Economics 101 Thread

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Agree, getting a high level of Trade is painful if you care about roleplaying and you do this the intended way. However, if you don't care about merchant gameplay and just want to get it levelled fast, there is nice exploit for it, check out this madman:

HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA

So let me get this straight:
  1. The profit margin tracked by the Trade skill is set by the last transaction you made
  2. The XP is given even for profits that a town/caravan/village can't afford to pay
  3. Apparently prices by villages/caravans are linked to the closest city
  4. But those trades don't affect the city's price, so you can sell high to a caravan + sell low to a city + buy back low from the caravan + buy back high from the city + sell even higher to the caravan
  5. Also the prices for all crafting metals + all packhorses + all riding horses + all warhorses are linked, which lowers when you pop one sub-unit to the left for sale and pop another sub-unit to the right for purchase, but doesn't remove the discount on the proposed transaction if you pop the sale horses back to the right before hitting OK
So it looks like my proposed solution of pooling demand for a given resource is already implemented for horses and metals but not for food. Also, it's bugged to only work for current prices, not proposed transactions. ALSO village and caravan pricing is tied to their closest city but doesn't appropriately fluctuate according to supply.

Does this sound right @SadShogun? Also, can you specify what you meant by this:
The "supplies" are already not updated immediately and they instead slowly follow the actual supply in the market. In a sense this acts a store, and protects against the shocks created by looting, caravans/player buying a lot of goods in a short time etc.
Do you mean that production supply is factored into the demand/price equation? Or did you mean there's a hidden minimum cache of goods that players can't buy? Both? Both would seem ideal.

Here are my proposed fixes to these specific exploits:
  1. Obviously, the item-price bug needs to be fixed by recalculating all prior proposed trades every time the transaction changes
  2. It'd be really nice if the same system that applied to staple foods? Ideally, only for base demand but not luxury demand? (I mean, it might already do that and I just haven't seen it)
  3. The inventory of a village and the inventory of a caravan should be counted - for demand/supply price equations - as part of their host town's inventory
  4. Workshops should reserve or purchase a week's worth of input supply in advance
#3 would probably lead to some Caravan AI issues that must be compensated for, but treating caravans as mobile representations of the host city would make a ton of sense as well as stop player exploits.

The only player exploit this might create would be buying low from a caravan and selling high to a city it's going to, but that could be compensated for by increasing sell prices on caravans OR tagging the Sell price to the city it's going to but tagging the Buy price to its host city (OR ideally make it buy at the lower of the two prices but sell at the higher of the two).

This would also mean more sensible caravan behavior, as they'd exist first-and-foremost to sell the host town's products and buy the host town's needs.

AND it would lead to semi-realistic price shocks in host cities as caravans or villages are raided. For instance, a host town for a silver mine would not panic-buy silver from caravans if its supply has largely run out but there is plenty of silver in the village. The panic would start when the villagers are intercepted and their silver is stolen by looters. This way towns would be much more resilient to supply shocks and less vulnerable to player abuse. Similarly, capturing the castle of the silver mine would cause prices to sharply increase as their supply disappears.

One larger thought for you @SadShogun: One thing I noticed looking at the pricing equations from last year is that goods seemed to reach market price at slightly less than one week's supply. This means that a town with enough goods to reach "market price" will run out of EVERYTHING it has if it receives nothing for a week. This appears to be intentional.

I don't know if the pricing equation has changed in this aspect since then, but I suggest that doubling or even quadrupling the multiplier so to reach market price at a 2 week or 1 month stockpile would not substantially affect the simulation...

BUT it would make players' lives a lot easier by allowing for a greater range of trading opportunity and less room for the econ simulation to collapse.

This issue is probably why it's difficult for players to make profits. Because even a town with ZERO supply will only purchase enough to get them through the next week before heading into the discount zone.

