Caravan = Ungodly Wealth = Boring

[Abelardo]

They really need to allow bandits to group up to hit your caravan. Perhaps, if you have poor relations with a lord in another faction he will also try and raid your caravan. (Sure he might piss off his own faction, but he might really hate your guts.)

Yeah, exactly, but as much as I feel something like that would be needed I highly doubt they would change it, after all this is just a localization of something that has already been out for quite a while.

I'm sure that moders would address that though, if anyone actually bothers to mod this game that is.

 

[nightstormer]

So far if you want to get cash fast, caravans are pretty much the only option. But if they worked on the looting code and let you have more loot and chance at better you could make money off that. It would be slower than caravans, but you'd make enough to feel you're progressing in the game. So, then people would have a choice. Fast money - caravans, slower but just about enough - selling loot.

This code with some small modifications should work when the module system is out as well, if people want to do it themselves: http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,131601.0.html

 

[Semper_Ducimus]

Having just started this game, and struggeling with money, and the temptation to not use the cheats to give myself money, i find this "Nerf the caravan" thread a little disheartening. But at least now i know what to do for cash!

If one REALLY feels caravans awards too much money, and has huge issues with it and thinks it breaks the game for them, would using TweakMB (which now works with F&S), and lowering the reward amount a feasible option ?  Just a thought.

 

[wannyboy]

i like the greater bandit party suggestion. my caravan hasnt been attacked once, so i just keep walking around to gain some money. Would like to see something like a "bandit boss" who has about 150 bandits with him who appears later in the game. You can kill him, however, the bandits will just elect someone else. If you are no vassal, have quite some renown, low honor and u beat the boss, they will sometimes try to elect you as their boss, making you the king of the "6th faction"
anyone lieks this idea?

 

[Aeon221]

I think it should have a whole lot more risk involved, like the moment you get a caravan going the game will start to spawn lots of bandit parties (leveled to your own party) that would automatically target you for the duration of the journey.

Because yeah right now it's pretty pathetic, all you need is a 50-60 strong party and you're set, set the caravan up, click the destination and hold ctrl+space, done.

A) That sounds annoying as ****, for all kinds of obvious reasons. No one wants to play whack a mole to move some goods.

B) You clearly haven't played a game without caravans. I have. If I make enough to buy a single handcrafted item before day 300 it will be a miracle. This also happens to be the first M&B game where I've bothered trading, because I am poorer than **** all the time (and I started playing before they added factions to the beta, when Zendar was the only place on the map). So far I've broken 30k once, and then immediately had the joy of choosing between defending a city (and losing an assload of troops) or losing access to 20k. Whoops. There went 15k worth of troopers. Also known as 40 guys. Yay!

C) If all you're doing is C-Spacing around the map, you might as well just use cheat mode. The game is providing you with options, the lack of restraint is a bug on your end. The game works fine if you don't abuse the feature by spending 200 days doing nothing but sending caravans hither and yon. You can do exactly the same thing in WB with the triangle trade and setting up enterprises and it similarly rapes the difficulty. Don't like it? Don't do it! And don't ask the devs to protect you from yourself.

 

[wannyboy]

those bandits would not stop caravans, just make it little harder because now, its just 3 times walk without any real risks involved and you are rich enough to make nice army and equip yourself and your heros with nice armor(not handmade but still) but i do agree that without caravans, you are realy poor on this game. Warband was perfectly playable without any caravans, if i needed money, i just went pwning sea raiders with only my hero's and selling the looted armors for rediculous price but now, caravans are realy the only way to gain something now, change this first

 

[Mavkiel]

I'd rather just have a dice roll in the background. Rough example

20 -- Perfect run no bandits spawned, official in receiving city makes mistake and think they owe you cash. (you receive the tax you would have paid without permit)

10 -- bandit party of your troop size targets you.

0 -- A party of bandits 3x your troop numbers spawn and aims for you. Upon entering your destination 2-3 goods are pilfered from your caravan (Darn thieves!)

 

[wannyboy]

dont think both sending more bandits and stealing your goods is a good idea, however, i like them both. there should indeed be more things that could go wrong making it risky

 

[peope]

I agree it is like a cheat and thus boring.
Taxes from fiefs become ignorable because they are not even worth pennies compared to what you get from a caravan.

 

[Abelardo]

A) That sounds annoying as ****, for all kinds of obvious reasons. No one wants to play whack a mole to move some goods.

B) You clearly haven't played a game without caravans. I have. If I make enough to buy a single handcrafted item before day 300 it will be a miracle. This also happens to be the first M&B game where I've bothered trading, because I am poorer than **** all the time (and I started playing before they added factions to the beta, when Zendar was the only place on the map). So far I've broken 30k once, and then immediately had the joy of choosing between defending a city (and losing an assload of troops) or losing access to 20k. Whoops. There went 15k worth of troopers. Also known as 40 guys. Yay!

