Victoria 3 Trade Center: How To Unlock & Use

Victoria 3 starts off in 1800, and so the early stages of industrialization gives birth to globalization. However, interacting with other countries to buy and sell goods is not so easy. There are certain requirements in Victoria 3 that make you eligible for a trade center. The trade center then allows you to interact with other countries so you can make the supply and demand model more efficient.

What Is Trade Center In Victoria 3

Consider the trade centers to be similar to the urban centers. However, you cannot build a trade center directly. They allow you to keep a track of international markets and routes. Moreover, a trade center shows you the rate of tariffs, employment, and goods that are being imported and exported. In case you are seeking urbanization, then having a trade center is a must thing.

Focusing on a trade center means that you are now interacting on an international transaction for your nation’s wants and needs. Therefore, the most important thing for you is to realize who is on your side and who is stopping who from being on your side. You not only have allies and rivals, rather you have enemies of allies and friends of rivals as well.

So, you need to know how your trade will affect you through a chain of events. If your supply of armory is coming from a country that is an ally to your rival, then we suggest you don’t begin a war with your rival. Otherwise, the armory supply will be blocked or you will have to pay a hefty amount of money to get it. 

Building A Trade Center

As mentioned earlier, you cannot build a trade center like other buildings, rather it comes out on its own. However, you need to fulfill a list of things if you want to see it in your nation. It requires good market policies, tariff policies, good production, trade routes, and convoys if you are planning on using the sea. 

Trade Routes

The first thing that you will need to do is build a trade route. A trade center will not be operable without a good trade route in Victoria 3. To build a trade route you will need to follow the International Trading Policy. It makes sure that you consider their trading agreements with other countries. You will not be able to make a trade route if your nation has an isolationist policy.

Once your policies match the International Trading Policy, you need to have control over the pricing of goods. In case your nation’s pricing depends on foreign influences or you have a puppet state, then you will not be able to make the best out of the trade center.

The most important thing about trade is perhaps the bureaucracy. Tariff is not the only thing in international trade, you use some of your bureaucracy as well. So, if your bureaucracy is already negative, you will be paying a lot of taxes and so the buying and selling will not be as profitable as they should be. Therefore, if you want to have a low tax rate and good trade routes, you will need to improve your bureaucracy.

Once you have trade policies, control over the pricing of goods, and good bureaucracy, then you are ready to make up a trade route. However, we recommend you make up a trade route only when you see a good profit margin in it. Making it for no reason or using it inefficiently will affect your nation negatively. Therefore, first, make sure that there is surplus production that you can export while having a good profit margin.

Now, you can either keep trade routes through the ocean or through the land. In case your nation is landlocked, your only option is to use land. If you have the facility of the ocean, you will be able to access countless other nations and for that, you will need convoys.

Apart from that, if you go to the market and then trade routes, you will be able to see the statistics in depth. It shows you the current goods being exported and imported along with the price compared to the base price. Moreover, it shows the unproductive trade routes based on the country, the amount of convoy it requires, the trade revenue after tariffs, and the negative effect on each employee yearly.

The option in the market goes a step ahead and gives you a list of goods that have the potential of being imported or exported. The demand for the import of goods comes when there is a price increase compared to their base price. On the other hand, the demand for the export of goods comes when you have the option of selling the goods for a higher price in other nations.  

Moreover, you can be looking for importing or exporting something new or something to a different place. When that happens, right below the goods, there are two options: New Import Route and New Export Route. With that option, you will be able to change the routes, countries, and goods that you are looking for.  

Tariffs And Market Policies

Tariffs are simply the tax you charge on a trade. It will affect your nation’s imports as well as exports. When a transaction occurs, the revenue or loss first goes to the trade center. From there, the tariff is deducted and it goes directly to the treasury. Moreover, the amount of tariff is based on the tariff rate and the trading good’s base price.

 In addition, the tariff rate relies on two things: market goods policy and trade policy law. There are a total of four trade policy laws and your nation can pick one of them. Among these four, only two of them allow the tariff system. Choosing Isolation or Free Trade will not provide you with any tariff.

However, if you choose Protectionism or Mercantilism, then each good being traded will have a market goods policy. However, by default, these goods will have a No Priority policy. So, on default settings, your nation will not be favoring a specific thing, rather it will lean towards the natural flow.

If you want to control the traffic of imports and exports, you can tweak the setting a little bit. The Protect Domestic Supply will eliminate the import tariffs to encourage more trade at the expense of your nation’s treasury. The Encourage Export, on the other hand, will allow you to export goods without having to pay any tariff.

Moreover, if you are going for the Protectionism or Mercantilism trade policy laws, you should know how they will affect the Market Goods Policies.

Protectionism

If you choose the Protectionism trade policy law with no priority, then it will have a 10% tariff on both, the imports and the exports. Therefore, by default, your nation will not have a preference towards either one. However, if you have the protect domestic supply with protectionism, there will be a 0% tariff on imports and a 20% tariff on exports. It will prevent your nation from exporting goods and there will be higher imports.

