In Progress Workshop Income is broken

[iimstevo]

Summary: I had a workshop in Ortysia - a Silversmith. This averaged around 180-250 gold per day. It was a great starter workshop to get.
I then purchased a Smithy in Ortysia as well - this average 5-15 gold per day, and my silversmith dropped to around 150-190 gold per day, meaning I lost money despite investing 15,000 gold.
I thought, hmm maybe this is because my smithy and silversmith are both fighting over the hardwood/charcoal - fair thought.
I sold my Smithy, and then purchased another Silversmith across in Amitatys. My original Silversmith still only earns 150-190 gold per day, and my new one only earns upto 40 gold per day.

I've invested 22,500 gold to pretty much get 0 return from Workshops. This needs to be looked at and there needs to be some kind of interface saying what's going to happen. I've always struggled to maximise profits from my workshops. Flooding them with materials at low prices yields no additional income, and buying all of their output stock yields no additional income. There needs to be clear indicators of what investing that 15,000 gold will actually accomplish, as well as the workshops should be upgradeable to maximise profits.
How to Reproduce: This seems to happen on every save, so simply start a campaign, and buy two workshops. It looks like the income is capped based on clan tier - which it shouldn't be.
Have you used cheats and if so which: No
Scene Name (if related): Map Scene
Media (Screenshots & Video): Cba uploading a screenshot - its detailed enough as it is.
Computer Specs: N/A

 

[uçanbiblo]

Hello, the devs are currently working on this issue. Thank you for reporting it in.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Yeah, they're working on nerfing the silver smith

 

[Zorion_no]

The mechanics kind of is too "complex" for its own good.

What they do need though is to have like it was in Warband where you could donate the mats, and the workshops would use those first, then buy the items of the market if they needed.

As for the return of the investment though, 15k spent, and you get 150 back, thats only 100 days and after that its all profit.
While it typically only covers a fraction of the troop cost etc, its still "free money" after that time have passed.

Ideally one shouldnt have to do all the math and science to find the best/most profitable workshops.
Basically if you own a town, you can in the management see on the "basket" what kind of goods are being consumed.

So say the town consume 1 silver at 300 denar - 100 for materials and wage you get 200 profit.
However the same town consume 6 beers at 40 denar a day - 6 for materials and wage your get 234 profit pr day.

Dumping goods in the towns typically just ends up makeing the caravans pick those up, since its now "too cheap" which leads to shortage of the mats and you end up with not produceing anything for days even.

For your blacksmith, you can see in the basket how much goods the town consume aswell.
So you can see that it consumes x tools, weapons etc that is made by the blacksmith.

Sometimes to make profit, you need to move abit of the crafted goods yourself to nearby towns for profit.

Another issue is the resources being not supplied to the town.
Caravans being raided, villages being looted, villagers taken by bandit/hostile lords etc.

Another factor that contributes to "consumption" is the amount of ppl in the town, so over time they can go up quite abit tbh.
I typically start with a brewery in Revyl(or what its called, a Sturgian town nestled away).
Next to it there is a village that produce grain, and the price of grain in the town is cheap, the beer aswell.
However I thus pick up alot of beer, then move it to Omor where the price is almost 2x of where I got it.
This way I lvl up trade, I get profit, the prices in Revyl go up, so its passive is pushed up.

Revyl's village never get raided in my play, its superclose to the town, to the point where the garrison is so close that it scares of the bandits more or less, makeing the villages able to dump grain there, and caravans typically dont get hit there atleast.

Ideally they would make the mechanics of workshops abit easier or more profitable(not quite like it was back in the start of EA).
But atm it "feels" abit low in terms of "unrewarding".

 

[iimstevo]

The mechanics kind of is too "complex" for its own good.

What they do need though is to have like it was in Warband where you could donate the mats, and the workshops would use those first, then buy the items of the market if they needed.

As for the return of the investment though, 15k spent, and you get 150 back, thats only 100 days and after that its all profit.
While it typically only covers a fraction of the troop cost etc, its still "free money" after that time have passed.

Ideally one shouldnt have to do all the math and science to find the best/most profitable workshops.
Basically if you own a town, you can in the management see on the "basket" what kind of goods are being consumed.

