Trading?

[Lord Strong]

so a caravan shows up but i have no idea how to trade the trading family that showed up.

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Once the caravan worker occupies a storefront in the caravan marketplace, your townies will automatically buy stuff from them. Sometimes they'll bankrupt themselves doing this . You can tell if the caravan is ready to sell by clicking on the storefront. It will show an inventory of the items for sale.

You can personally buy items from a caravan via the warehouse menu.

The remaining caravan workers will buy surplus goods from you and your townies by visiting your storefronts. You can put one in your land to sell your stuff; I usually put one in my warehouse. Your townies will need one on their own land or in a market zone.

[Lord Strong]

so to fully take advantage of caravans i need at least the two different markets or store fronts in all areas that produce stuff. they only sell what the game considers excess or do i have to manually adjust warehouse for what i want to sell or keep?
this game seems to complicate more than it should.

villagers don't know how to budget their spending?

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Your townies only try to sell excess stuff, and will keep stuff they need for their crafts. So, for example, your tailors won't try to sell yarn unless they have a lot of it. You can see what they want to sell by clicking "what they need" in the warehouse menu.

Your family won't sell anything unless you set up the sales in the warehouse menu.

No, they don't know how to budget very well, but there's still lots of time for the devs to work on balancing. It seems like the most common complaint right now so hopefully it will be addressed.

[Lord Strong]

should i set up my village with the defaults? or are there some things i 'need' to manually adjust before running into problems? like free based settings or settings that get the main family in control. or setting that balances this all out. or is this game a bit to complex for guys like me? I like to have a game economy but if its buggy i want know best settings for least micromanaging and vice versa.

[Lord Strong]

i think far as game goes I know at beginning new families need building materials. for full game do i need to constantly monitor stuff or just make sure supply and demand balance out.

[Lord Strong]

i think i need a buying theshold and a selling limit or something like that.

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I don't think it's too complex for you, you seem to be willing to tinker around with stuff and learn how things work. That being said, it's still early access. There are bugs and the game isn't balanced yet. So don't worry too much about having a perfect town. If things spiral out of control and your townies are all naked and starving, just embrace it and start a new town. Or wait for the next patch then try again.