Here's the proof in the pudding demonstrating market prices for all goods (Price Multiplier = 1) means about 6-7 days of supply:

image.png
 
Hey,
The reason why, all horses updating the supply (and prices) are because they belong in the same "ItemCategory", on the other hand all of the trade goods (including food) each have their own item category (i.e. there is a "grain item category" with only grain in it). There are several reasons it is like this. Main reason being that the different goods having different effects. Some is tied to the program structure of the system and they ,as I mentioned before, require substantial refactoring as well as design.
Also without fixing price bug which causes prices to not update without actually committing the trade for horses would affect the trade goods as well if they shared the same item categories.

Other improvements regarding the workshop behavior for their stockpiling etc. can be beneficial however they're "profit neutral" in the long run.
For example if a workshop tried to buy when there is cheap goods;
  • Workshop waits to buy until the prices fall below a certain point, when prices fall below a certain point though, caravans also more likely to target this settlement (also the consumption increases because the settlement budget system for items takes the price index (i.e. how cheap it is) into account when calculating the budget. In our simulations this generally showed a more "stop few days, run few days" behavior. In longer tests it did not really changed the amount of profit made by the workshops. (While there was a minor effect)
Most important factor in a workshops profitability is the closeness to the raw materials.(e.g. trade-bound villages which are producing the good helps)
Next very important factor is the profitability of the workshop "recipe" i.e. input average value versus the output total average value
These two determine most of the profit a workshop makes.
The recipes and the demands of the produced goods is going to be improved to increase the profitability of both the caravans and the workshops. These changes, hopefully, will improve the economic viability of investments especially for the late game player gains from passive sources.

I think the ideas presented by here in the forum (while I cannot find enough time to respond and discuss all of them) is very helpful for us find new ideas and even alleviate some of the problems with the existing ones (and we do have a improvement branch which improves numbers across different goods under way).
It is good to both to discuss the existing systems and present new ideas, as it is very delightful to read solutions from people who put their labor in it. I really appreciate it, so thank you for feedback! Please do understand that while not all ideas are possible to implement in the game, some solutions are actually great resources to understand the underlining problems bothering the you, the players.
 
There are several reasons it is like this. Main reason being that the different goods having different effects. Some is tied to the program structure of the system and they ,as I mentioned before, require substantial refactoring as well as design.
I understand this. Makes sense. I definitely recommend exploring the possibility, though. Also - of course - fixing the bug with horses.

Here's my recommendation for new categories:
  • Staples: Grain, Fish, Olives, Grapes, Dates, Meat, Cheese
  • Condiments: Oil, Butter, Spices (I know that's not added... yet?)
  • Alcohol: Beer, Wine
This would also work with a morale penalty for giving your troops condiments or alcohol without staple foods to eat them with.
Other improvements regarding the workshop behavior for their stockpiling etc. can be beneficial however they're "profit neutral" in the long run.
For example if a workshop tried to buy when there is cheap goods;
Good to know! But that said, I'm not suggesting a "buy only when cheap" option.

I'm thinking that workshops should buy the same amount per day as they do now, but that the original setup should involve purchase of 7 days worth of supply. It could still be profit-neutral and that's fine but this way if the supply completely runs out for some reason, the production can keep running until a new load makes it to market.

If that's too complicated, then as a bare minimum we need to be able to stash input goods in our own workshops like we could in M&B WB.
The recipes and the demands of the produced goods is going to be improved to increase the profitability of both the caravans and the workshops. These changes, hopefully, will improve the economic viability of investments especially for the late game player gains from passive sources.
Well you know my recommendation: changing the multiplier on the pricing equation so that market price is reached at 14 or 30 days supply rather than 6-7.

The reason why this is important is that, by increasing the number of goods in stock required to reach market price, you give more room for the player to profit by selling a larger load. It also means settlements are less likely to run out of essential goods.

Example according to the equation from last year:
Beer purchased at minimum price (9 denars) and sold to a 5000 prosperity town with ZERO supply of beer will only take 29 units to drop the price down to market price (45) and would sell for an average price of (guesstimating) ~52 for a profit of 1247 denars (I'm pretty sure most looter parties give more profit than that).

That's literally buying at the absolute minimum price and selling to a town with no supply at all.

By increasing the multiplier to 14 days, you can sell 66 units before reaching market price for a ~67 average sale and a profit of 3828. Increasing it to 30 days increases the sellable units to 132 for an average price of ~68 and a profit of 7788.

