why are caravans so GARBAGE now???

[tulock]

i had an old playthrough where i was about 75% the way done conquering all of the continent, but some update hit and my buccelari became garbage tier so i walked away from bannerlord and cursed it as a failure.



i got bored, had nothin to at night, so i figured id start a new campaign, see what all has changed. the start was surprisingly smooth, no timers anywhere forcing me to do anything i didnt want to do. +++



i saw they had nerfed trade by moving castle buying to the end of the tree, big suck. whatever, trade is easy it just takes a long time. i figured id get started asap.



i immediately noticed the economy is absolutely fncking stupid. i have not encountered a single trade rumor that was accurate. the fish trade has been nerfed so hard it makes me feel stupid. "oh, your city just got seiged 4 times in a row? you have zero food at all? i have 170 trade skill? guess im selling u this fish at 15-10 coins a pop now..." should have been like 40-20. if i cant gouge the rich cities, then whats the point of trade?



anyways, i finally found a spicevendor companion and immediately made her a caravan. its been 180 days and shes NEVER made over 500 coins, on top of that 1/4 days she doesnt even show up in my budget(like she doesnt exist) and i end up eating the entire bill for my army. what the literal fnck is going on. how are these caravans so garbage now?



i found a "lucky" fellow. made him a caravan. he routinely only produces 10-100 coins, and like the spicevendor 1/4 days he doesnt even show up on the budget, leading to me eating the entire bill.



i hit clan tier three, and started deploying small armies of "golden" and "lucky" companions. sometimes, they cost like 300-500 coins. sometimes they cost 1100-1500 coins. i dont understand what the fnck is happening. this strategy WORKED for me in the past. its like, building a solid foundation to conquer the continent is against the rules now? tf?



i genuinely dont know what to do. i cant continue when i cant make enough money to support what i have. i dont even have a lot. 135 tier2-4 units, with the majority being infantry and archers. the bandit factions are now large enough to eat my 30 man caravans, which they are doing. i cant afford the -1500 a day PLUS the loss of caravans. why were caravans nerfed so hard? whats the point of all this? why why why? i was playing after posting this on reddit, and i got a nice screenshot of the absolute financial crisis im experiencing. im so broke now, that i have to disband all armies, kick all my companions out, give away all my troops, and start completely over, except this time with a 4k debt.

investing in the caravans completely ruined me.

 

[KingEroc1st]

personally i enjoy short selling cities for herds. there will be this quest to deliver herds of animals to a city. that city usually has a shortage of that animal. you accept the quest. and head there with your own supply as well. before turning it in. go sell a bunch of the animal. (in this situation horses work best) and you'll make a nice profit for the exchange. now go deliver the herd. now that the city has a surplus of horses. you can buy your horses back for cheap. i would be making 100%-150% profit per horse for like 10-15 of them and NOT LOSE A SINGLE ONE

 

[michigogo]

Yeah, I came back to bannerlord recently and was disapointed at how bad caravans are now. Workshops are even worse, though at least they don't get killed after 3 days lol.

 

[Pete_007]

i sell my loot to my caravan and they give me 15k Denar a day. caravan will give money until they money down to 10k so if u can make your own caravan have like 80k they will give u 70k so just dump all the loot u got from battle

 

[Apocal]

anyways, i finally found a spicevendor companion and immediately made her a caravan. its been 180 days and shes NEVER made over 500 coins, on top of that 1/4 days she doesnt even show up in my budget(like she doesnt exist) and i end up eating the entire bill for my army. what the literal fnck is going on. how are these caravans so garbage now?

They have an account and only pay you if they have more than 5,000 or 10,000 denars. If they don't have excess money, they don't pay you anything but also don't cost you anything, so there is a fairly wide band for "breaking even" on a caravan.

The overall profit was deliberately made worse.

