Trading Post

"Build near Native settlements or Trade Routes. Provides experience points and other benefits."

- In-game description

The Trading Post is a building in Age of Empires III.

Overview
The Trading Post replaces the old fashioned trade system of carts, boats and caravans of the previous games. It can also be built on a Minor civilization settlement site in order to forge an alliance with the tribe and to get access to their unique units and improvements.

Unlike most buildings, Trading Posts cannot be built anywhere on the ground. It can only be built on a square-shaped site found near minor civilization settlements and Trade Routes. When having a post on a Native American or Native Asian site, the building can train different Native American and Native Asian units depending on the civilization which lives there.

When having a post by a Trade Route, a non-interactive trader will constantly walk past the post granting experience. When upgraded to a stagecoach, or trade cart in the Colonial Age, the player will have an option to toggle the experience income into coin, food, or wood. The stagecoach, or trade cart moves faster as well. In the Industrial Age the stagecoach can be further upgraded into a train which moves faster than the stagecoach.

The player can send the Advanced Trading Post card from their Home City that reduces Trading Post cost by 40% for European and Native American civilizations or 20% for Asian civilizations, increases their hit points by 50%, 33% for Asian civilizations and enables a ranged attack, or provides a trading post rickshaw for Asian civilizations.

Improvements

 * For each native tribe or religious communities' improvements, please see their respective articles.

Home City Cards
{| class="wikitable collapsible collapsed" style="width:100%;" ! sab="1148" | Click for a list of related Home City cards
 * - sab="1147"
 * - sab="1149"
 * sab="1150" |

Ottomans

 * }

Bugs/glitches

 * It is sometimes possible for Trading Post sites to be generated on broken terrain, which means that players cannot construct a Trading Post on these sites. Most notably this can occur on the New England and Amazonia maps. This problem has been addressed in patches, occurring with less frequency.
 * Another common glitch is units getting stuck within the perimeter of a Trading Post as a result of trying to pass through it and not being able to get out. This most notably happens with Native Trading Posts. It is possible to destroy the units inside the confines of the Trading Post, but if an Explorer/Monk/War Chief get stuck inside, there is no way of removing them.
 * If the player gets any building HP improvement such as the Improved Buildings or Advanced Trading Posts Home City cards, already built Trading Posts remaining HP will stay the same as before the upgrade (e.g. 2500/2500 before, 2500/2875 after).

History
"Trading posts were established by early explorers of the New World as places to stop, barter, rest, and engage in commercial activities in support of their efforts to find wealth for their patrons, usually kings and queens, who sponsored their voyages. Wealthy and powerful trading companies between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries competed viciously as they drove exploration of the New World in search of pelts (chiefly beaver), to market in Europe. They dotted the landscape with trading posts and continued driving west in search of new sources of pelts. The fur trade and the need for the trading posts declined as fashions in Europe changed and the demand for pelts collapsed. Many trading posts developed into proper settlements over time."