Economy Changes with 1.8 and onwards

Users who are viewing this thread

Great stuff!

That said I have been hooked to trading since Warband, one of the main things I see missing is more pronounce regional trade goods. For example Furs/leather from the north, spices from the south, silks from the east, and oil from the imperial lands. This created viable trade routes and I feel like this has never made its way into Bannerlord properly. I should be able to buy spices (we need this trade good) in the south or silks in the east and be able to get sick profits in the north or west (Vlandian lands).

Caravans - Having caravans should also provide passive trade experience, it was in the description they did this plus it would be worth the risk.

Guilds - Maybe down the road there can be trade guilds and trade guild membership. Maybe this could be a requirement to start a caravan or to own a workshop. It is too easy to start up an enterprise/trading company. Maybe a minimum trade level and fee is required to join the guild before the player can buy a workshop or start a caravan.

Anyways those are my thoughts and keep up the great work!
Thats nice idea!
 
@cuce Thanks! Exciting to see how lower supply (and higher demand) will make player efforts to move goods across Calradia more interesting.

One concern: What about the potential for more frequent city starvation? If, generally, demand (i.e. city consumption rate) is up and supply is lower, isn't there a risk of constant city shrinkage from starvation, garrison deterioration from lack of food, etc. in so far as that lower-supply-higher-demand dynamic affects food goods? I'm sure you've considered this - just curious as to your approach.
not much of a risk there. Didnt change grain production that much. in fact caravans willing to trade with less potential profit means they are diffusing grain more.
 
I have noticed some of the towns start out having 2 of the same workshops. What effects might this have on the town's economy?

Also, on a random note, do you know if there will be new quests relating to increasing workshop production and profit?

I can't wait until your new economic changes are implemented into the game.
 
Great stuff!

That said I have been hooked to trading since Warband, one of the main things I see missing is more pronounce regional trade goods. For example Furs/leather from the north, spices from the south, silks from the east, and oil from the imperial lands. This created viable trade routes and I feel like this has never made its way into Bannerlord properly. I should be able to buy spices (we need this trade good) in the south or silks in the east and be able to get sick profits in the north or west (Vlandian lands).

Caravans - Having caravans should also provide passive trade experience, it was in the description they did this plus it would be worth the risk.

Guilds - Maybe down the road there can be trade guilds and trade guild membership. Maybe this could be a requirement to start a caravan or to own a workshop. It is too easy to start up an enterprise/trading company. Maybe a minimum trade level and fee is required to join the guild before the player can buy a workshop or start a caravan.

Anyways those are my thoughts and keep up the great work!
It would be great if once regional goods are implemented, you could set town destinations for your caravans under the party management screen to create and protect your trade routes.
 
there was an unintended change parallel to main economy changes that caused workshops to double up at some game starts. we are looking at it.
 
there was an unintended change parallel to main economy changes that caused workshops to double up at some game starts. we are looking at it.

It has been this way for a while. In all of my 1.7.2 games (both beta and stable) Phycaon regularly had two breweries, Baltakhand 2 wool weaveries and Balgard two tanneries. There may well have been others, I think.

And going back a few patches Quyaz used to regularly spawn with two oil presses.

So just to clarify are you saying that this was meant to be changed in 1.8.0 but somehow it got reverted to the old behaviour?
 
Two workshops of the same kind are currently rookie numbers :xf-wink: I don't know if it is intended but in my current game (started in 1.8.0) I got three smithies in the same city or three pottery shops.
 
did the economy effect fief purchasing and noble recruiting, I had 25 million and couldnt get a guy with a town and castle, someone just showed it cost him 424 million to buy a castle from someone. decimal point get moved in the code???
 