 

[mehmeteking]

i immediately noticed the economy is absolutely fncking stupid. i have not encountered a single trade rumor that was accurate. the fish trade has been nerfed so hard it makes me feel stupid. "oh, your city just got seiged 4 times in a row? you have zero food at all? i have 170 trade skill? guess im selling u this fish at 15-10 coins a pop now..." should have been like 40-20. if i cant gouge the rich cities, then whats the point of trade?

I don't know why food prices do not increase in your game when there is shortage, but in my game food prices are pretty high after a siege. I can easily make around %150 profit on food.

anyways, i finally found a spicevendor companion and immediately made her a caravan. its been 180 days and shes NEVER made over 500 coins, on top of that 1/4 days she doesnt even show up in my budget(like she doesnt exist) and i end up eating the entire bill for my army. what the literal fnck is going on. how are these caravans so garbage now?

i found a "lucky" fellow. made him a caravan. he routinely only produces 10-100 coins, and like the spicevendor 1/4 days he doesnt even show up on the budget, leading to me eating the entire bill.

I have seen my caravans make over 1000 coins, and I have seen them make zero (not even appearing.) The latter has to do with the distance they travel, caravans may spend a day or two on the road making no profit or loss. And how much they make fluctuates due to many reasons. A caravan may find some lucrative trade opportunity and exploit it making a lot of money, but the same trade can become less profitable even before the caravan reaches its destination. There are so many factors at play here, because of dynamism of trade.

i hit clan tier three, and started deploying small armies of "golden" and "lucky" companions. sometimes, they cost like 300-500 coins. sometimes they cost 1100-1500 coins. i dont understand what the fnck is happening. this strategy WORKED for me in the past. its like, building a solid foundation to conquer the continent is against the rules now? tf?

Your parties will sell loot and prisoners at the cities, and can even make profit from it. When at war, parties of my clan within my army make massive profits and almost never go to negatives... But your parties won't always be lucky, there are days when they make no profit and you end up paying the full upkeep. Some clan management update apparently will allow us to set the upper limit for wages per party. Any party that reaches said threshold will stop recruiting and upgrading troops, and may even disband some to keep the wages within limits.

i genuinely dont know what to do. i cant continue when i cant make enough money to support what i have. i dont even have a lot. 135 tier2-4 units, with the majority being infantry and archers. the bandit factions are now large enough to eat my 30 man caravans, which they are doing. i cant afford the -1500 a day PLUS the loss of caravans. why were caravans nerfed so hard? whats the point of all this? why why why? i was playing after posting this on reddit, and i got a nice screenshot of the absolute financial crisis im experiencing. im so broke now, that i have to disband all armies, kick all my companions out, give away all my troops, and start completely over, except this time with a 4k debt.

investing in the caravans completely ruined me.

I have 5 caravans in my latest game and they are doing for the most part. I always make sure that I get the well-armed caravan and give it a companion with high Tactics. Sure, there will be times I lose some caravan, but I find them to be quite profitable overall. They are a high risk, high reward alternative to workshops. BTW, you will lose any workshops in a settlement if you are at War with its owner; so workshops are not absolutely safe, either.

 

[TipsyDragoon]

I love the people that go "Oh, but my caravan makes 50 battaniazilion a day". What nonsense.
Truth is, the caravans are a huge gamble and thus mostly useless as they are not worth tossing away 15k denars.
You will have people tell you "do this and that" but it's all just a matter of luck. They will try to convince you that they are doing smart things by equipping their companion right, selecting the right city, perks and profession, etc. but truth is they are just lucky. Period.
People with survivor bias (and maybe good intentions) will try to give you advice but in the end you have to decide if you want to throw you money away and hope that your caravan brings back the coin in several weeks or gets raided 5 minuntes after leaving the city. Nothing you can do about it. It's a bad system and not worth it in my opinion.

 

[BigFat]

i hit clan tier three, and started deploying small armies of "golden" and "lucky" companions. sometimes, they cost like 300-500 coins. sometimes they cost 1100-1500 coins. i dont understand what the fnck is happening. this strategy WORKED for me in the past. its like, building a solid foundation to conquer the continent is against the rules now? tf?

