1.2 workshops broken? What am I missing?

[Euryanax]

Trying 1.2 and though I like a lot of the changes, workshops have got me stumped. They used to be a viable way of offsetting the rising cost of your growing clan. Though I've only been playing for a couple hours my first workshop has yet to make a dime.

What am I missing? I see you can now place raw goods in a warehouse. How much do I need to collect to start earning a profit? A wool weavery in Khuzait lands used to be a solid money-maker. Are they now dead? What workshops should I be focusing on?

Any input would be appreciated.

 

[RJ_Sera]

TW creating the warehouse, and in order to make it work the workshops are now make less income to take the place for that new feature to shine, a passive income things nerf to the make you become "material shipper"

 

[SudianX]

I loaded up on grapes to fill a warehouse at a winery (in Vlandia). One pass through half the villages on the way there netted me 350+ grapes, and that is going down at 2.5 grapes per day (I do not have the +% workshop production perk yet). In my experience so far, it is much more micromanagement to manually sell the goods as opposed to manually stock the inputs.

I am also trying an olive press at the same time (also in Vlandia).
I spent quite a bit of time buying out competitors (changing the type of workshop, then selling it back) only to find the profit wavering between 300s and 400s per day for each (after spending over 300k).

I also do not see any difference in profits between the winery (with stocked grapes) and an olive press (with no olives stocked). I plan to stock the olives so I can do a before-and-after comparison with itself.

Oddly enough: I had to buyout a ton of olive presses in Sturgian lands as part of the monopoly setup Did those pop up after I had bought out all the ones in the expected places (Vlandia and Aserai) and improved the profitability of them? I did not check before starting, but this does not bode well...

I get the bad feeling that some competition will pop right back up in the next couple of in-game years, long before breaking even on the scheme

As it is: I own the only winery and the only olive press in all of Calradia, and the merchant caravans cannot cart the stuff away quickly enough for my workshops to go over 500 per day in profits.

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

I get the bad feeling that some competition will pop right back up in the next couple of in-game years, long before breaking even on the scheme

As it is: I own the only winery and the only olive press in all of Calradia, and the merchant caravans cannot cart the stuff away quickly enough for my workshops to go over 500 per day in profits.

I was sweating too, at first, but the money gets insane stupid fast. You should be making ~800-1,200 per day off the Oil (and similar for Wine, I'm guessing) within a season--it takes a bit for the prices to go up but, once it does, you'll make back the several hundreds of thousands you spent within a couple seasons and then it's pure profit from there.

You will have to shut down resurgent competition but, if you pick a shop that's kinda sorta okay fo the locality (I got this idea from Strat Gaming on YouTube), it'll delay the shop's reversion to whatever you don't want it to be by a couple years.

You should be a millionaire within ~5 years of doing this, if not a multi-millionaire. I recommend holding 25% of the supply so you can sell it abroad for 500-1,000+ per unit per town visited (also a great opportunity to make sure no new competitors emerge as well).

EDIT: Having learned the hard way, I do not recommend going crazy on Trade since I ultimately had to use a cheat code to get 300 since it was mathematically impossible for my 7 Social character to get that number and he was going to cap at 282. Not to mention, fiefs go from 1.5-~10 million denars each so it's far more efficient to piggyback off of an existing faction as a noble or seize power in a neutral town by force. This is a tangent, but it's something I am inclined to share since, if you're making crazy money from trade, you might have thought about going all the way to 300 Trade to get Everything Has a Price.

I strongly counter-recommend it; it's a waste of time and potentially impossible if you didn't optimize your character for it with 9-10 Social by level 21 or so.

 

[SudianX]

I think manually storing raw input ingredients does increase profits. My olive press went above 600 per day after I stocked it with olives.

I think.

If Yoshioki is correct, maybe my profits were still heading upwards anyways, as it may take upwards of an in-game year to ramp up the monopoly profits

Off topic:
I have done the Everything Has a Price before. My last game before the new patch, in fact, I only ever bought fiefs and never offensively sieged. It was fun playing defensive siege after defensive siege (using the siege engine destroying ambush mechanic) and never using cavalry on open field battles. It was rather sad to watch 1000+ man armies murder my villagers, but fun to watch them helplessly crash onto my walls I had beaten back the entire Vlandian and Battanian armies with only my single clan in my one little town at first. Pretty hilarious. (I made all the $$$ with smithing, not trade.)

