Economy Changes with 1.8 and onwards

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The ebb and flow of supply and demand needs to be external to workshops or too large to move for the workshops themselves.

I would go one step ahead to claim this is an issue beyond workshops. Even as a player. You sell 1 jewelry and price drops 10% if you are lucky. The trade currently is either catching crazy momentary deals or just trading horses.
 
Horses are still the best trade. Just go to Azerai lands, buy them in those deep-in-desert towns (Hubyar? smtg with I.... and A....) and sell them on the coast (Quayaz, Sanala). I sure misspell those names cause even after 1000+ hours in game they are unmemorable for me. In fact almost all calradia language is unmemorable for me. Its like alien language 😁 )
 
it works and all of that. though for the use of weapons especally when that stocks up massivelly is going to make smithies a pain to work with latter on. :sad: hopefully there is something there that allows the consumption of those weapons in a meangingful way (same with armors etc) like better equipped town garasons, or someday better village millita garasons as well with better gear for better defense.
 
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


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.
Looks really nice TaleWorlds!
 
is there a system that would give a base price of a product, and adds a fixed sum on top of that based on distance from the source?
like:
furs in sturgia would cost only the base cost +- market demand + 0 distance costs
furs in Asserai would cost the base cost +- market demand + 20 distance costs

@cuce, please consider integrating the player caravans with the player workshops. This way the caravans can find the best markets for the inputs and outputs off the workshop. And please consider giving the player the option to set routes for player caravans. This would give the players who play as a trader more control over their trade empire.
 
is there a system that would give a base price of a product, and adds a fixed sum on top of that based on distance from the source?
That is kind of part of the demand. The further away from the source a city is, the longer it takes caravans to get there & the greater the chance caravan will get intercepted along the way & the greater the chance the caravan will sell the good before getting to that city. That all combined means that demand in far cities will be greater.
 
That is kind of part of the demand. The further away from the source a city is, the longer it takes caravans to get there & the greater the chance caravan will get intercepted along the way & the greater the chance the caravan will sell the good before getting to that city. That all combined means that demand in far cities will be greater.
That is kind what I expected. The system in dynamic and 100% interconnected. This sounds amazing, but my fear is that this system can easily be unbalanced.

My thought is that by adding a fixed sum per distance from the source, you will create a bigger chance of price differences that will make the travel distance worthwhile. This in theory would stabilise the dynamic market a bit.

While I really like the idea of all the different parts of the simulation connecting en influencing each other, I think this hampers development time by investigating which change disrupted the balance this time and every new implementation can have unforeseen consequences.

Systems that temper the fluctuations of the dynamic systems can help stabilise the simulation while implementing new systems and bug fixes. tinkering can be done at the end of development
 
I'm no longer invested enough to spend time on a long post. Trading and workshops are broken worse than ever. I'm not saying to work on it - obviously you'll make it worse, as has been demonstrated. I'm just saying I'm uninstalling yet again.
 
Hi,

Workshops: It's very hard to keep track of the income over time. I did this manually once in Warband: Every time there was a report I noted down the profits (Excel), and I made a graph to show the profits over time, and most importantly - profit compared to initial cost. This is even harder to do in Bannerlord because it doesn't have that periodic report. So, what I miss is the historical data view for workshops to help evaluate the actual profit from the investment. (Btw the Excel sheet was miserable to maintain :grin:)

Caravans: It annoys me that caravans don't avoid territories with which its owner is at war. Surely that would be a very unnecessary risk to take in a realistic situation.

Towns: The Warband option of giving inventory to the workshop seems like a natural part of a commercial venture. Boosting the economy of the Workshop with cheap items from far away. Caravans could also be part of this where they use their long-distance trade to supply workshops with the same owner. That would make it much more relevant to own both caravans as well as workshops at the same time.

Those are my three opinions for now :smile:
 
This is kinda not true, and also kinda true but for a different reason than you say.

