I know there is some idea that caravans should be required for enough food for the towns, but I don't like it. Unless we can proactively arrange for caravans and guards to bring in as much food as we need, it's juts annoying. Anything I can't interact with I don't want to be punished by. I want to spend money and use troops to just build farms if I can afford it and or send specials supply caravans and such.
Well also if the entire town is literally starving, then there should probably be prices to match and an incentive for every trader in the area to start rocketing food over there - plus AI coding to match.
I gather that there are arbitrary caps or scales to how much demand will drive up price in order to keep players from gaming the system, which is pretty asinine because why even have an economic system if you're going to slap arbitrary limits on it? If you're literally starving to death, the cost of beef vs grain vs cheese becomes completely academic: ALL food is equally priceless when you have no food.
Prices should also take into account the general economic outlook: if the town is in a structurally
permanent food shortage, then the sell price shouldn't drop to below-cost the minute a caravan gives them enough to not starve for like a couple days.
Same goes for all trade goods: I have no earthly clue why selling durable goods like silver ore to the only town in the area with a silversmith magically drops the buy price below par after a handful of ticks... which paradoxically causes caravans to buy up the extra supply and leave the exact same town with zero silver a few days later. The fact that they removed the WB workshop stockpiling mechanic from WB is also insane... because your only options when confronted with a massive buy opportunity of cheap goods is to either sell it for nothing or drag it in your caravan or conquer a castle to put it in.
Here are the extra credit points: what would be
very realistic is if denars weren't magically created out of thin air and prices fluctuated according to the money supply vs the general economy.
Basically: the economic system is "rich" in the sense that it isn't all abstracted... but it's not rich enough to actually make more sense than an abstracted system.
Maybe back in 1.5.7 but Mexxico went back and undid the nerf to starvation.
Now it is straightforward to starve out towns, even the low prosperity ones.
Does that actually have an impact on sieges? Like... more than a couple of garrison/militia troops disappearing per day? Color me skeptical that TW would implement historically-accurate starving out a garrison because they seem terminally allergic to allowing players to avoid the s***y BL combat.
To be fair - a lot of my observations are from in-depth plays which I pretty much stopped doing towards the end of 2020 and at this point I can't be arsed. I've tried to play modded BL past the mid-game recently and it's boring as piss.
horse villages, despite those being the sone of the worst for death spiraling towns because they produce sumpters which get consumed into a prosperity boost (more food required) but provide no additional food to offset it.
Yep. I'm not dialed into the code, but this is exactly the kind of stupid crap that would be better replaced by an abstracted system if it can't be overhauled entirely.
Producing horses does not magically make a community more prosperous, unless those horses are being purchased enough to allow domestic importers access to things like food.