Having used that perk twice now has got me wondering: what does the game do with absurdly rich AI clans? They never naturally have anything close to the 8-11 million I leave them with, and they always seem to be struggling when they have a ton of cash but no fiefs. The first game I used it (took over the whole map with that one ) the first town I bought was Provend, followed by the castle from the same clan, and within weeks I found the fief-less clan leader I purchased it from with a party of 15 troops wandering around sadly. I was easily able to convince him to be the first clan to join my brand new kingdom and get his castle back. He never seemed to do anything with the huge pile of cash. Maybe I was just to impatient to notice what he did with it over the years compared to all of my other vassals...

Back on topic:
I have also added a silversmith, storing the output in the warehouse. I get a little bit of trade XP when storing the goods, but they are not marked as "bought" so I receive no XP when manually selling them elsewhere.

The purchasing merchants look at it, see my personal company stamp on the bottom, still assume I murdered someone for it and give me no trade XP Here I was imagining the skill gains would be huge if the "purchase price" was recorded as the cost of the raw input ingredients. Silly me.

 

[SudianX]

Update: the olive press did get up to the 800s briefly, but the winery does not go above 600s (daily profit). I wonder if there is another winery or two somewhere that I missed...

<I did get trade skill to 300 this morning. With 8 points in social, it was quite painful No descendants in this playthrough will use it, nor probably any other character in the foreseeable future. I was hoping the warehouses would help gain this skill faster, but no.>

 

[anoddhermit]

I think manually storing raw input ingredients does increase profits. My olive press went above 600 per day after I stocked it with olives.

I think.

I think it can, but it depends on the situation. There's a perk that increases output which used to reduce profits for some goods because it just flooded the market with them. Same concept seems to apply here, where artificial scarcity from storing goods can increase profits.

I am storing 25% for rare goods but up to even 75% for more common goods. Wineries still seem to be one of the strongest options. I like setting up multiple shops in Sargot and Ortysia because you can trade the excesses to Aserai easily.

What really needs to happen for the whole trade playstyle to function synergetically, though, is having the ability to set routes for your caravans so you can have them pass through your workshop towns. As well as have them not meander like morons deep into enemy territories as well.

 

[SudianX]

[...] As well as have them not meander like morons deep into enemy territories as well.

This would be my biggest pet peeve. I use caravans, but only during the beginning of the game before I am part of any wars. Once a companion gets captured, then freed, they are not sent back out trading again by me. I do not tolerate failure

Update: I found a new olive press in the Khuzait lands less than 100 days after I cleared everywhere to make a monopoly (technically two at once). I know it had been less than 100 days because I am watching the time limit on the main quest line count down (1267 days left to start my kingdom! ). Now I am even more suspicious of those olive presses I found in the Sturgian cities during my first continental monopoly-making trip. I think they were made during the middle of my first counter-clockwise travels

Looks to me like workshops cannot be reasonably made profitable by trying to force changes to what other AI merchants do, short of intentionally declaring war to smash caravans and isolate sections of the map. I'm not actually going to pull out a calculator to check, but it does not seem worth it to me unless you are already planning on traveling through all those cities anyways.

Best to be satisfied with the natural 300s that were achievable before warehouses were added, or perhaps to use the warehouses in conjunction with being the trade caravan yourself (actual intended use, of course).

Well, golly. I checked again and my olive press is pulling 850+ per day, without me messing with the competition on the far side of the map (they have to import those olives... so I'm not so sure about their profitability...)

My conclusion: I'm too impatient to actually reach a conclusion My workshop profits are varying wildly as it is: between 600s and 900s (Olive press always about 2X as profitable as the winery, so the winery is 300s - 450s). Now this competition might not start to make a difference for another 50 days... sigh. I'm far too impatient. Wars and bandits make for a very volatile economy. I like it . Good job devs!

