Economy Changes with 1.8 and onwards

[StaceMcGate]

Salutations merchants of Calradia


We have been working on some changes regarding the economy of Calradia for some time. With the new patch we can finally share those changes with you.

So we wanted to take this opportunity to share the changes as well as the reasons, rationale and limitations behind them.


To properly explain where the changes came from we need to start with the existing problems.

First of all `economy` in this sense is about trade goods, caravans and workshops so mostly trade. Equipment wages and loot values are a separate topic. Surely it is still related but they are sequestered enough to be handled separately to a decent degree.

So what are the primary issues we thought we should prioritize?

• Over stocking of trade goods in towns. This is the mother of all problems. Its causes are many but its effects are more.
  • With abundance of trade goods in town markets, price index drops to very low.
  • Its not only about a single trade good being in stock in huge quantities, but also every trade good being available in pretty much every town in about 5 years.
• Low profit margins. Low price index means profit margins are low as well.
• Caravans and workshops have limited potential profits.
• Workshop variety has limited effect.
• Variety between town markets is not high, making the game world less interesting.
• Market homogeneity limiting trade opportunities, limiting how much profit player can make as the games goes on.
• With limited profits Trade skill xp gain is also curbed severely, making it harder than intended to increase trade skill.
• Trade gameplay in general is less rewarding even for making money compared to more mainstream methods.

Just went through two quick play throughs of 1.8 and these issues are still quite prevalent.
While companions assigned to trade caravans do acquire more trade SP than before, the world economy becomes stale after roughly
the first year of gameplay and trade no longer becomes a truly viable means of income.
Even with all the perks I could give them, workshops would not go above 450 income and they would erratically lose all value
fast, leading to constantly changing what type of shop they were in the hopes of making profit.

Some questions/suggestions I have about trade

1) Would it be possible to have events that introduce scarcity or demand of goods? Like droughts that significantly reduce the amount of crops produced, luxury goods becoming in demand within certain cultures for certain period, or seasons having more profound effects on good productions?
I ask because unless the world is introduced to devastation via raids or sieges, the economy becomes stagnant and the value of goods remains the same across the map. If random events were a new variable, I wonder if that could add spice to trade.

2) Workshops have had a level indicator next to them for the entirety of EA, wondering what is planned to do with that or if that is just a placeholder text.

3) Is the amount of caravans an issue in maintaining variety in town goods? Each town seems to have at least 3 caravans, and within the first few weeks the value of goods drops dramatically. Sounds extremely basic, but have you considered limiting the amount of npc traders to help out with variety?

4) Caravans simply aren't worth your time later in game as they are immediately destroyed while at war or by bandit parties. Unless caravans are made neutral parties that are only attacked by bandits or have an option to have an even larger caravan party, this will remain true as even bandit parties will have around 25-50 troops.

5) The main character and companions need more methods of receiving trade SP in the games current state. Owning profitable caravans/workshops, being a governor and having caravans/villagers enter settlements, or just boost the amount of SP earned. Trade growth currently caps around 150-180, and unless you make it your primary objective to further boost it, it just plateaus.

 

[svelok]

5) The main character and companions need more methods of receiving trade SP in the games current state. Owning profitable caravans/workshops, being a governor and having caravans/villagers enter settlements, or just boost the amount of SP earned. Trade growth currently caps around 150-180, and unless you make it your primary objective to further boost it, it just plateaus.

And there's not enough trade goods in cities for you to do like massive trade runs where the volume justifies spending time on it. Even at 100+ trade skill you're still going around trying to find 5-10 cheap things to buy up here and sell for a profit over there, even though you've gone from 500 denars in the bank to 500k and have 2k passive income from workshops and caravans.

 

[Earth Dragon]

You've got dates and mainly beer in the desert and you can now buy camels in the south.

It’s fair enough to have towns have their own trade good that the artisans provide.

Spice, Ivory, Gold, Gems, and Rugs are all things that could be designated to the town.

The issue would be how would the be “consumed”. They’d almost need their own system.

