Hello. To be honest, I'm an EU4 player and that's why I'm wondering, but I realize that asking a real historians would probably give me more fruitful answers than asking on EU4 subreddit. I have a couple of questions, the most important being the one in the title, but I will write in more indepth points. I should also note that I know that real history isn't exactly what I see in EU4, so I might make a fool out of myself, so sorry in advance for my ignorance.
First, as already mentioned, what made Spices so common in India and Indonesia while basically non-existent in other parts of the world? I'm not even trying to compare the climate with European one, but let's say Africa, South East Continental Asia (I mean countries like Vietnam, Laos...), Polynesia... They all had monsoons, they all had a rather tropical climate, right? So why are spices so rare and rather expensive?
Next, Incense. My only guess that's it similar to Porcelain and Silk, Europeans just didn't know how it's made so they had to import it. Am I right?
Third, Cotton. Once more, I'm probably missing something major, but as far as EU4 and my knowledge go, there was a lot of it in what today is southern USA and ingame like 1/3 of India produces it. What's so unique about it? Also, why was Cotton more important over time than Wool? Quick read about the subject left me a bit dissapointed, wool is supposed to stop the heat better, so it's good for winter and worse for summer, while cotton doesn't stop the heat so well, so it's the opposite, but why Cotton is more popular (and ingame, more expensive) in the end?
Coffee. Ingame it's at first produced only in Yemen/Ethiopia, over time it's also grown in Columbia and loses it's very high price. So why was it only cultivated over there? Why not even in a neighbouring country, Oman? Is it once more a secret similar to Porcelain and Silk or something else? Then how did Europeans get to know it and started growing in Americas?
I'm also a bit curious about Ivory. I've heard somewhere that I think the French (? I'm really not sure, but obviously someone in Western Europe) hunted for whales in the Atlantic. Also, ingame, Greenland can produce it, so I'm pretty much sure it's about walruses and other sea animals can give you something similar. So what made Elephant ivory more popular? Quick google was basically an advertisement that they are similar, so I can't really imagine the reasoning why I've heard more about elephants than narhwals and stuff. Lack of technology perhaps...?
Gems. What made things like Diamonds, Sapphires, Rubies and all that so unique? And could someone explain to me why there is a chance to get it in places like Polynesia or why it exists in Konigsberg? My only guess it's that EU4 simplifies the reality and also included Amber as gems, after all I've heard about the Amber Road from the Baltic Sea to Rome.
And one last little thing. Food market. I'm looking at the map and well, it seems like countries like Poland and Russia have a ton of grain (I mean, ingame it's called grain, but it also includes potatoes, corn and many others) and livestock, while countries like England have barerly any. How did it work? When country wasn't able to feed it's population? Today in our globalised world when you have country like United Arab Emirates or something, they are rich enough to sell Oil (or whatever) and import food, but back when it wasn't the case? Is the game simplifying the reality (once more) and looking at GB, where the entire British Isles (around 56 provinces in total) has only 5 provinces producing Grain and 10 producing Livestock normal? While let's say Poland out of 31 provinces has 9 producing Grain and 5 producing Livestock? Or Ruthenia, where out of 43 provinces 14 produce Grain and 11 produce Livestock? The total amount of provinces is almost half of GB's and they produce twice as much food, and what I mean by that, how does GB not starve and Poland (altrough they do have seven Cloth, two Salt and one Dyes) or worse, Ruthenia (two provinces produce Cloth and 4 produce Iron) doesn't produce some more luxury goods, how was that profitable?
Thanks in advance and sorry for my ignorance!
Third, Cotton. Once more, I'm probably missing something major, but as far as EU4 and my knowledge go, there was a lot of it in what today is southern USA and ingame like 1/3 of India produces it. What's so unique about it? Also, why was Cotton more important over time than Wool? Quick read about the subject left me a bit dissapointed, wool is supposed to stop the heat better, so it's good for winter and worse for summer, while cotton doesn't stop the heat so well, so it's the opposite, but why Cotton is more popular (and ingame, more expensive) in the end?
I'm going to quote from a previous answer of mine on cotton, as it answers a lot of your questions:
Cotton was known in western Europe as early as the Middle Ages: it was grown in Sicily, Cyprus, Turkey, and other Mediterranean areas and bought by merchants from northern Italian cities, who resold it further north or took it home to be spun and woven and then sold as a finished product. Where cotton cloth made for ordinary clothing in the Near East and southern Mediterranean, however, in Europe it was relatively unimportant, compared to its use there or the use of linen or wool domestically. It could be spun very fine, woven into muslin, and sold to the elite, to be used in items like veils that needed to be translucent or transparent; it could also be spun more thickly and woven into canvas for sails, or combined with linen into a strong twill fabric called "fustian".
In the second half of the seventeenth century, western merchants began to import cottons from India. It may have been the Dutch East India Company that was one of the first: the printed calicoes (named for Kelikut/Calcutta - here's a good examples) soon became integrated with regional dress in the Netherlands. But whether it was specifically them or not, the imported calico was a important and highly desirable semi-luxury good. Consumers loved them, and calicoes and chintzes (painted cottons) were everywhere by the beginning of the eighteenth century. To quote Daniel Defoe in 1708:
The general fancy of the people runs upon East India goods to that degree, that the chintz and painted calicoes, which before were only made use of for carpets, quilts, &c. and to clothe children and ordinary people, become now the dress of our ladies; and such is the power of a mode as we saw our persons of quality dressed in stuffs which, but a few years before, their chambermaids would have thought too ordinary for them: the chintz was advanced from lying upon their floors to their backs, from the foot cloth to the petticoat; and even the queen herself at this time was pleased to appear in China silks and calico. Nor was this all, but it crept into our houses, closets, and bed chambers; curtains, cushions, chairs, and at last beds themselves, were nothing but calicoes or Indian stuffs; and in short, almost everything that used to be made of wool or silk, relating either to the dress of the women or the furniture of our houses, was supplied by the Indian trade.
