Can't satisfy the poor people of Riga...

[greggB]

I started in Stockholm, and I can't remember the year, but most towns are 1800 to 2000 people, to give you an idea. I'm almost two years into the game, and most of the north-eastern towns are between 4000 and 5000 people (Novogrod is at 5200). I started a trade office in Riga with the plans of having it produce skins, and I put a bunch of everything poor people like in a warehouse, and set everything to sell cheap. Grain at 125, beer at 45, and then Riga produces effective fish so I didn't worry about that. I built a hunting lodge there and waited, and after a week only two people were working there (out of 30, I believe). I hadn't even checked the town status before that because I assumed that by making sure the poor people have everything they need they'd be happy. So I checked the status and I saw the poor people were dissatisfied. One of them was complaining about the stench on the streets, so I hauled bricks in and put wells and roads in, 100%, and they're still dissatisfied.

Now, the one thing I wasn't sure about was the timber. I saw the quantity go pretty low once. I was planning on hauling timber in and selling it, but I didn't get that far.

Anyway, I've found that the poor people are usually pretty forgiving, at least during the first year or so. And that's the thing, I don't know if this is another dynamic calculated into the game, because I've experienced the same thing in other games, where it seems like later on it's harder to please the poor people, especially if you move into a town where nothing's going on. Right now Riga only has around 1800 people, and all the other towns in the northeast are at least twice its size.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[Oakshield]

First, start by checking the consumption at market hall. That gives you an idea about how much is needed per week.
Keep a very close eye at the Big Four (or Five); being Beer, Grain, Fish, Timber and Wool. Make sure you got at least 2 weeks of needs available in your office or the city warehouse; without the prices being too low, or the AI will buy things up again. Which means, start producing fish as well and sell it to the town.

Also some of the prices you're using may be too high. The one for grain isn't that bad as you can sell it for 140, however you may consider to drop the beerprice to 40, selling timber for 65-70, fish (when you're producing it) for 490-515 and wool for around 1050.

But that's not it.
Just like in real life, the ppl in this game will need the basics. Being food, clothing, housing and jobs.
Which also means you need to supply the town with the rest of the goods, set up industries - skins and honey as main, the rest as (temperary) support - over there to provide jobs and build housings.
If you got the money and materials for it, build a school to attract beggars; who then will become workers in your industries, live in your houses and buy the goods you're selling to the town.

And when building your industries, use the "Sim-city approach", meaning concentrate your industries and warehouses in one part of the city. When begin forced to build outside the city, choose the gate with the most towers, as it would most likely be the one that's less likely to be attacked. Eventually when you got enough industries there, the AI will build the stronger towers over there first.

More info about prices and some newbie aid can be found here: http://patrician3.wikia.com/wiki/Patrician_III_Wiki

Good luck!

Thorin :)

[AlP]

Originally posted by greggB:

And that's the thing, I don't know if this is another dynamic calculated into the game, because I've experienced the same thing in other games, where it seems like later on it's harder to please the poor people, especially if you move into a town where nothing's going on.

There's no such mechanic in the game.

If the city grows, it becomes more difficult to keep everyone happy. Not because it's later on or because of some obscure mechanic, but because with a larger population you need more hospitals and chapels and houses and roads, and every shortage and sieges drop the quality of life and so on and so forth. It becomes a bit too complicated to properly plan ahead.

[greggB]

Thanks for the replies!

I played the game more since my last post. First, I started in 1345. Most of the towns then are 1800 to 2100 people starting out. I've been playing Patrician 3 for a while and I'm always trying to improve my strategy, so often I'll realize that I erred somewhere, on a pretty fundamental basis, and restart with a new strategy. So I don't think I've ever gotten this far into a game. So far I'm pretty happy with my strategy, though I see how it could be improved by not over-producing grain as I did this time.

But getting back to Riga... I made sure all of the Big Four were cheap and well-provided. I kept beer at 45. I played before I read the replies or I might have lowered it as was suggested. Then I got a message that a sawmill was completed. It dawned on me that I'd built a sawmill, once again assuming the people would be happy and that it wouldn't take too long to get workers for the first one.

