I figured out what is wrong with Trade...and how to fix it

[egamma]

Our current trading system doesn't work because there's little incentive to trade. There's food, and there's gold. Most realms have an amount that is close to break-even, and won't trade with others. The realms that do have a surplus aren't likely to sell much of it in case of another Great Drought (or war, or regular droughts, or simply because they don't like the price).

We need to add Metal. Once lords need to buy metal to outfit the recruits from their recruitment centers, or for their smithies, then we have more trade dynamics. Lords will be able to post food for metal trades, metal for food, metal for gold, gold for food. Traders will be able to combine a metal to food sale with a food for gold sale and a gold for metal sale. Mountain regions like the Divide range will suddenly become more valuable, and war for those resources will ensue--or surrounding regions will be bought off with favorable trade agreements.

Later, we can add wood from our woodlands. Wood is consumed daily in cities and townslands to cook food; it's also needed to build palisades, construct siege engines, and ships (yes, those are on the to-do list still).

The problem with Trade is the gold is boring. We all have gold. But metal and wood would provide a new incentive to trade.

[Penchant]

Our current trading system doesn't work because there's little incentive to trade. There's food, and there's gold. Most realms have an amount that is close to break-even, and won't trade with others. The realms that do have a surplus aren't likely to sell much of it in case of another Great Drought (or war, or regular droughts, or simply because they don't like the price).

We need to add Metal. Once lords need to buy metal to outfit the recruits from their recruitment centers, or for their smithies, then we have more trade dynamics. Lords will be able to post food for metal trades, metal for food, metal for gold, gold for food. Traders will be able to combine a metal to food sale with a food for gold sale and a gold for metal sale. Mountain regions like the Divide range will suddenly become more valuable, and war for those resources will ensue--or surrounding regions will be bought off with favorable trade agreements.

Later, we can add wood from our woodlands. Wood is consumed daily in cities and townslands to cook food; it's also needed to build palisades, construct siege engines, and ships (yes, those are on the to-do list still).

The problem with Trade is the gold is boring. We all have gold. But metal and wood would provide a new incentive to trade.

All trades should stay, resource for gold, or gold for resource for simplicity, IMO. Also, I believe things have been considered like this but the key thing that was decided was not to make it necessary, but beneficial. Necessary isn't going to help the atmosphere towards trading as you are adding penalties, not benefits, which generally works a lot better.

[LilWolf]

I already spend more time worrying about food across all my characters than I do about any battles. And you want to add other materials to that as well? No thanks.

What BM needs is an extremely simplified trade system that requires little to no interaction from most of the players(I'm looking at you, carts. You were so simple once set up).

[Chenier]

I think Tom said, some time ago, that he liked the suggestion of having three resources: food, materials, and goods.

It was my suggestion, at least. To keep things simple: having a million resources puts too much of a focus on the trading game which many people hate. My suggestion at the time was also that the resources not all work exactly the same: I don't think the lack of materials should drop production to 0 and prevent all repairs, but maybe it could cap production at 50 and make repairs more expensive. I could see every region needing a certain number of materials according to population, and if it only has 50% of those materials, then the region would be capped at 75% production. After all, people can improvise, recycle, and replace missing parts with what's available (though it's likely to cost more, be less effective, and not last as long). If it had an overabundance of materials, perhaps it could allow the region to go slightly above 100% productivity. As for goods, I could see it working the same way, or perhaps its own way. Perhaps every realm could produce its own kind of goods, to trade with others, which provide morale bonuses according to the diversity and the distance from which the goods come. For example, if Morek got a lot of goods from Corsanctum, it'd get a little bonus, but if it had goods from Corsanctum, D'Hara, Barca, and Grand Duchy of Fissoa (in the same regions), then it'd have a much better bonus. This dynamic has two advantages: one, it doesn't force anyone to pay more attention to the trading game, because there's no (or small) penalties for not having the resource, while two, it helps traders out by giving them more to do, as food is have/have-not dichotomy: either you have food and you'll be fine regardless of the amounts you have, or either you don't and you'll be in big trouble regardless of the amounts you'd need. Having resources with (non-linear) scaling bonuses would give traders more to do, because a lot more people would be interested in trading with them (without being forced to).

[Anaris]

You're absolutely right, egamma.

Unfortunately, this isn't news to the dev team.

Adding another resource will require a lot of thought and planning—not just because it'll require code changes in various places to make the other resource matter, but because we need to find just the right balance where it matters enough that people care about it (so they will actually be willing to buy it, and even go to war for it in extreme circumstances), but not too much, so that, as Chénier says, it causes the entire realm to break down when there isn't enough.

