Trade Investment

The rules allow (and my previous experience with a "small" nation confirms) Trade Investments at £10,000/1,000 recruits per boost to one trade item in one trade area. But, with a larger country, are larger investments of men and cash required in order to see an effect? And might it be possible to spread one overall investment over two trade areas if dealing in the same item (e.g. bossting livestock sales in both Europe and the Mediterranean)? Anyone tried that? (Or any other interesting variations?)

So as far as I know, nobody typically invests recruits in trade because they're just to important for other things. So typically most nations just throw money at investments. The exception being when you start entirely new trades, then you have to put in recruits (something I found out the hard way when I went negative on recruits and damaged my economy until I could replace them!)

I don't know if there's any strong evidence, but I think Richard is happier when you make fewer, bigger investments. So a bunch of 10K investments aren't going to do as well as a few bigger ones. You can invest in anything pretty much, but I'd find a trade advisor and ask about your ideas before spending your money, and find out when the investment will start to pay out. Somebody's trade advisor recommended an investment in Cork, not bothering to mention that it would take 20(!) years before it would pay out.

If you're a maritime nation, you can just invest in trade by region without specifying what, so "America's Trade" "Africa Trade" etc. You can do this as a non-maritime power, but given that your trade is going to be disadvantaged compared to others who have ports and the like, I'd look for other investments closer to home.

Thanks for that, Deacon. "Fewer and bigger" is the way I'm thinking I ought to go (not what I have been doing...) And the tip about general maritime trade investment is most welcome. Weirdly, I am awash with more recruits than I can cope with (mentally) at the moment...

Just think about how many recruits you get per year. a 20K investment is the same as 10k with 1k recruits. So effectively, you're 'selling' your recruits for 10 pounds each. If you have too many recruits, you may find other nations will buy them from you, and may give you better rates than that.

If you have so many recruits in a big nation then a long term idea could be sending them to various acadamies, so that you get a decent administration, Judicary, medical service etc, it may mean opening a few new acadamies all teaching similar subjects, but the long term benefits will be many, improved tax incomes better education etc, If you are still stuck for ideas then have some of them employed as sweepers & cleaeners of your cities, keeps the nobles happy plus reduces sickness, also do all your cities have police units?

It may not be a case of having too many recruits more a case of not having enough when you look at all the things you could do.
Workgangs to keep roads & canals maintained
Build/dig major canal network( will need engineer missions for that)
Drain marshes/clear forests, have recruits from an agricultural college then farm them.
If you do a few of these then all your problems of being overwhelmed with recruits will disappear.

You could of course also raise units then put them into to canton status & invest in trade that way, it would give you a reserve of troops but also help with trade, be warned however trade will suffer when you call them up to serve.

hope that helps to overcome your recuit problem.

More thanks all round. Without trying to give too much away - I inherited a position with many Academies already in play and most "areas" of trade fully invested-in (also police-squads, rat-catchers etc.), and swamps of recruits (many of them of a low social quality. in 18th C terms). I've staffed-up those Academies that were empty and found uses for a few 1,000s more, but... you think I could get a good price for from someone for 17,000 low-caste Hindoos?

An idea would be to put the LC Hindu into work gangs to keep the cost of Road maintainence down, also as street cleaners. They are not much good for government work, I recall a case of a Spanisch player using them as tax collectors which resulted in Honour colapse & rebellion.

It can also be useful, if you are overburdened with recruits, to keep a 'reserve' to help with recovery from sickness. 1000 recruits can cause an army to improve its sickness level by 2 levels

Now there's a couple of good ideas...

Another option you could consider is raising Liners/Armed liners/ Whalers to help in your various trade areas, If you are heavily involved in the Baltic then maybe a few Ice Breakers to allow your merchantmarine to access the ports all year round. Simply raise the units & put them on Patrol helping trade in a specific area. It should have longterm economic benefits.