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Are you doing any saving and loading between your trades? Saves don't properly keep track of the price when it comes to calculating profit.
First, the most important thing to remember - Always Sell first and all at once. NEVER do a "Buy and Sell" in the same transaction. Why? Because you only gain exp based on the total gained for the Sale... It doesn't matter much how much "profit" it makes you if you sell fifty thousand in "profit" and then Buy up sixty-thousand in needed goods to trade in the next town.
Sell first.
Exit the Marketplace window.
Then enter the Market and Buy your trade goods.
Next - Focus on three to four towns and get to know what their markets carry and tend to have access to or at a good low price. If you can't find any decent items in a Town to buy after a few trips, consider leaving them out of your route or at least only visit them "every other" time to check. Buy "low" of course. You'll figure out the market pretty quick and know a good price by sight even if it's higher than what the game is telling you is a good price.
Work this route of three to four, maybe five if they're close together, and keep that trade going on every trip. Visit other sets of towns only when your current route seems to have run dry for awhile.
Do not hire more than twenty soldiers while you're leveling up trading in the early game. There is NO need for more than that as a trader. Bandits can't catch you and you can take on any that are small enough that can catch you with your 20 soldiers. You don't want the upkeep costs eating into your bankroll for buying goods to sell.
DO get some pack animals. You need them desperately so buy some at a reasonable price when you can afford it. Buying some additional riding mounts for your few troops is a good idea, too.
Do get to know the attached villages to a Town. Know what they produce and what they seem to usually have in abundance - You can get lucky and buy there for a cheaper price in good volume.
Sell everything you get from Bandits that isn't an upgrade for you or a Companion.
Do NOT upgrade your 20 troops into units you can't afford to keep.
Your first goal is to get enough money together to buy two businesses and have enough to continue with your trading. Once you have those two up and running in STABLE towns that aren't likely to be successfully besieged, then you can think about trying out a different trade route.
Trading in war-torn areas usually sucks. Trading deep in Sturgia sucks. (Bandits) Trading in the South generally sucks. IMO, trading either in the North-Central part of the map isn't too bad as long as the Towns aren't switching factions frequently. Anywhere that is relatively stable should have decent trade going.
Do some missions, here and there, to pad your purse a bit. But, focus on Trading first and foremost.
NEVER listen to "rumors" in Taverns or in Town Centers - They're worthless. Use your own knowledge of the Towns you're trading in and then when you get the Perk that starts giving you rumors for each good, you can judge how secure those rumored opportunities may be.
Watch the Reports. Know where the fighting is, what Towns are getting hit frequently, etc.. This will tell you where there could be a "sale" opportunity, but won't likely be any "buy" opportunities.
Once you "git gud" at personal combat, consider entering some tournaments for some mediocre gear and a bit of cash. You'll not have to rely on the occasional upgrade from Bandits and can just start looting all and selling it all without worrying about the details.
Trade is very easy if you stick to the above basic "Plan." When you start complicating things by trying to run a full "Army" on a Merchant's purse, you'll get into trouble having enough money to actually trade with until you become a Lord.
Once you're a Lord with a fief or three... Money/Trade is inconsequential and you'll make plenty of money and Trade exp.
Simple path: Low prosperity Aserai towns tend to sell Desert Horses, Mules, Aserai Horses, and Sumpter Horses for very cheap. You can also typically pick up cheap grain/dates here. Resell the horses in high prosperity Battanian towns for an easy profit. Buy hogs, wood, clay, grapes, and iron ore in the Battanian towns (lower prosperity usually cheaper goods). Sell these in the Aserai faction. Rinse and repeat.
General information for building your own path:
-Low prosperity towns sell goods for cheap.
-High prosperity towns buy goods at higher prices.
-You can often pick up clay for 5 denars each (low prosperity Khuzait towns and one of the Battanian towns). This can be resold for 15-25 denars (on average at higher priced locations).
-You can often pick up flax for 4 denars each. This can be resold also for 15-25 denars on average.
