There is a huge potential to this game's economy, but today its broken.
I've been doing a lot of hours in this game now, and have been looking closely at my towns and kingdoms prosperity and food stocks. You probably have seen me post about it here and there.
I fully understand and appreciate how food is intented as a way to slow down prosperity increasing at a too high pace. But there is one major problem right now. Food curbs not only prosperity but also your garrison.
In my game,I have conquered the entire map. I have installed a mod to help control the bandit problem (patrol mod, it's nice for the endgame), and have Tweaklord increase the amount of stock a castle and town can hold. I expected this would help garrisons' withstand the constant fluctuation in food suply. And realistly, a town with a full stock should be able to survive at least a few weeks without losing it's garrison. Nothing has been modded on the food or prosperity production sides. The mods that increase these food production don't fix the problem, they delay it to a higher prosperity level.
So a higher food stock should have fixed the only clear problem about food and prosperity, namely your garrison constantly deserting, causing you to always hold onto your troops in fear of losing them. As you would be able to build up a stock, and then be clear of few in game weeks.
But the problem is bigger than I thought. My realm is completely at peace, with no major bandit disturbances. All lords patrolling and no sieges or raids happening.
I have about 8 towns, and what I notice is that most of them (6/8') are:
Trade is also up to a level where you see caravan trains running arround all over the place.
But STILL i'm generally losing prosperity and not gaining. In some places, like Sanala, prosperity has dropped from 13K to 6K over the last 2 years (PEACETIME!) though I did notice that there were a lot of aserai leftovers in the vicinity there, but stil, this town went from richest to pretty poor FAST because of food shortages. In some places, where the villages seem pretty wealthy, prosperity does increase slowly. About 100-200 per year. But thats the highest it will get on its own. Compared to the potential downfalls, that's crazy little. And even during the growing properity, there are small food shortages so often, that keeping a garrison is out of the question.
Meaning that the only way to get prosperous towns right now, is to pump it full of food on a regular basis yourself. For castles, there is no solution.
I think that this means that the economy is broken, as it can't make use of the good circumstances provided.
tl,dr: Even in prosperous peacefull times, general prosperity in Calradia only seems to improve extremely slowly, not at all. Food stocks in any case, never stabilise and keepign a garrison will always result in losing men.. How can we fix this?
How can we fix this?
I'm not sure I have the perfect solution. There are multiple things to fix here. It might even be that i'm just scratching the surface, that there are much deeper problems. I can only tell from ingame.
Must have:
First of all I would make a separate food stock for the garrison of a town or castle. This stock is player controlled, but should have some automatic functions like, in case of running low buy food from market and in case of food shortage in town you could choose to donate a part in return for temperorary security and loyalty boosts. Just an idea.
Then you could increase the food stocks in towns and castles. Maxed out towns and castles should be able to whitstand a few weeks of siege without starvation. In real life some did for months. (with starvation offcourse, but not from the first weeks)
Next to this, your town shouldn't go into starvation simply because there is not enough food to maintain prosperity. Now a town has 2 states, prospering or decaying. There should be a decent grey buffer zone in which a town is stable, able to build up a bit of stock etc. You could do this by increasing the food bonus to prosperity only when there is enough of this kind of food stored away. Visa versa, this would then only have a negative effect if both the stock and the marketplace no longer have the product.
Should have:
It would also be nice if the amount and type of resources produced by villages would be visible. The town needs are already shown, which is great (they change according to prosperity) but we should also see how much resource are produced by a town (like through workshops etc). As a town owner it would even be amazing if you could get an overview of incoming and outgoing resources and their prices.
As a town owner you should be able to forbid the sales of specific goods if a stock goes under a certain amount. I have seen towns with no food reserves being hauled empty by caravans.
This would be able to teach us how and if the amount of hearths a village has, has an effect on the amount of goods they produce.
It should also be a bit more clear where the villagers of castle towns go to sell their goods, as this effects the towns workshops and general economy.
Nice to have:
As a town owner you should be able to send out caravans with specific goals of goods. As an example, send out a caravan to fetch 500 grain, priced between 10-17, 200 fish between 5-15, etc.... You then need to provide the funds to purchase these items ofcourse. On returning they get put straight into the stock of the town (if chosen) or in your own inventory (could be nice).
As a town lord, you could set import and export taxes for specific products. If you would want to grow, you could lower incoming taxes on food and needed goods, and decrease export taxes on your produced goods. There should ofcourse be some pro's and cons to doing this though. Such as local villagers complaining because the price of their goods drops.
Right now I'm using a mod that does this with little regard to general balance. but it's extremely nice to help you mop up the endless stream of bandits: Village/town patrols.
Let's gather some more ideas, I can add them to this list. If you don't agree with my priorities, I'm very open to discussion.
