AGEOD Forums

I want to have merchant ships to initiate trade.
Well, mostly not difficult case, but I started playing in 1850 as CHINA and they have not that possibility.

So the question is: which technology should I subsidize to get that ships?

Without ships China can't get many manufactured items and China can't build industry sites (strangely).
So merchant ships to trade with European ports would be handy.

It might be the case that they don't have merchant ships in their force pool at all.

There is a database file somewhere, where you can check.

Yeah. That may be the case.

http://www.ageod-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=300&t=24424

Stupid. As it artificially limits China, but that is not needed. China is weak enough to be pain to play.
I've solved that problem by myself adding those ships to Chinese Junks fleets (just 2 trade ships).
This way every Chinese fleet is a trade fleet which seems reasonable for them.
They do not upgrade and cost cheaply 10 "capital" currency to buy replacements.

In PON China is completely backyard country which was untrue. China was underpowered and out gunned by Anglo-French forces but they had factories, powder depots and tons of troops. In PON you lack everything, especially money, which was not a problem on that scale in reality.

Solution:
http://www.ageod-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=300&t=52593

Don't forget that if another power puts one of its fleets off-shore you can trade using that.

Playing Italy I made a lot of money selling China my surplus fish once I had a trade fleet there.

In truth, China is not really very playable in PoN. Not least a lot of the later game carve up of your coastal provinces will happen regardless of how well you are doing (if I recall how the events are written). So you might want to review the China event file and remove some of those?

Really its a country that has needed a mod like Kensai's Austrian one to allow for an a-historic turn leading to more expansive game play