My suggestion: Try to just focus on a monopoly in the towns that naturally have the ingredients you use in attached villages (And yes... war can change a few of those border sources ). Let the inevitable competition deal with importing costs. This seems to be easier to localize and periodically check up on.

I did try to focus on changing the competing workshops into something that should still work in the town in question, so as to try to avoid bankruptcy and future type-switching. The ones that keep popping up are where there were none to begin with, thus they have to import their olives (haven't found any new wineries yet... maybe because their profit was never as crazy high? I doubt I will ever get to doing another complete round to see if I missed a winery somewhere)

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

Off topic:
I have done the Everything Has a Price before. My last game before the new patch, in fact, I only ever bought fiefs and never offensively sieged. It was fun playing defensive siege after defensive siege (using the siege engine destroying ambush mechanic) and never using cavalry on open field battles. It was rather sad to watch 1000+ man armies murder my villagers, but fun to watch them helplessly crash onto my walls I had beaten back the entire Vlandian and Battanian armies with only my single clan in my one little town at first. Pretty hilarious. (I made all the $$$ with smithing, not trade.)

Having used that perk twice now has got me wondering: what does the game do with absurdly rich AI clans? They never naturally have anything close to the 8-11 million I leave them with, and they always seem to be struggling when they have a ton of cash but no fiefs. The first game I used it (took over the whole map with that one ) the first town I bought was Provend, followed by the castle from the same clan, and within weeks I found the fief-less clan leader I purchased it from with a party of 15 troops wandering around sadly. I was easily able to convince him to be the first clan to join my brand new kingdom and get his castle back. He never seemed to do anything with the huge pile of cash. Maybe I was just to impatient to notice what he did with it over the years compared to all of my other vassals...

I'm just salty I had to cheat the cross the finish line and the reward isn't worth either the effort nor the shame to me. . That's why I'm going to take it as a lesson to have a transition plan for entering a kingdom (or seizing neutral lands, etc.) so I don't end up in this murky position in the future.

Incidentally, the war and political situation in Calradia has been pretty exciting, what with Emperor Garios Comnos somehow losing Jalmarys (not by force but by giving it to "fen Caenacht" who is a vassal of his), Derthert's family losing the kingship to the Pravend guys and now dey Jelind (I think because I bought Charas for 1.5m from Vartin dey Jelind lol), and the Holy Battanian Empire running wild in the region (Vlandia isn't having a good time between the Battanians and Western Empire lol). It's a shame I couldn't have played a role in this history... *sigh*

Back on topic:
I have also added a silversmith, storing the output in the warehouse. I get a little bit of trade XP when storing the goods, but they are not marked as "bought" so I receive no XP when manually selling them elsewhere.

The purchasing merchants look at it, see my personal company stamp on the bottom, still assume I murdered someone for it and give me no trade XP Here I was imagining the skill gains would be huge if the "purchase price" was recorded as the cost of the raw input ingredients. Silly me.

Yeah, they really should. Me turning 10 Denars Raw Silk into 500+ Denars Velvet should translate to a massive gain in Trade XP. In fact, the whole Everything Has a Price play goal would be infinitely more achievable if the goods you sold abroad from your warehouses actually contributed to XP like normal trading does.

Side note: know where a brother can find some cheap Silver Ore? Best I've found was ~100 each near Ostican/Rovalt and a similar number northeast of Vostrum. How many Silver Ores turn into Jewelry? With Silk to Velvet, it's 0.9 to 0.9 (perks likely messing with these numbers). You can check by cursoring over the Input/Output icons in your Clan menus.

Update: the olive press did get up to the 800s briefly, but the winery does not go above 600s (daily profit). I wonder if there is another winery or two somewhere that I missed...

Renewed competition will pop up regularly, so you probably are finding global challengers depressing the price. It can take a while (a year at most) to really break 1,000 passive income from one industry, though, and that's enough time for 1 or 2 shops to return to competing with you.

