain Quantum Mechanics to me, it is just unnecesarily complex or simple in some parts, but it is cool as fuck that it is included.

[QBrute_]

Really cool guide, thanks for explaining. I think what makes trade so complex is the sheer amount of mechanics and modifiers and other factors that are all connected in some kind of way.

[shibainuiscute]

I have over 200 hours in eu4, and this is my 5th time rewatching. I hope i will understand the trade system one day

[KCCOmug]

As someone who also has 5, 000 hours in this game I thank your for explaining Trade steering and the difference between a Domestic Node and a Foreign one.

[michaeltomasicchio]

Also want to add in my two cents on the topic of trade node management, that being if your node bleeds trade into another node, you can try and turn your node into a "pseudo-endnode" by conquering the node that your node flows into. There are a bunch of videos that will explain it better than I can, but basically if you control all of the nodes that your node flows into, no more trade will flow out of your node, effectively making it the same as end node.

[oldetobie]

I've got over a thousand hours in this game and I thought I understood trade pretty well but I learned a lot from this video, thanks Based Quarbit

[KaiserDragoon]

A minor thing that mostly comes into play pretty late game, but getting world ports (coastal level 3 trade centers) can help with achieving and maintaining high navy tradition. Each one reduces yearly navy tradition decay by -0.2%, so you can completely cancel decay with 50 of them, or 40 of them with 100% innovativeness (not likely to happen except in WCs lol). If you're gaining a decent amount of yearly navy tradition from ships and other sources like the Murud-Janjira Fort monument, you can get a net positive navy tradition every year.

This isn't that useful for most players since you'll need to conquer a ton of the world for this to be relevant, but it is funny late game if you really want to generate the highest possible numbers by cranking up trade steering.

Edit: Forgot to say, really good guide overall!

[MinedMaker]

I have thousands of hours in EUIV and I still learned a ton in this video. I have watched tutorials on trade before, but this one told me what I actually needed to know. Big props!

[hellquent]

Privateering for big PP - it can help you to push power projection over 50.
For me it always were more for pp than ducats from it

[ninjoe]

EU4 trade is not that complicated it only needs a half hour to be explained

[SereglothIV]

I knew most of the things in this video, but I finally found out what the hell is domestic trade power and trade power abroad 😂

Also, you mentioned DLCs a couple of times. I think, although I'm not 100% sure, that moving your main trade node is also a DLC feature. Without DLC, your main trade node is always where your capital is.

[AverageJohanson]

I swear over the years I've watched like a dozen videos like this explaining trade because the knowledge just leaks out of my memory over time

[bitofboth]

great video! I just bought some dlc so have to get used to more of the features, but I like that your video had some "absolutes" - build a building on ALL coal provinces, NEVER click that button, trade company trade centers and estuaries to get to 50%
no further questions your honor

[patropro]

As the dutch just sending 350 ships to the seville trade node and collecting to just see the spanish trade income drop significantly is so satisfying. It may not be the most efficient, but when earning almost twice as musch as the 2nd great power you dont really need the money. And taking it away is more fun

[jasonlange]

I kinda vaguely knew most of this but still never really understood it - when I play I still do just the default "collect in your best owned trade node, transfer everything there, make Trade Companies on centers of trade on other subcontinents" strat sort of mentioned here anyway. Even after watching this video...I'll still probably just do that without thinking about it, but at least now I'll more understand why it works!

[quintiax]

One thing you can do if you have a sub-par starting trade node is 'creating' an end note. Budgetmonk made a video on it but IIRC you should conquer your entire home trade node and the trade nodes where your hom trade node steers towards. It tricks the AI to not steer trade from your home trade node, allowing you to fully collect. (Budgetmonk explains it better though)