I would also love to see the food system brought up to an even “10” food items with either Nuts ? or Fruit ? added as the 10th item. There are some spots on the map hurting for a little action, and many of those places could easily get another town with these a trade good (looking at you Usanc) and there are spots with massive abundance of Olives or Grain that could have a village switch over to the new food type.

This could also be a food produced by Towns from all these orchard built there, but instead of being a non-physical, behind the scenes good, it’s actually posted to the markets, and then re-absorbed into the settlement.

 

[nereid]

It’s fair enough to have towns have their own trade good that the artisans provide.

Spice, Ivory, Gold, Gems, and Rugs are all things that could be designated to the town.

The issue would be how would the be “consumed”. They’d almost need their own system.

I would also love to see the food system brought up to an even “10” food items with either Nuts ? or Fruit ? added as the 10th item. There are some spots on the map hurting for a little action, and many of those places could easily get another town with these a trade good (looking at you Usanc) and there are spots with massive abundance of Olives or Grain that could have a village switch over to the new food type.

This could also be a food produced by Towns from all these orchard built there, but instead of being a non-physical, behind the scenes good, it’s actually posted to the markets, and then re-absorbed into the settlement.

I do like the notion of additional luxury goods, but I would propose that these items are refined from a base resource. Or let workshops use multiple resources.

Consummation can be based on prosperity and distance. For example spices from Khuzait lands are best sold in some very prosperous towns in Vlandia. You could even add a little bonus to the town in question if you supply enough of these luxury goods, maybe a prosperity bonus.

You could also tie this in some kind of quest or bring back feasts.

 

[Mizza]

Salutations merchants of Calradia


We have been working on some changes regarding the economy of Calradia for some time. With the new patch we can finally share those changes with you.

So we wanted to take this opportunity to share the changes as well as the reasons, rationale and limitations behind them.


To properly explain where the changes came from we need to start with the existing problems.

First of all `economy` in this sense is about trade goods, caravans and workshops so mostly trade. Equipment wages and loot values are a separate topic. Surely it is still related but they are sequestered enough to be handled separately to a decent degree.

So what are the primary issues we thought we should prioritize?

• Over stocking of trade goods in towns. This is the mother of all problems. Its causes are many but its effects are more.
  • With abundance of trade goods in town markets, price index drops to very low.
  • Its not only about a single trade good being in stock in huge quantities, but also every trade good being available in pretty much every town in about 5 years.
• Low profit margins. Low price index means profit margins are low as well.
• Caravans and workshops have limited potential profits.
• Workshop variety has limited effect.
• Variety between town markets is not high, making the game world less interesting.
• Market homogeneity limiting trade opportunities, limiting how much profit player can make as the games goes on.
• With limited profits Trade skill xp gain is also curbed severely, making it harder than intended to increase trade skill.
• Trade gameplay in general is less rewarding even for making money compared to more mainstream methods.

So what are the changes?
In summary:

• Demand for trade goods increased…
  • Simply put, demand is based on the prosperity of the town multiplied by demand value for a certain good.
  • In some cases they are up 3-4 times more, so towns simply consume more trade goods.
• Luxury demands are reintroduced
  • We have a luxury demand system in the game, but values were adjusted through the early access to make it moot. We brought the values back.
  • Difference with luxury and base demand values is, luxury demand only kicks in after town reaches a certain prosperity value.
• Production of villages are adjusted
• Workshop production volume and efficiency are adjusted
• Value for various trade goods are adjusted
• Expenses for workshop are drastically increased
• Some trade goods are not produced by artisans anymore and will only be produced in their respective workshops.
• The amount of production simulated at the game start is reduced to 5 days from 20
• Workshop production only cycles in case of possible profit instead of always.

So what these changes mean when they are all put together?

