Victoria 3 Trade Routes: How To Earn Profits Faster

When running a country, players also need to know about trading. To establish trading in Victoria 3, you need to establish trade routes. If your trade route is effective, it provides you profit, and if you are running ineffective trade routes, you will just be at a loss because each trade route costs bureaucracy. Our Victoria 3 trade routes guide entails how to establish them for effective money and goods flow.

Key Highlights:

• Trading enables the players to earn money by selling their goods.
• Trading also helps players to fulfill goods needs for their country.
• Trading knowledge is important for better in-game progress.

Requirements For Establishing Trade Routes

There are certain requirements that players need to fulfill to establish trade routes and certain factors that affect the effectiveness of a trade route. Here are some of the things that are required to establish an effective Victoria 3 trade route.

Policy

First of all, your country needs to have an internationalist trading policy. The internationalist trading policy ensures that your country is open to all trading agreements with other countries. If your country has an isolationist policy, then first, you need to change the laws to be open for trading. After changing the laws, you will be able to establish trade with other countries.

Control of Market

For you to be able to establish trading, you need to have control over your own market. You should be able to control the prices and the production of the goods in your markets. If your country is a puppet state or your market is controlled by foreign countries, then your trading will not be as effective as it can be.

Bureaucracy

Each trade that you make in the game costs you bureaucracy. If you have a negative bureaucracy, you will lose a lot of money on taxation. So, you need a good knowledge of how to manage your bureaucracy to establish low-tax and effective trade routes. You can establish an effective bureaucracy by establishing a government administration buildings.

Establishing Trade Routes

In order to establish Victoria 3 trade routes, you need to keep in mind the following important points:

Analyze Your Market

Firstly, to establish a trade route, you need to analyze your market. Analyzing your market will help you to decide what goods are to be imported and what goods you need to export. You can get an idea of what your nation is producing in excess that is not being consumed and you can export it to other countries to earn money.

For imports, you can check what goods are in high demand in your country which are not being produced in the required quantity. A player can make a better decision about what goods to import when you analyze the market. If you want to check all these supply and demand, you can refer to the market menu on the trade screen.

You would also need to analyze the markets where you need to sell your goods. You can also start a multi-national market for example if you play as the United Kingdom, you would have an advantage of a large marketplace. If you have a large market to sell goods in, your trade will be more effective.

Establish Trade Routes

Now, to sell or buy goods, you would need to establish trade routes. First, visit the trade routes menu in the game to see all the routes that are currently operational and other routes that you can start. The Trade menu provides information for both import and export routes. Moreover, you can also find a potential trade route for each good that you need to trade.

You can make trade through23 different types of trade routes in the game. Here are the types of Victoria 3 trade routes:

Through Land

Players can trade goods with their neighboring countries through the borders of their country. These routes are typically on land and cost lesser because of the lesser distance and effort required. Also, if you have good relations with your neighboring country, you can use their land to access other countries to make trade possible. 

Water Ways Or Convoys 

If your country is not one of those surrounded by land only, then you can also trade through the water. For trading through water, you would need to build a convoy. This means you can trade through the ports in your country. Convoy trade costs a lot more depending on the number of sea nodes, the number of goods, and other goods-related modifiers. This trade is only possible if both countries have ports. If either country lacks a port, this trade would not be possible.

3. Taxes

If you want to establish an effective trade route, you would most likely need to keep your taxes according to the requirements. Taxes, also known as tariffs in the game, affect the imports and exports of a country. You would need to understand completely how taxes would affect your trade routes. Taxes would also define how competitive your trade route is. The more effective your trade route, the more beneficent it is.

If you set taxes very high or very low, your trade route would become ineffective because the goods that you are trading would have variations in price, which would ultimately affect the supply and demand of your market. So, before setting taxes, understand how taxes work so that the trade route you are establishing does not cause you losses rather than providing benefits. You can monitor your taxes in the budget tab.

Monitor Your Trade Routes

Once you have established trade routes, that is not all that you have to do. As we have discussed earlier, all trade routes cost players bureaucracy. If you are running some ineffective trade routes, you will be at a great loss because such routes provide little or no trading benefits. Rather, they are causing you to lose a lot in the form of strengthening your bureaucracy.

Also, each trade route starts at level 1, which limits the number of goods that you can trade. If you monitor your trade routes and apply policies accordingly to make them profitable, you can make your trade more effective. You can get information regarding trade routes through green colored trade lens at the bottom of the screen.

How To End A Trade Route?

If you find out that a certain trade route is not performing well and you want to end it, you can click on that specific route and click on the cross. By clicking on the route, you will have access to all the information about that specific route, including the loss that it costs you.

If the trade you have clicked on does not belong to you, you naturally can’t cancel it. Also, the only method to end a trade route in the game as of now is the one we have stated above.

You should only consider ending a trade route when it isn’t making enough profit. Also, be sure to pay good attention to what you will lose when you end a route as it can be very detrimental to your progression.

Wrap Up

Victoria 3 is a strategy-based game where players need to carefully make strategies regarding politics, the army, and economics. Just as in the real world, players need good knowledge regarding trading for the betterment of the economy. To establish trading, players need to establish trading routes that carry the goods for imports and exports.

Up Next:

• Victoria 3 explosives
• Victoria 3 Beginner’s Guide
• Make Money Faster in Victoria 3
• How to switch countries in Victoria 3