So say the town consume 1 silver at 300 denar - 100 for materials and wage you get 200 profit.
However the same town consume 6 beers at 40 denar a day - 6 for materials and wage your get 234 profit pr day.

Dumping goods in the towns typically just ends up makeing the caravans pick those up, since its now "too cheap" which leads to shortage of the mats and you end up with not produceing anything for days even.

For your blacksmith, you can see in the basket how much goods the town consume aswell.
So you can see that it consumes x tools, weapons etc that is made by the blacksmith.

Sometimes to make profit, you need to move abit of the crafted goods yourself to nearby towns for profit.

Another issue is the resources being not supplied to the town.
Caravans being raided, villages being looted, villagers taken by bandit/hostile lords etc.

Another factor that contributes to "consumption" is the amount of ppl in the town, so over time they can go up quite abit tbh.
I typically start with a brewery in Revyl(or what its called, a Sturgian town nestled away).
Next to it there is a village that produce grain, and the price of grain in the town is cheap, the beer aswell.
However I thus pick up alot of beer, then move it to Omor where the price is almost 2x of where I got it.
This way I lvl up trade, I get profit, the prices in Revyl go up, so its passive is pushed up.

Revyl's village never get raided in my play, its superclose to the town, to the point where the garrison is so close that it scares of the bandits more or less, makeing the villages able to dump grain there, and caravans typically dont get hit there atleast.

Ideally they would make the mechanics of workshops abit easier or more profitable(not quite like it was back in the start of EA).
But atm it "feels" abit low in terms of "unrewarding".

The whole point of it is to be an investment though.
There's no real investment beyond the first workshop - and that's the issue I'm highlighting since buying a second and third workshops just lowered the income of the first and that was it.
So your 100 day theory works for 15,000 spent, but you've not factored in the additional 22,500 (because of the 50% return) spent to get literally the same income or less.
That's several in-game years to yield no profit at all.

You can't afford multiple parties, which means you can't afford a kingdom, which means your companions can't be made into their own clans because they'll all be too old to reproduce etc. etc. etc...
It all snowballs from there.

 

[Flesson19]

If you know what ones to choose and how they can be sustained or micro managed you can make 300-500 a day for each shop I know it can be hard to figure it out when the economy changes each patch and certain shops make more or less each branch, that is why I make my workshop video so people can get that info.

 

[Zorion_no]

If you know what ones to choose and how they can be sustained or micro managed you can make 300-500 a day for each shop I know it can be hard to figure it out when the economy changes each patch and certain shops make more or less each branch, that is why I make my workshop video so people can get that info.

What this guy says.

The other workshops dont "earn less" cause you have more shops, atleast not what I've seen.

Like if you open up 2 of the same workshop in the same city, yah that dont work.
I opened up 1 linen in Omor, and 1 silver.
They dont earn that much in the first years, but as the years go by, they make noticable more.

As for the whole parties and all that, be sure to position yourself to get an city, and if you get a castle, give it back to the kingdome(they are imo just moneysinks).

Overall though, there is too much money to be made in war, and to little in peace.
Then again just become a blacksmith and you have no real issue of money in all fairness.
Even if you dont make those crazy 100k weapons, but just make 1000 denar type as orders.

Dont "rush" to become a kingdome either.

But as this guy say, "know" so yah thats the issue, you got to figure it out, where the big profits(to the degree they have any).
Tbh this is to variable from faction to faction, so yah setting up workshops in Sturgia is generally poor investment, however setting up some in a few of the Empire towns is "gold mines".

There was some issues though, that they are looking into afaik in terms of the profit etc, so I think over time it will get better.

 

[iimstevo]

What this guy says.

The other workshops dont "earn less" cause you have more shops, atleast not what I've seen.

Like if you open up 2 of the same workshop in the same city, yah that dont work.
I opened up 1 linen in Omor, and 1 silver.
They dont earn that much in the first years, but as the years go by, they make noticable more.

As for the whole parties and all that, be sure to position yourself to get an city, and if you get a castle, give it back to the kingdome(they are imo just moneysinks).

Overall though, there is too much money to be made in war, and to little in peace.
Then again just become a blacksmith and you have no real issue of money in all fairness.
Even if you dont make those crazy 100k weapons, but just make 1000 denar type as orders.

Dont "rush" to become a kingdome either.

