Caravans should be safe income source or not?

Should caravans be safe money sources like current design?

  • They should be sometimes get caught and destroyed

    Votes: 234 81.0%
  • No, they should be safe income source

    Votes: 55 19.0%

  • Total voters
    289

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Their current speed is kinda insane if you think about what a caravan is supposed to be. If they get engaged in the first place, it's because of bad IA movement, because no army can catch up with them.
An army on the march isn't the fastest thing in the world either.
 
Their current speed is kinda insane if you think about what a caravan is supposed to be. If they get engaged in the first place, it's because of bad IA movement, because no army can catch up with them.

And even if you catch up with them, you actually need some good army to defeat them (because of their archers numbers).

So i'd say they need to tone down their speed a bit, OR make them less defended (because right now no bandit can attack a caravan).

I never have issues going faster than caravans. Then again, I keep extra horses in my inventory - one for every man minimum.
And there are bandits who can attack caravans, but mostly bandits with cavalry. Also, looters are too weak to take on a caravan in general, they have decent troops, as they should have. Who in their right mind ever sent off a caravan unguarded? Think.
 
Prefer them to be relatively safe, rather than risk making them irrelevant by having them get destroyed too often.

Can see this being a difficult thing to balance, and very prone to breaking if things like bandits or the battle-auto-resolver need to change.
 
I'm just going to point out that economically there's not even much reason for the AI to want to destroy an enemy's caravans if they're traveling through their lands; they're still improving the economy of that region by being there. They're bringing in the supplies that that fief needs and they're buying up the garbage that they want to sell.

Same thing goes for sniping enemy caravans. It's not always a good idea.
 
I think caravans are balanced atm.

1. Are they so safe? You can lose your caravan if there are wars. Town business is a lot safer than caravans. From the other hand, caravans should be stronger than bandits - or why they need so much caravan guards? Bandist are bandits, if they are so strong they could become a clan and do diplomacy.

2. Is the profit they make is so good? Definitely no. You can do a lot better by trading yourself. You can earn so much money by just rolling aroung and purchasing anything that is green and selling everything that is red. If you can remember approximate prices of livestock - you are a millionaire. Also, compared to town business, that could be just sold for a lot higher price, you earn nothing from disbanding the caravan.

3. So, are they OP? Again - No. I could agree with you if caravan could exist without using one of my companions. Because it is really hard to choose, if I want to lose another companion, that could do quests for me/lead army/do blacksmithing. Also caravans are expenive, so they are not an absolute decision. There are pros and cons.
 
What if destruction of caravans is made more rare and instead of that, many bandits and lords will demand the caravan to pay a toll. (player can do this in warband but AI never did it, but now that even AI has gold count, this would be useful).
After the toll, the companion of a player is safe, and his caravan that he spent 15K on is saved, but either the caravan or the player is loosing gold because of many bandits who are constantly demanding tolls, this means that player has time to "clear" out the area without ruining his investment or more importantly, loosing his companion.
Notables would be forced to disband their caravans because they can no longer afford tolls so economy still gets damaged.
Optionally this is a possible way to rework the mission "escort caravan" where a notable is getting close to disbanding a caravan, but you the player can help him recover by escorting the caravan to a few towns like in the quest.
I think overall this toll system is a good way to bring back a feature from warband but also fix this whole system where your caravans aren't being destroyed or it's too frustrating when being destroyed, but are just going bankrupt, and it makes sense logicly because you harass caravans for money or to weaken a region, not to kill people (unless they are approached by those sadistic lords of course).
 
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Im all for them being attacked from time to time , but it gets annoying to find the companion and go to talk to a merchant all over again when it gets destroyed (happened to me today with one of my caravans)


if they stagnate for a couple of weeks then continue working on their own, Im good with it. Maybe reset their extra capital when they get raided ?‍♂️
 
For the people saying that caravans are too safe of an investment or simply have never had their caravans destroyed. It is worth remembering that just because you have never experienced it does not automatically mean it is a rare occurrence. You could very easily just be very lucky while someone else is very unlucky.

Caravans are fine as they are as far and risk vs reward goes. They are able to reliably travel around and do their job but occasionally will get destroyed by enemy armies during times of especially high risk like war.

I'd personally hate it if I had to constantly babysit my caravans by rushing to their aid due to random events or if I could expect to have to re-create my caravans on a consistent basis. At that point I'd just buy a workshop or two inside my faction's towns that I know are a 100% safe form of passive income that I'll only lose if an enemy manages to take a major city in a war.

Caravans should remain self sufficient and should remain a simple source of passive income. If you want to add more bells and whistles to it like planning trade routes to enrich the trader experience that is fine, but not to nerf caravans just because they worked out a little too well for your liking.

Especially since not all of us want to farm looters well into mid-game because it is the only viable source of income left.
 
I want to make caravans more desired targets so that bandits and minor mercenary faction lords

caravans attacks should be similar to what the player can do:

- destroy to loot it
- demand money from it (player loses the daily profits this way, but caravan can recover)
- attack the caravan and some survive/escape. Player can decide to reinveste (hire new guards and products for like 5-10k) or disband it.
- demand to sell products (mostly by lords). It makes the caravan sell at a loss (cheaper price than if it went to the destination).

and so on. Makes the caravan profit less stable. If this system applies to all caravans (not just player's) it would make the world more dynamic, the idea to hunt down bandits more important, etc.

caravans also should be better at choosing routes in order to avoid enemy factions. Avoid going to close to enemy border and also avoid regions where are rumors of a enemy army. Currently the AI just toss caravans on the war path in a suicide move.
 
