Trading is the key to success

[Skybreaker]

In Grand Ages: Medieval, trading is essential to progress and you’ll need to master its nuances if you want to eventually become the ruler of Europe.
Summed up:
You can produce up to five goods in your settlement and towns. Anything else you need must be provided through trading with other cities – which can be owned by you, a neutral ally or even in some cases a competitor.
There’s no doubt that trading sounds easier than it actually is. So here are some hints and tips to get your sabaton-clad foot into the door of Grand Ages: Medieval and its economy:
Hint: Speed up your merchant cart by changing the game speed with the spacebar!

Here are some useful tips:

• Ideally you would probably arrange your own autonomous trading/resource system by collecting the various resources from cities you have personally founded.
  But be aware, it’s not enough to simply have all resources at hand in one town – you need to share them and make them available to your whole empire.
  
• Trade routes can (but don’t have to) be automated. This means that with only a few clicks you can select the town(s) your merchant will visit, plus the goods you’d like to trade – and send them on their way. Of course, you can also do this manually – but the bigger your empire gets, the more you will benefit from using the automatic trade route set up.
  
• Warehouses will guarantee that your goods will be traded between more trading routes/cities.
  
• For some regions, early maritime trading is essential to expanding your empire. If you send your merchants abroad, they will automatically be shipped from one of your port towns (if you have any).

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[gids1]

except your trading seems to be bugged,did the campaign 3 times now (partly, cant move to next chapter with 300k debt)and everytime i have to micromanage like crazy and even then it doesnt seem to work out .I wont even start about automatic trade routes.Maybe i do something wrong although theres not much to do wrong,deliver from Point A to B = profit ,Except theres no profit or very little and before hes back to point A ,Maintenance costs sets in ,dont even have an army yet then.This games Economy system is based on the USA its system where you can run a country on billions of debt :p

[Kryptan]

im having a similar problem the more i expand the maintence cost skyrocket if i stay with 2 cities i seem tobe ok but beyond that im screwed

[Willcawe]

Originally posted by digitaljunkie:

except your trading seems to be bugged,did the campaign 3 times now (partly, cant move to next chapter with 300k debt)and everytime i have to micromanage like crazy and even then it doesnt seem to work out .I wont even start about automatic trade routes.Maybe i do something wrong although theres not much to do wrong,deliver from Point A to B = profit ,Except theres no profit or very little and before hes back to point A ,Maintenance costs sets in ,dont even have an army yet then.This games Economy system is based on the USA its system where you can run a country on billions of debt :p

I think you're doing something wrong. I had 5 cities and I had to do some micro managing between production cost and profit, but I overcame that pretty quickly. You don't want to over produce too much because goods cost money to be processed. You have to find the balance to maintain a steady profit. If you have a business that is over producing at low levels, you may consider dropping it in exchange for a bussiness that has more demand in the area.

I think the game is great. It looks and plays simply enough, but it has this unseen depth to it that I can't quite fathom just yet. Its going to require time to actually understand the games underlying systems.

[gids1]

didnt say the game is bad :)i like it ,but if it is not a bug you need more tools to see where it is going wrong in the trading ,.Im prety sure the trade part of the game will have some serious discussions going .I like the game but i dont like to start the campaign 3 times over because of the trading part .But il try again

[Murdering]

When setting up an automated trade route, there is no way for me to set the specific goods the trader has to trade, and at what price he should buy/sell. I'm familiar with the concept of trade routes in Port Royale and Patrician. Is this not intended for Grand Ages Medieval?

[PzyCow]

@Rick

Though i havent tried it yet i think you need to research the manual traderoutes before you get acces to the port Royal / patrician style trade routes.

[HappyWillyMonkey]

disappoint: dont want to have to micro manage trade routes that early in the campain ....