But as this guy say, "know" so yah thats the issue, you got to figure it out, where the big profits(to the degree they have any).
Tbh this is to variable from faction to faction, so yah setting up workshops in Sturgia is generally poor investment, however setting up some in a few of the Empire towns is "gold mines".

There was some issues though, that they are looking into afaik in terms of the profit etc, so I think over time it will get better.

So can you explain as to why me buying an a second workshop in the same town lowered my first workshops income by about 20-30%?
And then after I sold that second workshop, the income remained lower... and then remained lower even with a second workshop being purchased in a secondary town a fair distance away?

Can you also explain why providing materials and supplies to the workshops doesn't increase the turnaround? And why buying materials that were produced from your workshop, doesn't cause the income to sky-rocket based on having demand with very little supply?

There's clearly a bug to be fixed here.

 

[Flesson19]

So can you explain as to why me buying an a second workshop in the same town lowered my first workshops income by about 20-30%?
And then after I sold that second workshop, the income remained lower... and then remained lower even with a second workshop being purchased in a secondary town a fair distance away?

Can you also explain why providing materials and supplies to the workshops doesn't increase the turnaround? And why buying materials that were produced from your workshop, doesn't cause the income to sky-rocket based on having demand with very little supply?

There's clearly a bug to be fixed here.

when you buy a second shop it will produce more goods and lower the buying price of that good. You can offset this by buying the output product lets say beer. I show in a video how massive profits can increase by doing this. As long as you have enough product for the input, then having 2 or 3 shops can be amazing for profit, right now wool weavery and silver smiths are the best. Early on when the economy hasnt settled, I had 3 breweries in Sanala and had no problem making 250-300 for each of them. so you second point, buying the output does increase profit. It goes up slowly til reacinh its max then come back down slowly. I did this test in 1.6.4 and everything worked perfect so I will test again in 1.6.5. But if you havent picked a good profit shop then this wont work.

 

[Zorion_no]

So can you explain as to why me buying an a second workshop in the same town lowered my first workshops income by about 20-30%?
And then after I sold that second workshop, the income remained lower... and then remained lower even with a second workshop being purchased in a secondary town a fair distance away?

Can you also explain why providing materials and supplies to the workshops doesn't increase the turnaround? And why buying materials that were produced from your workshop, doesn't cause the income to sky-rocket based on having demand with very little supply?

There's clearly a bug to be fixed here.

By all means I'm not blatantly stateing its not a bug, but it sounds more like "mechanics working as intended/designed".
(while I dont agree with the design tbh).

Asking me to explain it is "impossible" without me haveing your savefile, and lets face it, thats not my job as a gamer, but a dev, so supply them with the savefile, they can examine it and tell if its a bug or not.

And what the other guy says aswell.

Overall the mechanics of the workshops is abit unrewarding atm, and takes "alot of research" to get it right.
There is so many variables to factor.

1. Domestic demand the demand of the city (if its your city, you can look at the "basket in the management menu".)
2. Export demands, if the city produce relative cheap goods it will be picked up by trader and sold
(this is sort of counterproductive to some degree, as it also means the domestic markets price is abit low most likely), but by selling it it also pushes the price up so over time it should be good.
3. raw materials and the price of it.

Dont really matter if you dump lets use the brewery example - 1000 grain with the price being of grain 3 denar in that town.
when the price of the beer is still just 27
Your profit pr beer is still going to be 27 - 3 (and also -x for labor aswell) so say 20.
Had the price of the grain been 10 and price of beer still be 27 you do the math.
However if the price of grain is 3, but the price of beer in town is 40 you do the math.
The price of grain is 10 price of beer is 40 you do the math.
Basically if you didnt get the jist of it, if the price of the raw material already is supercheap it dont really affect the profit margins that much.
However if the price of the rawmaterial is high in that town, and you dump lots of rawmaterials there the gain is huge.

So overall just wait for the devs to give you feedback or read some guides online on workshops.
There is plenty out there.
Overall the mechanics isnt that easy as it was in Warband, and now takes abit more research before you make the right type of shop in town.