By increasing the market-price Town stockpiles from 7 days to just 14 days, you TRIPLE the player's profit and make trading a remotely worthwhile thing for players to do. AND the town is less likely to run out of crucial goods.

For an idea of how silly it is for markets to only buy a week's worth of product, consider that Walmart - even with some of the most efficient logistics technology on the planet - has an average Days Sales of Inventory of 42.79 days.

Please do understand that while not all ideas are possible to implement in the game, some solutions are actually great resources to understand the underlining problems bothering the you, the players.
Here are my thoughts on the biggest problems facing us players with the economy:
  1. Active trading is the most-intensive and also least-profitable activity in the game, which most of us only do to increase our Trading skill
  2. Passive trading (workshops and caravans) are high-risk and low-reward, with profits that do not seem to match well with the locally-available resources
  3. To be specific, the only workshops worth buying right now are Wool Weaveries (because their minimum sell price is 80% of market value) as well as Breweries and Silversmiths (because demand is so high for Beer + Jewelry at higher Prosperity levels that it's almost impossible to overwhelm the market)
  4. Caravans are often seen working with perverse incentives like buying up input goods in markets with production facilities or buying food from starving towns after a siege (example: I have two Silversmiths in Lycaron but caravans regularly buy up Silver Ore instead of Jewelry from the market, which cuts into my profits)
  5. Towns regularly experience complete market collapse in the late game (partially because of leveled-up bandits) but resupplying them back to health is only minimally-profitable
On top of this there are the two bugs mentioned earlier:
  • Villages and caravans improperly use the prices of the closest town, which causes player-abusable differences
  • Items sold within the same category update prices but do not recalculate transactions
OK and this is the BIGGEST BIGGEST BIGGEST GRIPE PLEASE HEAR ME IF YOU LISTEN TO NOTHING ELSE:
  • It feels like every time there's a new patch to the economic system, it's a giant nerf bat used against us. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that it genuinely feels like you guys want us to have less fun by increasing the grind in an already grind-heavy game. I don't really want to believe that, but the feeling is there. That's a large part of the increasingly-angry vibe on this forum in the last two years: that nerfs to "exploits" always seemed to take priority over fixes to frustrating bugs.
  • So - for instance - you could "fix" the abusable caravan pricing exploit by increasing the trade penalty when dealing with them so high that it's impossible to make a profit... at the cost of making almost all caravan trades unprofitable. But please don't. All that would do is further harm player trust.
Would it be helpful for your internal discussions if I laid these issues out in a poll and got an idea of how many players agree with me?
 
Garrison is all about having enough security to have enough loyalty without running out of food. Now, I'm not saying the AI understands that, but them having modest garrison sizes isn't an indication of them being weak or compromised.
The problem is that they do run out of money. They are not choosing those garrison levels because they are optimal, it happens because they run out of money. It is a very direct indicator that they have exhausted their money supply.
@Sweynforkbeard is right on this one, it's clearly about the money.

I have one save file where I have 20k influence as an independent clan. When I join as mercenary the richest and the biggest faction - Aserai, which conquered most of the Khuzaits and some imperial towns - then majority of troops dissapears in no time from all garrisons in the entire kingdom. Even at the point when all my influence finally gets depleted, all garrisons stay low for a very long time after this. Only the ruling, and other 1-2 richest clans of the faction, are recovering from this at decent pace. Some clans that were poor at the start even disbanded quite a lot of thier parties. and they don't seem to be going back soon after my influence is gone.

I think AI clans don't need additional, big financial hits, maybe some smaller balancing is needed, but nothing crazy.

I like @Ananda_The_Destroyer's idea of adding more activites for AI parties, but for this to be working nice and fun for the player, you probably need to balance, upgrade and expand settlements' mechanics first. Adding more map activities in general might be needed for this aswell.
However, there is a risk that it might decrease number of battles between nobles to a boring level, so you would need to address that too.



