I was always curious about this: hardware costs the same to produce as arms. The only thing you can do with hardware is sell it, but arms can be used to create army/ships and can be sold as well. At times hardware is more expensive, but if so it's not by much; the price is more or less same. And they are both bought just as readily.

I haven't produced hardware for a long time now. It would have been nice if it was actually used for something. Like producing civilian units for example. Or maybe even upgrade them like you do with army units (originally civilian units can only build level 1 structures; you need to upgrade them with x $ and y hardware so they can build level 2... etc).

Hammers are for income. Industrial Age Domestic Goods. And I wouldn't sell cannons to potential (and eventually active) enemies.

One of my favorite tactics is to buy up all iron en coal use them to produce hardware which I then sell back to the minor nations.

This has 3 advantages:
1. It deprives my enemies of these crucial resources
2. Hardware is usually more expensive than furniture, cloth or arms
3. It helps me gain influence with the most important minor nations (the ones that have iron and coal)

Yes, but it's minor nations who buy arms. Extremely rarely for major powers to do so, and then if you see a major power is short on arms you just boycott it.

Note that minor nations are usually on better relations with you, so they get the first bid on arms anyway. And once you get a colony, it's they who buy your arms first. Of course. That's the object of the game. But why hammers when you could use exactly the same resources to do weapons and sell them. The price is almost same (and the advantage is that if you don't sell them, you could do something useful with them too).

In essence

hammers = income
arms = income OR weapons

So why build hammers?

I just had another idea on how hammers could be made useful:

Make sure minor nations do NOT treat arms as goods they would buy (which would make sense, they don't bother raising armies).

This way you won't be able to sell arms as easily (and it would be slightly riskier, since you'd be giving weapons to potential enemies). And you'd have to produce hammers if you want to make money from steel.

Anyway, on to nigh on impossible. Maybe I'll also try Sardinia or Ottoman Empire next.

Tools are always a bit more expensive for some reason, so if I need cash, I make those. That is all there is to it.