 

[iimstevo]

when you buy a second shop it will produce more goods and lower the buying price of that good. You can offset this by buying the output product lets say beer. I show in a video how massive profits can increase by doing this. As long as you have enough product for the input, then having 2 or 3 shops can be amazing for profit, right now wool weavery and silver smiths are the best. Early on when the economy hasnt settled, I had 3 breweries in Sanala and had no problem making 250-300 for each of them. so you second point, buying the output does increase profit. It goes up slowly til reacinh its max then come back down slowly. I did this test in 1.6.4 and everything worked perfect so I will test again in 1.6.5. But if you havent picked a good profit shop then this wont work.

You aren't really paying attention.
I didn't purchase a second Silversmith. I purchased a normal Smithy as the second.
I assumed that lowered the price based on consuming charcoal - this I recognised, and it made sense (at least so I thought). So I changed the production to something that doesn't consume charcoal, or silver ore - so my Silversmith could return to its previous income - this never happened.
I then moved my workshop to an entirely different town, and this still did not resume my Silversmith to its previous income - income it had been sat at for almost a year in-game.

There's an issue.

 

[iimstevo]

By all means I'm not blatantly stateing its not a bug, but it sounds more like "mechanics working as intended/designed".
(while I dont agree with the design tbh).

Asking me to explain it is "impossible" without me haveing your savefile, and lets face it, thats not my job as a gamer, but a dev, so supply them with the savefile, they can examine it and tell if its a bug or not.

And what the other guy says aswell.

Overall the mechanics of the workshops is abit unrewarding atm, and takes "alot of research" to get it right.
There is so many variables to factor.

1. Domestic demand the demand of the city (if its your city, you can look at the "basket in the management menu".)
2. Export demands, if the city produce relative cheap goods it will be picked up by trader and sold
(this is sort of counterproductive to some degree, as it also means the domestic markets price is abit low most likely), but by selling it it also pushes the price up so over time it should be good.
3. raw materials and the price of it.

Dont really matter if you dump lets use the brewery example - 1000 grain with the price being of grain 3 denar in that town.
when the price of the beer is still just 27
Your profit pr beer is still going to be 27 - 3 (and also -x for labor aswell) so say 20.
Had the price of the grain been 10 and price of beer still be 27 you do the math.
However if the price of grain is 3, but the price of beer in town is 40 you do the math.
The price of grain is 10 price of beer is 40 you do the math.
Basically if you didnt get the jist of it, if the price of the raw material already is supercheap it dont really affect the profit margins that much.
However if the price of the rawmaterial is high in that town, and you dump lots of rawmaterials there the gain is huge.

So overall just wait for the devs to give you feedback or read some guides online on workshops.
There is plenty out there.
Overall the mechanics isnt that easy as it was in Warband, and now takes abit more research before you make the right type of shop in town.

Yeah, that's how I interpreted it, however, that isn't how it worked out. I continuously pumped silver ore and charcoal into Ortysia for the Silversmith... The price was relatively stable at around 250-300 gold per day.
I bought the Smithy, this then reduced the Silversmith to 150-180, and the Smithy earned like 5-10 per day (literally horrible workshop income).
I assumed this was because of the Charcoal was being consumed by the Silversmith, so I sold the Smithy, and the Silversmith remained at 150-180.
I bought a second Silversmith at Amitasis, this time not loading it with Charcoal and Silver Ore, and this had around 40 per day, while my first Silversmith at Ortysia remained at 180-200 per day.

All in all, I lost income despite gaining more assets, and it literally makes no sense.

 

[Zorion_no]

Yeah, that's how I interpreted it, however, that isn't how it worked out. I continuously pumped silver ore and charcoal into Ortysia for the Silversmith... The price was relatively stable at around 250-300 gold per day.
I bought the Smithy, this then reduced the Silversmith to 150-180, and the Smithy earned like 5-10 per day (literally horrible workshop income).
I assumed this was because of the Charcoal was being consumed by the Silversmith, so I sold the Smithy, and the Silversmith remained at 150-180.
I bought a second Silversmith at Amitasis, this time not loading it with Charcoal and Silver Ore, and this had around 40 per day, while my first Silversmith at Ortysia remained at 180-200 per day.

All in all, I lost income despite gaining more assets, and it literally makes no sense.

As I said I dont think we can say without a savefile tbh.

There is so many other factors though.

For example as you say it was 300 or so, which is kind of "good" tbh atm for workshops.

But back to what I said about export, basically in Ortysia alot of the income for Jewellery is from selling it to other cities nearbye.
So if now for instance those cities are hostile.