-You can often pick up fish for 7-10 denars each. This can be resold for 20-40 denars on average.
-You can often pick up iron ore for 15-25 each (Makeb, Seonon, a couple other places that I'm forgetting). This can be resold for 50-120 denars each.
-You can artificially inflate prices by a. raising the prosperity of towns that you own and b. making multiple workshops that require a certain material good at towns.
-If you're willing to lose money, you can artificially inflate/deflate prices by buying and selling large sums. Trade XP is based on net profit. Profit is calculated based: price of goods sold - number of goods sold * price of the last time you bought that good. (What this means is that if you have a stack of 2000 desert horses that you bought for 500 each, if you then buy a single desert horse for 200, then it counts that entire stack of 2001 desert horses as having been bought at 200 each. You can abuse this to make very rapid trade XP at the cost of large amounts of gold).
This is provably false. I loaded a game several times and it is just simply not true. Good luck with all the extra clicking.
@Drackn Caravans give XP is a good mod. Not cheating, fixes a core bug.
It is entirely false.
Profits are tracked on a per good basis.
Example:
I have previously tried to use interlinked goods (iron ore - crafting metals) to manipulate prices to powerlevel trade.
Essentially;
buy good A and then buy good B.
Sell good A with a profit; for which you gain XP. Then sell good B; at a loss
repeat.
I haven´t found regional goods too. It seems they´re all over the place like valandian north town planting grapes/olives ect...
Wood is so hard to come by i usually smelt captured garbadge weapons from looters to gain access to it.
The information I was going on for that was in a Reddit post where someone posted a code snippet. That could have changed or been misinterpreted, though.
But, it worked for me on Day 1+. I adopted that regime and saw a noticeable increase in Trading skill level. /shrug
(PS: AFAIK, this is only for normal "Trade Goods." Refined metals aren't normal trade goods AFAIK.)
The rest is pretty simple. To advance one's Trade skill, one must... trade well. To do that, the simplest method is just to plan out a workable route that yields good Trade returns.
Note: IMO, it's best done as early in one's game progression as possible. One can learn a decent route while supply/demand is relatively stable, then adopt one's route as it becomes more dynamic/unbalanced.
Lots of good advice in morkonan's post, would second the "Know" your villages. Played a lot as the battania (or whatever that forest celt like faction is in northern west part of map).
Would literally do circles (trade routes) that I bough stuff to later sell or replenished food depending on which part of the "loop"/trade route was at. I don't recall if workshops and caravans increase trading or if that was a different category.
Most my gaming was early weeks, I had placed a lot of focus 5ish into my trade. I did more sell all consumer goods and buy consumer goods OR sell weapons/armor and buy weapons and armor, that's more what I didn't mix.
I think knowing your troops role goes better then don't upgrade or increase troop numbers. I upped my troop numbers all the time but it was in a balanced format (2 infantry to 1 archer, added cavalry later) and I tended to only upgrade to a mid-tier at most. Some of the low tiers and mid tiers at least at the time where above decent if used correctly.
I tended to always have 5-8 captured guys in my army that were converted or in process of converting, they slow you down a little but the small prisoner amount was more efficient money and time wise in my opinion and I don't think they eat.
So if you fight and lose guys, you can restock troops from the prisoners. I only kept certain prisoners (had to fit the role in the army)
Unless things changed, there were certain raw resources that were more or less plentiful depending on which part of map one was at. There also nothing that says one can't buy a bunch of stuff and sell it off a little buy little. Depending on what it is, the sell price can drop pretty quickly. The raw resources tended to have a more slower price drop per unit sold.
Why the pack mules/horses are important.
The argument that you made is still not true; as Baldhead observed.
It doesnt have anything to do with refined metals or not. That was simply an example to show that even if you trade a basket of goods at a combined net loss (large even) you will gain xp on the goods that you do make a profit on.
It is as simple as sell goods at a higher price than you bought them for. There is nothing more to it than that.