I set my brother as a party and followed him around to prevent him from getting killed by bandits while recruiting. He stopped by two towns and had a handful of soldiers when I checked my money tab and saw that his party was costing me $3000 a day and bankrupted me.

 

[KingEroc1st]

I set my brother as a party and followed him around to prevent him from getting killed by bandits while recruiting. He stopped by two towns and had a handful of soldiers when I checked my money tab and saw that his party was costing me $3000 a day and bankrupted me.

maybe it's the up front cost of recruiting troops but 3000 sounds a lot

 

[Flesson19]

i had an old playthrough where i was about 75% the way done conquering all of the continent, but some update hit and my buccelari became garbage tier so i walked away from bannerlord and cursed it as a failure.



i got bored, had nothin to at night, so i figured id start a new campaign, see what all has changed. the start was surprisingly smooth, no timers anywhere forcing me to do anything i didnt want to do. +++



i saw they had nerfed trade by moving castle buying to the end of the tree, big suck. whatever, trade is easy it just takes a long time. i figured id get started asap.



i immediately noticed the economy is absolutely fncking stupid. i have not encountered a single trade rumor that was accurate. the fish trade has been nerfed so hard it makes me feel stupid. "oh, your city just got seiged 4 times in a row? you have zero food at all? i have 170 trade skill? guess im selling u this fish at 15-10 coins a pop now..." should have been like 40-20. if i cant gouge the rich cities, then whats the point of trade?



anyways, i finally found a spicevendor companion and immediately made her a caravan. its been 180 days and shes NEVER made over 500 coins, on top of that 1/4 days she doesnt even show up in my budget(like she doesnt exist) and i end up eating the entire bill for my army. what the literal fnck is going on. how are these caravans so garbage now?



i found a "lucky" fellow. made him a caravan. he routinely only produces 10-100 coins, and like the spicevendor 1/4 days he doesnt even show up on the budget, leading to me eating the entire bill.



i hit clan tier three, and started deploying small armies of "golden" and "lucky" companions. sometimes, they cost like 300-500 coins. sometimes they cost 1100-1500 coins. i dont understand what the fnck is happening. this strategy WORKED for me in the past. its like, building a solid foundation to conquer the continent is against the rules now? tf?



i genuinely dont know what to do. i cant continue when i cant make enough money to support what i have. i dont even have a lot. 135 tier2-4 units, with the majority being infantry and archers. the bandit factions are now large enough to eat my 30 man caravans, which they are doing. i cant afford the -1500 a day PLUS the loss of caravans. why were caravans nerfed so hard? whats the point of all this? why why why? i was playing after posting this on reddit, and i got a nice screenshot of the absolute financial crisis im experiencing. im so broke now, that i have to disband all armies, kick all my companions out, give away all my troops, and start completely over, except this time with a 4k debt.

investing in the caravans completely ruined me.

I have been working with @mexxico for some time with caravans, I do tests each branch to figure out what settings to use to max profit and it is possible to average around 500 a day profit, that is the point sometimes in a day they won't get to towns so they don't make profit that day. But averaging 500 per day is viable if you know how to do it. In my test video I show how you accomplish it. Workshops are actually decent for me as I also do a video showing what workshops make the most for each city in the game. At the low end maybe 100-150, but a lot all over the map can make 200-300 a day. I am still trying to get TW to work on trading in general as 300 for the perk is insane and should be 275 and also that caravan leaders Trade skill should increase profits more, where right now having 300 trade vs 0 only gives around 10-20% that is a joke, so I hope @mexxico can make some changes when he gets back from vacation an before he leaves in August or it will be that you will be forced to mod to enjoy trading which that how it is now, TW pretty much destroyed the fun of trading and it;s just horse trading all the time. But if your interested in my caravan and workshop videos I do them each patch to let you know how you can make money for them, they are on my channel under the same name on youtube