Last I checked the price on silver was cheap in that town, but generally so was the jewellery.
So if we say that the town is medium size it would roughly only consume 1-2 pr day on its own, which is price on the market atm = income.
However before the city may have exported it to both Vlandia other Western Empire and maybe even Aserai towns.

So if they are all now hostile, they dont trade with the town.

Lets take my silversmith in Omor though, when I start out it earn me about 100-150, but now 1000 days after I'm getting a solid 300-400 a day.

There just is "too much and too complex" a mechanics at play that influence the income from workshops(without it being bugs atm imo).
Again dont get me wrong if there is a bug, they should get back to you, and over time patch it.

I can "agree" with the first observation that the income dips abit after you open your first workshop in a town, but over several 100's of days it goes up and chunks out more than ever(for me).

 

[Flesson19]

Yeah, that's how I interpreted it, however, that isn't how it worked out. I continuously pumped silver ore and charcoal into Ortysia for the Silversmith... The price was relatively stable at around 250-300 gold per day.
I bought the Smithy, this then reduced the Silversmith to 150-180, and the Smithy earned like 5-10 per day (literally horrible workshop income).
I assumed this was because of the Charcoal was being consumed by the Silversmith, so I sold the Smithy, and the Silversmith remained at 150-180.
I bought a second Silversmith at Amitasis, this time not loading it with Charcoal and Silver Ore, and this had around 40 per day, while my first Silversmith at Ortysia remained at 180-200 per day.

All in all, I lost income despite gaining more assets, and it literally makes no sense.

Your not really paying attention.....
Amitatys doesn't have silver ore supplying the town so the shop will go idle and you wont make as much where Ortysia does so it will make more. I dont know any shop that consumes charcoal, smithy and wood shops use hardwood but charcoal thats a new one. Not sure what your doing but when the silversmith shop is supplied with silver I get around 150-250 for my Ortysia Silversmith and when I buy the jewelry It jumps to 300-450 a day.

 

[CptMuppet]

I dont know any shop that consumes charcoal, smithy and wood shops use hardwood but charcoal thats a new one

I have tested it lately in version beta e1.6.5. Smithies do not use hardwood, only iron. Wood workshops use hardwood and charcoal. Game kinda treats hardwood and charcoal as same resource. Same story with all types of iron and steel. Also towns use every day a little bit of all types of trading goods and, besides that, they produce some weapons, armors and horse armors. Most of them, if not all, towns produce out of thin air, no trading goods of any type needed.

 

[iimstevo]

Your not really paying attention.....
Amitatys doesn't have silver ore supplying the town so the shop will go idle and you wont make as much where Ortysia does so it will make more. I dont know any shop that consumes charcoal, smithy and wood shops use hardwood but charcoal thats a new one. Not sure what your doing but when the silversmith shop is supplied with silver I get around 150-250 for my Ortysia Silversmith and when I buy the jewelry It jumps to 300-450 a day.

You're not really paying attention... lol.
I only bought a workshop in Amitasys to move the workshop away from Ortysia so my income could return.

We're talking the space of like 3 in-game days and no recovery.

The charcoal dumps may have been pointless, but me buying their jewellery, and supplying them with silver should've continuously kept the price high - it did not return to the point I just stopped wasting my money supplying it (because its just not economical to do so anyway) - thus, the bug.

It is not economical to buy a second workshop, and the trading parties are just terrible that you can supply them with 22,500 worth of troops for them to potentially get captured in 1 day.

 

[Zorion_no]

You're not really paying attention... lol.
I only bought a workshop in Amitasys to move the workshop away from Ortysia so my income could return.

We're talking the space of like 3 in-game days and no recovery.

The charcoal dumps may have been pointless, but me buying their jewellery, and supplying them with silver should've continuously kept the price high - it did not return to the point I just stopped wasting my money supplying it (because its just not economical to do so anyway) - thus, the bug.

It is not economical to buy a second workshop, and the trading parties are just terrible that you can supply them with 22,500 worth of troops for them to potentially get captured in 1 day.

Well judgeing by what you say and if its accurate then yes you are most likely experienceing a bug.
Your experience is not how it plays in my game.

I have in my city, Brewery + Smithy - both give 350 denar a day+.

I'm still thinking that it may be that you "dont understand" the mechanics of how workshops work though or the market, but again it may be assumption on my part.