Campaign-to-campaign differences are actually pretty big. Especially things like Hearth and Prosperity, which depends on war and raids and sieges, can affect prices a lot - and there's a big difference between a 350g/d brewery and a 500g/d oil press. And in the medium term, shifting control of castles can hugely shift the number of villages that bring goods to any given town, affecting inputs.

The problem; and it's the same reason people turn to third party analysis in order to just copy a meta; is that the player can't experiment.

Workshops are expensive to buy, pricey to change type, and sell for a pittance. You can only have a couple at once, especially at clan tier 3-4. And the only way to know what a potential workshop will bring in is to build it! So maybe in my campaign, an oil press in Jaculan will be >500g/d consistently, many years into the game. But maybe in your game it'll only be 200g/d. You have to go waste the gold, using one of your 4 or 5 slots, to find out - and then you have to repeat that for every workshop, times every city; and don't forget that the workshops you make can even affect the profits of the others. So the number of options is huge, the reward/penalty for choosing right/wrong are large, but the player is given extremely limited information and it's both costly and difficult to experiment. As a result, the meta is that players flock towards whatever is proven to work in any campaign, relying on outside information to make up for the lack of in-game information.

I don't come bringing a magic bullet solution for this problem, but if you want players to make more diverse and/or campaign-specific choices, you need to give them more in-game information. Whether that's being able to see AI workshop profits, or seeing an estimated profit when changing workshop type, or something else altogether, I dunno.
This. All the way. While I do like to think, it seems workshops have become more trouble than they are worth. Maybe they ll be more useful late game, when the player needs them a lot less.

We need more in game information for sure. Cost now too high and the risks are to high making the workshop system to tedious and stressful to enjoy. I love this game and love economic changes but workshops just arent worth it anymore
 
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Workshops are pretty broken at present. Even when buying a workshop in a town with 3 villages producing the required products for the workshop, it is not unusual for the workshop to have 0 (that is ZERO) income after a few months, and your only option seems to be to sell it at a significant LOSS.
Broken. Since this change that seem to affect trade caravans too, it has become MUCH more difficult to have a stable or financially lucrative economy outside of war. As soon as war ends the cost of maintaining garrisons, parties, exc. become unsustainable.
 
Curious if anyone has any ideas about what variables to look at to track the health of the economy.

Eg: suppose I was going to mod how caravans spawn or function. What variables should I be monitoring (and how often) to see the economic impacts?
 
Why does caravan require to have one of my companions as caravan master, when there is already an AI caravan master in? And why workshop doesn't require to have one of my companions to run it? IMO neither caravan nor workshop should require to sacrifice a companion. Companion is there to be with my character all the time. To fight together with me. To drink with me in taverns. Not to send him away and never see him again. Same extends to governors. Why can't I just appoint one of the local notables as governor?
 
Curious if anyone has any ideas about what variables to look at to track the health of the economy.

Eg: suppose I was going to mod how caravans spawn or function. What variables should I be monitoring (and how often) to see the economic impacts?
we track availability heatmaps, avarage high and low prices, price indexes, prosperity trends of towns, caravan survival times, workshop counts, etc

these are the ones we check in general. if there is something that look fishy amongs these we check other things.
 
I've been cheating up money and clan tier to check out how each Kingdom are in terms of production considering the villiages surrounding said Town. While feeling like an economist, darting around the map, buying, selling enterprises. Reset on a new save and so on.

In my overall conclusion is: I dont get it. I have no idea how to creat a stable economy in a kingdom to support my armies as I raise to fame among the land.
Most notably I have to say that Vlandia stood out for being the uttermost terrible economical area. No enterprise rarely went up to 300+, many of them stayed even below 200.

I also went into my World Conquest save to check out, my economy was mostly based on the 5 towns I owned. Workshops were abyssmal.

SO... for economies sake... get a town?

Edit:
Now I have experimented around with Caravans. They are a nice source of income!
 
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Not really sure how behavior like this was considered "good enough" for release candidate:


Two different starving towns, food prices are still at "discount" level. Myzea even has plenty of food on the market, cheap, for some reason.