• With supply and demand more in line with each other, over stocking in markets is much more rare.
• This means the price indices are as low as possible 5 years into the game.
  • This is the primary change and we built the rest of the changes on top of this.
  • With traveling around the world, buying and selling is still viable even into very late game. Trader gameplay is more viable.
  • Trade skill exp is gained from making profits from trading. So you will be able to gain trade skill even later into the game.
  • When traveling around the map and visiting towns, you will now see different markets with different inventories and prices, actually making it more fun to trade.
  • With the amount of trade goods in the market being much more limited, we also made it so that various events like raids and sieges have a much bigger impact on the prices and availability in a market.
    • You can visit a town right after a long siege and see it in want of anything you might provide.
    • Or raiding all the villages of same produce you can affect the prices to a much more recognizable degree
  • This change also emphasizes the trading style of traveling the land visiting many towns on the way and making various trades along the way and trying to recognize and catch opportunities, instead of doing big trade runs from 1 destination to another.
• Luxury demands
  • With the reintroduction of luxury demands you can also rely on your knowledge of the prosperity of towns to figure out where you should sell those goods.
    • You can sell grain or hardwood pretty much anywhere, but if you landed some cheap jewelry or silk you should go to a big and rich town to find some market for it.
  • Another advantage is, overall prosperity values increase in the game as time passes. So certain trade goods and workshops that have limited trade and profit potential can start to be more valuable later into the game.
• Caravans and Workshops
  • Caravans
    • We made some changes to caravan trade behavior. Caravans were in general acting too safe when deciding on what to buy. With price indexes more varied instead of rock bottom, we had the chance to get them to take more risk.
    • Caravans now make better use of animals of burden, increasing their carry capacity thus their profits
    • Lastly, simply trading being more profitable means caravans are more profitable.
  • Workshops
    • Again, more profits mean making more money for workshops.
    • With heterogeneity of trade goods, it is more important to make correct decisions on where and what kind of workshop to buy.
    • With trade goods being abundant, the amount of raw materials consumed by workshops were not making a dent in the supply and did not affect the prices. Now even if we didn't increase their consumption, a town with a smithy will have higher prices for iron ore.
    • Workshops have always had daily expenses, and we were relying on this expense mechanic for AI controlled workshops to go out of business, and opening different kinds of workshops in their stead. Both balancing out the economy and also making it more lively.
      • With their profit being limited, the expenses were lowered quite a bit as well. Which meant that it would take a workshop to not make a single denar of profit for around 14 years straight to go out of business.
      • Now that workshops have much better profits, meaning we have more room to bite into and increase the daily expenses.
      • This allowed us to get AI controlled workshops to cycle as we intended.
    • This will also make players have to think a bit more, since workshops can actually run a deficit now.
      • Pretty sure you will figure out the ideal workshop in no time, but still it's an improvement.
    • With demand increasing, and since it ‘s multiplied with prosperity, we thought it would be better to increase the price of workshops according to town prosperity even more. In fact it is the bigger part of the price now, and it pays off.
    • Another advantage is that some workshops, specifically ones producing luxury goods are much more profitable at late game.

What we want to do next?

Well of course we are going to tweak pretty much everything through your feedback. Beyond that there are still some points we want to adress. One of them is supply and demand is not increasing in comparable degree as time passes in the game. Village productions increase to a degree according to their hearth value but with workshop productions being static it is manufactured goods are shooting up in prices. We had previous plans with workshops, and in time we are looking for ways to improve overall experience and give players some degree of managing them.
Another point that we still want to handle is dynamism. Both from month to month in a single game and between new game starts. There have been improvements in both with these changes but we want to push it further.


Both me and other developers in the team will be in the thread for any questions or suggestions and feedback in general. I hope you enjoy the changes.

Have fun.



Detailed change log is below

Spoiler: Detailed list of changes

Demand Value Changes (base demand,luxury demand)