[Liquide_de]

I have some problem with manual trading. I discovered it, say to trader "Buy 30 Coal in town A, go to town B, sell 30 Coal and buy 25 Amfora, and sell it in town A". What I saw, when started? He bought only 7 Coal, selled it, and bought 4 Amfora. In next it was 20 Coal and 9 Amfora, next 3 Coal and 5 Amfora. WHY?! Town A have 230 Coal, and town B have 65 Amfora. I set max price of buy, and minimum price of sell. I think, may be i was wrong? And set maximum price of sell and minimum price of buy. And it didn't work ofcourse. How can i carry the right products in the right amount?

[sleepyshan]

After a few bankruptcies/restarts, I'm finding some success in diversifying prducts (unlocking them via the development wheel/tree) and steadily settling new cities before my initial cash gets all spent. It seems if you don't have enough products unlocked, you can't get population demand high enough to balance out. The cities that produce them will just result in a glut, which starts a vicious cycle of needing to reduce production, resulting in fewer workers/population, therefore even lower demand, and repeat.
If you expand to more products and produce them across various cities, you can reach a threshold where overall demand is higher than production and you can keep up that trend by building more businesses which brings in more population. Using the All Towns tab of the city details helps you see where your production is balanced across all your personally-owned cities.

Also, don't build warehouses everywhere or early. It increases the quantity of good a city will hold onto, but it does so in the "middle" of the price spectrum so it muddies the opportunity to buy low/sell high. It can be helpful to have an upgraded warehouse in a central hub of intersecting automated trade routes so that there is some exchange of more rare resources across intersecting routes.

[Big B]

So far I have been playing for about 4 hours, I have 9 cities and doing fairly well, I am where the empress needs me to become a Baron. To do this you have to make even more towns and take over land. This leads tot he problem of animals and bandits going wild all over your stuff.

Having a standing army is IMPOSSIBLE I was stable at 200k I started to build and army that costed about 100k thinking that with the purchase price and upkeep I should at least have a stable market of 50k now

So once my army is mobilized to try to take out a group of bandits that have been robbing my trade route of 50k every 1-2min. but as soon as I am ready to take them from the castle my eco just collapses (I have changed nothing for the last 30min, how does it collapse like that?) and now all the soldiers have no food, all of them desert and I am left with a 76 man army that wont even leave the castle compared to my 1300 man army...

and btw wildlife will destroy your army unless you have 3 mercs squads per wold pack.

It seems the eco changes based on how much money you have, if you have a lot you lose it fast, if you dont have much then you start just hovering between -20k to +20k

[닝닝 공주님의 기사]

I only wish that the devleopers did the blind tested this game so that they knew how stupid this game's economy system is unless its played by who made this game

[Bumbajack]

We are looking into this economy balancing issue. We tested the economic system massively and also in a beta test - it is maybe a little too hard to master and thus we may re-balance a little bit shortly. In the meanwhile, the hints above may help to be successful. Thanks for your input and patience.

[spilproof]

If you follow the campaign instructions exactly, you create gluts. the surrounding neutrals do not have enough consumption to drive the trade. I am trading with every town, but still have to turn off production due to gluts, in order to just stay at around 0 balance. I am focusing on products that the traders say are needed, but they get their carts full of the glut crap, and just move the same grain all over, not selling it.

[Periander]

I have found with a about 5 cities you can make a lot of money with just a single merchant. You add every single cart to him and create a giant trade loop with all of your cities and a few others.

From there it's just a matter of continually scaling up until those 5 cities hit 15k then expand slowly from there.

[Mayveena]

Originally posted by spilproof:

If you follow the campaign instructions exactly, you create gluts. the surrounding neutrals do not have enough consumption to drive the trade. I am trading with every town, but still have to turn off production due to gluts, in order to just stay at around 0 balance. I am focusing on products that the traders say are needed, but they get their carts full of the glut crap, and just move the same grain all over, not selling it.

Agreed. The tutorial needs to mention that you may need to balance your production and show how to do that. Surprised this wasn't caught in beta testing.