Author Topic: Reworking Trade  (Read 106518 times)

Indirik

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Re: Reworking Trade
« Reply #135: May 04, 2012, 04:57:03 PM »
One idea we were floating around was the Civilization model. If your realm has a region that makes wood, then you whole realm is considered to be supplied with wood. This also makes some regions more strategically valuable.
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OFaolain

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Re: Reworking Trade
« Reply #136: May 04, 2012, 06:18:15 PM »
One idea we were floating around was the Civilization model. If your realm has a region that makes wood, then you whole realm is considered to be supplied with wood. This also makes some regions more strategically valuable.

Ooh, I like the sound of that.  One suggestion I'd like to make is that rather than automatically supplying the realm with wood, the woodlands lord puts his wood on the market for X gold/day for Y days and a King (or equivalent) would purchase access to it wood for the duration (like in Civ 5 where you can sell a resource to the AI for 30 turns and in exchange get either a lump sum, gold/turn or a resource back), which *then* supplies his/her realm with wood.  This would make resource-producing areas (woodlands in this example) more desirable for lordships since it would increase the money they bring in; and, a realm with 4 woodland regions would then be a major exporter of wood and bring in significant revenue that way, while the regions are still desirable since your benefit (access to wood) depends on the good graces of your neighbor who controls all of it.
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Indirik

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Re: Reworking Trade
« Reply #137: May 04, 2012, 06:22:03 PM »
Some kind of system to "trade" resources may be possible. But the idea is to simplify the system, and get rid of the extraneous bother and complexity. We want it easy, and without much player overhead.
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Charles

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Re: Reworking Trade
« Reply #138: May 04, 2012, 06:26:33 PM »
I dislike the idea of buying goods from a npc.  This stuff should come from somewhere.  We will already have the system set up to add these other resources, so why not use it?  Once people get used to our trading system, I believe they will start to like it, or atleast be willing to work with it. 
Also, if we can make the trading system affect the regional stats (etc), rather than just gold, I think it would cause some people to be more willing to try it.  I may be wrong though.

Adriddae

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Re: Reworking Trade
« Reply #139: May 04, 2012, 06:39:30 PM »
One problem I find is that its really hard to make a profit trading. In the old system, caravans, the time to travel, and the soldiers needed to protect against vagabonds, just didn't allow for much profit to be made. The only reason to trade was to help feed your realm's city, or to transport food across to another realm and help them feed their cities. Of course, this was just in my experience with trading.

Chenier

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Re: Reworking Trade
« Reply #140: May 04, 2012, 11:24:43 PM »
One problem I find is that its really hard to make a profit trading. In the old system, caravans, the time to travel, and the soldiers needed to protect against vagabonds, just didn't allow for much profit to be made. The only reason to trade was to help feed your realm's city, or to transport food across to another realm and help them feed their cities. Of course, this was just in my experience with trading.

I think it's much easier to make profits now, mechanics-wise. Market-wise, that's another issue though.

Some kind of system to "trade" resources may be possible. But the idea is to simplify the system, and get rid of the extraneous bother and complexity. We want it easy, and without much player overhead.

Communal resource management is one way to reduce the burden of new resources, while giving the banker something he can actually do for once, but I think that these resources should be produced in nearly every region, albeit in different quantities. If by civ-style, you meant that one tile (region) has all the resource you could possibly need and the rest don't have any, then I wouldn't consider that to be a good idea.
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Duvaille

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Re: Reworking Trade
« Reply #141: May 05, 2012, 06:36:26 AM »
I must say I am with Chenier in this, for the most part anyway. His system is very easy to grasp:

- Peasants hungry -> get them food
- Peasants unhappy -> get them goodies
- Need to build something cheaper -> get materials

A somewhat small step such as this would already improve the trader game a whole lot. With this the food shortage realms would have something to trade back, which would be materials, that they would anyway produce more than they need. Even if this were to be expanded later on, it would be a smaller step that could be taken before more variety is added later. Even without more complexity later on, it would still stand by itself very nicely.