Defoe is exaggerating here for effect - chambermaids around 1700 would probably not have found calicoes beneath them - but this illustrates the general situation well. It also illustrates one of the problems many contemporary commentators had with the calico craze; that is, that when both ordinary folk and those who could normally afford silk wore this middle-of-the-road fabric, it became difficult or even impossible to tell a woman's social standing just from looking at her. This bothered people, because in this period, as in many others, they wanted to know when they needed to show respect to a woman and when they could disregard her. Okay, a bit soapboxy there, but when you see enough of these complaints about maids vs. mistresses, slaves vs. free women, prostitutes vs. matrons, etc. the pattern of the viewer being ticked off emerges.
Anyway, in response to this frenzy, domestic fabric-printers in many countries (though not Switzerland and the Low Countries) started printing similar designs on cotton and lobbying their governments to ban the imports. An English pamphlet of 1686, about ten years after cottons really exploded in that country due to a ban on the importation of French fabrics, complained:
This trade (the woollen) is very much hindered by our own people, who do wear many foreign commodities instead of our own; as may be instanced in many particulars; viz. instead of green sey, that was wont to be used for children's frocks, is now used painted and Indian-stained and striped calico, and instead of a perpetuana or shalloon to line men's coats with, is used sometimes a glazed calico, which in the whole is not above 12d. cheaper, and abundantly worse. And sometimes is used a Bangale that is brought from India, both for linings to coats, and for petticoats too; yet our English ware is better and cheaper than this, only it is thinner for the summer. To remedy this, it would be necessary to lay a very high impost upon all such commodities as these are, and that no calicoes or other sort of linen be suffered to be glazed.
English legislation began with the 1701 ban, that prevented any printed cotton from being brought in, in order to protect the domestic industry from having to compete with higher-quality and more "authentic" Indian goods; a similar bans was enacted in Spain and the Spanish colonies in 1717. The even earlier French ban of 1686 actually prohibited both the import of Indian cotton prints (as well as some other luxury fabrics from Asia) as well as the manufacture of printed cottons and linens domestically! This ban was lifted in 1759, and during its long existence it had a fairly devastating effect on the French fabric-printing industry, and caused a certain amount of unrest as smugglers were brutally repressed by the state. None of the bans had much effect - as evidenced by the repeated complaints about people wearing illicit cloth while they were in effect, and the fact that these governments repeatedly enacted new bans with harsher penalties - and it's possible that they made calico even more attractive by forbidding it.
By the 1770s, though, printed cotton was simply commonplace in Europe and European New World colonies. It was muslin's time to shine! Muslin had never been banned, but being (as described above) soft, lightweight, and transparent, it wasn't well-suited to the type of clothing worn in Europe during the late seventeenth and most of the eighteenth century, except for accessories and trims like ruffles, handkerchiefs, veiling, etc. In the Caribbean, however, it was perfect. Women there turned lengths of muslin into loose, full gowns that kept them cool in the hot breezes. This was brought back to Europe in the late 1770s - specifically to the French nobility. For the full version of that, you should really read this answer by /u/kittydentures; the short version is, aristocratic circles picked up on the chemise gown (from disreputable types) to wear in informal situations and once it reached the public's attention, it became a very desirable style for all women. The pure white fabric with its lack of ornamentation (apart from, sometimes, white-on-white embroidery) and the somewhat loose fit of the gown reflected both the ideals of Rousseau regarding nature being preferable to artifice, and the growing interest in Classical antiquity. While sheer white linen mull could be used in these gowns, cotton muslin really was the fabric associated with the style, which, as I explained here, became more based in the idea of Greek/Roman/Etruscan art and developed into what's now known as the Regency style. And just as they had at the other end of the century, people were bothered by the fact that maidservants could wear white cotton when off-duty and resemble their mistresses.
By this time, lower-quality calicoes had taken over from low-quality wools as the basic fabric for the poor, as the former had been falling and continued to fall in price, particularly once the Industrial Revolution kicked in: cotton factories were the scene of many of the first changes of that period. Outside of fine muslins and gauzes, it could no longer be considered anything like a nice fabric for formal clothing. Cotton also took over from linen as the material of choice for men's and women's underclothing in America around this time; linen did not fall out of use by the majority of people in Europe for several more decades, until it became too expensive to be used for that purpose unless you were wealthy. Linen was somewhat difficult to process in comparison to cotton (you have to let the flax plant rot in water for some weeks - it's not very nice), and in the new, all-mechanized textile industry, cotton was simply a better bet for factory owners.
The progress of cotton in men's and women's (but mostly the latter) wardrobes went in fits and starts. The calico craze and the Neoclassical revival best fit the concept of a revolution, but it's less that their development caused a change (except with regard to the switch from cotton to linen underclothing) and more that social factors - arbitrary ones, to an extent - caused them to become more interesting to merchants and manufacturers, with repercussions down the road.