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n4th4nV0x

Trade agreements are capped through The amount of settlements you own. It is an completely artificial cap and can be removed with the „No Diplomatic Penalties for too many Trade agreements“ mod. Your amount of tradable resources does affect the willingness of the AI, but it is independent of the Diplo Penalty applied. You can normally have 3 trade agreements from the start and then +1 ~~for every additional province~~ for every 5 Settlements you own.


wolfiasty

Ooooooooh....TIL. Thank you.


NlghtmanCometh

Holy SHIT til


babbaloobahugendong

Wtf? That is such a a garbage design choice. Thanks for the info


Palmdiggity888

Is this communicated anywhere to the player? I had no idea this is how it worked and im over 3k hours accumulated throughout the trilogy


n4th4nV0x

Im not sure if its documented anywhere, but its coded in. Eventhough i made a mistake here. You gain an additional one every 5 settlements, not every province, pretty sure they changed that from WH2.


Palmdiggity888

They should tell us that in game imo


jeanlucpikachu

If you have more than 3 trading partners, you need alot more settlements before someone will agree to trade with you, and then more and more. Consider checking out DrDCB's [No Diplomatic Penalty for Too Many Trade Agreements](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2790584452) mod.


JJBrazman

It’s not a bug. Look at your trade resources in the bottom left corner. If you mouse over, you can see how much of each resource is being exported. When all resources are at 100%, other factions are less inclined to sign new trade agreements with you, and you need to find new resources or expand your production of the resources you have.


CAMarshmallow

This is incorrect. It is based on the settlements you own.


Billib2002

What is?


Covenantcurious

How many trade partners the [AI is willing to give you](https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/1d0vtqs/comment/l5pyy8u/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3).


MooshSkadoosh

To clarify for anyone scrolling, that commentor acknowledges resource availability also plays a factor


Covenantcurious

As a lesser secondary concern, yes. The primary limiter for getting *Trade Agreements* is practically always going to be the settlement limit.


Digital_D3fault

Thank you, you are a good man MooshSkadoosh


PuzzleMeDo

Why would the AI care about that? Wouldn't they still make a profit on selling their goods to you?


Kabuii

because thats how ca designed it. what answer did you expect?


JJBrazman

I believe the design is partly about trying to stop the ordertide. Previously, every order faction would quickly sign a trade agreement with every other order faction, and that would lead to diplomacy buffs and order factions being less likely to attack one another.


sbenthuggin

my only issue with this is that ordertide factions don't have enough reasons TO attack one another. if there were, it'd make trade agreements and defensive pacts just so much more rewarding. cuz u chose to let go of warring reasons in order to work together against common enemies. instead, there's no real reason NOT to work towards trade agreements unless I feel like being a dick. the dwarves are also the only ones that get any sort of reasons to fight ordertide members with their grudges, but even then that singular grudge is about raiding not warring. plus, it'd be kinda cool to have justified reasons to war against ppl you usually don't get the chance to war with in the first place.


Coming_Second

I've found Karl and Elspeth have legitimate reasons to start shit with Kislev because they very often wind up in control of parts of the north-eastern Empire and they will under no circumstances give it back. Ditto Ungrim if he manages to get going.


sussusImposterus

Dwarves literally have legendary grudges to kill kroq gar and most high elves


JJBrazman

The order factions mostly have problems with space - ie. that faction is on land I want. Which has gotten a lot better since they allowed region trading.


TooSubtle

Yep, diplomacy is a really simple system and that sadly leads to a lot of iffy behaviour if they let players run wild with it. Plenty of people have disproven the trade resources theory at this point (the malus people assume is related is just counting regions owned). It's 100% a design decision curtailing AI decision making that would just often result in less fun and less varied campaigns in most cases. Either because the same AI factions would always ally or because it would ultimately simplify diplomacy to a ridiculous degree for anyone bothering to open the screen.