By increasing the market-price Town stockpiles from 7 days to just 14 days, you TRIPLE the player's profit and make trading a remotely worthwhile thing for players to do. AND the town is less likely to run out of crucial goods.
It would also change other things, some of them for worse. For example starving settlements' garrisons by siege would take much more time, and you need some patience to do that even now. You need to keep in mind that probably the majority of players is more interested in conquest gameplay than in the merchant one.
For an idea of how silly it is for markets to only buy a week's worth of product, consider that Walmart - even with some of the most efficient logistics technology on the planet - has an average Days Sales of Inventory of 42.79 days.
To be fair, year in Calradia is 84 days long, so it changes perspective on this a bit.

I am not totally against it though. Stockpiling more than 14 days worth of food would be too much in my opinion, but experimenting with values between 7 and 14 days might bring some nice results.


Here's my recommendation for new categories:
  • Staples: Grain, Fish, Olives, Grapes, Dates, Meat, Cheese
  • Condiments: Oil, Butter, Spices (I know that's not added... yet?)
  • Alcohol: Beer, Wine
I don't think grouping food types into one type, like with steel and iron, is a good idea. In Bannerlord, stockpiling different food types in the market gives very, very different result in food bonus for a town, and food bonus translates to prosperity bonus. For example, Grain is the most desirable food type, and much bigger percetage of it, available on the market, would be consumed daily by a town than for the other food types. It can be an order of magnitude difference.

Edit: Pirce grouping of different item types makes one more exploit possible similar to the caravan one. You can level up Trade by bying and selling two grouped items in the right order to one town. You are using one item to manipulate the price of the other one, so you lose money on one item and gain on the other one. You don't lose much money by doing this, but it isn't as effective as the caravan exploit.


Edit 2: I didn't specify it earlier - I have joined Aserai as mercenary.
I have changed this:
When I join there as the richest and the biggest faction - Aserai, which conquered most of the Khuzaits and some imperial towns - then majority of troops dissapears in no time from all garrisons in the entire kingdom.
To this:
When I join as mercenary the richest and the biggest faction - Aserai, which conquered most of the Khuzaits and some imperial towns - then majority of troops dissapears in no time from all garrisons in the entire kingdom.
 
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I have one save file where I have 20k influence as an independent clan.
Why/how did you have influence as a independent clan? Did you lose it when declaring a kingdom or joining one? In the past I felt influence as independant was just a bug sometimes, and that I lost it when making a kingdom.

then majority of troops dissapears in no time from all garrisons in the entire kingdom.
Why/how do they disappear? They won't disappear from money/wage they but can disappear from food shortages though. Does the AI take them out and disband them? Or are they using them as replacements?
Only the ruling, and other 1-2 richest clans of the faction, are recovering from this at decent pace. Some clans that were poor at the start even disbanded quite a lot of thier parties. and they don't seem to be going back soon after my influence is gone.
I don't understand what your influence has to do with it, if that's important.

adding more activites for AI parties, but for this to be working nice and fun for the player, you probably need to balance, upgrade and expand settlements' mechanics first. Adding more map activities in general might be needed for this aswell.
However, there is a risk that it might decrease number of battles between nobles to a boring level, so you would need to address that too.
What's important to me for the AI getting more money or troops or anything really is simply that More campaign time is spent to get the resource, whatever it is. Just giving them more money, or food, or recruits just so they can have bigger or more parties for the player to fight is not the kind of fix I want. Everything the player has comes from decisions of spending campaign time and I would like it to be so for the AI as much as possible. Spending your time always has trade offs: Do I wait in town to make babies? DO I drag around an expensive clan army for leadership? DO I break off as a sleek fast poarty and catch many more enemies for more money? DO I ram troops into a fast siege with high losses or spend days destroying wall and siege gear?

In general I think the value of campaign time needs to be more respected as the game is balanced.
 
Why/how did you have influence as a independent clan? Did you lose it when declaring a kingdom or joining one? In the past I felt influence as independant was just a bug sometimes, and that I lost it when making a kingdom.
You can get influence as independend clan from the last perk in charm and from supporters, and you lose all your influence when you leave kingdom, not when you join one.

