Caravan = Ungodly Wealth = Boring

[barcibus]

Here's the deal: risk and reward.  That's it.  It isn't easy to balance, but if you get it right it is fun.  It's fine that you have a chance to make a ton of money; what's not fine is that THERE IS NO RISK.  That's what makes it boring.

This is so basic but so many people post in here saying "just don't use it" or "stop hating" need to either stop posting and go play your game, or you need to sit and think about game mechanics for a bit so you can contribute something.

If you still don't get it, then they could make it so that on easy mode you still have the easy money route... or just enable cheats and go with that.  But stop saying the game is fine and to just ignore things, that's not how fun works.

 

[Ozone]

i have 53,294,321 an army of 6000 elite mercs and i own half the map ^^ the tsar story line broke for me twice so i gave up on that and went rebel

I don't understand 80% of anything you have ever posted

 

[Aeon221]

If you don't like it dont use it. It was pretty obviously put in to mollify folks who'd ***** about money due to prices. I'm on day 80ish on this save, no caravans, and I have some ok gear and maybe 30k saved up. Every battle is an expensively dangerous challenge, every purchase carefully justified. Adds spice to the experience which was long missing from WB.

And then there's the rp element: a real noble scorns the bourgeois habits of trade, but money humping peasants will do anything for coin! Filth pigs!

If you don't use em difficulty skyrockets. If you do, easy mode. Seems pretty reasonable to me. Especially since soooo many people have *****ed about prices being wah wah too high.

 

[Proteus]

I can thing of 2 plausible mechanisms to fix the trade good seed exploit and make caravans more risky:

• Each town has a stockpile of caravan goods, that is independent of the player market. Each caravan takes the [size of caravan] items out of the stockpile and the stockpile refills over time (by automatically assuming that each day there are x goods that are produced (or gained by trade) in this city. Prices for the  caravan are calculated according to the amount of tradegoods in the stockpile. This was the seed exploit is fixed and it also is ensured that (if a stockpile of a tradegood in a city is depleted) a certain time has to pass still the player is able to start a caravan with this tradegood from this city again.
• Set a certain caravan worth as a trigger for bandits banding together. That is, if a player caravan with a certain worth (or above) gets into visibility range of a group of bandits and they also see another group of bandits, they move towards each other and merge, thereby producing a larger grouzp of bandits.  With other words, the bandits see that there is a precious caravan but the mercenary unit guarding the caravan is too large for an attack and decide to work together with another bandit group, so that they might get strong enough to overpower the caravan guards. This might create bandit groups large enough so thtat they dare to attack a group of 50 mercenaries (which seems to be the size many players (myself included) use as their normal caravan guard.

Not sure if this is soemthing that can be created with the module system of M&B Warbands,
but it dewfinitely would enhance the caravan system.

 

[jackx]

The problem I have with not (ab)using caravans, and the exploit in particular is that there's a fairly narrow timeframe during which you can reasonably start any of the storylines with a good chance of success - provided your character, your army and most importantly, your finances, are up to it. Without the virtually instant wealth from caravans, there's a good chance you'll miss that window, and so be limited in your choice of storyline, because the longer it takes you to get to that point, the more likely that the faction you'd like to quest for gets stomped into the ground.

Sure, I can still start any storyline I want with my current "slow build" character, who after ~300 days is now lvl20 with a decent army and 1mil in the bank, but since most of the map is Swedish, and most of the rest being taken over by the Crimeans, what's the point? Join a faction and enjoy the quest for all of the 5 minutes I get before being completely steamrolled?

The political map in WFaS changes much too quickly for the fixed course prescribed by the storylines to, and the current, rather ridiculous level of AI aggression doesn't help much, particularly as the two most aggressive, and most successful factions, tend to be the ones without storylines.

And while an uphill struggle might be an appealing challenge, there's only so much room for against-all-odds heroism in warfare characterized by grinding attrition and indiscriminate casualties...

Balancing the caravan system and fixing the exploit is one thing, but unless the political map becomes more stable, players will still need a get-rich-quick scheme of some sort if they want to start the storyline of their choice, and not be stuck with the scraps the game may leave them after several hundred days of slow character buildup.

 

[Aeon221]

Disagree entirely. Map varies hugely based on functionally random factors.

In one game I had, Sweden dominated Poles until Poles struck back after I started their questline. In another, everyone was pretty much held at bay by Poland.

You don't need a huge amount of cash to be effective, only to play with all the toys. It's harder, sure, but not necessary. And you can still be hugely effective using good tactics and controlled aggression. Part of why Sweden was pushed back in the one game has to do with me hunting down lords while at a 40+ man disadvantage and bringing them to book. That meant fewer sieges by Sweden and fewer lords left for defense, as more were spending time cooling their heels in custody or recouping enormous losses post escape.