Grain 100,0 -> 140,0

Fish 32,0 -> 15,15

Meat 36,12 -> 19,50

Cheese 21,7->10,20

Butter 12,4 -> 10,25

Grape 9,3 -> 5,20

Olives 12,4 -> 5,20

DateFruit 12,4 -> 7,32

Oil 15,5 -> 17,30

Flax 10,0 -> 10,20

Linen 30,10 -> 20,25

Wool 12,0 -> 12,0

Cloth 12,6 -> 12,6

Cotton 8,2 -> 10,3

Velvet 14,7 -> 15,32

Wood 4,0 -> 10,10

Iron 3,0 -> 10,20

Salt 15,5 -> 25,25

Silver 8,4 ->10,20

Hides 33,11 -> 30,15

Clay 16,0 ->8,5

Beer 39, 13 -> 23,20

Wine 9,3 -> 15,30

Tools 30,10 -> 30,30

Pottery 15,5 -> 22,20

Leather 20,10->25,10

Fur 20,10 -> 10,38

Jewelry 24,12 -> 15,32



Base Value Changes

Jewelry 300 ->600

Cotton 70 ->80

Clay 20 ->18

Pottery 100 ->200

Linen 90 ->200

Leather 200 ->250

Velvet 250 ->500

Beer 50 ->100

Wine 100 ->75

Oil 120 ->210

Fur 120 ->400 (fur weight 15 ->10)

Tools 100 -> 200

Hides 60 ->50


Workshop Expenses

-The daily expense value should be the same for the player and AI.

-Workshop daily expense have been increased from 20 to 100 denars.

Workshop Conversion Speed And Output Values (conversion speed is how many production runs a workshop makes in a day, output count is the amount of good a workshop produces in a production run)

-Brewery
Conversion speed 8->3.5
Output count 1->2

-Velvet weavery
Conversion speed 2->0.75
Output count 1->2

-Linen weavery
Conversion speed 4->2
Output count 1->2

-Wine press
Conversion speed 5->2.5
Output count 1->2

-Pottery shop
Conversion speed 4->2
Output count 1->2

-Olive press
Conversion speed 5->2.5
Output count 1->2

-Wool weavery
Conversion speed 2->1
Output count 1->2

-Tannery
Conversion speed 2->1
Output count 1->2

-Wood Workshop
Conversion speed 5->2.5
Output count 1->2

-Smithy
Conversion speed 3->1.5
Output count 2->4

-Silversmith
Conversion speed 1->0.75
Output count 2->2


Overall workshop produce roughly the same amount of goods but consume less raw materials.


Frequency Changes:

-Tannery and brewery frequencies =1

-Increased other workshop frequencies to 2

-Frequency affects the workshop types chosen at the start of the game, this is a simple balancing change.


Artisan Production

Artisans won't produce the trade goods below

-Linen
-Beer
-Leather
-Jewelry

Before game start production

-Number of village production cycles before game start was decreased from 20 to 5

-Number of workshop production cycles before game start was decreased from 20 to 5


Village Daily Production Changes

Grain 45 -> 50

Lumberjack 20 -> 18

Claymine 20 -> 10

Saltmine 12 -> 15

Ironmine 12 -> 10

Fisherman 32 -> 28

Vineyard 20 -> 11

Flaxplant 24 ->18

DateFarm 10 -> 8

OliveTrees 16 -> 12

SilkPlant 6 -> 8

SilverMine 4 -> 3

Trapper 5 -> 1.4


Price Control Changes: We added price control to workshop behavior. With this change, a workshop will not make a production run if it's not going to be profitable or break even with local market prices.

These changes won't be applied to the artisans or equipment production of workshops and they will continue their productions regardless or profits.

As a female player. I find now husbands are to much gold to get. two starts and with what they ask for in beyond me. then I am to old to have a child. so I start over. game is getting no fun .. remember as a woman the clock ticks very fast.

 

[Earth Dragon]

As a female player. I find now husbands are to much gold to get. two starts and with what they ask for in beyond me. then I am to old to have a child. so I start over. game is getting no fun .. remember as a woman the clock ticks very fast.

Then you should be concentrating on improving your relationship with an individual clan with young male suitors. If you have a high relationship, they will still pay you

 

[azakhi]

@cuce
I haven't had the chance to try 1.8.0 yet but I wanted to ask as I don't see it in the changes; Will there be any changes to how price is calculated depending on supply? Currently it feels very random and unnatural.
I was making a mod for myself where workshops do not sell products if the price is under a threshold and I was logging prices for debugging. While doing this I noticed that prices would jump from 80 to 260 and back to 100 in the matter of a couple seconds. This is very off-putting considering you wouldn't see this in real life (unless it is cryptocurrencies I suppose).
In my humble opinion towns deciding price at every second based on supply is wrong. They should consider recent history and do not act like that one wool is the only wool left in whole world.