Why/how do they disappear? They won't disappear from money/wage they but can disappear from food shortages though. Does the AI take them out and disband them? Or are they using them as replacements?
I don't understand what your influence has to do with it, if that's important.
I have made mistake and didn't specify that I joined faction as mercenary. That matters because pays for mercenaries are based and exchanged for their influence, so with my 20k influence as mercenary entire faction got broke really quick.

Edit: I have corrected mistakes, it seems like I can't write properly today.
 
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@CptMuppet Ah okay, so you were a merc in the above example. Yes, that mattered.

The vastly simpler upshot of this is what I alluded to about "gifting money to clans of a faction you want to succeed", above:

Clans on Poor or Very Poor do some instant laying off of troops to hit the very low % force totals the AI is compelled to by those wealth conditions. Even at Average they may not add to garrisons or reach 100% (but low tier) manning in war parties.

This being made more severe by the e1.6.x version's reduction in fief incomes, the normal state for clans right now is a fraction of what strength they can, and should, be fielding or putting in garrisons.
 
Why/how do they disappear? They won't disappear from money/wage they but can disappear from food shortages though. Does the AI take them out and disband them? Or are they using them as replacements?
I have one of my lords that is running out of money. His holdings all have a "party/payment size reached" modifier to the garrison of -1.

In the Asarai case Sanala is particularly interesting. On day 1 it had 4.300 prosperity and a garrison of 292. On day 500 prosperity has reached 9.137 (well done!) but the garrison has dropped to 155. So, even in (because of?) a nice safe environment AI lords seems to be set on a path towards poverty.
 
FYI all: you can see Clan Wealth as one of the sorting tabs for Clans in the Encyclopaedia now. It might help your understanding of some situations to check that and see for yourself how poor things are.
 
It would also change other things, some of them for worse. For example starving settlements' garrisons by siege would take much more time, and you need some patience to do that even now. You need to keep in mind that probably the majority of players is more interested in conquest gameplay than in the merchant one.
I think two weeks food supply is a fairly reasonable starting point for a starvation siege, especially as currently implemented.

Also you gotta keep in mind that the most hotly-contested fiefs are likely going to be going through multiple sieges in fairly short spans of time and also experience village disruption.
To be fair, year in Calradia is 84 days long, so it changes perspective on this a bit.
Huh... they changed it? I thought it was 120 days, with 4x 30-day months. Wild that I didn't notice.
I don't think grouping food types into one type, like with steel and iron, is a good idea. In Bannerlord, stockpiling different food types in the market gives very, very different result in food bonus for a town, and food bonus translates to prosperity bonus. For example, Grain is the most desirable food type, and much bigger percetage of it, available on the market, would be consumed daily by a town than for the other food types.
I'm sure that the code can be tweaked so they still offer the same Food-stat bonuses they do now while feeding the same demand curve for food in general.

Also IRL example: I used to live in Portugal, whose staple foods are: grain, fish, oil and meat. Bacalau (aka cod - which still gives me nausea just thinking about it today) and caldo verde (a green soup which serves basically as a vehicle for olive oil) prove that you can sustain peasantry on fish and oil alone without any grain.
Pirce grouping of different item types makes one more exploit possible similar to the caravan one.
I'm aware but LOL they should patch that exploit already.
In general I think the value of campaign time needs to be more respected as the game is balanced.
YES! In M&B WB & VC there was always a distinct impression given that lords were independent actors with their own motives and goals that did their own thing according to their own ethical codes.

In BL, lords do absolutely nothing at all but siege, raid and patrol. That's it.

And it appears to have **** nothing to do with their personality: I just caught an Honorable Merciful Generous lord raiding one of my villages. What the **** is that???
In the Asarai case Sanala is particularly interesting. On day 1 it had 4.300 prosperity and a garrison of 292. On day 500 prosperity has reached 9.137 (well done!) but the garrison has dropped to 155. So, even in (because of?) a nice safe environment AI lords seems to be set on a path towards poverty.
That might be a function of food availability? Prosperity directly translates into food demand and starvation kills garrisons. Are you playing on a fresh 1.7.0 save?