This would be my biggest pet peeve. I use caravans, but only during the beginning of the game before I am part of any wars. Once a companion gets captured, then freed, they are not sent back out trading again by me. I do not tolerate failure

Don't you lose some crazy number of denars when that happens, though? I vaguely remember that as my first experience with Caravans last December and just avoided them as a result. It's only last week, after the latest update on PS4, I tried them again and managed to make a lot of money off of them. My present intention is to disband them before joining a faction or otherwise exposing yourself/your caravans to warring states since it's a train crash waiting to happen at that point.

 

[SudianX]

Side note: know where a brother can find some cheap Silver Ore? Best I've found was ~100 each near Ostican/Rovalt and a similar number northeast of Vostrum. How many Silver Ores turn into Jewelry? With Silk to Velvet, it's 0.9 to 0.9 (perks likely messing with these numbers). You can check by cursoring over the Input/Output icons in your Clan menus.

Well now, I am not sure what those numbers mean. They do not show up when I have it at 0% output storage in the warehouse, and they vary based on the % storage set. Jewelry has a 0.4 listed for me at the 25% storage mark, scaling up to 1.5 at the 100% mark (no perks messing with it, I think).

I did not even look at the costs of silver, nor stocked the warehouse, only manually sold the jewelry to find out about the trade XP functions. I have been rewarded with an average of less than 100 profit per day

It was a monopoly-making-leftover that did not get sold. I placed it in Ostican thinking it would not go bankrupt and revert back to whatever it was beforehand. I do not think I will be trying to use a jewelry workshop any time soon At least not without manually stocking it and manually selling the goods, anyways.

I think I will sell it soon and test the idea of my monopoly having 2 workshops going in different cities. I will probably test both the winery and the olive press at the same time, seeing as they have vastly different profits as it is.

As for the caravans: probably a loss of money in the long run, yes. I just like to see a + number in the day to day change during the beginning when I am setting things up. I feel better about progress when I am not counting down just how many days I have left to heal in town or hunt down the next bandit party, hideout, etc. (Ooh, I really like the differentiated sound effects for family member aging up/hideout spotting/marriage offers etc. I like knowing that a hideout has been spotted just from the sound in this latest patch)

I generally do not play as Aserai, but their discount starting price + the 5000 refund from the perk should make caravans usually work out okay, even during wartimes (until the permanent multifront war situation, at least). I did have one get conquered by bandits in this playthrough (while still only clan tier 2). This loss struck me as unusual in my experience.

I have had up to all companions at clan level 5 running caravans with no casualties before. That was a funny playthrough. I leveled up the clan purely through the perk granting renown for each profiting caravan per day. 8+ caravans giving that much renown is no joke. Then upon joining a kingdom I lost all but 3 within a two-week span. Oddly enough I found 1 still operating a year or more later, after about 10 wars. That one was stubborn.

This time around I chose to get renown from the profiting workshops. This seems appropriately slow.

 

[Zorion_no]

Side note: know where a brother can find some cheap Silver Ore? Best I've found was ~100 each near Ostican/Rovalt and a similar number northeast of Vostrum. How many Silver Ores turn into Jewelry? With Silk to Velvet, it's 0.9 to 0.9 (perks likely messing with these numbers). You can check by cursoring over the Input/Output icons in your Clan menus.

Answer : Near Car Banseth in Battania. Village near it to the Druimor Castle, often have cheap silver.
Gersegos Castle often have cheap Silver (Western Empire).
Ortysia(Western Empire) the village there often have cheap silver, or often have quest asking for tools, where you will buy cheap tools, and get silver in the amount of what 25(*100 = 2500 for some tools you purchase for what 500 tops?).
Ataconia Castle, feels that is wrong, maybe its the other of the Northern Empire, they also have reasonable silver typically.

All of them can be prone to being raided though by hostile factions. So its abit up and down.

The one I know of in Southern Empire, is "always raided" it seems or when its not the price is relative speaking high.
Good for the tools for Silver method though.

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

Well now, I am not sure what those numbers mean. They do not show up when I have it at 0% output storage in the warehouse, and they vary based on the % storage set. Jewelry has a 0.4 listed for me at the 25% storage mark, scaling up to 1.5 at the 100% mark (no perks messing with it, I think).