C) If all you're doing is C-Spacing around the map, you might as well just use cheat mode. The game is providing you with options, the lack of restraint is a bug on your end. The game works fine if you don't abuse the feature by spending 200 days doing nothing but sending caravans hither and yon. You can do exactly the same thing in WB with the triangle trade and setting up enterprises and it similarly rapes the difficulty. Don't like it? Don't do it! And don't ask the devs to protect you from yourself.

It doesn't have to be bandits spawning all the time, that was just an example, another one would to make trading a whole lot more complex, make prices fluctuate like crazy so trading doesn't involve exclusively spice and velvet on a handful of cites because everything else is pointless, the caravan implementation is poorly designed period.

Also saying that ctrl+spacing is my own fault is stupid, the game should be designed in a way were 1) I wouldn't need to use ctrl+space or 2) I should be discouraged on using it, in the current state not ctrl+spacing doesn't make it more challenging, it's just boring, take Prophecy of Pendor for an example, in that mod ctrl+spacing anywhere is a HUGE risk, because no matter how big your army is there are always bigger and more dangerous enemy parties lurking around.

You said it yourself, they make it almost impossible to make money without caravans but at the same time make using caravans ridiculously easy, again it's just very poor design plain and simple, but don't be afraid, I'm sure the devs won't change that so you'll be able to exploit it as much as you want.

 

[Iboltax]

The trading in this game is like Drug Wars with no time limit. Anyone know what I'm saying ? 

 

[Semper_Ducimus]

To piggyback on a previous comment about this game not being an MMO, i'd like to reiterate the novel concept that a single player game should NOT be a grind fest or a run on a virtual treadmill.  For for those unfamiliar with that term, single player games should not force you to do repetitive tasks that reward miniscule gain over and over and over again in order to advance progression.  Your not competing against anyone.

That, unfortunately, is what i'm gathering from this thread. That some people think the game should force you to do repetitive tasks again and again, over and over for small gains.  If that's your idea for fun, go outside, wash your car or truck, and then wax it with Q tips. Come back and exhort how much fun that is, and how using an electric buffer would be cheating.  Its not my intent to jump into a battle that isn't mine, but having played several MMO's, and having grinded XP, cash, and items for hours at a time, the mere THOUGHT of it now, makes me cringe.

 

[Iboltax]

To piggyback on a previous comment about this game not being an MMO, i'd like to reiterate the novel concept that a single player game should NOT be a grind fest or a run on a virtual treadmill.  For for those unfamiliar with that term, single player games should not force you to do repetitive tasks that reward miniscule gain over and over and over again in order to advance progression.  Your not competing against anyone.

That, unfortunately, is what i'm gathering from this thread. That some people think the game should force you to do repetitive tasks again and again, over and over for small gains.  If that's your idea for fun, go outside, wash your car or truck, and then wax it with Q tips. Come back and exhort how much fun that is, and how using an electric buffer would be cheating.  Its not my intent to jump into a battle that isn't mine, but having played several MMO's, and having grinded XP, cash, and items for hours at a time, the mere THOUGHT of it now, makes me cringe.

I agree about the grinding thing, which is what happens in regular Warband trading, it becomes a slight grind but its somewhat alleviated by having other options to gain money that are almost just as profitable. So when you get bored of trading, you can fight bandits, you can loot, tournaments, etc, and all those tasks are interesting challenges in themselves. In this way Warband avoids turning trading into a terrible grind, but it does cross over into it if you choose to just trade as a primary source of money making.

The caravans have great potential to actually be a fun game in themselves if they were balanced and if there were more spontaneous forces that didn't make each caravan run a sure success.

Although it almost seems like the developers intended design was to have the player get a lot of money quickly in the game so that they could start playing the main storylines while the factions were still in their early stages. Considering that the storylines are approached in a very linear way I wouldn't be surprised if this was their intention. But who knows since the storylines are so poorly executed. If this is the case they should have just given the player a wage from whichever party they decided to join and outright make money a non-factor. Fact of the matter is, I don't think they had much of an idea how they were going to balance any of this.

My hope is once the module system is released someone makes a mod that turns caravan trading into something challenging and fun.

 

[Mavkiel]

To piggyback on a previous comment about this game not being an MMO, i'd like to reiterate the novel concept that a single player game should NOT be a grind fest or a run on a virtual treadmill.  For for those unfamiliar with that term, single player games should not force you to do repetitive tasks that reward miniscule gain over and over and over again in order to advance progression.  Your not competing against anyone.

I don't believe anyone is suggesting that. What is being suggested is that it is to easy to gain enough wealth to trivialize the economy. If you play your cards right you can easily get enough cash within 30 minutes of game play to hire all the best equipped mercs and best hand crafted gear you can order.

Standard rebuttal of this is "don't use the caravan system". Problem with that is, every other method of gaining wealth is ridiculously slow. One game I did not use caravans, and just fought and raided caravans. Even after ransoming 3 kings and close to a dozen lords I still couldn't afford to buy the single crafted item I wanted(Replacement units can be costly if you fight often).

