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Ever been super frustrated that you need a certain type of good or notice that a certain type of good is scarce and want to profit by providing it?

What if... you could?

Imagine that in addition to caravans and workshops, you could make a camp on the world map which could produce your choice of basic resources dependent on the terrain you built it in. Say, you could build a woodcutting camp in forest terrain, or an iron-mining camp in mountains. Or a grain farm in plains, or maybe a horse breeder.

Yes, done poorly, this could be really OP. So to avoid that:
  • A camp would cost money to set up and maintain, say a base of 7,500 gold, which would be affected by terrain and player skills/perks.
  • You have to leave a garrison there, and camps would have no walls and either no or very limited defenses. Roving bandits and looters would attack them just like caravans. If your garrison is defeated, your camp is destroyed and all stored goods are lost. Perhaps even a defeated attack could result in the attackers carrying off part of your stuff.
  • No camps for finished goods, just raw materials, and certain things like silver could be either off-limits or very hard to find a spot that would produce them.
  • For things like horses and livestock, you'd have to provide seed goods, so they could start their breeding program.
  • Certain camps might need other resources, like tools for mines and woodcutters, or furs for camps in snowy terrain, etc. Not having these things could either stop, or have a significant negative impact on, production.
  • Camps would have morale, just like a party. Low morale could lead to desertion, and total desertion (everyone leaving) would result in the camp slowly deteriorating until it was destroyed. Morale could be negatively impacted by attacks (meaning you'd want to clear nearby bandits and camps and proactively defend the camp during wartime, as even a successful defense would lower morale somewhat), low/unvaried food, or lack of other supplies. Things like beer or wine could raise morale at the cost of a malus to productivity.
  • If it's not a food camp, you'd have to manually stock the camp with food. If it is a food camp, they'd eat part of the yield if you didn't bring them something else.
  • No direct profits from the camp -- they'd just make the resource specified and it would cost you money. And they would not sell the goods themselves. You'd have to go there, collect the goods yourself, and sell them. Perhaps, if it wouldn't be OP, your caravans (and only yours) could be enabled to use your camps as a place to get things to sell.
  • You'd have to provide workers for camps (Tier 1 Recruits or Peasants only, no having Imperial Legionaries cutting wood), so you'd have to have a separate workforce and guarding force both of which take up food. Anyone you put there who's Tier 1 or a Peasant would contribute (up to a certain point) to the camp's output, and anyone Tier 2 or above would be a guard but not cause the camp to produce more. Casualties would not be replaced, so if your camp was attacked, you'd need to potentially go there and drop off more workers and/or guards.
  • You'd lose relations with villages (and their owners) if you put a camp near a village and they were both making the same thing (you'd be threatening their livelihoods). Perhaps villager bands or foreign (or heck, even your own faction's) lords could demand your offending camp be dismantled and possibly attack the camp if you refused. Conversely, you could maybe get a relations boost for making a camp near a city or village if there was a shortage of what it made and you sold that stuff in the city. (In general, I think a relations boost for bringing things to a town that it's short on would be a good idea, especially stuff it's short on and that there's a workshop there that needs it)
  • Camps would have a limited storage capacity, and would stop producing if they got full (but would still be costing you wages and food).
  • Camps could either be upgraded by visiting them or based on your trade/stewardship skill/perks. I would favor the former (if not both) to ratchet up the pressure to defend a camp the more it's producing (since the whole thing is destroyed if the garrison is defeated).
  • A camp would take up either a workshop slot or require a companion to be present, so you wouldn't be able to have too many of them.
Interested in your thoughts. I think this would add an interesting dimension to the game's economy, allowing the player to address shortages and profit from shrewd analysis of supply and demand.

EDIT: Instead of a successful attack destroying your camp outright, perhaps it would be better if the attacker then had to raid the camp, and only a raid that got to 100% would destroy the camp totally, whereas if you got there and drove the raiders away, perhaps you could rebuild your camp without losing your whole investment.
 
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