We also recognize that there is a certain amount of truth to what LilWolf says. We do intend to add more automation to the current system (at a bare minimum, automatic sell orders), but not enough so that one person can set up a system that works for a realm forevermore into the future, without ever being looked at again. That would be tantamount to just removing resources from the game altogether.

[Tom]

That would be tantamount to just removing resources from the game altogether.

Which, honestly, we just might do. I'm not saying I plan to do it, but it's an alternative. Many things in BM have always been and will always be experimental to some degree, and if they don't work out, if they don't add to the game, we will remove them again. It wouldn't be a first.

Still, I think food is important and should stay, and if we have food, then we need trade because otherwise the forum will be full of complaints when the first drought hits and people wonder why they can't simply buy or steal food somewhere else.

[LilWolf]

but not enough so that one person can set up a system that works for a realm forevermore into the future, without ever being looked at again. That would be tantamount to just removing resources from the game altogether.

That was never the case in any of the realms I was in. There were always special circumstances that demanded manual intervention(drought, looting etc.). In my opinion that's how it should be with resources. Once set up, things chug along nicely until something goes wrong. Only then is player attention needed.

[Kwanstein]

Currently, trade exists to facilitate the exchange of food. Food is justified, because it makes cities dependent on rural regions, which counterbalances the importance of cities. Without food, cities would be self-sufficient regions, capable of supporting all economic structures, potent fortifications and able to produce large amounts of gold. That would be detrimental to gameplay, hence why food exists.

What you are asking, is the introduction of a new resource, not for the sake of balance, but for the sake of trade itself. As I demonstrated, trade is a supplementary feature, the role of which is to facilitate the exchange of food. Trade currently fulfils this role, fully, and so there is no point in adding to it.

[Anaris]

That was never the case in any of the realms I was in. There were always special circumstances that demanded manual intervention(drought, looting etc.). In my opinion that's how it should be with resources. Once set up, things chug along nicely until something goes wrong. Only then is player attention needed.

And I think that this is probably around the place we would like things to get back to, too. Maybe it won't be exactly the same, but I don't believe the intention with the changes to the food system has ever been to increase the minimum complexity for the players: only to increase the maximum complexity—that is, to offer more options for those who really want to dig into them.

[Scarlett]

I was thinking about this the other day. Part of the food/gold situation now is good - it creates conflict (huzzah). But it also eats up a lot of time (boo).

One nice thing about the old system was that you could dedicate one or more regions' surpluses to a particular place; 'this rural feeds this city.' But this didn't create any conflict.

Historically, medieval lords were not concerned with day-to-day movements of bushels of food. Their stewards might be aware of it but they'd only be concerned if they were saving up for a siege, since it was sieges and long winters that granaries were for. Starving during the summer or autumn was unusual, though not unheard of.

Sieges were a huge part of medieval war but they aren't represented in BM. For so long as that's true, it doesn't make any sense to build a food system around just winter and sieges. But in the long run, it might be beneficial to consider an alternative to the 'everybody rushes the walls on the first day' such that a) lords are really only concerned with emergency stores, not day-to-day stores, and b) those emergency stores are really important.

[Indirik]

A more hands-off system is definitely a bonus. As Scarlett says, lords should only be concerned with exceptions, not mundane daily concerns. That's part of the reason for the idea behind auto-sell orders that lords could use, and the possible addition of a "Let the banker manage my food" option.

[Solari]

I am seriously weeping with joy over the very promising comments I've read in this thread.

[Dishman]

It seems like people are complaining about having lords being given the burden of setting up trade offers. I've also heard people complain about the lack of usefulness of the trader subclass. Is there a way to move lord's responsibilities to the realm's traders? Maybe let region lords set a percentage of 'sell/buy' for their region and let the finances of it be set by the traders? There are probably better approaches, but this is just what came to mind.

[Kwanstein]

Trader is indeed an unattractive subclass, as it is only beneficial in the unlikely circumstance in which a region finds that it has no prospective trade offers open to it. As food-consuming regions and food-producing regions are spread out fairly evenly in most cases, and because global food production is always at a surplus, it is seldom the case that a merchant, who's abilities are only modestly superior to a Lord's, is able to make use of his or her trade in a productive manner.

[Vellos]

The trader class would be lots of fun if there were a larger number of offers out there, and less price-coordination by buyers and sellers.