This is after a daily tick (or several in case of Hubyar). Starving towns, or even towns expected to run out of food in 2-3 days, should immediately attempt to buy out ANY food item still available on the local market (impacting tax gains from that settlements, can't get money from people who just spent a fortune on basic necessities, no matter what my government may think), and apply it toward reduction in local food storage. Pretty ridiculous to see a town starving while 150+ loads of meat are offered dirt-cheap in its markets.

Another major issue I've noticed is that goods consumption is completely off, especially compared to workshop production capacity. Breweries, as the most egregious example in current version, will flood the market in just a few days enough to become unprofitable. There are enough of them on the map to quickly flood the "global" market into long-term unprofitability. Similar issue occurs with most workshops, unless the player spends time fighting against the "economy" with manual good distribution, or is fortunate enough that warfare causes enough disruption and depletion.

On top of that, consumption information is so heavily obfuscated, or completely hidden from the player, unless they are the owner of a town, most of it will be undecipherable.

The leftmost notable should be able to offer a breakdown of economic situation of a town:

"We can rely on our three villages to provide grain, meat, hides, and grapes. Our brewery and tannery produce enough beer and leather to allow trade with other towns. The caravans keep us supplied with Oil, Tools, and Pottery, but it's been some time since we've had Wine and Fish available on the market. People are desperate for Hardwood and Wool."

Or something to that effect. So at least the player has some feedback of what is going on with that town.

Towns should have much higher consumption of... basically everything other than grain, as things are right now. They need to be goods sinks, and a lot of the goods that are not produced locally should near always be in high enough demand to warrant bringing them for trade. 1 unit a day does nothing considering workshop production rates. This consumption should also be heavily dependent on prosperity of the town - the higher it is, the more variety of goods the town requires, and the larger amount of each is in demand. Their cultural diversification of preferences should be a thing as well.

Towns also need to be capable of deficit consumption. Meaning going increasingly into negative "consumed" quantity of a specific good, driving up the price, and lowering tax gains from that town. Also increasingly limiting prosperity gain (but not reducing prosperity unless at some "critical" level of deficit) dependent on the magnitude of the deficit.

At 5000+ prosperity, any goods that are not locally produced and available should only go into positives when a caravan just hits the town with 100+ units of it. And not last long after that, either, since the town should immediately address the deficit "spending" of each good by directly removing required quantities from the market.

Give towns "storage" capacity for goods to match at least expected weekly consumption at current prosperity value. Have them restock from any delivery before the rest is allowed back into the marketplace. Hell, give the player ability to either hire one of the gang leaders to set fire to that warehouse, destroying a portion of the "stored" goods, or do it themselves in some manner of night "stealth" mission, as a tool of market speculation.

Construction of projects (including continuous) should increase desire for specific goods, dependent on the project. Recovering villages should increase price for specific goods, and recover faster if they are delivered by the villager party.

Various cultures should have some secondary goods they consume in large quantities based on specific regional resources, to ensure local production maintains profitability. So that Vlandian towns would consume, as example, a lot of oil and horses. Northern empire towns would use much more silk than other factions, since it's so freely available to them. Battanians would take grape baths, because Battanians.

Provide increased LOCAL consumption to make workshops exploiting local village production profitably operational, even in between caravan visits. Just at lower profit, unless nearby towns are at very high prosperity. This should also apply to breweries, not just "trade" goods.

You're working with settings without global trade network. Goods from another side of the map should always be in high demand. Demand driving workshop profitability should not rely on warfare disruption just so they can start breaking even long-term. High prosperity towns should be near always starved for luxury goods that local production cannot supply. Relevant information should be communicated to the player in a clear way (that's what the NPC interactions should be bloody well used for), not hidden behind "Town Management" panel.