 

[yehrom]

I dont find the shop so overpriced.
Having such high value items is very nice. There is no obligation for you to buy it, just a way to use your cash. Fashion victim you are, Folks ! ^^

Sure the game is currently severly bugged and need an overhaul refresh. No doubt that the economic one is actually broken, and the economic system is one of the major feature of WF&S.

That said, running on the map all night without any problem is a big issue too (linked to caravans). A critical point too, it would be nice to have more proressiv "jobs offer", by faction as by city, to really be able to make your way in a sandbox game.

But the challenge that WF&S offer, during battle as at start, is welcome for me.
I just hope they will support this mod fine and use his potential (for WB too!).

 

[Aeon221]

Shop is pretty spendy, but the handcrafted stuff is WAY more expensive. Some items cost 100k and take a few days to make. FOR A SINGLE ITEM.

You can gear up with generic stuff on the (comparative) cheap, but the real **** will cost you an arm and two legs.

 

[jackx]

I guess my mistake with the slow build was trying to remain neutral (apart from occasionally making peace), so as to start my story of choice with a  "clean slate", instead of actively maintaining the balance of power I'd like to have when I start my story of choice.

Which I suppose is simply a necessity when one adds fixed storylines in a sandbox game of rapidly changing circumstances...

Other ways of achieving decent income besides caravans, and adding considerable risk to high-profit caravans would probably help in balancing out the economic experience and making it feel less like a boring grind, while still giving the player the high income that is needed to be successful...

 

[yehrom]

FOR A SINGLE ITEM.

Yes, but here is the purpose, isnt it ? Having such item, like near "unique one". You can do without, its just "a bonus" for rich character (as it always was).

You can gear up with generic stuff on the (comparative) cheap, but the real **** will cost you an arm and two legs.

But having "the Best" can be a final goal, again it is not a "must-go" way. Thats personaly what I love in the MB serie, and I mostly played it with standart item in a RP way.

 

[Aeon221]

FOR A SINGLE ITEM.

Yes, but here is the purpose, isnt it ? Having such item, like near "unique one". You can do without, its just "a bonus" for rich character (as it always was).

You can gear up with generic stuff on the (comparative) cheap, but the real **** will cost you an arm and two legs.

But having "the Best" can be a final goal, again it is not a "must-go" way. Thats personaly what I love in the MB serie, and I mostly played it with standart item in a RP way.

I'm glad you understand the point I was making, but I'm not sure what repeating it added to the conversation. I'm making my way in the world just fine with only the occasional store item and a large amount of looted gear. And an army of fifty mounted Polish musket mercs armed with a quality carbine and some decent armor. Those guys are impressively versatile!

 

[Blaze]

For starters, have caravan trade depend on the player's trading skill and possibly inventory management. If trading does have an effect, it's almost negligible. Raise the prices for the big selling items, namely velvet and spice. As it stands, I can buy spice for less than 150 and sell it for over 1800; and you can do 40 of them in a single run.

Also, make investment more variable. Instead of a straight up 14%, have it change by -5% to 15% every "turn". Also, being sieged and taken over means you lose 20% of it. Or better yet, have the range scale by the wealth of the settlement.

I totally ignore the armor/horse masters. Their prices are absurd and you can find practically equivalent items in the regular shop anyway.

Let's not forget that you can completely forget about protecting the caravan due to a bug and just haul ass past everything to your destination since leaving the caravan or letting it get raided doesn't fail the quest.

 

[yehrom]

I'm glad you understand the point I was making, but I'm not sure what repeating it added to the conversation.

My point was that such highly expensive item (even for minor bonus) isnt a problem in gameplay because you need to grind to buy it (fashion victim POV), but add a value ingame in itself as a good way to use your cash and get a pseudo-unique item. Thats why such xK$ for a single item, as you said, dont hurt me.

My POV here is simply:
A game is rich when the player has choice to do and deal with them, not when he can have all he want just with time.

 

[Aeon221]

I'm glad you understand the point I was making, but I'm not sure what repeating it added to the conversation.

My point was that such highly expensive item (even for minor bonus) isnt a problem in gameplay because you need to grind to buy it (fashion victim POV), but add a value ingame in itself as a good way to use your cash and get a pseudo-unique item. Thats why such xK$ for a single item, as you said, dont hurt me.

My POV here is simply:
A game is rich when the player has choice to do and deal with them, not when he can have all he want just with time.