So they have two ways they can go if they want to fix this. Lower prices on crafted goods, and shrink caravan profits. Or add some sort of risk for running caravans, be it corrupt officials in the receiving city, or bandits attacking you.

 

[Finch]

Try a caravan run without your powerful party in tow, just you and the caravan. If you want a challenge, there can be one. The game will be easy if you make it so. Or really just use a mod to play this on Nightmare mode when a balance mod comes out.

 

[Archonsod]

I don't believe anyone is suggesting that. What is being suggested is that it is to easy to gain enough wealth to trivialize the economy.

By the same token though it's impossible to prevent the player grinding their wealth value to whatever they want while retaining the trading system. The balancing factor is really time more than anything else; you could in fact grind your wealth up without caravans simply by trading the individual items for however long it takes you to accumulate a given level of wealth. The only thing stopping it is the presumption that doing so would be less fun than the alternative things you could be doing.

I wouldn't say it's trivialising the economy so much as streamlining it. Economics isn't the focus or appeal of the game, at the moment you can make three or four caravan runs and have enough to pursue the plot and combat, which means there's still an economic factor but it's not an intrusive distraction. One of the more common complaints regarding Warband was that players were too distracted by the need to make money (particularly in the late game).

 

[kelsen89]

There's got to be some sort of risk involved in doing velvet/spice caravans.  Once you get about 60 troops you can run them over and over to make as much money as you want and you can even alt-tab while doing it because nothing will attack you.

This can be a very fun game but you guys need to spend more time on balancing.

I think the risk of doing caravans is the possibility of being BORED OUT OF YOUR ******** MIND and having wasted most of your free time watching your caravan go back and forth. It was enough to stop me from doing it

 

[Iboltax]

I don't believe anyone is suggesting that. What is being suggested is that it is to easy to gain enough wealth to trivialize the economy.

By the same token though it's impossible to prevent the player grinding their wealth value to whatever they want while retaining the trading system. The balancing factor is really time more than anything else; you could in fact grind your wealth up without caravans simply by trading the individual items for however long it takes you to accumulate a given level of wealth. The only thing stopping it is the presumption that doing so would be less fun than the alternative things you could be doing.

I wouldn't say it's trivialising the economy so much as streamlining it. Economics isn't the focus or appeal of the game, at the moment you can make three or four caravan runs and have enough to pursue the plot and combat, which means there's still an economic factor but it's not an intrusive distraction. One of the more common complaints regarding Warband was that players were too distracted by the need to make money (particularly in the late game).

This is all true, but I think they should have solved the late game money problem by simply increasing the amount you get from prosperous villages/towns taxes and keeping the balance of wealth you get from trading/looting/raiding/etc. When you get to a point in the game where you actually own enough fiefs that you are getting serious income from them, then you are also at a point where you are playing to conquer land and castles and aren't interested in doing trading, looting, other small time activities.

In this case, i think they wanted you to get a lot of money early in order to get into the storylines at an earlier time.

 

[Mavkiel]

By the same token though it's impossible to prevent the player grinding their wealth value to whatever they want while retaining the trading system. The balancing factor is really time more than anything else; you could in fact grind your wealth up without caravans simply by trading the individual items for however long it takes you to accumulate a given level of wealth. The only thing stopping it is the presumption that doing so would be less fun than the alternative things you could be doing.

I wouldn't say it's trivialising the economy so much as streamlining it. Economics isn't the focus or appeal of the game, at the moment you can make three or four caravan runs and have enough to pursue the plot and combat, which means there's still an economic factor but it's not an intrusive distraction. One of the more common complaints regarding Warband was that players were too distracted by the need to make money (particularly in the late game).

Hate to disagree with you on every point but I do

It does trivialize the economy because there is no, read no risk involved in creating an obscene amount of wealth. Your never targeted by more bandits, factions never demand tribute(or taxes if you want to call it that).

You say economics isnt the focus or appeal of the game, I disagree. Anyone can win a battle, but holding onto your turf? That requires being able to balance your armies and your budget.

"there is no way to prevent players from grinding wealth". I disagree, you can up the chances of larger bands of bandits noticing you. If I am carrying around 1mil in gold I'd think some bandits would work together to rob me. Hell at that point you'd think actual faction lords might take an interest in you. Make you pay a foreigner tax (If your not a member of their faction).

Also they could make storing your wealth in cities potentially dangerous(Preventing people from living off the interest). If an enemy faction takes the cities they have x chance of looking the Merchants guild. It'd make spreading the wealth around far more attractive.

Alternatively, they could keep track of how much cash your making, and give the ai some gold to play with to simulate the boost to their economies. That might actually make the Khans kick everyones butt when those velvets sell well

 

[Semper_Ducimus]

Try a caravan run without your powerful party in tow, just you and the caravan. If you want a challenge, there can be one. The game will be easy if you make it so. Or really just use a mod to play this on Nightmare mode when a balance mod comes out.

On the same token, if one finds things too easy, they could ramp up the games difficulty settings if they haven't already done so.