Village Daily Production Changes



Ironmine 12 -> 10
very bad move, I have posted quite a few times on the forums how smithy's are really bad since iron ore is taken my caravans constantly making smithy go idle for long periods of time which is why smithy make even less than in 1.7.2. Iron ore situation needs to be solved nad making less has made it worse since a single village can never produce enough ore for a smithy to run full time, even Epicrotea that has 2 still can't run full time. The ore consumed needs to be lowered dramatically at least or they will never be profitable like other shops, and they might need more work than that.
 
smithy iron consumption is halved, while output is kept same
right but villages production was lowered also. I am not sure if you know but I do a workshop video every patch to test profits and workshops are still very low, 4 in the entire land able to make over 100 a day on average. Much lower than almost any shop. If I could suggest lowering the iron consumption rate just a little but more for beta and let me test again while we are on beta and I can get you the numbers and it can be changed back or altered more. I would love to get this worked on while its in beta and would do the testing for you and give you the results. But that is my suggestion is lowering it just a bit more. Maybe drop to 1 instead of 1.5 and let me test again and see if we can nail it down before it goes to live branch.
 
is it worth testing anything right now with the shop-generation bugs? Right now my Askar starting shops: Brewery, Brewery, Brewery. In Epicrotea the starting shops are: Woodworker, Woodworker, Woodworker (no wood inputs). I haven't seen a silversmith anywhere (yet) and in 1085 the green (profitable) purchase price for jewelry is almost 1,000 denars.

I think the economy is mostly broken right now, and it's probably not worth trying to engage with (either via controlled testing or testing strategy in-games) until a fix is released.
 
is it worth testing anything right now with the shop-generation bugs? Right now my Askar starting shops: Brewery, Brewery, Brewery. In Epicrotea the starting shops are: Woodworker, Woodworker, Woodworker (no wood inputs). I haven't seen a silversmith anywhere (yet) and in 1085 the green (profitable) purchase price for jewelry is almost 1,000 denars.

I think the economy is mostly broken right now, and it's probably not worth trying to engage with (either via controlled testing or testing strategy in-games) until a fix is released.
my testing it done at day 300 when the economy stabilizes, which they devs say about 5 years in is when its good. the natural 3 making a lot are brewery, silversmith and tannery. I even did some testing 500 days in with similar results but by that time inflation is starting so I feel very confident on my data or I wouldn't post the video.
 
my testing it done at day 300 when the economy stabilizes, which they devs say about 5 years in is when its good. the natural 3 making a lot are brewery, silversmith and tannery. I even did some testing 500 days in with similar results but by that time inflation is starting so I feel very confident on my data or I wouldn't post the video.
Thanks for the quick reply! :
Next question for you (and @cuce):
Should shops be designed to be solvable? With the current system, every patch there will be the 'best' shops. Players just check Flesson's youtube and buy the most profitable shop. Sure, there might be some variance, but not enough to be meaningful to a campaign.


Maybe each shop should produce similar 'value' but have different pros and cons. Examples:
Silver: Very high startup cost, consistent strong profits
Velvet: Very high startup cost, highest average profits, but income is very variable
Tannery: Average startup cost, average profits
Beer: Very low startup cost, least profit


The current workshop system is always going to create 'best' shops. Moving shop-choice to be a strategy based on what the player wants the shop to do might offer a higher variety of gameplay. Having access to cheaper shops (10-15k) would also feel better for new and casual players that want to easily establish some passive income.
 
Salutations merchants of Calradia


We have been working on some changes regarding the economy of Calradia for some time. With the new patch we can finally share those changes with you.

So we wanted to take this opportunity to share the changes as well as the reasons, rationale and limitations behind them.


To properly explain where the changes came from we need to start with the existing problems.

First of all `economy` in this sense is about trade goods, caravans and workshops so mostly trade. Equipment wages and loot values are a separate topic. Surely it is still related but they are sequestered enough to be handled separately to a decent degree.

So what are the primary issues we thought we should prioritize?

  • Over stocking of trade goods in towns. This is the mother of all problems. Its causes are many but its effects are more.
    • With abundance of trade goods in town markets, price index drops to very low.
    • Its not only about a single trade good being in stock in huge quantities, but also every trade good being available in pretty much every town in about 5 years.
  • Low profit margins. Low price index means profit margins are low as well.
  • Caravans and workshops have limited potential profits.
  • Workshop variety has limited effect.
  • Variety between town markets is not high, making the game world less interesting.
  • Market homogeneity limiting trade opportunities, limiting how much profit player can make as the games goes on.
  • With limited profits Trade skill xp gain is also curbed severely, making it harder than intended to increase trade skill.
  • Trade gameplay in general is less rewarding even for making money compared to more mainstream methods.



