Advanced Trade

[rektasaurus]

Before unpacking and looking through the game files I thought I’d post here. I can’t seem to find an answer through google.

As I understand it the way goods move now is that caravans (and villagers) sell and buy at towns driving the price up or down a few units at a time. Presumably food is consumed by the inhabitants of the town but what happens to the rest of the goods? I’ve parked out in front of towns and watched what’s being bought and sold. Typically food and raw goods are purchased and sold. Very rarely have I seen finished goods change hands. What happens to the weapons and armor and finished that are produced in towns? Are caravans the only buyers right now or do the items get consumed by the town based on prosperity? It’s very difficult to come up with anything more than simple trading plans like buy food low in Sturgia and sell where red everywhere else because it’s not clear to me how the goods are being consumed... does anyone know?

If only caravans and food consumption are driving supply and demand then prices for every good except food will over time equalize. This makes food the only market which can have any sort of dynamisim which can be manipulated through war. Do towns consume goods other than food?

 

[Bannerman Man]

Yes, the rest of the goods are also slowly consumed by the town as well, inlcuding weapons, armor, and horses. This is to create a demand for each item, because otherwise goods would accumulate in the world until they become worthless. If you own a town you can view its consumptions from the previous day by going to the "Manage Town" menu and hovering over the basket at the top, like so:

The following information might be a little outdated, because I think the formula was slightly changed to account for very low prosperity towns.

Consumption rate is determined by prosperity and item prices. The town determines how much it wants to spend on each item per day through an equation that you can see here. For towns less than or equal to 3000 prosperity the equation that determines how much they will spend is (Prosperity x Demand Constant 1). For towns >3000 prosperity the equation becomes (Prosperity x Demand Constant 1) + ((Prosperity - 3000) x Demand Constant 2). Both of the demand constants for most items can be found here (don't forget to divide by 1000). The number that is calculated is then divided by the price of the good in the town menu to determine how many of an item is consumed.

So for example, the first demand constant (default) of grain is 0.12 and the second constant (>3000) is 0.03. So in a 4500 prosperity town the daily budget for grain is (3000 x 0.12) + ((4500 - 3000) x 0.03) = 405 gold. If the price of grain in the town is 10 gold, then the town will consume 405/10 = 40.5 or 40 grain that day. Any budget that is not spent on an item is carried over to the next day (so 0.5 will carry over to the next day in this case).

However, a base demand for each item was added to the equation in one of the most recent patches, so I'm no longer sure exactly what the formula determining the consumption budget looks like. That should still give you a general understanding of how item consumption works though. Hopefully that makes sense.

 

[rektasaurus]

Yes, the rest of the goods are also slowly consumed by the town as well, inlcuding weapons, armor, and horses. This is to create a demand for each item, because otherwise goods would accumulate in the world until they become worthless. If you own a town you can view its consumptions from the previous day by going to the "Manage Town" menu and hovering over the basket at the top, like so:

The following information might be a little outdated, because I think the formula was slightly changed to account for very low prosperity towns.

Consumption rate is determined by prosperity and item prices. The town determines how much it wants to spend on each item per day through an equation that you can see here. For towns less than or equal to 3000 prosperity the equation that determines how much they will spend is (Prosperity x Demand Constant 1). For towns >3000 prosperity the equation becomes (Prosperity x Demand Constant 1) + ((Prosperity - 3000) x Demand Constant 2). Both of the demand constants for most items can be found here (don't forget to divide by 1000). The number that is calculated is then divided by the price of the good in the town menu to determine how many of an item is consumed.

So for example, the first demand constant (default) of grain is 0.12 and the second constant (>3000) is 0.03. So in a 4500 prosperity town the daily budget for grain is (3000 x 0.12) + ((4500 - 3000) x 0.03) = 405 gold. If the price of grain in the town is 10 gold, then the town will consume 405/10 = 40.5 or 40 grain that day. Any budget that is not spent on an item is carried over to the next day (so 0.5 will carry over to the next day in this case).

However, a base demand for each item was added to the equation in one of the most recent patches, so I'm no longer sure exactly what the formula determining the consumption budget looks like. That should still give you a general understanding of how item consumption works though. Hopefully that makes sense.

That’s excellent thanks. Makes sense and implements diminishing returns on prosperity while keeping demand for items that run out. I didn’t know since I’ve never owned a town and couldn’t see. Also if this calculation is done for every item in every town that would explain the performance issues in campaign map.

 

[Bannerman Man]

That’s excellent thanks. Makes sense and implements diminishing returns on prosperity while keeping demand for items that run out. I didn’t know since I’ve never owned a town and couldn’t see. Also if this calculation is done for every item in every town that would explain the performance issues in campaign map.

No problem! It's easy to miss that tooltip even if you do own a town, and it doesn't explain how it actually works. I'm not sure what the main culprits are for campaign map performance stalling occasionally, because there are a lot of calculations going on, but this could certainly be part of it.

 

[rektasaurus]

No problem! It's easy to miss that tooltip even if you do own a town, and it doesn't explain how it actually works. I'm not sure what the main culprits are for campaign map performance stalling occasionally, because there are a lot of calculations going on, but this could certainly be part of it.

Yep all the ai math for every party. It seems that a lot has changed since the thread you linked to. It might be worthwhile to start looking through the game files