So I sat there with one worker in each business for quite a while. I checked the prices and supplies and everything was good, including timber. A week passed and I got one more employee each for each business. Again, I'd put in wells and roads 100%. The people wanted a celebration, but I hate organizing celebrations. Then someone said the church needed an extension, and I had plenty of gold, so I decided to do that. Then I kind of forgot about it, but the next time I came back the people were satisfied and increasing, and before too long my businesses were fully staffed. And after that everyone got and stayed happy (and they should be, with the way I coddled them).

I think when I quit Riga was around 2600. And it was actually less than 1800 at one point before that.

Anyway, Patrician 3 is a complex game and I think something was going on, because I've seen this before. It's either a certain amount of time into the game or the fact that other cities are a lot larger that seems to make it more difficult to start growing other cities. Just my theory.

Thanks again.

[AlP]

What you need to understand is the principle that the cities have to be reliably supplied for a certain time period. That's what attracts workers, and allows them to grow.

New citizens arrive somewhat slowly, and you can increase that by attracting beggars with the church food donation. Four beggars translate into one worker.

This process never stops, and you need more and more supplies to maintain the quality of life at which new people enter the city and stay there. When a city grows, its consumption grows as well. It's no longer enough to supply 60 Beer per week, you need 80 Beer now.

From your explanation, it seems that you were trying to reach some kind of relatively minimum amount of supplying, and expected to fill the businesses with workers too fast. That's a typical mistake made by beginners.

Originally posted by greggB:

So far I'm pretty happy with my strategy, though I see how it could be improved by not over-producing grain as I did this time.

There are very few downsides of over-producing grain.

It's cheap enough that you can just sell it to the town at a loss (it costs you 100 gold, and the minimum price was 60 I believe). It creates a stock that can prevent sudden shortages.

The "downside" is that farms occupy land and cause a city to grow, which you may not be prepared to deal with. You have more people, but can you supply them with more goods?

So just spamming businesses is not what you want, but at the same time an excess building or two won't hurt you.

[Skyshadow]

First of all, dont build early, period.
If you build before 200-300k stocked gold, you risk your money.
Trading means unsteady income, when you build early you put a steady cost on your head and a potential product delay or unlucky trading route could send you to the money lender..And you dont want that.
Before you really start caring so much about what your citizents want, you need to make money, without it no need can be fulfilled.
Money is made by bying low and selling high products that have big demand. Products that buy low and sell high with good demand are iron goods, (early) wool, meat, skins, beer.
My initial philosophy is create trade routes that bring these goods to my city while simoultaneously trying to sell a little one the way so that i dont overstock early.
When i feel my pocket can handle it, i will order my route to buy some of the other goods on the road to bring to my city for consumption with a some profit.
Note im playing councilor difficulty, lord mayor of lubeck at the moment.

[AlP]

Originally posted by Skyshadow:

First of all, dont build early, period.

Technically true, because with building there's a ROI consideration. That's return on investment, which early on is worse with buildings than with trading.

Originally posted by Skyshadow:

If you build before 200-300k stocked gold, you risk your money.

That's not true. There are plenty of risk-free building options, even for beginners.

Pitchmakers, for example. Cheap and fast to build, and only requires 15 workers. You can't possibly lose money with it (unless you construct too many of them), especially early on when there's so little pitch available.

Originally posted by Skyshadow:

Trading means unsteady income,

Also not true.

Trading income is very steady, because of the fact that there is a constant demand for goods, and constant production of goods. You can simply make runs from a city that produces Iron Goods to every other city nearby, and that alone is a constant high-profit income.

Originally posted by Skyshadow:

when you build early you put a steady cost on your head and a potential product delay or unlucky trading route

That cost is usually low enough that it's insignificant.

We are talking about early stages of the game, where you can't actually build much. There's not enough bricks, to start with. And then not enough ships to haul the bricks. And then you also need Iron Goods, which don't fit on your ships that are filled with bricks.

Originally posted by Skyshadow:

could send you to the money lender..And you dont want that.

Quite the opposite, you want to already have 3 loans from the first days of playing.