@SadShogun this is exactly what I was talking about in terms of town collapse. Tying Prosperity directly to the Food stat is a mistake, since consumption of food is already a function of Prosperity. And, in the past, there's been a severe mismatch where a high enough supply of food to counteract the Prosperity penalty would reduce the price enough to cause caravans to buy up the supply.

I guess the Food stat is less a measure of available food and more a measure of food precarity + nutritional health of the people? If so, that should really be a function of the supply of food and the PRICES - so it simulates the affordability of food for the common people. A town being more prosperous shouldn't be a reason for the peasants to not afford food: if they all have paying work, then the opposite should be true.

I didn't even know it was possible for Prosperity to go over 8000. Interesting!
 
That might be a function of food availability? Prosperity directly translates into food demand and starvation kills garrisons. Are you playing on a fresh 1.7.0 save?

@SadShogun this is exactly what I was talking about in terms of town collapse. Tying Prosperity directly to the Food stat is a mistake, since consumption of food is already a function of Prosperity. And, in the past, there's been a severe mismatch where a high enough supply of food to counteract the Prosperity penalty would reduce the price enough to cause caravans to buy up the supply.

I guess the Food stat is less a measure of available food and more a measure of food precarity + nutritional health of the people? If so, that should really be a function of the supply of food and the PRICES - so it simulates the affordability of food for the common people. A town being more prosperous shouldn't be a reason for the peasants to not afford food: if they all have paying work, then the opposite should be true.

I didn't even know it was possible for Prosperity to go over 8000. Interesting!
No, food is clearly not an issue in this case. You do not reach over 9.000, an almost 5.000 increase in prosperity over the span of 500 days, by running into food shortages along the way. It had plenty of food and must have had so consistently. And again it was the entire faction. The situation was even worse for the Khuzait.

The Sanala case should be a reasonably good indicator that, despite the most ideal conditions you can probably hope for in the game, the AI cannot maintain a capacity close to the starting one.

And it is not 1.7 its 1.65.

My realm is centered around Battania so I have had zero interaction with either the Asarai or the Khuzait. So, as I mentioned, it is not impossible that it is peace/limited conflict that have done them in.
 
I think two weeks food supply is a fairly reasonable starting point for a starvation siege, especially as currently implemented.
I'm not so sure. It would be two weeks for food in the market alone. Add to that settlement's food stocks and also time needed for actual starvation of the garrison. After all of that you still need to fight all militia troops, because they are not affected by the starvation the same way as troops in garrisons are.

Huh... they changed it? I thought it was 120 days, with 4x 30-day months. Wild that I didn't notice.
I don't know, it was 84 days for a long time - 21 days for a season. I know however that there is a lot of misinformation about it on the forum and youtube.

That might be a function of food availability? Prosperity directly translates into food demand and starvation kills garrisons. Are you playing on a fresh 1.7.0 save?
Sanala is quite wild town in regard of prosperity. It is located in a very safe place and there is huge grain production in neighbour villages and some fish production aswell. Fish is the second best food type for gaining prosperity. It is like that for some time already, probably since e1.6.0 at least.
In one game I have bought Sanala and was able to get there 15000 prosperity without ever worrying about starvation.


Edit: I'm correcting mistake - there are 21 days for a season, not 28.
 
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No, food is clearly not an issue in this case. You do not reach over 9.000, an almost 5.000 increase in prosperity over the span of 500 days, by running into food shortages along the way. It had plenty of food and must have had so consistently. And again it was the entire faction. The situation was even worse for the Khuzait.
It may not be the only issue, but prosperity increases food daily consumption of the town and its a very common problem that prosperity, even modest like 4-5k start to cause food shortages because the effect of hearths reaches it's limit. You really can't have a large garrison in a high prosperity town because the caravan system just won't support the demand well enough. Also, why can't they pay for their garrison, in you opinion? If they have a 9K prosperity town that's a juicy passive income there alone, there must be problem beyond "oops out of money".

I have one of my lords that is running out of money. His holdings all have a "party/payment size reached" modifier to the garrison of -1.
Okay so they're using something like the wage limiter to passively kick out troops due to their finances. I'm guessing they're doing goofy stuff like limiting it and kicking troops, then raising the limit the next pay and recruiting and then limiting because they spent the pay recruiting and kicking out XD I don't know of course, but this type of goofy recruitment and spending has been observed in many versions and is a big money-go-bye-bye problem.
 
