Reworking Trade

[Velax]

2) allow traders to send a message to any lord who has an offer posted on the marketplace. This will allow the trader to negotiate with the lord to get them to post orders that will let them broker a deal. The lord may have a sell posted for 250 when the trader needs a 200. Or the trader my be able to broker if the lord is willing to pay a little more, or accept a little less. Etc. As it stands now, traders are essentially silent little robots wandering around from market to market, never talking to anyone, because you may be a 4 day journey away from being able to contact some who can probably help you broker a deal. So you never talk to them, and the deal goes unfinished.

I like this idea.

[Chenier]

I had put some cheesy 10 gold buy offers before everyone was made to be deficitary. To my surprise, they were accepted. I put them up again and they were accepted again.

Sure, it was from a friendly realm, but still. :P

Can't wait for the excess food to be eaten or rotten... Trading is really bad lately. I don't like the idea of people forgetting they should trade, or getting used to not bothering with it.

[Indirik]

@mykavykos: yes, people may choose to not answer. But at least they will have a choice, and the traders will have an option.

@penchant: true, only duke/margrave will have the option of taxing tthe lords. But margraves also make a lot of gold under the new system.

[mykavykos]

@indirik: I only said that this option have to be backed by a mechanical system. I don't disagree with you.

[Indirik]

Yes, a mechanics-based offers system may be nice. We had discussed adding one under the old caravan system. It may be something that is a bit too complex right now, and could be added later.

[Tom]

3) greatly reduced availability of trades for lords. I can think of two things off-hand. First, restrict lords to trading with adjacent regions only. Second, make newly posted orders visible only to traders for the first three days after they are posted. Lords can only see them once they are 4 or more days old. This allows the traders to get an exclusive shot at all new offers before lords can act on them.

I like this. It makes traders especially important when food is scarce, and needs to come in quickly.


The other option I am thinking about is related to food rot. Right now, food on the market doesn't rot, but it should. I would have the rot reduced considerably for deals brokers (not completed!) by traders - that way pure traders doing the trading game profit from this, but region lords who become traders to game the system don't.


And finally, yes a posting fee for non-traders. The logic being that only traders can access the market, and region lords can it, too, but have to pay some NPC trader to act as a go-between. Those fees would be flat per-deal ones, and much less for posting than for completing. Say 5 gold to post an offer, 10 gold to complete a deal. It's not huge game-changing unfair, but it's enough that over time it matters. A rural region constantly selling its surplus will feel it if every deal costs 10 gold.

[fodder]

what does that mean really? the bit about rotting deals.

say you've chucked 1k food on a sell deal and have 1k food in the warehouse.
does the warehouse gets hit on rot worth 2k food?

or does the buyer of the 1k food find out his 1k food isn't 1k but what's left that isn't rotted away? (and still pay the money for 1k)

[Dante Silverfire]

If you restrict lords to being able to only trade with adjacent regions you essentially require a trader if a realm is to survive. This will destroy small realms. Not everyone wants to play a trader, so requiring them is a bad idea.

[Indirik]

You just have to have the food make two hops. Or hope a trade helps you out? Or hope someone becomes a trader?

[mykavykos]

A Lord must have an option to post his offer without pay a fee.

Maybe there could be an option to post an offer only in his own region. Traders treveling in the region and in an market place, would be able to see the offer, but no one else.
If the lord want to post an offer in the market, so then he will must pay the fee.

[Dante Silverfire]

You just have to have the food make two hops. Or hope a trade helps you out? Or hope someone becomes a trader?

Two hops? What if I am trying to get food from 6 regions away? That's impossible with that change.

"Hope someone becomes a trader?" Seriously?

If you implement this, you might as well allow us to change the IR so we can order someone to be a trader or else a realm can easily be doomed with this change.

I thought the point of parts of the game was to increase the fun not increase the time input while not adding any fun? By trying to add too much to the trading game you're killing the ability to operate without a trader. This is like saying a region that has more than X%  pagan peasants in it will start spontaneously losing stats and revolting just because you haven't had a priest make non-pagan followers.

[Chenier]

If you restrict lords to being able to only trade with adjacent regions you essentially require a trader if a realm is to survive. This will destroy small realms. Not everyone wants to play a trader, so requiring them is a bad idea.

I agree. Allowing traders to see the deal a bit earlier... sure, the idea might have merit, though I doubt it'd give them a significant edge and would probably just needlessly complicate lords' lives. But restricting trade in such a way? That would be utterly awful.

And any change that makes traders really important should at least be preceded by allowing priests to be traders.

Traders' range is already a significant boost, though. I don't see why they need anything more than this. Just boost the range if you deem it unsatisfying.

[mykavykos]

Agree.

It must be harder, not impossible. A lord paying fees will still be able to trade but but may prefer don't do it himself.

Also I think that there must be some kind of incentive to be a trader, not only based upon the trade system itself.

The trade system must be something impartial with the trader class having characteristics that give him advantages in the system.

I was thinking and, maybe, the best option is put aside the trader in this topic and care about only the system itself. Creating a trade system that works well, because now it doesn't work. Not for trader and non-traders either. Then discuss the trader class entirely to make it nice to play and having advantages with the finalized new trade system.

If implemented, then the two updates would come online together.


@Chénier: merely boosting range is irrelevant if the system don't work at all. I'm a trader and I can see offers in a range of kilometers and so what? Or there are no offers or, if there are offers I can't broker them because I cant make a profit, or because there are no balance in the offers or whatever. Range is nice. Be able to do trades is better.

[Eithad]

I believe the current range for lords is 400miles, this is actually a significant distance. Instead of restricting it to adjacent regions only, the range can be cut down a bit. To give an example from Riverholm to Suville is 272miles and is 4 regions away. Something along the lines of 300miles should be fine.

Also the restricting offers for 3 days sounds nice, but the time could also probably be cut down a bit too to not hamper food movement too much when regions are starving.

[Dante Silverfire]

Agree.

It must be harder, not impossible. A lord paying fees will still be able to trade but but may prefer don't do it himself.

Also I think that there must be some kind of incentive to be a trader, not only based upon the trade system itself.

The trade system must be something impartial with the trader class having characteristics that give him advantages in the system.

I was thinking and, maybe, the best option is put aside the trader in this topic and care about only the system itself. Creating a trade system that works well, because now it doesn't work. Not for trader and non-traders either. Then discuss the trader class entirely to make it nice to play and having advantages with the finalized new trade system.

If implemented, then the two updates would come online together.


@Chénier: merely boosting range is irrelevant if the system don't work at all. I'm a trader and I can see offers in a range of kilometers and so what? Or there are no offers or, if there are offers I can't broker them because I cant make a profit, or because there are no balance in the offers or whatever. Range is nice. Be able to do trades is better.

The system works just fine right now as far as I can tell. What continent are you on? If you're on Dwilight, that's not really a good representation of the trade system.

Yes, it may need some tweaks, but I don't see the system as broken, because its working great on Atamara right now from my point of view.