Loans are good early on, they give you more money to buy stuff with. A 10k loan will let you buy at least 30 Iron Goods, which you'll sell for anywhere between 12000-13000. Having more cash is always good.

[Skyshadow]

@AIP
It seems that i forgot to include that you can build some raw resources cheap early buildings.
Yes, you can build those without real risk.
What i meant is build expensive industry, a house wont bunkrupt you.
I took this as a given, my bad.

Trading is unsteady income because someone might come and cover the demand before you.
There is risk involved.

As for the loans its a little different borrowing because you cant support weekly cost, and another borrowing to buy goods which you know will eventually pay back themselves.
Thats what i meant.

[Oakshield]

Originally posted by Skyshadow:

@AIP
It seems that i forgot to include that you can build some raw resources cheap early buildings.
Yes, you can build those without real risk.
What i meant is build expensive industry, a house wont bunkrupt you.
I took this as a given, my bad.

Trading is unsteady income because someone might come and cover the demand before you.
There is risk involved.

As for the loans its a little different borrowing because you cant support weekly cost, and another borrowing to buy goods which you know will eventually pay back themselves.
Thats what i meant.

That's only possible if you adjust the settings to start with much (I think it's 30K) gold.
Start with the hardest money setting (which is 1K) in gold and learn through struggle and manually trading how to earn money.
Learn how to pirate the AI merchant's ships early on to earn money, learn how to use the captured goods or the income of those salvaging actions to be used in set up routes to generate income, using only 10 barrels of goods as starting item maximum.
Learn how to set up trade routes to supply not only your hometown, but also the other Hanse cities; as the biggest trap in this game is that people concentrate at one town only. Learn how to expand to other cities, to increase their sizes until you control the entire Hanse.

And when you have done that, start over at a higher difficulty until you're able to do it at Patrician level. And when you're able to do thàt, make sure you are able to do it within a year. (And yes, some cities do have the ability to become LM within a year after you start).

When doing all of the above, you will realize there's no shame in plunging in debt after every tax withdrawl. The key is that you need to make enough money to get out of that debt and to be able to invest in other kinds of business.
There are tricks for that. Setting up a skin-sucker route for instance; providing you with enough skins for an expedition to the Med after which you will return with enough wine, cloth, pottery or spices (or all) and a load of cash to support your ever growing trade empire.
Setting up an expedition to the Med to buy wine, then turning to the America's to trade with an Indian tribe, seling your irongoods as well and returning home with 500K - 1M in gold.
Thòse are the tricks to get a wealthy trade empire.
Wasting cash to start an early industry or build a house isn't it. Most houses only reach break-even point when they're 90% filled. And if you don't supply your city with the right goods to support your industry, you'll just waste your money on 240 or more gold a week for landtax; while that same 240 could be used to buy a barrel of cloth and being sold for 300+ gold.
Industries - with the exception of grain, wood, pig iron, hemp, honey, wine, bricks, wool - need resources to produce their products. Yet, the ones that don't require resources offer not enough profit, compared to those who do; and often are either seasonal products, meaning their costs go up in winter (grain, hemp, honey, wine), or products transported by loads (grain, wood, bricks, wool), making them even less profitable. Ten barrels of wine or honey give more profit as one load of wood, grain, wool or bricks, while taking up the same amount of space. And they certainly give more profit as a single house.

Thorin :)

[AlP]

Originally posted by Skyshadow:

Trading is unsteady income because someone might come and cover the demand before you.
There is risk involved.

That almost never happens.

Cloth for example, is only produced in Malmo and Visby in the right side of the map. If you buy the excess cloth, you are the only one that has it. Even if the AI somehow manages to haul enough cloth to the city where you are going, you can just sail to the next one and sell there. Or just wait a few days, and all that stock will be consumed.

Same with Iron Goods, only Lubeck, Stockholm and Reval produce them, and the consumption everywhere is huge.

[Oakshield]

Originally posted by AlP:

Originally posted by Skyshadow:

Trading is unsteady income because someone might come and cover the demand before you.
There is risk involved.

That almost never happens.