No, food is clearly not an issue in this case. You do not reach over 9.000, an almost 5.000 increase in prosperity over the span of 500 days, by running into food shortages along the way. It had plenty of food and must have had so consistently. And again it was the entire faction. The situation was even worse for the Khuzait.

The Sanala case should be a reasonably good indicator that, despite the most ideal conditions you can probably hope for in the game, the AI cannot maintain a capacity close to the starting one.

And it is not 1.7 its 1.65.

It may not be the only issue, but prosperity increases food daily consumption of the town and its a very common problem that prosperity, even modest like 4-5k start to cause food shortages because the effect of hearths reaches it's limit. You really can't have a large garrison in a high prosperity town because the caravan system just won't support the demand well enough. Also, why can't they pay for their garrison, in you opinion? If they have a 9K prosperity town that's a juicy passive income there alone, there must be problem beyond "oops out of money".
Thats just it and what surprised me. How, can they possibly have money problems in the least contested region in world?

And again, food is not an issue. In fact Sanala still has a daily surpluse of more than 100 which it also must have had for the kind of growth needed to reach that size.

The only explaination that I can think of is that the AI suck at peace. That they are wired to spend them self into the ground (Idgarrett mentioned something about the AI´s spending behavior) and then eventually end at that stage. Without additional income from loot or "cost saving" from defeated parties that is essentially what they can sustain.
 
Inappropriate behavior
I would write suggestions but you'll probably call them "turds" so I'll pass.
Man you changed your tune rapidly -from like "id rather kill myself than endure this game unmodded" to " Great Mr Dev - thanks so much and glad to help!!!"
-Snip-
 
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Thats just it and what surprised me. How, can they possibly have money problems in the least contested region in world?

And again, food is not an issue. In fact Sanala still has a daily surpluse of more than 100 which it also must have had for the kind of growth needed to reach that size.

The only explaination that I can think of is that the AI suck at peace. That they are wired to spend them self into the ground (Idgarrett mentioned something about the AI´s spending behavior) and then eventually end at that stage. Without additional income from loot or "cost saving" from defeated parties that is essentially what they can sustain.
I've completed the main quest on my current run and I've been surprised at how easy it is to go hella-bankrupt if you act like an NPC.

I don't think I'm being that nuts with my garrisons: just 200 T6 troops at each of my cities... 100 T6's at each of my castles...

And yet I'm constantly hemorrhaging cash.

I mean I know those troops are expensive but I could have sworn that I was pulling in like 4000 denars a day on tariffs alone in earlier versions.

Now I'm spending 4000 denars on my main party alone - not to mention my 5 clan parties - and pulling in something like 400 max a day on each of my TOWNS.

If it weren't for constant smithing and fighting and ransoming AND the mod tweak for 1/2 cost garrisons, I'd go broke in no time flat.

Am I being unreasonable or what?

Also I've noticed some extremely weird caravan behavior. Now that the game's over, I guess I have breathing room so I'll check out the fact that there always seem to be at least A DOZEN caravans doing nothing but going back and forth between Odokh and Akkalat.
 
I've completed the main quest on my current run and I've been surprised at how easy it is to go hella-bankrupt if you act like an NPC.

I don't think I'm being that nuts with my garrisons: just 200 T6 troops at each of my cities... 100 T6's at each of my castles...

And yet I'm constantly hemorrhaging cash.

I mean I know those troops are expensive but I could have sworn that I was pulling in like 4000 denars a day on tariffs alone in earlier versions.

Now I'm spending 4000 denars on my main party alone - not to mention my 5 clan parties - and pulling in something like 400 max a day on each of my TOWNS.

If it weren't for constant smithing and fighting and ransoming AND the mod tweak for 1/2 cost garrisons, I'd go broke in no time flat.

Am I being unreasonable or what?