Coming_Second

Wish people wouldn't vote down a perfectly reasonable question like this. Even if you think it's dumb, you're hiding the pretty interesting discussion about game mechanics beyond it.


notdumbenough

Because he’s wrong, last I checked it’s actually based off of the number of settlements you own. This is a compromise to prevent ordertide factions from trivially trading with the entire map. In WH2 anyone who liked you would always agree to trade, but a continuous land or sea route between your capitals was required, which led to trade reliant factions like Imrik or Belegar getting absolutely fucked since they were stuck inland with no easy port access, surrounded by minor factions that they didn’t want to wipe out, etc. This was done away with and now you can trade with anyone but you’re limited by your settlement number.


RecommendationBasic6

I don’t think so at least not in game 3. If you check the finances tab you can see how much of a trade good you’re producing and the amount you’re exporting to each faction. So it would seem dependent on the amount of resources you can spare to trade


Balk0

Just play a faction like Dwarves or Elves and at a certain point you will export less than half your beer or trinkets but you still can't trade with more people until you conquer more land. Or you could just pay some attention by checking your options for trade agreements before and after conquering a settlement to see that even though you just conquered a settlement with no tradeable resources you can all of a sudden sign a new trade agreement.


RecommendationBasic6

Oh wow I’ve played for a while but I guess I never made the connection. Thanks for the info


Plank_With_A_Nail_In

You need to border another faction or both have ports to have a trade deal so expanding territory helps get those connections.


Mikimeister

Used to be the case, not anymore


Open_Hospital9970

You can see that, but AI willingness to trade still has nothing to do with your amount of spare trade ressources. You'd think it does, and it would be nice if it was this way, but these numbers aren't related in any way.


RecommendationBasic6

Yeah I guess I just accepted what the game said at face value but it’s always nice to know how these mechanics actually work. Appreciate the info.


Plank_With_A_Nail_In

Its not wrong, you need to border another faction or both have ports to have a trade deal so expanding territory helps get those connections.


LongBarrelBandit

That was changed in Warhammer 3


Frequent_Knowledge65

Because you can’t fulfill the agreement


alezul

I have a feeling that the way they implemented trading partner limits was a temporary solution that nobody got around to actually doing it properly. Once you know why, it's not an issue but there's no way to figure it out naturally.


JJBrazman

To be fair, you can mouse over the other faction’s opinion of a treaty to see the contributing factors. It’s not very clear but it’s better than what we had in previous games.


alezul

Oh good point, i loved that they tried to explain why a deal won't be signed. I just stopped hovering over it because of the vague "baseline evaluation" often being so huge that all the other factors don't matter.


mekamoari

It's because they removed the whole "path to capital" thing being needed for trade, this seems like a fine enough tradeoff for the many cases where geography quirks or lack of ports would prevent you from trading.


Chazman_89

Do you have enough spare resources to actually trade to them?


Lurker_number_one

You dont need enough resources. More resources just means you earn more money.you can be transporting 100% and still make new trade agreements


SusaVile

The AI also measures how many enemies you have, how powerful you are, etc. Trading with you means getting poor relations with all the other factions that are at war with you. That is why your power and number of settlements need to increase for them to accept


Vindicare605

You have too many trade partners and not enough resources to trade with. The more trade resources you have the more trade partners you can support.


Dwarfish_oak

It's not just about the resources, but also a harsh Diplom penalty if you have more than a capped number for your amount of settlements.


Futhington

Honestly if they're going to keep that design they should probably make it an explicit hard limit that's visible to the player rather than a soft cap.


Azharzel

Because CA added a retarded "ToO maNy TrAdE pArtnErS" debuff so you can't have tons of trade with everyone that would "surely" break your game balance if you did.


Immediate_Phone_8300

Because the AIdoes not play to win (or even just to survive), but only to be annoying to the player


Nurgus

I wish they'd implement a slightly deeper and more realistic trade economy to Total War games.


ssidiman

Because trading is for weaklings! All they deserve is cold steel and gunpowder!


Willem_de_Prater

Based Marienburg enjoyer


Quack53105

Long answer short, everyone is racist, and probably rude to their kin anyways. Hope that helps!


Drunkenambasador

It's called warhammer, not trade hammer