 

[AwareWolf]

Party consuming certain things [alcoholic beverages like beer and wine] should impact troop efficacy - their morale should get even more of a boost, but their ability to perform in combat should be impaired. Archers should be effected most as consuming alcohol would effect their aim.

 

[cuce]

@cuce
I haven't had the chance to try 1.8.0 yet but I wanted to ask as I don't see it in the changes; Will there be any changes to how price is calculated depending on supply? Currently it feels very random and unnatural.
I was making a mod for myself where workshops do not sell products if the price is under a threshold and I was logging prices for debugging. While doing this I noticed that prices would jump from 80 to 260 and back to 100 in the matter of a couple seconds. This is very off-putting considering you wouldn't see this in real life (unless it is cryptocurrencies I suppose).
In my humble opinion towns deciding price at every second based on supply is wrong. They should consider recent history and do not act like that one wool is the only wool left in whole world.

Saw the other thread post today, ill be looking into it this week. the exact report wasn`t something i had experienced

 

[MostBlunted]

Party consuming certain things [alcoholic beverages like beer and wine] should impact troop efficacy - their morale should get even more of a boost, but their ability to perform in combat should be impaired. Archers should be effected most as consuming alcohol would effect their aim.

No, while sounding good in theory it will create new issues. First of this means TW needs to develope the system that units, that consume beer will have a "debuff" > +2,3 years dev time. Then TW needs to give the player control over food consumption like which unit is allowed to eat which food > + 4,5 years dev time. And the profit isn´t really there for it. Just a tedious system. I mean I would just avoid alcohol in this case, it´s not needed to get a good bonus so...

 

[AwareWolf]

No, while sounding good in theory it will create new issues. First of this means TW needs to develope the system that units, that consume beer will have a "debuff" > +2,3 years dev time. Then TW needs to give the player control over food consumption like which unit is allowed to eat which food > + 4,5 years dev time. And the profit isn´t really there for it. Just a tedious system. I mean I would just avoid alcohol in this case, it´s not needed to get a good bonus so...

No, the entire party consumes the beverages just like normal unless it is sold or destroyed before party consumption. I am going to write a mod that tests this. As stated in other posts I am a C# tools programmer, it's my profession so this should be a trivial task. Gotta check the API and see where this can be modified. That is all.

 

[MostBlunted]

A trivial task for you, but for TW this would take months as fixing easy stuff modders fixed even over 1 year before. Or major stuff like sieges, modders were faster as TW.

 

[azakhi]

Saw the other thread post today, ill be looking into it this week. the exact report wasn`t something i had experienced

I should note I had that happen on 1.7.2, so far 1.8.0 is a lot better. Not sure what exactly changed so can't comment on that I am afraid. Thanks for looking at it!

 

[Jur]

@cuce
I haven't had the chance to try 1.8.0 yet but I wanted to ask as I don't see it in the changes; Will there be any changes to how price is calculated depending on supply? Currently it feels very random and unnatural.
I was making a mod for myself where workshops do not sell products if the price is under a threshold and I was logging prices for debugging. While doing this I noticed that prices would jump from 80 to 260 and back to 100 in the matter of a couple seconds. This is very off-putting considering you wouldn't see this in real life (unless it is cryptocurrencies I suppose).
In my humble opinion towns deciding price at every second based on supply is wrong. They should consider recent history and do not act like that one wool is the only wool left in whole world.

Woulden't check on events (trader, consumption) also use less CPU? Since price calculations would be only done from time to time, instead every second?

 

[azakhi]

Woulden't check on events (trader, consumption) also use less CPU? Since price calculations would be only done from time to time, instead every second?

There is no caching of prices so in theory you might be able to gain some performance doing that but I don't think it is a good idea for 2 reasons:
1- Performance gain would be very negligible compared to other resource heavy calculations, such as AI.
2- Would be very bug prone. Which means it isn't worth it because see reason 1.

