Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
This topic has been locked 
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
Report this post
What is there to fix? There is only so much demand. And...you've gone over that.
And depending on how much stuff you have to shift? Sometimes a second post is worth it. I've done it a few times, and it works...ok.
But there's probably a max number of times any single trader visits per year (guessing) so at some point it doesn't help you get rid of things tons faster. It didn't seem to go oodles faster when I've tried it. Maybe somewhat, but ... then again I've never tried 20 fully staffed trading posts. Only 2-3 maybe.
And yes, if you're amassing so much that you don't need/want, turn it off. Turn Artisan houses on/off, mostly - there's an option for that on the house UI. They can churn out stuff like gangbusters. Destroy super large backgardens and rebuild some smaller. I don't like building super sized backyards for that reason. Easier to control by making them still kinda large, but not that large.
Increasing the number of trade posts did seem to help the trade efficiency not in terms of volume, but in terms of variety. If I was trying to sell off 6 different types of goods, the trade post would usually only load up on 2 or 3 of them, and would not accept more until a trade cycle was completed. Having 3 trading posts results in each post stocking up on 2 different types of items, meaning that when the traders arrive, they could take away upwards of 7-8 different item types.
But I'm going to be frank, I just generally don't understand the global trade system - it seems generally riddiculously inefficient, and the rate at which traders arrive and volumes of goods they take away, feel completely random and unpredictable. I have 200 surplus boots, marked for export. The tool-tip tells me the demand is normal. The trader might randomly take away all 100 of time one time, then only 10 of them the next time, despite the global demand remaining the same. According to the dev notes, over-statured global market should result in goods still being collected - just at much lower profit. Instead, trying to sell more than 100 of ANY type of item seems like a lost cause. I think it's not working right. The traders should take away the surplus goods, they should just pay you less if you keep flooding the market according to the patch notes.
In reality, it just seem to completely randomly ignore entire classes of items for entire years for reasons I cannot phantom. Again, it's not the global demand, at least not the tool tip. It seems like the problem is actually on the side of the tradeposts themselves. The traders themselves will usually take whatever is currently stocked in the post, but the post itself randomly refuses to demand goods that are marked for export: the post will never collect them, thus the trader will never pick them up, and I cannot see any logic behind any of it.
Overproduction of any even remotely advanced product is an inevitability. Set up a tailor artisan? You WILL end up with 400 excess cloaks and clothes flooding your storage, because the towns-folk only consume like 1 cloth item (that includes materials, such as just linen or leather) per family per year if even that, and the traders, despite apparently these items being in high demand, will never actually take away more than maybe 20-30 a year: less than workshop makes in month. Meaning opening artisans that make anything but bread or bear is a waste of an investment: you'll only need them working for like 5 months, then you'll have so much of the goods that you'll never be able to get rid of them.
With the 6 units cap on militia, armaments are the same deal: your fletcher will make those 70 bows over one summer, and you'll never field more than 2 units of bowmen, meaning after that one summer, that fletcher - the permanently dedicated, costly workshop is useless and you are better off tearing it down and freeing that worker slot.
The worst case are live stock traders, which not only seem to only appear once a year at max, but will never haul away more than one piece of live-stock per cycle, so if you are trying to make some profit breeding and selling sheep: enjoy having constant surplus of 200+ sheep for the rest of the game. you literally cannot sell sheep faster than they breed - even if you start with only 4 of them, and set any surplus to be sold immediately: you'll end up caping out all your pastures in two years, with no way to get rid of them.
Aside from consumables (beer and bread), you will NEVER need any artisan to work more than for maybe two months. After that, that is it, you have enough of the good for the rest of the game.
Pausing artisans is actually a TERRIBLE idea, because that way, you have permanently dead, locked up family that does not contribute anything.
The correct thing is to build the workshop, let it run for few weeks, at which point, you can (and absolutely SHOULD) tear down the whole workshop. You'll never need the clothier or fletcher ever again, in few weeks they will already produce more than you'll need, or consume, or sell, for the rest of the whole run, and the family is now free to work on other more ballanced aspects of the production, such as food, which actually has both supply AND demand, where as artisans can supply, but the demand is non-existent.
I do think, however, that they generally do not like to fill up their "pantry/storage" with only a single/few items. It's kind of like how a clothing market stall doesn't like to fill up with 50 leather - they're leaving room for shoes/other, so (I'd guess) you don't end up with 20 market stalls that are always full of only leather w/no room to stock other clothing when you get around to making some. Or something like that.
So yeah, if all you want to do is trade 500 bows, they probably won't stock up on 500 bows. I've seen them stock 80-100 of a single item before, but not sure if that was accidental, on the Ai's part, haha, or intentional.
Oh no, from 100+ families one will be inactive for a month or two, whatever will I do?... lol.
Not everything needs to be running 24/7 like some kid in a chinese sweatshop. It's a mindsed issue. Artisans still pay monthly taxes and go to war, and make their stuff so I can export it to my other regions, use it there and sell the rest on a market.
There is no need to tear down their homes and workshops. They can relax and chill when I don't need them.
All that to gain total regional wealth, that I can then finally tax below 1-5% on all my manors, and pay the yearly king's taxes with that, without the loss to happiness.
Because good luck doing that without active artisans like blacksmith or clothier/cobbler and proper trading.
But here's the thing, you are probably playing on the main game branch, and I'm playing on experimental patch, so my experience with the game mechanics and balance is different.
Why the hell are you trying to defend this? It's really damn clear that this is just a very obvious ballance issue, something that needs a lot of time and testing to get right.