The steps taken could be even smaller. You could start with introducing the goods and see how that works. Tweak it to perfection, let the traders and lords get used to the new resource, get more experience and feedback from the new kind of trade and use all that knowledge for the design and implementation of materials.

"The peasants of your region are happy for all the available goods."

and then perhaps later:

"The availability of materials helps to restore production."
"The abundance of materials boosts production to 107%."

Tom

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Re: Reworking Trade
« Reply #142: May 06, 2012, 09:49:59 PM »
Yes, the currently most likely idea is to have all resources be non-essential, but it you have them, it makes things easier/cheaper/whatever.

^ban^

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Re: Reworking Trade
« Reply #143: May 07, 2012, 12:59:28 AM »
Tom,

This most recent change to production is absurd.

Quote
In summary, your realm appears to be in demand of food, lacking a net total of 18 bushels a day.

This is Solaria -- a region with one city and six rurals. And the realm has a net deficit. This is insane.

Hell, we have three of the top five net food producing regions on the entire island.
« Last Edit: May 07, 2012, 01:01:08 AM by ^ban^ »
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Solari

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Re: Reworking Trade
« Reply #144: May 07, 2012, 03:37:38 AM »
What ^ban^ said.  I can't imagine the horror that other realms are about to encounter.  Solaria was previously producing a 200% surplus, so I'm not really sure how a 15% reduction resulted in a net deficit.  Is something being calculated incorrectly? 

Duvaille

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Re: Reworking Trade
« Reply #145: May 07, 2012, 07:09:19 AM »
Well, it does seem a little drastic. If I have understood it correctly, my character's region is one of the most bountiful regions when it comes to harvests. Just in a day my surplus dropped from 15 to 6, which does appear to be more than 15% reduction. Admittedly the weather reports promise bad weather for harvest, so matters might not be as bad as they look.

vonGenf

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Re: Reworking Trade
« Reply #146: May 07, 2012, 07:22:25 AM »
In my region which has average weather, the production went down from 15 bushels a day to 13, which seems perfectly in line with the announced cut. If you have bad weather the situation may look bad, but bad weather never lasts.
After all it's a roleplaying game.

dustole

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Re: Reworking Trade
« Reply #147: May 07, 2012, 08:10:44 AM »
Kabrinskia went from a net producer to needing 140 bushels per day.  That is a fairly drastic change.  Population wise Golden Farrow has been at maximum population for a few weeks now.  The biggest change is that townslands seem to be net importers of food.  In the past townslands were about neutral.  I am curious to see what realms like Luria Nova and D'hara look like. 
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Tom

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Re: Reworking Trade
« Reply #148: May 07, 2012, 09:55:16 AM »
There's still a thousand bushels stored on average in Dwilight, so there is no need for panic-mode. I will continue to tweak food.


JPierreD

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Re: Reworking Trade
« Reply #149: May 07, 2012, 01:14:59 PM »
It would be enlightening to know if players are enjoying the food game currently, because if so it would be quite interesting to make the weather conditions last a little longer, causing more crises in the proto-capitalist (or outright neo-liberal) style our food game simulates.

The premises is that people don't enjoy repetitive tasks for the sake of it, or without much purpose. To have defined and stable seasons with reliable production prognostics, only subject to minor variations, may not be as fun and provide as many conflict opportunities as a less predictable system.

In theory when a region runs temporarily low on food it is likely that each realm will look after themselves, before than after its allies, causing at least some attrition, and making looting temporarily even more effective. In the other side of the island a overproduction could be making food rot and drop its price sharply, unbalancing the rural/city relations, creating political tension (this I have already seen happening). A stable and foreseeing realm will have stocks of food for if/when a drought comes, but warehouses can be looted, or otherwise damaged, and that would not be a total guarantee of safety.

The questions I suppose should be made first are:
1) Do people enjoy the food game?
2) Would they enjoy such harsh food game?
3) Can it be made so it is both harsh but not the sole focus of attention, so that the crisis can be manageable without devoting huge attention to the food game? Or would it not be possible to balance such unpredictability with a simple food system?
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