Cliff mentioned that there have been some changes made, including with international trade. Has the link where max foreign relations leads to a 0.15% reduction in international trade been removed, or changed to actually boost international trade?
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As of which version?
I’ve checked 1.4.1 & 1.3.9 and both have the same Foreign Relations → International Trade
-0.2+(0.2*x) i.e. 0%Foreign Relations reduced International Trade by 20% and 100% Foreign Relation changes International Trade by 0%
edit: max foreign relations does not reduce international trade, visual representation:
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As of 1.4, I guess Cliff fixed it, now, I think that a further improvement would be to make it increase.
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Hm. I am tempted to check really old versions since I cannot find anything about this in the Change Log.
keep in mind that there is an intertia of 4 turns on this relationship - this means that Foreign Relations must be at 100% across several turns for there to be absolute zero negative impact on International Trade - it’s very possible to misinterpret values if you do not include intertia in your assessments.
Keep in mind that we can always override this relationship using mods if we are unhappy with how it operates for our particular country 
Right now high Foreign Relations does impact Foreign Investment which is a big deal for Capitalist Opinion, and a tangible boost to GDP! So I do think Foreign Relations does play a significant role - it even destroys Patriot Population in a way that i think is a bit ridiculous xD Again this is where modding is so useful.
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I don’t know much about modding as such (i.e. even though it’s easier now, I’m unsure about what polynomial equations to put in), so, I’ll leave it to Cliff and other modders to see what changes they can put in.
I understand your point about inertia, it was at 100% for about 80-90% of the length of the rectangular box, which is unclear as to what length of time that was.
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It’s not as hard as you might think.
Take the internal names from the game files, in this case both are statistics therefore Democracy 4\data\simulation\simulation.csv
Here’s an over-ride with equation that means when foreignrelations is 0% then effect is -20% but when foreignrelations is 100% then effect is +20%
[override]
TargetName = “InternationalTrade”
HostName = “ForeignRelations”
Equation = “-0.2+(0.4*x)”
Inertia = 4
visualised:
website I used Best Free Online Graphing Calculator - [ 2019 TI 84 Plus - 3D Download ] -
All these things take is a little time of reading and playing around 
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No doubt that you’re right, all I need is the patience to do it. Furthermore, what is the realistic representation of “100%” foreign relations on international trade? And what even is “100%” foreign relations equivalent to? Is it culture dependent or culture independent? For example, is it like Sikkim joining India in the '70s, or is it like the UK joining the EU in the '70s? What does “100%” represent in foreign relations? Does higher level of integration lead to a symmetric increase in trade? I.e., if really bad relations lead to a 20% reduction, will a high level of integration just lead to just a 20% increase in trade? Is it size dependent, or size independent (country adjustments yes, or no?), etc.
Or should we stuff it all and go for a simpler answer for the sake of much-declared simplicity and generalizability on this forum?
This is ultimately something you have to decide for yourself.
Look through the game files and understand every input into international trade in order to understand how the game works, any change you make has to be balanced - then taking into account everything you have to decide proportionally what the maximum positive effect would be.
As to what it means you have to look at the effects of international trade, and against if you are unhappy with that you can change existing effects, remove effects, add new effects - it’s whatever you want. This game is a simulation and is just a network of values – what it means is as far as the current built and as far as your imagination can take you. This is why I have a big “mod it” attitude, it’s much easier to do that when no one can agree on what things mean and everyone has a different interpretation on how the model should work without actually trying it themselves and understanding how their changes might effect the equilibrium.
If you care enough to research something you should care enough to make a simple .ini file is my view on it.
Anyways. I made the mod for you based on the above, feel free to copy paste it from the workshop folder to your local folder and tweak the equation however you like. I’ve tested it and it does what I said it does. Cheers.
edit: if you want to make it country specific place the override into the country’s override folder. simplez.
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I doubt that I’ll be able to understand all the inputs and outputs for trade, and I’m reticent in making any game breaking changes. I will take a look at this when I have sufficient time to make a good mod, in the meanwhile, I thank you for creating this mod. Even though I’m not on Steam directly, I’ll find a way to download it and try it out! 
Ah damn I didn’t realise that.
I am not familiar with how non-Steam modding works (from an uploading point of view) … this is something I should look into. Link me to a resource on how that works if you are aware of it already.
Here’s the mod. Just extract it to My Games\Democracy4\mods and it should appear on your mod list when you boot the game.
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Thanks, no prob, I appreciate it nonetheless, I myself don’t know how non-steam modding works outside of Gdrive. I’ll give your mod a go!
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