Production system, trade and resources

If you going to post that it's useless, at least read all the posts in the thread. We already named numerous purposes, being research and trading with imaginary foreign countries using special places like silk routes and international docks.

I did read it.

However does wool -> technological breakthroughs really make sense? We are in the medieval age. We are way past such basic things.

I said you could set up a fake economy myself, perhaps the form it could take would be trade routes and docks but ultimately all this will be is an alternate way of making money.

I did not say it is useless it could be quite an interesting distraction from the main objectives of the game, but as its only purpose will be to make money (it is trading after all) I am simply questioning the amount of work it will take versus the benefits of such a system. We already have ideas of how to make money.

Really though I am just strongly making the point that if your going to have a system like this you need to make sure that the goods will have value or no one will use it as they will be better of focusing on products that can actually be useful. Why focus on wool, silk and wine when you can spend your limited resources on increasing the strength of your army, fortifications or aquiring the resources that can be used for these things. These things are practicly valuable.

It is like backed currency versus fiat currency. This presents difficulties in creating the system let alone actually doubling the amount of resources that we need to keep track of in the game.


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Here is an example I hope it makes sense:

Especially when we can have a much simpler system such as one that does not actually record each thing individually.

For example you could have a furs hex where you make furs with the right upgrade. This then gives you +500 "trade goods" , different types of resource would have different value perhaps gems would be +2000 "trade goods".

You could then have trade agreements with other factions, these would give you a % increase depending on the distance between the two factions and the amount of overlap of good types. For example faction A has furs, gems and silk, faction B which is 100 miles away has velvet and wine. Now because they do not have any good types overlap you just factor in the distance say 1% trade good value increase per mile so the value of the good is doubled.

Now we have faction C they have furs, wine and tobacco and want to have a trade agreement with A. They are 150 miles away though so if there was no trade good overlap there would be a 150% increase in value of goods traded with each other. Unfortunately though there is and this means they will not trade furs with faction A. So a trade agreement with this faction will leave their furs untraded. Will the trade route be worth it? If you can only have 1 trade route perhaps not, if you can have more than one because of a better trading building then maybe you can trade those furs elsewhere (you know like in Civilisation where you trade the goods individually).

Now with this system (which is similar to the idea Arch3r put forward earlier where you do not stockpile rather have +X production) things would (i think) be much simpler. There would be no stockpiling to record, no indivudual resources to manage as they are all classed as "trade goods" and just have a +X value and that +X trade good value translates into +X gold per turn by some ratio. This would be a variable you could easily change to help control the economy.

Numbers Example:
Trade goods * 0.5 = #gold
BEFORE TRADE
Faction A: YOU

Furs +500
Gems +2000
Silk +1000
Total = 3500 = 1750gold

Faction B: 100miles

Wine +1000
Velvet +1000
Total = 2000 = 1000gold

Faction C: 150miles

Furs +500
Wine +1000
Tobacco +1500
Total = 3000 = 1500gold

AFTER TRADE (2 routes)
Faction A: YOU

Furs +500 Traded with B -> +1000
Gems +2000 Traded with C -> +5000
Silk +1000 Traded with C -> +2500
Total = 8500 = 4250gold

Faction B: 100miles

Wine +1000 Traded with A in exchange for furs -> +2000
Velvet +1000
Total = 3000 = 1500gold

Faction C: 150miles

Furs +500
Wine +1000 Traded with A in exchange for Silk -> +2500
Tobacco +1500 Traded with A in exchange for Gems -> +3750(?its late?)
Total = 6750 = 3375gold


Basicly you turn it straight into gold rather than bothering to fully simulate it as it is much easier and ultimately I do not think these trade goods are going to have any purpose other than making money anyway right? So why not skip the step for simplicity. Especially for early versions.

I like your suggestion and it makes sense. Well except for the fact that when you trade it with a further faction extra money magically appears. But to have some depth in the economy I think rare goods should have a special purpose.
In medieval (using the idea from Stronghold Kingdoms) worlds holding a banquet as king/lord was pretty common and there were the luxury goods used for. If we pretend that a research takes, say, 2 turns and requires 2 wool and 2 wine (which means wool production will be decreased by 2 and same for wine) as if the researchers want wool for their beds at night for the time the research lasts and they want to have wine to drink.