 

[Emperor1997]

As a female player. I find now husbands are to much gold to get. two starts and with what they ask for in beyond me. then I am to old to have a child. so I start over. game is getting no fun .. remember as a woman the clock ticks very fast.

And why should it be easy for female clan leaders to marry a male hero, who then joins their clan?
It is a patrilineal era, who the game is set in.

It should not be easy for women to marry a male hero in matrilineal marriage, but I think the Devs should add this option to all female heroes in the game and not only clan leaders, but with a very high price.

 

[Durinax]

I was wondering if there was any consideration of giving villages a secondary production field, one that isn't firm so it has a small (0.05% per month type deal) chance of changing to whatever the nearest tradable city (so it takes into account wars) has in high demand. I think something like this would add a lot of dynamics to the game. Plus it would be nice to see grain villages having more than just grain for sale.

 

[cuce]

some production types do have trickling amounts of secondry production, apart from every village producing very small amount of grain.

 

[SomeWeirdSins]

Before game start production

-Number of village production cycles before game start was decreased from 20 to 5

-Number of workshop production cycles before game start was decreased from 20 to 5

This change is one of the major reasons why trade is non-functional in the early game. Low supply means that prices start high and drop over time. As a result of the deflation buying low and hoping to sell high is normally a losing gamble, and the player is unable to scale or role-play off trade. It is also immersion-breaking that the player is unable to buy basic equipment (such as a low-tier bow) early game.

 

[ElCrisp]

With trade goods being abundant, the amount of raw materials consumed by workshops were not making a dent in the supply and did not affect the prices. Now even if we didn't increase their consumption, a town with a smithy will have higher prices for iron ore.

I'm not sure how this is playing out in practice but the behaviour you suggest here would actually be a problem if realised.
Workshops as they currently exist will always work actively against their own profitability - their profits are obviously dependent on the price difference between their inputs and outputs while selling and buying on the one market, they will always work to increase the cost of their inputs (pushing up demand) and decrease the cost of their outputs (saturating the supply) it doesnt make much difference if they pause when they cant see immediate profits if they then sell again bringing prices back down and eliminating profit opportunities once more keeping their own market at parity.
There fore workshops in general need to not move the needle too much on the demand of their inputs and the over supply of their outputs to maintain profits. The ebb and flow of supply and demand needs to be external to workshops or too large to move for the workshops themselves.

Or you could enable players to caravan their goods straight from home workshop markets to distant ones for fat profits.

Another in game factor for workhops is caravans which through buying low and selling high (arbitrage) can smooth out these over supply problems for work shops.
Which then links to our second problem regional price difference or comparitive difference in markets are being flattend by the trade momentum (volume of goods and speed of their transport) across the map. As identified by @StaceMcGate There are a large number of caravans on the map, at some point to make player caravans more survivable, caravans accross the board it seems had their movement speed increased which in turn increases the momentum of trade goods around the map. Your own changes this patch to enable caravans better use of beasts of burden giving them the abilty to move a larger mass of trade good will also increase global trade momentum, further dampening regional differences (assuming this change applies to AI caravans)
But now we come to the third issue. Part of the reason I believe trade momentum was increased was to smooth the food markets to prevent starvation and modderate how strong grain villages are for the prosperity ceiling.
For these problems I would suggest kingdom opperated food caravans to distribute and buy food for the kingdom. Tariffing private merchants heavily for essential food stuffs (this is how fuedal lords in part maintained social control was forced control of food markets) paired with this you could lower the overall trade momentum of private caravans bringing back regional comparitive advantage and trade profits and XP with it.

While you are at it could you fix the glaring issue that has been raised multiple times. The growth over time of hostile parties such as bandits vs the static size of friendly parties such as villagers and caravans (another reason for caravans short life span and the bandaid speed buffs.)
This no doubt only exacerbates the inflation issues in the late game and if nothing else makes it harder to balance the economy with this confounding variable.

Glad somebody is workong on this stuff @cuce bet of luck