Again, that's what I said. I don't have those items, and I'm not concerned by it. I'm glad they're in, and I think they're an interesting choice.

They're also hugely ****ing expensive. Which is why caravans poop out so much money.

It would cost, say, 80k*5*8 (some stuff costs 100k, some costs 50k to fit out the entire party with handcrafted armor and a single weapon. That's ~3.2mil. For each additional handcrafted weap for the whole party, figure another half mil.

That is a lot of money. You want that much handcrafted gear in a reasonable time frame, you need caravans. 

Want to pimp your mercs? The best upgrades I've seen can hit 20k, and I'm not sure they don't get even more expensive. You're looking at paying 1k+ for a single merc with three good upgrades. An army of 100 of them will cost you, uh, 100k + the fixed cost of buying the upgrades, so if you bought all three kinds and gave them three upgrades each, that's 9*15k = 135k. So there's a quarter mil on just buying 100 men. Rank them up to elite and their upkeep can hit 2-3k a week easily -- a sum that can do a number on your liquid funds if you keep most of it at the bank.

I haven't even seen what fief upgrades cost, but considering how many and how varied they are I doubt they come cheaper than the handmade weapons. So there's that expense, which isn't likely to be recouped by the fief income in any reasonable amount of time. And remember that the more fiefs you have, the more time you have to spend protecting them. That means a lot less time available for caravans.

So as you can see costs can get VERY large if you believe in having the biggest and the best. They can also stay entirely reasonable if you don't mind settling for less. I think that's fair.

 

[Astros]

I don't see a problem with caravans either. They also only net alot of money when you travel from one end of the map to the other. And considering the actual length of such a journey such a high profit is only reasonable. And like the guy before me said.. hand-crafted stuff is really expensive when you really want it, and so are Merc armies. And unless you use cheats (which is pretty lame in any instance), you will have to run caravans to fund those things. And 'balancing' those caravans to net less money when spending the time on travelling from one end to another, wouldn't be balancing either. It would be frustrating. And then they'd have to lower the cost of anything. And then you would be here again saying that earning money is too easy. Yeah. Great.

Oh, and on another note. If you want a challenge while running caravans.. how about you go at war with every faction in the game? Travelling through the whole map can be pretty 'exciting' then, since every noble you run across will attack you. Especially with only a small group.

 

[Abelardo]

I think it should have a whole lot more risk involved, like the moment you get a caravan going the game will start to spawn lots of bandit parties (leveled to your own party) that would automatically target you for the duration of the journey.

Because yeah right now it's pretty pathetic, all you need is a 50-60 strong party and you're set, set the caravan up, click the destination and hold ctrl+space, done.

 

[Ceriy]

If it's too easy why not trade with chap goods?

 

[Astros]

I think it should have a whole lot more risk involved, like the moment you get a caravan going the game will start to spawn lots of bandit parties (leveled to your own party) that would automatically target you for the duration of the journey.

Because yeah right now it's pretty pathetic, all you need is a 50-60 strong party and you're set, set the caravan up, click the destination and hold ctrl+space, done.

Yeah. Use chap goods.

And I bet you wouldn't be happy with your own suggestion, Onarum. I personally would get totally annoyed and frustrated by having to fight groups of bandits every nose's length. Also the concept of bandits has always been that they are basically cowards who target smaller groups of travellers that they can easily ransack without any greater risk. Bandits suddenly starting to 'team' up onto huge warbands of well-trained and equipped warriors would be only one thing: Dumb. No human being would act like that.

 

[Abelardo]

I think it should have a whole lot more risk involved, like the moment you get a caravan going the game will start to spawn lots of bandit parties (leveled to your own party) that would automatically target you for the duration of the journey.

Because yeah right now it's pretty pathetic, all you need is a 50-60 strong party and you're set, set the caravan up, click the destination and hold ctrl+space, done.

Yeah. Use chap goods.

And I bet you wouldn't be happy with your own suggestion, Onarum. I personally would get totally annoyed and frustrated by having to fight groups of bandits every nose's length. Also the concept of bandits has always been that they are basically cowards who target smaller groups of travellers that they can easily ransack without any greater risk. Bandits suddenly starting to 'team' up onto huge warbands of well-trained and equipped warriors would be only one thing: Dumb. No human being would act like that.

Are you people really that worried that you won't have this exploit anymore?

Also really? no bandits would possibly band together to steal high value goods?

 

[Mavkiel]

They really need to allow bandits to group up to hit your caravan. Perhaps, if you have poor relations with a lord in another faction he will also try and raid your caravan. (Sure he might piss off his own faction, but he might really hate your guts.)