Alternative to suggested trade journal...

[Slyloki]

In the 10 suggestions thread it was said that a journal would be good to help with trading and prices in the various cities...

Without going as far as that I came up with a different aproach to this as I was wandering the country side...

As it is now, when you're on the map and put your cursor over a city you can see it's name and who owns it... I suggest that the main import/export of a town gets added to this popup based on trade skill..

For example at level 2 you would see a towns major import and export good, at level 4 you would also see how much the prices are...

This would reflect a merchants ability to gather information from other traders and recent travelers to these cities...

Simple, clean and no need for any extra screens...

 

[kroc]

id say it would make the game too easy... look on a city 20 leagues away and see that it needs this.. i mean, comon, you cant just look at a city and know what it needs!!

i prefer keeping a journal that you go in a city and it writes it onto your journal...
also since the game is dinamic why not make the prices for things dynamic? like when you sell 10bags of salt to zendar, the price for salt drops, hence they dont need it as much.. also merchants sell stuff to carovans etc, so when a carovan comes out of a city, merchant should not have the stuff the carovaan took..

 

[BobG]

If the economy and prices actually were dynamic, then I'd agree that some type of trading journal would be handy. The way it is right now though, it seems that each town has one major export and one major import, and everything else is a standard price. Therefore, if you've been to a city before and talked to the merchant, you know exactly what it needs. And I agree -- as long as this simplistic economy is going to be in the game, it'd be very handy to be able to know what city needs which goods without having to actually go to the city and ask, or refer to an external log.

 

[kroc]

and also making city needs more than one could help.. not like a city needs just velvet... it might need salt and meat as well...

 

[Slyloki]

id say it would make the game too easy... look on a city 20 leagues away and see that it needs this.. i mean, comon, you cant just look at a city and know what it needs!!

I don't think it would make a difference to the dificulty...
As it is, prices are fixed, I have these written on a sheet of paper for reference, Just means I don't have to use my noggin...

In a dynamic economy, as I agree it should be.. Supply and demand and all that, I don't think it would make it easy either given a few more 'rules' to the suggestion.

The information shown could be base price rather than actual price, with modifiers to it's accuracy based on your trade level...

Or it could be the price as it was some time ago... (travel time to city at an average speed of 5 or 6) Though this could be too involved to program in as it requires tracking a fair bit of data... Simpler would be to just give 'yesterdays' price, again somehow modified by trade skill..

My main point is that it doesn't require an extra screen to display this information...

Still to easy? give the player an option to toggle this data on or off...

 

[catsoup]

dynamic trade would be something. I like the idea! It could be done like in the game merchant prince ( a.k.a. machiavelli the prince) (yeahyeahyeah, theft of ideas, but that's what game design is all about) there each town has needs for a certain ware. The price for the product is determined by how much they need of it. But once you totally covered their need they don't buy the ware any longer, but after some time they are going to use/waste the ware and the need for it will rise again. The speed how fast they use the ware is determined by what kind of the product. Glass and jewelery is used slower then spices. So it demands some tactics and simply is fun.
I could imagine it in m&b that way: If the player has some merchant skill he can trade on the market. He determines which wares he will try to sell and for what prize. Then he stays for a day in the town, just as if he was in an inn sleeping (also paying for his place). And then he is told which wares has been bought which would be determined by the need for certain wares among the population and by how high the skill of the trader is. What do you think about it?

 

[catsoup]

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. In merchant prince there were other merchants which spreaded the ware the player had sold in a single town to it's neighborhood etc and which also determined the prices. For example sometimes, the player had found out after a looong trip to india that some concurrent merchant already covered the european need for spices and thus the player lost a lot of money (in merchant prince you could hire an assasin for to kill the bastard punk). This cycle could also be implemented.