Also I've noticed some extremely weird caravan behavior. Now that the game's over, I guess I have breathing room so I'll check out the fact that there always seem to be at least A DOZEN caravans doing nothing but going back and forth between Odokh and Akkalat.
Based on Idgarrett´s observation AI´s spending behavior is essentially "if I have money in the bank I am going to spend it all". That fits well with the Asarai observation and it also fits with the behavior of my own vassals; they essentially all have very large garrisons and run around with huge parties thanks, no doubt, to what I have paid them to join me.

Originally, I just havent paid much attention to this. I have basically just assumed that the hardships of war have depleted my opponents. It would probably be better if that was actually the case. I.e. the AI should be able to muster relatively large garrisons/parties but should also be more vulnerable to negative events.

To facilitate this you could increase the average income of AI lords, possibly by giving the AI a positive modifier to income from holdings. This in turn would also mean that economic war, burned villages etc., would hurt more. You could also make loosing battles more consequential by e.g. increasing the cost of recruiting new troops.

The flip side ofcourse might be that factions will have a harder time to recover. But, relative to "everyone is going to go broke eventually" that might be an acceptable trade-off.
 
Also I've noticed some extremely weird caravan behavior. Now that the game's over, I guess I have breathing room so I'll check out the fact that there always seem to be at least A DOZEN caravans doing nothing but going back and forth between Odokh and Akkalat.
OK can anyone figure this out?


Originally, I just havent paid much attention to this. I have basically just assumed that the hardships of war have depleted my opponents. It would probably be better if that was actually the case. I.e. the AI should be able to muster relatively large garrisons/parties but should also be more vulnerable to negative events.
Yes. I'm not sure what on earth is in the Lord AI but I have a feeling it isn't pretty.

Ideally, lords should act reasonably within a budget defined by an average of their income over time and their behavior should be driven by economic incentives + personality traits. They should keep their total salary at a fraction of their total budget.

Also - per my mod tweaking - they should get a discount of 50% off garrison wages. And they should use the Improved Garrisons mod to send guard parties to farm looters.

Even more ideally, AI should not be so suicidally-reckless all the time. All but the most Daring lords should retreat from hopeless battles, sacrifice troops to escape or bargain for their escapes. Hell, Cautious lords shouldn't even be entering combat physically themselves.
 
re: "OK can anyone figure this out?"

Only partly. Your implied initial reaction that something must be broken is likely correct...

I observed what are likely 3 caravans from each of the two towns doing a 'closest profitable trade' choice, which IIRC was explained by Mexx as 40% of the tasking choices for a caravan when it targets a destination. So that's about 6 of those in that loop.

I also observed that they were resource leveling between the two towns, which the process of small purchases and sales of items that are commonly products of or demands of town workshops. Where that breaks down is that both those towns have some village supply from castle villages of iron ore, and yet that item was one that they were shuffling back and forth in lots of 5-8 units.

So, moving to pure guesswork based only on observing the VoD, I'd say that there must have been substantial unmet demands in both towns, and yet the price of some goods would drop enough when village parties came in to confuse the caravan AI... but that doesn't explain how caravans from other towns got caught up in repeating the loop, and some obviously did just that.

If there is a save preserved from the time during that loop, and your character party was near, a look at all the market prices and quantities might give more clues. But again, that almost certainly can't be a compelling and persisting profitable loop.

Hope that helps!
 
Adding this in, here rather than in a new thread or report, as @SadShogun has looked in on this and knows the topic well.

Caravan discrepancy: mid-game, town notables' caravans are up to 50 troop count. player-made caravans are fixed at 30.

Towns do not rationalize the Meat/Hides price with what Livestock prices are, and should. Because...

A player can, without simply wanting the materials created and often at great added value, purchase local Livestock and render that down, reselling the Meat and/or Hides. Costing no time or money other than the Livestock price. If the player can do that, the Town should. It's almost embarrassing to see Pravend with 2 Tanneries, over a 100 Hogs on the market at 30-ish, and be demanding Meat in the high 30's and Hides near 3 figures.

related issue: created materials (Charcoal from Wood) (Hides and Meat from rendering) bear no "value price" for purposes of gaining Trade Skill xp. Those almost certainly should be assigned such based on ratio of production and current market value of the feedstock.
 
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