So what are the changes?
In summary:

  • Demand for trade goods increased…
    • Simply put, demand is based on the prosperity of the town multiplied by demand value for a certain good.
    • In some cases they are up 3-4 times more, so towns simply consume more trade goods.
  • Luxury demands are reintroduced
    • We have a luxury demand system in the game, but values were adjusted through the early access to make it moot. We brought the values back.
    • Difference with luxury and base demand values is, luxury demand only kicks in after town reaches a certain prosperity value.
  • Production of villages are adjusted
  • Workshop production volume and efficiency are adjusted
  • Value for various trade goods are adjusted
  • Expenses for workshop are drastically increased
  • Some trade goods are not produced by artisans anymore and will only be produced in their respective workshops.
  • The amount of production simulated at the game start is reduced to 5 days from 20
  • Workshop production only cycles in case of possible profit instead of always.



So what these changes mean when they are all put together?

  • With supply and demand more in line with each other, over stocking in markets is much more rare.
  • This means the price indices are as low as possible 5 years into the game.
    • This is the primary change and we built the rest of the changes on top of this.
    • With traveling around the world, buying and selling is still viable even into very late game. Trader gameplay is more viable.
    • Trade skill exp is gained from making profits from trading. So you will be able to gain trade skill even later into the game.
    • When traveling around the map and visiting towns, you will now see different markets with different inventories and prices, actually making it more fun to trade.
    • With the amount of trade goods in the market being much more limited, we also made it so that various events like raids and sieges have a much bigger impact on the prices and availability in a market.
      • You can visit a town right after a long siege and see it in want of anything you might provide.
      • Or raiding all the villages of same produce you can affect the prices to a much more recognizable degree
    • This change also emphasizes the trading style of traveling the land visiting many towns on the way and making various trades along the way and trying to recognize and catch opportunities, instead of doing big trade runs from 1 destination to another.
  • Luxury demands
    • With the reintroduction of luxury demands you can also rely on your knowledge of the prosperity of towns to figure out where you should sell those goods.
      • You can sell grain or hardwood pretty much anywhere, but if you landed some cheap jewelry or silk you should go to a big and rich town to find some market for it.
    • Another advantage is, overall prosperity values increase in the game as time passes. So certain trade goods and workshops that have limited trade and profit potential can start to be more valuable later into the game.
  • Caravans and Workshops
    • Caravans
      • We made some changes to caravan trade behavior. Caravans were in general acting too safe when deciding on what to buy. With price indexes more varied instead of rock bottom, we had the chance to get them to take more risk.
      • Caravans now make better use of animals of burden, increasing their carry capacity thus their profits
      • Lastly, simply trading being more profitable means caravans are more profitable.
    • Workshops
      • Again, more profits mean making more money for workshops.
      • With heterogeneity of trade goods, it is more important to make correct decisions on where and what kind of workshop to buy.
      • With trade goods being abundant, the amount of raw materials consumed by workshops were not making a dent in the supply and did not affect the prices. Now even if we didn't increase their consumption, a town with a smithy will have higher prices for iron ore.
      • Workshops have always had daily expenses, and we were relying on this expense mechanic for AI controlled workshops to go out of business, and opening different kinds of workshops in their stead. Both balancing out the economy and also making it more lively.
        • With their profit being limited, the expenses were lowered quite a bit as well. Which meant that it would take a workshop to not make a single denar of profit for around 14 years straight to go out of business.
        • Now that workshops have much better profits, meaning we have more room to bite into and increase the daily expenses.
        • This allowed us to get AI controlled workshops to cycle as we intended.
      • This will also make players have to think a bit more, since workshops can actually run a deficit now.
        • Pretty sure you will figure out the ideal workshop in no time, but still it's an improvement.
      • With demand increasing, and since it ‘s multiplied with prosperity, we thought it would be better to increase the price of workshops according to town prosperity even more. In fact it is the bigger part of the price now, and it pays off.
      • Another advantage is that some workshops, specifically ones producing luxury goods are much more profitable at late game.



What we want to do next?

Well of course we are going to tweak pretty much everything through your feedback. Beyond that there are still some points we want to adress. One of them is supply and demand is not increasing in comparable degree as time passes in the game. Village productions increase to a degree according to their hearth value but with workshop productions being static it is manufactured goods are shooting up in prices. We had previous plans with workshops, and in time we are looking for ways to improve overall experience and give players some degree of managing them.
Another point that we still want to handle is dynamism. Both from month to month in a single game and between new game starts. There have been improvements in both with these changes but we want to push it further.