The current implementation is not just extremely unintuitive, it may work well in terms of caravans doing their normalization work, but makes workshops extremely ungainly to turn profitable. Trade in general is nickle-and-diming affair in small quantities, instead of the large scale bulk operation it should be when going from one end of the map to the other. Then again, "trade" gameplay should have included large-scale contracts with town merchants and owners, and storage rights along with associated "roguery" gameplay, but that's another tangent.

At least fix economy so that it doesn't just reflect the period settings, and gives a sliver of local flavor to towns through their consumption preferences (also helping local workshops), but it also doesn't throw conflicting information at the player when it bothers to communicate at all.

tl;dr:
- Towns should not be starving when there's cheap food on their internal market.
- Primary notable should provide breakdown of internal consumption and supply situation
- Towns need much higher consumption values, preferably with increased consumption for goods tied to regional production of each faction, and general prosperity value
- Towns should have deficit consumption implementation, driven by prosperity value, allowing for accumulation of internal "demand" for increasing number of units desired and possible to trade at once
- Towns with high levels of deficit accumulations should have slower prosperity growth than those supplied
- Ongoing town projects (including continuous) should increase consumption of specific goods
- Recovering villages should increase consumption of specific goods
- Towns should "store" portion of caravan-delivered goods for near-future expected consumption, also to prevent immediate market price manipulation by the player
 
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Most caravans only drop off a handful of goods to remain profitable as increased quantities affect prices so quickly. There might best be a slight delay of a few hours for pricing information to adjust while allowing caravans to carry slightly more goods.

For players selling massive quantities of battle loot it is unlikely to be an issue since it is rare to get more than a handful of duplicate items with normal party/carrying capacity.
 
that would result in player being able to dump 50 jewelry to a single town, with no loss in profit margin
If you used the deficit mechanic I described in my post above, it would not.

If a town builds up "deficit consumption" amount, that would guarantee large sales for towns which are not constantly supplied by caravans (and profitability of only a few units for those that are), at least until the demand for whatever good is fulfilled (preferably with some "stock" margin for short-term future consumption). After which the price gets adjusted according to market presence of the units that were not used to satisfy the already generated demand.
 
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


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.

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


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.
THANKS. All this I have experienced, it works very well.
What mattered more to me was to understand how to impact a Kingdom in its economy by holding alleys and workshops for example. What is the relationship between the economy of a Kingdom and the fact of having 4 alleys and workshops in this kingdom?
Can we provoke rebellions with the economy or because we are "very popular" with local notables or local gangs in the cities?
The trading experience and the street occupation system is great, but I'd like to know what impact owning multiple streets can have on a Kingdom.
I suspect that this "bandit" system is not yet fully implemented. We feel that there is a lack of purpose. I have the impression that we have there the opening towards a new game play alternative without Kingdom. But then, I would very much like all the ways of being able to impact the war to be explained one day in a topic.
What would be great is if we could, admittedly with difficulty, find a way that would impose peace. The Rebellion System and house "bandit" system if it develops, might offer a different alternative, don't you feel like it?
This alternative would give even more importance, I believe, to the commercial qualities of the aseraïs who, through trade, subterfuge, the possession of workshops and streets, the support of "popular" rebellions, could have a positive or negative impact on kingdoms, war and peace.
The economy is interesting in this game. It is true that I would like to be able to impact even more on the course of events and even on war and peace with trade and the direct or indirect support of rebellions.
Popularity with notables or gang leaders, I don't always understand the impact on the course of history. If this popularity, at a certain level, made it possible to attempt a rebellion, I understood it better. I don't think that's possible at the moment.
The system "occupations of alleys", and the system "rebellion" should in my opinion be linked with in addition a system of "crafted refuges". In this way, we would have a new way in the game to sow discord in the Kingdoms, cause rebellions, revolts, "against war", "against famine", and also develop our refuge and improve it (all risking its destruction and therefore, we would have to find another refuge).
We could also imagine being only nomadic and having a "traveling camp" (with the risk of being attacked while we sleep).
I have seen mods going in this direction, hopefully we will have a base game implementation of this type of system.

Thank you Taleworld.
 
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