Workshops and trade skill

[Philippe_at_bay]

I've never had occasion to experiment with this, so I thought I'd ask it here.

I've seen it mentioned that when you set all of a workshop's output to go into the warehouse, it builds trade skill.

Do you get trade experience from output moving into the warehouse, or do you get the experience in the normal way because you pick up the output from the warehouse and eventually sell it at a profit in another town?

Trade skill is not that hard to earn, especially if you pay close attention to what trades are profitable.

My usual approach is to concentrate on building up charm -- if everybody who matters in the kingdom loves you, you'll have no trouble getting all the fiefs you want when you're a vassal. And if you play your cards right you can get yourself elected ruler.

But there are two other important skills: smithing and trade. You need a certain amount of smithing to build that ten million dinar warchest that you'll need once you become a king.

But one of the interesting things you can do with your warchest is to buy a few strategically placed towns so you don't have to go to the trouble of going to war for them.

The problem is that you can't max out charm, smithing, and trading, as well as being competent in all the other things you need to be somewhat good at. There just aren't enough skill points and opportunities to go around.

An important realization is that you don't need to be maxed out as a smith to get stinking rich.

Charm, however, seems to need to be maxed out if it's going to be useful.

Which brings us back to trading. Paying close attention to commodity prices in three or four adjacent towns can do wonders for your trade skill. It can even earn a moderate amount of money, but nothing like what you get from the industrial production of middling two handed swords. (As far as I can tell, super high quality is the enemy of economic efficiency -- tier five swords are too expensive and hard to make).

You still have to put a lot of focus into trading to be able to buy towns, so being able to generate a lot of experience easily will ultimately not solve the problem of balancing charm, smithing, and trading, if there's even a solution.

[Blue moustache]

I'm not really sure what you are asking here but it looks like u are experiencing some balancing issues about these skills you mentioned.

Right now i'm in the middle of a campaign with Charm, trade and smithing maxed out, so i can easly tell you about my experience:

-Charm: one of the easiest skills to max out, it makes you be friend with everyone in Calradia with not much effort, but honestly i never noticed real benefits from that, in any way. Having a 100/100 relation with other lords, or town/village people never influenced my game in any way, so the only thing i can think of about its utility is the minigame of convincing the others (also not really useful unless you want to convince an enemy army to let you go).

-Trade: i'm not sure if it's me but i see no price penalties reductions when i buy or sell stuff with this skill almost maxed out, but in general, if it does make a change it looks really small. One of the most annoying skills to max out (IMO) because u are gonna need to travel a LOT for it since the further you travel the more you earn. Sadly it's also the only way to earn the right to trade towns. Also it's not even a good way to earn money since you can earn way more and faster in other ways, like....

-...Smithing: most broken feature of the game, no need to say much. In M&B universe the economy goes around equipments, the most expensive things in game. you could craft a single good weapon and retire for how much money you'd earn from that.

To conclude, in every campaign i played it came out that war and loots are the most profitable thing in the game, not the only one but surely the most efficient in terms of gold/time.

[Clovis Sangrail]

You get the Trade skill when the production is sent to the warehouse.

You get the profit when you pick up the goods from the warehouse and sell them.

You do not get Trade when you sell the warehouse goods.

I've gotten my main up to Trade 250 where he can get the Spring of Gold perk doing just this.

To get someone to Trade 300 for the Everything Has A Price perk, I usually put my sister in charge of a caravan as soon as she turns 18. As the caravan leader, she earns Trade experience running the caravan. She will hit Trade 300 in her mid-30s, at which point, she can inherit the clan when my main dies or retires. And the clan will be quite rich when she takes over.