Both me and other developers in the team will be in the thread for any questions or suggestions and feedback in general. I hope you enjoy the changes.

Have fun.



Detailed change log is below


Demand Value Changes (base demand,luxury demand)

Grain 100,0 -> 140,0

Fish 32,0 -> 15,15

Meat 36,12 -> 19,50

Cheese 21,7->10,20

Butter 12,4 -> 10,25

Grape 9,3 -> 5,20

Olives 12,4 -> 5,20

DateFruit 12,4 -> 7,32

Oil 15,5 -> 17,30

Flax 10,0 -> 10,20

Linen 30,10 -> 20,25

Wool 12,0 -> 12,0

Cloth 12,6 -> 12,6

Cotton 8,2 -> 10,3

Velvet 14,7 -> 15,32

Wood 4,0 -> 10,10

Iron 3,0 -> 10,20

Salt 15,5 -> 25,25

Silver 8,4 ->10,20

Hides 33,11 -> 30,15

Clay 16,0 ->8,5

Beer 39, 13 -> 23,20

Wine 9,3 -> 15,30

Tools 30,10 -> 30,30

Pottery 15,5 -> 22,20

Leather 20,10->25,10

Fur 20,10 -> 10,38

Jewelry 24,12 -> 15,32



Base Value Changes

Jewelry 300 ->600

Cotton 70 ->80

Clay 20 ->18

Pottery 100 ->200

Linen 90 ->200

Leather 200 ->250

Velvet 250 ->500

Beer 50 ->100

Wine 100 ->75

Oil 120 ->210

Fur 120 ->400 (fur weight 15 ->10)

Tools 100 -> 200

Hides 60 ->50


Workshop Expenses

-The daily expense value should be the same for the player and AI.

-Workshop daily expense have been increased from 20 to 100 denars.

Workshop Conversion Speed And Output Values (conversion speed is how many production runs a workshop makes in a day, output count is the amount of good a workshop produces in a production run)

-Brewery
Conversion speed 8->3.5
Output count 1->2

-Velvet weavery
Conversion speed 2->0.75
Output count 1->2

-Linen weavery
Conversion speed 4->2
Output count 1->2

-Wine press
Conversion speed 5->2.5
Output count 1->2

-Pottery shop
Conversion speed 4->2
Output count 1->2

-Olive press
Conversion speed 5->2.5
Output count 1->2

-Wool weavery
Conversion speed 2->1
Output count 1->2

-Tannery
Conversion speed 2->1
Output count 1->2

-Wood Workshop
Conversion speed 5->2.5
Output count 1->2

-Smithy
Conversion speed 3->1.5
Output count 2->4

-Silversmith
Conversion speed 1->0.75
Output count 2->2


Overall workshop produce roughly the same amount of goods but consume less raw materials.


Frequency Changes:

-Tannery and brewery frequencies =1

-Increased other workshop frequencies to 2

-Frequency affects the workshop types chosen at the start of the game, this is a simple balancing change.


Artisan Production

Artisans won't produce the trade goods below

-Linen
-Beer
-Leather
-Jewelry

Before game start production

-Number of village production cycles before game start was decreased from 20 to 5

-Number of workshop production cycles before game start was decreased from 20 to 5


Village Daily Production Changes

Grain 45 -> 50

Lumberjack 20 -> 18

Claymine 20 -> 10

Saltmine 12 -> 15

Ironmine 12 -> 10

Fisherman 32 -> 28

Vineyard 20 -> 11

Flaxplant 24 ->18

DateFarm 10 -> 8

OliveTrees 16 -> 12

SilkPlant 6 -> 8

SilverMine 4 -> 3

Trapper 5 -> 1.4


Price Control Changes: We added price control to workshop behavior. With this change, a workshop will not make a production run if it's not going to be profitable or break even with local market prices.

