Kexin 说:
Please STFU with the caravan whine threads, because just in case you guys haven't noticed stuff in this damn game cost an insane amount of $$. If it wasn't for caravans I would to have raid every village in the damn world to afford the gear that I have now for me and my crew.
That's one of the main points of these threads though: caravans give ridiculous amounts of money for little effort, while all other methods in the game give next to no money.
I spent the first few days fighting bandits, selling prisoners and doing quests for mayors. I would get around 40 thalars for defeating the bandits, 10-30 thalars per prisoner and 100-200 thalars for each quest completed. I then had a look at the stores and realised that everything costs a bloody fortune. Even just a low-tier shield was 3000 thalars. So, I started trading. It was still slow, but occasionally I'd come across a town with a large number of something really cheap (iron and tools mostly) and then would go and sell it at the other side of the map. It took me a few more hours of play time doing this to get around 8000 thalars.
Then, I tried using the caravans. I shopped around and found a city selling spices for ~100 thalars and another buying them for ~1000 (Tver' I think). I immediately sent a caravan of 40 and made 40k thalars (well, 80k, but I'm sure that's a bug associated with the patent quest). After this I could keep trading (without even having to resort to using the bug/glitch/feature of selling spices or velvet to somewhere cheap and then sending a caravan) and making huge amounts of money. No risk, little in game time used up and hardly any real time used up to make 1 million thalars.
It just seems ridiculous; every other way of making money is insanely inferior to using caravans. You either are dirt poor or you have finally made enough to send caravans and you're filthy rich; there's no in between.
What I think could be done is:
- making the trading skill play a greater factor in the success of the caravan. I have 0 trading skill and it just means that I have to spend a little more time trading to get the same amount of money as someone with a high skill.
- make the routes more dangerous. Make it so that the best routes are between some kind of "no man's land" (there's a few on the map) where there are no cities to hide in and where large groups of strong bandits/deserters roam. Then, allow people with higher trading skills to hire caravan guards for each trip. Other players will simply have to defend themselves as best they can (if they aren't traders, they should be able to fight). Also, make these bandits attack regardless of numbers - I usually just have 70 men in my squad now, because it keeps all bandits away. If they attacked me with their low numbers, I'd get weaker each time. If the trade routes were in "no man's land" I'd have to think tactically and decide whether my men can make it through without resupply and rest.
- give an actual limit to the goods being traded. Hell, perhaps even just make it that a caravan open up like an inventory, where you can place items you've bought. Then, you buy as many items as you want from one city and sell at others. Hire the caravans for a certain amount of time and it works out fine. As it is, it's incredibly easy to make 40-50k off a caravan. If there were limited items in the cities, you'd actually want to take the crappier items like pottery, because there isn't much velvet. Then, you'd make less per caravan and be a little on par with other forms of making money. Ultimately, though, you should have a greater chance of being attacked (even by smaller forces) when you have a caravan.
I think those points would make it more balanced. As it is, it seems that you either make far too little money or you make far too much - the prices of items seem to try to be balanced against both the extremely low profits from fighting/prisoners/etc and the extremely high profits of caravans. This doesn't work. Balance the whole economy properly and the game will be much more fun.