3 days though is "not always enough" to have market recover, it can take weeks in my experience once its dipped.
While it dips down, it can take quite some time for it to go up again.

Cause of all the underlying factors that influence the market.
Resources, prosperity(internal consumption), war/peace, caravans raided, overall I think for ppl who arent "into tradeing" its abit too complex(for those who enjoy the number game its super cool)

Generally speaking a function similar to what was in Warband when buying workshops would be great, so you could get a "general idea" of how profitable it would be to invest in that town, withouth haveing to do all the maths and consideration.

 

[CptMuppet]

3 days though is "not always enough" to have market recover, it can take weeks in my experience once its dipped.
While it dips down, it can take quite some time for it to go up again.

From my expirience of playing campaigns for 1500+ in game days each, it can rarely take even more time. It depends on the cause(s) and can occur not only at the local, but also at the global scale. Especially when for example you have really big party and trade a lot, or when you change production of many workshops. Or maybe villages are often raided/well defended at the global scale, depending on what game throws at you in your particular playthrough.

A more interesting example of this, in the context of this thread, might be the big price drift of various trading goods after starting new game. In first days some prices can get crazy in towns here and there. Then, after caravans and the player distribute goods more evenly across the map, prices stabilize for a quite long time. But often on strange values compered to the rest of the campaign playthrough at which silver ore stands out. It settles down on much lower price at first and then gets more or less 2x more expensive for the rest of the game. Also jewellery prices are quite "moody".

Maybe that is the cause of the low silversmith income owned by @iimstevo? Maybe it is a bug? It might be twenty other things in this complex economic system. Who knows? Without a save file we can just guess at best. And with the save file I think it can still be confusing, even for veterans of this game. Especially with constant, neverending changes to the economy from one version of the game to another.

 

[Zorion_no]

Also check this out btw :

Gives you abit more insight into the market.

Look at the "price manipulation" and as you can see, and as he states, some goods vary alot with the amount you sell.
Grain have hardly any impact if you sell 1000's of units.
But if you sell 20 ore the price falls dramatic.

Thats most likely a huge part of the issue with the "lack" of profit or that it dont come fast enough.
Caravans not comeing to town to buy.

Example in my plays I had the issue that my town also was the home of "Northern Empire" lords even if I had captured it ages ago + some merc factions that was tied to NE.
So each time a caravan from the WE came to buy goods or sell them, which the NE was at war with the caravan got robbed constantly.
Which did impact the market.

Also hurt the town in terms of "lack of food" as theese "robber-lords" kept on buying grain, which this city often struggle with (Diathema).
None of the attached villages produce grain, and the villages attached to nearby castles more often travel to Epicroeta etc.

So its abit of a nitemare sometimes to "micromanage it or "care about it"".

Why I find that in general its best to just look at the legacy return of the workshops and the income they provide.
I mean 100 denar a day for 1000 days, when you purchased it for 13000 is still kind of a great profit.

Part of the problem is that if you dial down all the elite troops you typically have in your army vs other lords, you'd see that if you'd have a more "recruit" army that the profit from the workshops mostly would cover the expense.

But since our T5 units cost 2-3 times the upkeep, the workshops alone dont really cover the expenses.

Again as the other guy states, we're just doing guestimations, and arent solidly sure based on the op's post that "he understand all the mechanics in play that influence profit etc".
I'm not saying its not a bug but without the savegame its impossible, nor our job.

My effort in this thread was more of the "educational" to make sure that the op understand that the mechanics here is not very streamlined and that there is many factors that influence profit etc.

 

[CptMuppet]

Again as the other guy states, we're just doing guestimations, and arent solidly sure based on the op's post that "he understand all the mechanics in play that influence profit etc".
I'm not saying its not a bug but without the savegame its impossible, nor our job.

Yeah, I know. I made my own guestimation in my reply after all. I'm happy people here are trying to help.

Thanks for the video, very informative and nicely done. I have played this game long enough to figure out all these machanics by mysefl, but I still was surprised and impressed how much you can abuse it and how fast author was able to speedrun it in practice. Only one thing in this video wasn't exaclty right, but still was good estimation. Author have overestimated base xp needed for achieving 300 trade skill by roughly 17%. He stated it is 660993, but in reality it is 562798.