These changes won't be applied to the artisans or equipment production of workshops and they will continue their productions regardless or profits.
Hi, looking forward to trying out the new economy system.
I am hoping in an update to see an inventory system for owned workshops so you can drop needed supplies to them rather than your supplies being used or bought by town or other traders.
 
my testing it done at day 300 when the economy stabilizes, which they devs say about 5 years in is when its good.
@cuce is there a way to speed up the stabilizing phase of the economy? Currently the start of a new character is more difficult than before. Usually all produced goods are too expensive to buy and sell. Later, about 100 days in, Jewelry and Velvet are more or less worthless to trade as the sell and buy price will stabilize around 300 denars.

Maybe raise the simulated days at the start of the game. 20 from before the patch may be too much, but 5 is IMHO not enough for a viable start. I hope this would lead to a smoother starting experience.
 
Should shops be designed to be solvable? With the current system, every patch there will be the 'best' shops. Players just check Flesson's youtube and buy the most profitable shop. Sure, there might be some variance, but not enough to be meaningful to a campaign.
This is kinda not true, and also kinda true but for a different reason than you say.

Campaign-to-campaign differences are actually pretty big. Especially things like Hearth and Prosperity, which depends on war and raids and sieges, can affect prices a lot - and there's a big difference between a 350g/d brewery and a 500g/d oil press. And in the medium term, shifting control of castles can hugely shift the number of villages that bring goods to any given town, affecting inputs.

The problem; and it's the same reason people turn to third party analysis in order to just copy a meta; is that the player can't experiment.

Workshops are expensive to buy, pricey to change type, and sell for a pittance. You can only have a couple at once, especially at clan tier 3-4. And the only way to know what a potential workshop will bring in is to build it! So maybe in my campaign, an oil press in Jaculan will be >500g/d consistently, many years into the game. But maybe in your game it'll only be 200g/d. You have to go waste the gold, using one of your 4 or 5 slots, to find out - and then you have to repeat that for every workshop, times every city; and don't forget that the workshops you make can even affect the profits of the others. So the number of options is huge, the reward/penalty for choosing right/wrong are large, but the player is given extremely limited information and it's both costly and difficult to experiment. As a result, the meta is that players flock towards whatever is proven to work in any campaign, relying on outside information to make up for the lack of in-game information.

I don't come bringing a magic bullet solution for this problem, but if you want players to make more diverse and/or campaign-specific choices, you need to give them more in-game information. Whether that's being able to see AI workshop profits, or seeing an estimated profit when changing workshop type, or something else altogether, I dunno.
 
yeah the economy has been a disaster for me. As I do the caravan and workshop videos, the profits from day 50 to 250 to 500 and beyond change a lot, as silversmiths from day 1 can make 700-1300 a day but by day 300 they can be down to 300-400 so trying to nail down what's best has been really difficult and trying to give "good" advice in my videos is so tough as it feels the game has almost 4o or 5 different phases of the economy and workshop/caravan income
 
For me it just feels random, it may have reasons that workshop X only makes profit Y but it´s not clear. It´s not worth it to investigate too, just change production until it makes "enough" profit.

I think it´s not worth investing time to make a workshop "work" (clear area of bandits and stuff like this).

But as long as the main income in Bannerlord is loot it also doesn´t really matter. When you need the workshop (early game) they´re too expensive and too risky to lose. When you can afford them you already make like 10k+ denars each battle so it doesn´t really matter if your 4-5 workshops make 1000 or 2000 denars combined.
 
That said I have been hooked to trading since Warband, one of the main things I see missing is more pronounce regional trade goods. For example Furs/leather from the north, spices from the south, silks from the east, and oil from the imperial lands. This created viable trade routes and I feel like this has never made its way into Bannerlord properly. I should be able to buy spices (we need this trade good) in the south or silks in the east and be able to get sick profits in the north or west (Vlandian lands).

Not only should we have these, but there should be workshops that either produce these from lower-level inputs, or use some of these as the basis of other goods. Right now, according to some of the Youtubers that have been testing out the 1.8 changes (chiefly Flesson19), there's still a meta for workshops: breweries. Everywhere. While it's good that workshops now give more of a return, and all the work on the economy is appreciated, it's still kind of boring to have the best workshop for a town be the same all over Calradia. It'd be nice if different towns had different workshops, depending on the goods they sell. It would give some more variety to the game. It also might help Sturgia out, because, according to these same Youtubers, workshops in Sturgian towns don't produce as much as workshops elsewhere.
 
Back
Top Bottom