The basis of my idea was to give the "International Relations" system, with all its diplomacy, intrigue and background working, a raison d'etre.

Why would a faction wage a war to another? To get money, and you can get money if you make a clever trade policy or control certain resource "mines".

The idea is to leave to the clan leaders the choice about the value of the items, not to a simple "x miles = +x value": each faction will decide its own policy, for its own geopolitical purposes.

And, in my opinion, the simplest way of putting it is like i proposed before: individual resource production to be converted into gold according to the will of each part, keeping in mind that the final value of the good will be established by its "exchange point".

Im with Nikephoros, the value should be up to the kingdoms/clans trading with another.

Say Pi wanted to build a library and the cost to build it is 5 wood, 2 stone and 3000 gold.
Pi currently has 6 wood 1 stone and 4000 gold.
CoR on the other hand has 3 stone , Pi offers 1 wood and 1000 gold to CoR for 1 of its stone, It would be up to CoR to accept or not.

All resources should be hidden from the other kingdoms so you would have to spy other to what others have or contact them, a kingdom should also be allowed to openly show its resources on the market if desired.

This is how I personally feel it should be.

Well, for me, i'd take off all the resources that are not Trading Goods, to make things even simpler.

I think Plazeks list is almost perfect. I have changed it a little with - food to food/drink and leather to pelts and added luxury.

Metal
Wood
Stone
Pelts
Cloth
Food/Drink
Horses
Gold
luxury

Say you had a gem mine, this would not add gems but to gold, as gold was not just gold it was treasure in which consisted of rocks and metals which had value. Ie silver, gold, jewels ect.
Say you havested spice, that was a luxury so would add to that. Ale would go to food/drink, and so on the idea to use simplified categories would make it easier.

I still think we should make it as simple as possible: gold for more or less everything (before anybody steps out to make a lecture, I KNOW gold was not the base of medieval economy), trading items to get more gold.

Alternatively, a system with just a few resources, like wood, stone and horses.

I dont think we want to over simplify though nikephoros, in having various categories it makes fighting for areas and trading more prominent.

We could also use all M&B trading goods, since this is a M&B modification it could be nice. That would mean Furs, Dyes, Linen cloth, Wool, Spice etc...without Iron and the food (like bread, smoked fish and such). Altough we might want to use wine and olives
as resources I think wood, stone, iron, grain would be good (or maybe just food instead of grain)

Wood
Stone
Iron
Horses (for cavalry,and to give Steppe Tiles a raison d'etre in terms of game balancement)
Food (for logistical reasons)

Should be available in different quantities in every tile.

And yes, using M&B trading goods is a good idea. But only the "expensive" ones, those not possibily common to every city.

So, i thought 3 kinds of different trading goods for each kind of tile. Of course, which tile is producing which resource shall be decided "strategically", according to the placement of each faction and the map properties.

Hill Tiles:

Spoiler:

Plain Tiles:

Spoiler:

Snow Tiles:

Spoiler:

Desert\Steppe Tiles (do we have both?)

Spoiler:

Mountain tiles:

Spoiler:

Anyway, if possible, the spawn point of this Trading Goods should be "unique" or exist in a max of 3-4 instances.

Desert and steppe are very different and yes we have both. Steppes are cold.

Interesting ideas but wood in a desert? or even stone iron horses and food....

You would never build a kingdom on a desert unless close to resources.

Deserts would have dyes, camelhide (?) and rare stuff.

I think we can start a "beta" with placeholder 1,2,3 for desert and steppe.

May i ask how many clan we have, so far -active and willing?

I think each place needs to be more independent on it resources like civ 4, so you fight and trade more for them.

Also think there is about 4 active clans, though most likely more hiding away, though Pi will be slow over the next 2 weeks as I am away most days and and some others will be joining me over that time, do away this wednesday for 5 days and will have no net at all as will be at the british juggling convention running a workshop. You will lose me and pande for them 5 days.

Nikephoros wrote:May i ask how many clan we have, so far -active and willing?

IG is willing and armours should be ready too. We just need to compile armours and weapons as brf and assign stats to them.

So thats IG, Pi, Cor.
Sure theres another one...

AB and the 22nd.

There ya go 5.

I will leave the map with some the guys while away and get them to make the tile views ect so I can get this map moving more.