Let's talk Trade?

[Rabies]

The early game shouldn't be about ammassing wealth is my point. Having a hard cap on how much money you can carry shouldn't really affect the early game at all, since even in the base game you barely ever spend more than a few hundred denars at a time.

Well, surely that depends what you're doing?

If you decide to be a trader, travelling from town to town buying and selling things for a profit, then amassing wealth is precisely what the early game will be about? I mean, you'll probably want to invest your early profits back into your trading operation: buying more pack animals; paying for some caravan guards, perhaps; moving towards trading in higher-value goods. But ultimately, you're playing as a trader because you want to get rich.

I agree with you in that getting rich doesn't necessarily mean you have to have a treasury full of coins. But in that case, the game needs to allow you to invest in stuff - put your money into property, or something. Or money lending? Something that will give you a return on your investment when you want to sell it, anyway. Simply changing workshops back to how they were in Warband would go a long way towards achieving that (removing the cap on how many you can own); it would also allow you to have stashes there; and it would introduce (re-introduce?) some actual gameplay element, player input, into running a business.

The game will basically have to be broken in order to fix it. There is no way for taleworlds to tweak and balance their way out of the current game mechanics.

Couldn't agree more with this. What I meant was that, by introducing currency as a physical item in the game, you will break some of the current systems. And you would need to fix them by introducing several new supporting mechanics, as well as changing other mechanics, in order to make it work. And going back to your earlier point, having a finite amount of hard currency that's flowing around in the gameworld would be an important part of that. It would absolutely be worth doing.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Well, surely that depends what you're doing?

If you decide to be a trader, travelling from town to town buying and selling things for a profit, then amassing wealth is precisely what the early game will be about? I mean, you'll probably want to invest your early profits back into your trading operation: buying more pack animals; paying for some caravan guards, perhaps; moving towards trading in higher-value goods. But ultimately, you're playing as a trader because you want to get rich.

You want to get rich but you wont be awash with money until the midgame, at least if the trade system is well paced. I think having a lot of money should be something you have to specifically aim for as a long term goal, not just a passive side effect of playing the game. It makes money meaningless.

Couldn't agree more with this. What I meant was that, by introducing currency as a physical item in the game, you will break some of the current systems. And you would need to fix them by introducing several new supporting mechanics, as well as changing other mechanics, in order to make it work.

I actually think the game needs fewer mechanics to be honest. Ironically the reason the game is so shallow is that there is so much crap all competing for the same space. Far simpler games in a similar vein, like Kenshi or Freemen: War of War (I forgot what it's called) or hell even Warband, are way more complex to play because they aren't weighed down by needless complexity. An example of this is the level system, with so many perks and skills that it's basically just a random mass of modifiers that is either imperceptible in regular gameplay, or so OP that it steamrolls all the strategic decisionmaking. Or the combat with all its hidden stances and delays that are so complicated that they basically make the combat random, making player skill less relevant.

If something is fundamentally broken by making money a physical item, it should just be removed from the game. That sounds excessively puritan but these are decisions that should have been made when the game was still in concept phase.

 

[JunKeteer]

Money doesn't need to take up a physical slot/weight; barely any game does that nowadays (for good reason) - even in games that are more 'realistic' or economy-focused. To even make this work, the entire game has to be remodeled to even have it make sense for it be 'physical' other than a bad QoL feature with an actual trade-worth economy.

As well, having the profit/expenditures as a daily tick doesn't really help psychologically as I'm sure everyone's goal in beginning of the game after the very first recruit is to get to a point where that's always a net profit tick instead of the continual drain. At least in Warband it was a weekly tick so the exponential change (profit or loss) didn't happen as quickly. It may seem to be the same if they do it as weekly instead but I'm quite sure that change alone would make a substantial difference in the playthroughs.

 

[anoddhermit]

Money doesn't need to take up a physical slot/weight; barely any game does that nowadays (for good reason) - even in games that are more 'realistic' or economy-focused. To even make this work, the entire game has to be remodeled to even have it make sense for it be 'physical' other than a bad QoL feature with an actual trade-worth economy.

As well, having the profit/expenditures as a daily tick doesn't really help psychologically as I'm sure everyone's goal in beginning of the game after the very first recruit is to get to a point where that's always a net profit tick instead of the continual drain. At least in Warband it was a weekly tick so the exponential change (profit or loss) didn't happen as quickly. It may seem to be the same if they do it as weekly instead but I'm quite sure that change alone would make a substantial difference in the playthroughs.

I have a net drain for most of the mid-game lol. I get tons of money from selling loot, because I usually just build up an expensive mercenary party that just constantly defeats lords. My priorities might be different than most I guess, but IDK, it makes sense to me to be in the negative if it allows you to get more from non-passive sources which are way better for denars anyway - caravans are mediocre and unreliable until you have good companions for it, and workshops are just bad, while smithing is basically a cheatcode and selling battle loot is the only thing that feels balanced. Trade is similar to caravans but very location dependent(Vlandia/Battania/Aserai areas are great, Empire/Khuzait/Sturgia is terrible) and also context sensitive(recently sieged/raided areas pay way more, or any area with wars that've stopped a lot of caravans/cut off resources). I start getting into the positives when I reach 125 trade and set up caravans for the renown gains more than the money.