On the other hand, protectionism with encouraging exports will have a 20% tariff on imports and a 0% tariff on exports. Here, you will see an increase in exports but a drastic decrease in imports due to a much higher tariff rate.

Mercantilism

Apart from Protectionism, you can go for Mercantilism. Here, on default, there will be a 5% tariff on exports and a 15% tariff on imports. Therefore, by default, your nation will have more exports and fewer imports. By choosing the protect domestic supply, there will be a 0% tariff on imports and a 10% tariff on exports. However, by choosing the encouraged exports, there will be a huge 30% tariff on imports and a 0% tariff on exports. 

National Market

Unless your nation is a subject of another country, you will have your own national market in Victoria 3. The price of a good is not fixed in national markets. It depends mostly if not entirely on the supply of it with respect to its demand. If there is a surplus in the production of a good and people are not interested in buying that good, then its price will definitely fall.

On the other hand, if a product has less supply may be due to season or other conditions but higher demand, then the product will have an increase in price. Therefore, to keep the prices in balance, you will need to make sure that the supply side remains optimal. 

Types Of Goods

There are a total of four categories of goods: Staple Goods, Industrial Goods, Luxury Goods, and Military Goods. The staple goods contain items that are the basic needs of all citizens. They include clothes, furniture, grain, fabric, and more. Since the citizens buy these types of goods the most, they have the highest demand and so these goods absorb the most fluctuations in price.

Industrial goods are on the list of either the government or the private industries. They mostly include raw materials such as coal, glass, and tools. Depending on your nation, if it is not exposing itself to industrialization yet, then there will be an almost non-existent demand for these goods.

Apart from that, consider luxury goods similar to staple goods but in premium condition. They include wine, porcelain, luxury furniture, and more.  These goods start coming in demand once the standard of living improves in your nation. If your nation’s GDP is low then there will not be enough demand for these goods. However, if your nation’s overall standard of living is good then you will definitely need to either produce or import them.

Lastly, military goods are in demand by the government. These goods include artillery, small arms, man-o-wars, and ammunition. If your nation is involving itself in wars or there is a new threat to the soil, then there will be a higher demand for it. However, if the nation has not been in a war for years then you will find a much lower demand for it.

Trade Center’s Purpose And Benefits

Now that you meet all the requirements and have a basic understanding of them, it is time to know the purpose of a trade center. The trade center is interconnected with many things in Victoria 3. It allows you to increase urbanization, the standard of living, employment, and much more.

Dealing With Supply And Demand

However, the main purpose to build up a trade center is to overcome shortages and deal effectively with surpluses. There are certain goods that are not available so easily in a nation on its own. You can be having a huge nation with only a small agricultural land. When that happens, your population will demand more than what is being supplied.

If you don’t have a trade center then the prices will increase drastically during the shortage season. With that, more and more people will have trouble getting staple goods. Due to this, you might begin to see an increase in radicals. To keep the loyalists’ number high, you can simply go overseas to meet their demands.

Transportation Of Goods

The Trade Center will usually build in a city that is closest to your trade route. So, if you are using the sea channel, it will be nearest to it. For a landlocked country, you will have it near the border which connects to multiple countries. Not only will it make the process faster but it will also save costs such as that of transportation.

If your nation is not landlocked, you will need to get into Convoys pretty soon if you haven’t. They are a resource that is produced by the ports. The convoy shows how much ability your nation has to supply goods using the trade routes that you have set.

If you click on the trade route, you will be able to see how many convoys are available and how many convoys are required. We recommend you keep the available convoy number more than required so there is no shortage or delay in the transportation of goods.

Decreasing Unemployment

If your nation has recently come into the age of industrialization, you might be facing a lot of people who are willing to work. However, if the unemployment ratio is very high, the trade center will have a lot to offer. Depending on your nation’s busyness, you can have a great deal of employment. For the number one trade center in the world, you can be having up to 59 thousand employees easily.

Most of the employees working in the trade center will be the clerks, other than them you will find the capitalists. The average annual wage of a clerk is £14.4 and the average annual wage for a capitalist is £57.6. Therefore, a trade center will not only increase the rate of employment rate but will also improve the standard of living.

Increasing Migration Attraction

Apart from increasing employment, the trade center will also increase migration attraction by up to 25%. Not only will it increase productivity but also the taxes and other sources of revenue. Lastly, if your trade center is in the mature stages, you can have a drastic effect on urbanization. So much so that you can be expecting up to an increase of more than 300.

Final Words

All in all, the trade center is the key to advancing your economy in Victoria 3. You will be able to increase employment, tariffs, taxes, migration attraction, and a lot more. The population will reap its benefits the most as they will be able to buy goods at a reasonable price. Moreover, make sure that your ties with other countries are good otherwise it will affect your trade routes a lot. 

Up Next:

• Victoria 3 Beginner’s Guide
• Victoria 3 How To Increase Influence
• Victoria 3: How To Declare War