Not everything needs to run 24/7, though if you want to make your game fun and tedious, especially in a game that actively pushes you into simultaneous management of multiple different settlements, you probably want to keep the amount of micromanagement necessary relatively low (something the dev himself clearly agrees with, given the changes he made in the first experimental patch to make constant micromanagement of your fields being hyper-efficient. A good stategy/management game knows when to ease off on the micro, as to not become tedious.
But again, the problem here is not that you need to occassionally turn off the artisan for a few weeks. The problem is that the artisan will absolutely, 100% of the time, over-saturate the whole world with too much produce in a month or two, and you will never actually need him active again.
As I said: I don't agree that the artisans should return to work-pool when paused. I don't think that solves the problem.
I believe the problem is that the game should not force the player to keep artisans paused 99% of the time.
The solution here is simple, and obvious. Make artisans worth keeping around and active in the first place. E.g. - slower the rate at which they produce goods, increase the rate at those products are consumed, and make trade more efficient and reliable to allow you to get rid of surplus. That way - you will only have to pause them occassionally, and if you only have to pause them occassionally, it's perfectly fine and logical for them to not return to the work pool.
And no, your speculation is completely wrong. I haven't played the game on the main branch at all. I only got around to the game by the time the first experimental pre-release patch was released, and that is the only version of the game I played. I'm now fooling around with the patch that released earlier today, but I'll only get to really test out how much it changes tomorrow.
It seems like you are trying some kind of absurd sense of superiority from the fact that you figured out that you can pause the production, thinking that makes you smarter than others, despite that being absolutely obvious to everyone, as well as implying that nobody but you is smart enough to figure out to use the beta branch.
And as a result, you pointlessly end up defending a system that clearly does not work very well.
So let me reassure you: We ALL know you can pause the production, and we all know how to switch to the newest patch.
We still see that the supply and demand for artisans is completely wrong and makes no sense, and needs a lot of further tweaking. Having extensive dedicated production chain for items that don't actually get consumed, and are needed in extremely low numbers, makes no sense. It's obviously not the intended result, but rather, result of in-progress ballancing, as well as issues connected to disabled features: I'm fairly confident that things like super-low consumption of clothes is caused by tier-4 and higher households being locked off, the inability to efficiently sell surplus is a matter of Slav Magic constantly over-thinking and overhauling the trade system (the changes between the trade in base game, from what I've seen of it, and the first pre-release patch which I played, are DRASTIC, so it's obvious it all in a state of flux), and with entire production chains being incomplete.
Hell, if I played the release version, I would not be complaining - that version, from reviews I saw, allowed you to trade much faster, at much higher volumes and much more favorable prices: any surplus was EASILY turned into thousands of gold of regional wealth. In that build, the overproduction was not an issue - it was just a too-easy-way to make endless money.
Case in point: What are tools for?
The answer is: Nothing. They have no function, they are not consumed by anything, they currently can only be exported, which with the massive nerf to traiding, means they are JUST USELESS.
This is obviously not the full feature. The tools obviously are supposed to eventually have a function. My guess is: tools will eventually be consumed by artisans when they produce stuff. Which will eventually throttle down the overproduction rapidly: a fletcher will no longer be able to produce 300 bows a month, if he'll burn through 1 tool per ever 5 bows he makes, exhausting the whole towns supply of tools long before he makes such obscenely large orders.
If I'm correct on this guess, the issue with having to pause artisans will be solved, by limiting their supply, by amount of tools you have at your disposal. Thus removing the need to pause them: they will "pause" automatically when the supply of tools dries out.
The fact that people want artisans to return to the workforce, is nothing but a symptom of a mechanic that clearly isn't working right: it's a simptom of the fact that artisans end up paused way too often, for way too long times. Denying that is absurd. All that people are doing, is trying to give as constructive feedback as they can, because that generally helps developers to figure out what needs addressing. And it should not have to be said, but we all know game-dev is hard, this game is absurdly ambitious and already proved to be of incredible potential, it will have many teething issues, it is in EA, and we are entirely ready to accept imperfections, be patient, and trust the developer that he knows what he is doing, and is wise-enough to listen to feedback.
But while we are waiting for slavic magic to do his magic, constructive criticism is always going to be beneficial, and we should not shy from it.
Consequence: full inventory problems
Fix: reduce the production levels
Ok so it's clear to me that you are emotional about it, but lets clear the muddy water here.
Since you are getting personal about this, I will answer to you but just this once.
I never said or implied that you or anyone else was not "smart enough" to use beta branch, and so on. At this point you are shizo posting, and putting words in my mouth, so please don't do that.
To keep things clear, when I said that "you are probably playing on the main branch", it was my guess based on what you've said about trading and destroying artisans. Because in my experience trading is way more efficient (open trade route/caravan wise/how offten they visit) compared to the main branch, and also not as broken as it was. So unless you make something like 5+ tier 3 cobbler houses, you never gonna end with 1k+ boots, same with fletchers and bows. Especially that you can pause them and let them chill.
As for pause the artisan thing, there were a lot of people who don't even knew how to pause building production, and end up with the very same issue as OP. And many posts were made already about this subject, on this forum.
You can make another python post, go ahead but it will change nothing.
Just understand one thing, we are both on the same page, I'm not defending how the current game mechanics are, or should be. It's pretty clear that this is a serious work in progress (late stage alpha at best). So yeah, things will change.
But, as it is now. Both in the main game branch and the experimental patch.
OP did ask a simple question. "Is there any value to having a second trading post?"
My short answer is: No. It's not gonna export faster, and pausing a building production is a good way to stop having another 1650+ bows. (Probably because op didn't even knew that such option exist, because why else you would end up with 1k+ bows in the first place.)
It's very simple answer, it's not a opinion, it's a fact and a solution to his problem.
The other way is to wait few months/years for a game to develop fully.