It refers to how much raw material (0.9 in this case) is turned to finished product (also 0.9 in this case) per day. That means 1 Raw Silk, which can be cheaply bought en masse for ~10 denars each, can be converted into 1 Velvet which can be sold in the early game (or rather, when not playing Mr. Monopoly) for 300 each at a 290 denar profit. If you corner the market, you can make 500-1,200+ per item selling abroad and the passive income with 3 Velvet Dyeworks became 400-500 per day after a decade and was originally around 250-350 per day when I first cornered the market.

I was asking about Silver because Silver Ore is stupidly expensive compared to Silk. Even if I buy it "low" for 100 denars Jewelry would have to skyrocket in value to cover the costs of production unless 1 Silver Ore equates to several Jewelries or something.

As for the caravans: probably a loss of money in the long run, yes. I just like to see a + number in the day to day change during the beginning when I am setting things up. I feel better about progress when I am not counting down just how many days I have left to heal in town or hunt down the next bandit party, hideout, etc. (Ooh, I really like the differentiated sound effects for family member aging up/hideout spotting/marriage offers etc. I like knowing that a hideout has been spotted just from the sound in this latest patch)

Quite the opposite; caravans are pure profit in the long run (unless you join/create a faction before they pay themselves off, of course) and, in starting a fresh playthrough (because I want something more battle-heavy but don't want to abandon/derail my ongoing semi-pacifist playthrough) I have set up a new caravan every chance I could and have 3 as of Tier 1 and will have 2 by Tier 4 (kept one Sacha the Swift to be my Scout, Tournament deck stacker, and waifu bodyguad/company captain although my new wife, Vasilia Pethros, is apparently a chadette because she carried me through a Khuzait tournament to win an Asaligat lol).

I wish I could hear stuff like that but my crappy TV would have combat vocals be way too loud if I turned up the volume.

I generally do not play as Aserai, but their discount starting price + the 5000 refund from the perk should make caravans usually work out okay, even during wartimes (until the permanent multifront war situation, at least). I did have one get conquered by bandits in this playthrough (while still only clan tier 2). This loss struck me as unusual in my experience.

I'm inclined to pick Culture based on mood and aesthetics rather than gameplay, I say as of coming back to Bannelord, since the only real steal among the innate bonuses is the Battanians since forests are everywhere and the militia bonus per day is useful in the conquest game.

In other words, I'm now bouncing between two Empire Culture dudes with very similar builds but with different play goals (or rather, methods, since I want to unify Calradia with both of them but my first through mercantilism-turned-warlordism and my second through becoming a vassal, then warlord, after making a million denar savings account through mercantilism).

Answer : Near Car Banseth in Battania. Village near it to the Druimor Castle, often have cheap silver.
Gersegos Castle often have cheap Silver (Western Empire).
Ortysia(Western Empire) the village there often have cheap silver, or often have quest asking for tools, where you will buy cheap tools, and get silver in the amount of what 25(*100 = 2500 for some tools you purchase for what 500 tops?).
Ataconia Castle, feels that is wrong, maybe its the other of the Northern Empire, they also have reasonable silver typically.

All of them can be prone to being raided though by hostile factions. So its abit up and down.

The one I know of in Southern Empire, is "always raided" it seems or when its not the price is relative speaking high.
Good for the tools for Silver method though.

Thank you. I'll have to check it out. I figure the best way to run a Jeweler is to import the Silver Ore abroad though I'm skeptical of the profit margins compared to the tried-and-true Velvet Dyework making a comeback from Warband lol.

 

[snuggans]

A wool weavery in Khuzait lands used to be a solid money-maker. Are they now dead?

i believe wool weaveries are currently bugged last time i checked. i havent checked 1.2.8 though

 

[CrazyElf]

It seems that workshops as a whole need a major revamp at this point.

I think that a couple of hundred denars per day, maybe a bit more if the user chooses the "optimal" workshop is a reasonable amount.

At the moment, it seems that there are many configurations where there is zero profit.

 

[Hero07911010]

The new way to run Workshops.