They seem to be quite situational already. Not once have I lost a caravan a week after it was created, losing 10k-ish denars in the process.

If anything, they should be made slower. Right now they're too fast for any party in the game to chase them down. It even allows them to run right through enemy lines uncontested
 
I wonder what you think about one issue related to caravan's current situation.

Currently caravans are nearly 100% safe money source. You build your caravan and it buy some cheap stuff then sell them in next destinations. It buys cheap and try to sell expensive again and again. After some time (like 10-15 days) their capital passes initial limit (10K) and you start to get profit from them. Caravans are currently so cautious and fast they are nearly always ignored by enemies. Also bandits are generally weaker compared to them. This results in player gaining 0.8K daily from one caravan as average until party is disbanded by player. Caravan's party wage is about 0.2K. This means one caravan make 0.6K profit daily in average.

As summary to create a caravan you pay 15K and in one year you get 50K, in two years 100K and this goes on... If there is no extraordinary situation.

I think this situation is not a good design because caravans are currently obviously OP and player has no fear of losing them. This results in caravans to be a stable game element. There are nearly none caravan involved battle in map and this create lack of variety. I want to make caravans more desired targets so that bandits and minor mercenary faction lords (which player is in war with) will attack caravans even they are a bit weaker compared to it or even they are a bit far. So this will result in losing your caravan time to time (more than current situation). Of course this should not be very common. In average once in a year player can lose his/her caravan.

What do you think about this development idea? I know caravan owners will be a bit disturbed however we are trying to make game more exciting.

You can make 50k a day at some point by beating enemy lords, ransoming them and selling their loot. Caravan makes peanuts compared to that (though it's nice to have a positive daily turnover).

What I would like to see instead of having caravans more lucrative targets for bandits is AI caravans competing with your own so that yours will not be able to turn a profit so easily. You would have to be protectionist to make your caravans work for you in the long run - either by actually raiding other caravans or if you're a ruler/town owner then by applying tariffs and trade embargoes - which should also be reciprocated by other lords and rulers.

For that however, the economic aspect of the game has to be fleshed out.
 
To all the ones saying they are balanced, you guys dont seem to have used one yet...
Right now my caravans are pulling in 1.8k eachday, this is way way too much they earn themselves in just a few days and never losses.
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So i would say they should die sometimes and as someone mentioned maybe make it easier to make the caravans somehow without breaking immersion, maybe send a messenger to a companion when they are back in a tavern. This will give them the money to make a caravan again. Maybe also make it so the higher trading they have the better they are at earning money, AI wise also. Better at buying and selling and so on. For me above its Hikhara the swift that has trading skill, but as its seen she is the one bringing the lowest amount of money. They should also gain levels from trading if its possible.

Hope this helps, im having alot of fun with this game :grin:
 
I am going to chip in my opinion aswell.
I know @mexxico said that he is not looking for komplex solutions, so I will start by saying that i am all in favor of Caravans getting raided.

However here a two suggestions:

Give us control over the caravan

Basically give us the option to tell the caravan where it can and mustn't go like one a week or month.
That way we can reduce the risk of getting raided by an enemy faction.

A raided caravan should trigger a quest

When your caravan is destroyed and you meet up with the forme caravan leader he should give us the quest to hunt down the bandits that raided him.
That way the player could save atleast some of the gold and good the caravan was packing.
 
Caravans should have a risk, a high one at that but also a high pay out. To have a safe income source would be to make the end game what is now, me walking around with almost 100K denars without even trying. Now, if we are to make caravans weak to attacks by bandits and so on, and I say this while not knowing what is the simulation behind this, I hope we get some proper patrol features to deal with the copious amounts of bandits on the territories that keep villagers and some caravans on the run.
 
To all the ones saying they are balanced, you guys dont seem to have used one yet...
Right now my caravans are pulling in 1.8k eachday, this is way way too much they earn themselves in just a few days and never losses.
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So i would say they should die sometimes and as someone mentioned maybe make it easier to make the caravans somehow without breaking immersion, maybe send a messenger to a companion when they are back in a tavern. This will give them the money to make a caravan again. Maybe also make it so the higher trading they have the better they are at earning money, AI wise also. Better at buying and selling and so on. For me above its Hikhara the swift that has trading skill, but as its seen she is the one bringing the lowest amount of money. They should also gain levels from trading if its possible.

Hope this helps, im having alot of fun with this game :grin:
I was just going to mention how much I make from my caravans, that pic about sums it up. When you make enough cash to fund another caravan in 2 DAYS then you're obviously pulling in way too much from them. If there was a profit range between 400 and 1600 depending on a companions trade skill that would be much better because you aren't going to have 4 master merchants with 200 trade raking in 6400 gold (and if you did gratz on your trade empire because youve earned it)
 
Rather have you worry about other stuff atm. The caravans are fine atm. If you smart you keep an eye on what kind of cool mod is gonna change the caravans and implement that.
 
With the recent nerf to caravans I feel there is no value in them at all. You pay a lot of $ to start the caravan, I had one after 1 week of negative $ it was attacked and I lost the caravan and companion shows up in a tavern to be recruited back into party. I should not have to pay another 15K to form another caravan.
 
With the recent nerf to caravans I feel there is no value in them at all. You pay a lot of $ to start the caravan, I had one after 1 week of negative $ it was attacked and I lost the caravan and companion shows up in a tavern to be recruited back into party. I should not have to pay another 15K to form another caravan.

I agree with you there, it makes Caravans rather redundant, 30 was a bit too much of a nerf, 50 would have been a better number for caravans to avoid special bandits.
 
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