I've been doing a lot of hours in this game now, and have been looking closely at my towns and kingdoms prosperity and food stocks. You probably have seen me post about it here and there.
I fully understand and appreciate how food is intented as a way to slow down prosperity increasing at a too high pace. But there is one major problem right now. Food curbs not only prosperity but also your garrison.
In my game,I have conquered the entire map. I have installed a mod to help control the bandit problem (patrol mod, it's nice for the endgame), and have Tweaklord increase the amount of stock a castle and town can hold. I expected this would help garrisons' withstand the constant fluctuation in food suply. And realistly, a town with a full stock should be able to survive at least a few weeks without losing it's garrison. Nothing has been modded on the food or prosperity production sides. The mods that increase these food production don't fix the problem, they delay it to a higher prosperity level.
So a higher food stock should have fixed the only clear problem about food and prosperity, namely your garrison constantly deserting, causing you to always hold onto your troops in fear of losing them. As you would be able to build up a stock, and then be clear of few in game weeks.
But the problem is bigger than I thought. My realm is completely at peace, with no major bandit disturbances. All lords patrolling and no sieges or raids happening.
I have about 8 towns, and what I notice is that most of them (6/8') are:
- Losing prosperity
- Unable to get a food stock
- Losing garrison
- Losing militia
Trade is also up to a level where you see caravan trains running arround all over the place.
But STILL i'm generally losing prosperity and not gaining. In some places, like Sanala, prosperity has dropped from 13K to 6K over the last 2 years (PEACETIME!) though I did notice that there were a lot of aserai leftovers in the vicinity there, but stil, this town went from richest to pretty poor FAST because of food shortages. In some places, where the villages seem pretty wealthy, prosperity does increase slowly. About 100-200 per year. But thats the highest it will get on its own. Compared to the potential downfalls, that's crazy little. And even during the growing properity, there are small food shortages so often, that keeping a garrison is out of the question.
Meaning that the only way to get prosperous towns right now, is to pump it full of food on a regular basis yourself. For castles, there is no solution.
I think that this means that the economy is broken, as it can't make use of the good circumstances provided.
tl,dr: Even in prosperous peacefull times, general prosperity in Calradia only seems to improve extremely slowly, not at all. Food stocks in any case, never stabilise and keepign a garrison will always result in losing men.. How can we fix this?
How can we fix this?
I'm not sure I have the perfect solution. There are multiple things to fix here. It might even be that i'm just scratching the surface, that there are much deeper problems. I can only tell from ingame.
Must have:
First of all I would make a separate food stock for the garrison of a town or castle. This stock is player controlled, but should have some automatic functions like, in case of running low buy food from market and in case of food shortage in town you could choose to donate a part in return for temperorary security and loyalty boosts. Just an idea.
Then you could increase the food stocks in towns and castles. Maxed out towns and castles should be able to whitstand a few weeks of siege without starvation. In real life some did for months. (with starvation offcourse, but not from the first weeks)
Next to this, your town shouldn't go into starvation simply because there is not enough food to maintain prosperity. Now a town has 2 states, prospering or decaying. There should be a decent grey buffer zone in which a town is stable, able to build up a bit of stock etc. You could do this by increasing the food bonus to prosperity only when there is enough of this kind of food stored away. Visa versa, this would then only have a negative effect if both the stock and the marketplace no longer have the product.
Should have:
It would also be nice if the amount and type of resources produced by villages would be visible. The town needs are already shown, which is great (they change according to prosperity) but we should also see how much resource are produced by a town (like through workshops etc). As a town owner it would even be amazing if you could get an overview of incoming and outgoing resources and their prices.
As a town owner you should be able to forbid the sales of specific goods if a stock goes under a certain amount. I have seen towns with no food reserves being hauled empty by caravans.
This would be able to teach us how and if the amount of hearths a village has, has an effect on the amount of goods they produce.
It should also be a bit more clear where the villagers of castle towns go to sell their goods, as this effects the towns workshops and general economy.
Nice to have:
As a town owner you should be able to send out caravans with specific goals of goods. As an example, send out a caravan to fetch 500 grain, priced between 10-17, 200 fish between 5-15, etc.... You then need to provide the funds to purchase these items ofcourse. On returning they get put straight into the stock of the town (if chosen) or in your own inventory (could be nice).
As a town lord, you could set import and export taxes for specific products. If you would want to grow, you could lower incoming taxes on food and needed goods, and decrease export taxes on your produced goods. There should ofcourse be some pro's and cons to doing this though. Such as local villagers complaining because the price of their goods drops.
Right now I'm using a mod that does this with little regard to general balance. but it's extremely nice to help you mop up the endless stream of bandits: Village/town patrols.
Let's gather some more ideas, I can add them to this list. If you don't agree with my priorities, I'm very open to discussion.
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