For other uses, see Trading Port (disambiguation)
The Trading Port is a type of port building in Fall of the Samurai.
Description[]
Fortunes flow with the tides.
A trading port is a specialised harbour and support buildings that allow merchants free access to the seaways. While shipbuilding can happen here, the concentration of effort is on commerce, both in terms of overseas trade and in helping the province develop.
Japan had been a closed society to outsiders for many decades, but that is not to say that the Japanese were ignorant about the outside world. The truth was very different. After 1633 Japanese traders had been forbidden to go abroad, and foreigners had been confined to Nagasaki, but foreign books and the ideas they contained were still circulated. The Japanese kept up with European scientific, political and military developments through Dutch booksellers, and this contributed to their realistic appraisal of what opening up trade with the West might mean. A clear understanding of what had been happening overseas helped the Japanese to leap from the late medieval world to a modern one in less than 50 years.
General Information[]
Requirees 3900 koku, 8 turns, Port, Cordial Relations technology. Can be upgraded to American Trading District, British Trading District, or French Trading District.
- Improves export capacity (increases trade values) by +200
- +700 to wealth from ports in this province
- +5 per turn to town growth from trade within this province
- +2 to possible trade routes (sea)
- Recruitment capacity (ship under construction): +1
- Coastal defences will be disabled once the port's health falls to 70%
- Coastal defence range: 8
- Coastal defence level: 1
- -1 to happiness from modernisation
- Enables recruitment of Rank 1 Foreign Veteran
Clan Effects
- +2 to modernisation
- Establishes trade routes with the western powers
- +1 to the number of Foreign Veterans that may be fielded (Maximum: 5)
Trading ports represent the first of the more economy-oriented branch of port buildings, generating a solid amount of region wealth, wealth growth, and trading profits. This more than offsets the slight increase to unhappiness generated by constructing them. They are particularly worth building if the faction building them has potential trade partners that cannot trade due to lack of existing ports.
The first trading port a faction builds automatically begins trading with Great Britain, France, and the United States of America. Should this first port be damaged or blocked, there is a chance that these foreign powers will end their trade. Should this happen, they never reopen trade again, blocking the player from being able to build many late-game buildings. To prevent such a setback, it is useful to build one's first trading port in a defensible location, and have a fleet nearby to ward off enemy ships. Should the region with the first trading port be lost, trade is immediately cut off from the foreign powers and can never be re-established.
Trading ports can build all types of wooden ships, but cannot build copper or iron-plated ships; these advanced ship types require military ports instead.
Each trading port built increases the limit of Foreign Veterans that can be trained, up to a limit of 5-8 depending on the rank of the Chief of Staff in the faction's cabinet. Given that foreign veterans have a variety of useful functions, including saving on recruitment costs and increasing the experience of troops they're stationed with, it is almost always worthwhile to build at least a few trading ports.