Cloth for example, is only produced in Malmo and Visby in the right side of the map. If you buy the excess cloth, you are the only one that has it. Even if the AI somehow manages to haul enough cloth to the city where you are going, you can just sail to the next one and sell there. Or just wait a few days, and all that stock will be consumed.

Same with Iron Goods, only Lubeck, Stockholm and Reval produce them, and the consumption everywhere is huge.

AI uses "cheats" to deliver goods.
I've seen how a player pirated Cologne with several ships to make sure not a single brick entered the town. Yet, bricks did show up in the market and the AI was able to build more vineyards.

Not to mention, the AI is buying goods far away - i.e. beer in Novgorod - to deliver them to a city next to their hometown, while their hometown is producing beer. Like delivering beer to Groningen, while they live in Bremen.
And since the AI also got a infinite money resource, they're able to keep doing that.

Human players on the other hand got their brains and strategic insight. We won't ship Cloth from London to Novgorod, but will ship it from Visby instead. We will set up HUBs, where we gather goods and then send them back to the other towns to fill in the needs of the citizens. And because of that, we're able to make more money as the AI does, as our fleet is by far more cost effective as the AI's fleet.

Thorin :)

[AlP]

That sort of thing is pretty limited, though. It won't magically cover the demand, leaving you with goods you can't sell.

[Skyshadow]

Originally posted by Oakshield:

Originally posted by Skyshadow:

@AIP
It seems that i forgot to include that you can build some raw resources cheap early buildings.
Yes, you can build those without real risk.
What i meant is build expensive industry, a house wont bunkrupt you.
I took this as a given, my bad.

Trading is unsteady income because someone might come and cover the demand before you.
There is risk involved.

As for the loans its a little different borrowing because you cant support weekly cost, and another borrowing to buy goods which you know will eventually pay back themselves.
Thats what i meant.

That's only possible if you adjust the settings to start with much (I think it's 30K) gold.
Start with the hardest money setting (which is 1K) in gold and learn through struggle and manually trading how to earn money.
Learn how to pirate the AI merchant's ships early on to earn money, learn how to use the captured goods or the income of those salvaging actions to be used in set up routes to generate income, using only 10 barrels of goods as starting item maximum.
Learn how to set up trade routes to supply not only your hometown, but also the other Hanse cities; as the biggest trap in this game is that people concentrate at one town only. Learn how to expand to other cities, to increase their sizes until you control the entire Hanse.

And when you have done that, start over at a higher difficulty until you're able to do it at Patrician level. And when you're able to do thàt, make sure you are able to do it within a year. (And yes, some cities do have the ability to become LM within a year after you start).

When doing all of the above, you will realize there's no shame in plunging in debt after every tax withdrawl. The key is that you need to make enough money to get out of that debt and to be able to invest in other kinds of business.
There are tricks for that. Setting up a skin-sucker route for instance; providing you with enough skins for an expedition to the Med after which you will return with enough wine, cloth, pottery or spices (or all) and a load of cash to support your ever growing trade empire.
Setting up an expedition to the Med to buy wine, then turning to the America's to trade with an Indian tribe, seling your irongoods as well and returning home with 500K - 1M in gold.
Thòse are the tricks to get a wealthy trade empire.
Wasting cash to start an early industry or build a house isn't it. Most houses only reach break-even point when they're 90% filled. And if you don't supply your city with the right goods to support your industry, you'll just waste your money on 240 or more gold a week for landtax; while that same 240 could be used to buy a barrel of cloth and being sold for 300+ gold.
Industries - with the exception of grain, wood, pig iron, hemp, honey, wine, bricks, wool - need resources to produce their products. Yet, the ones that don't require resources offer not enough profit, compared to those who do; and often are either seasonal products, meaning their costs go up in winter (grain, hemp, honey, wine), or products transported by loads (grain, wood, bricks, wool), making them even less profitable. Ten barrels of wine or honey give more profit as one load of wood, grain, wool or bricks, while taking up the same amount of space. And they certainly give more profit as a single house.

Thorin :)

Im playing councilor diff 6 year in game time, on my way to becoming hanse leader, going slow intentionally, havent discovered americas yet in any of my older playthroughs...Actually i have seen much early game but never got to real lategame. I think this time i will.