AI town grown and over supply

[Thorn Jackson]

If you don't have a trading office in a town will supplying the town with massive amounts of goods "grow" it or will the goods just disappear or be bought up by competitors?

There is one Alderman mission where you are tasked with reviving a fledgling town. Is the only way to succeed to build a trading office in that town so that you can build housing and businesses yourself? Can you help a town grow WITHOUT building a trade office there?

Will finishing Alderman missions by supplying the materials for an overland route result in those two towns actually trading more goods to each other or is it just symbolic?

[AlP]

The town will grow to a certain point if you just supply it. At some point, I think it requires businesses to grow, otherwise people stop coming, or come really slowly.

Building businesses yourself grows them faster anyway, because they absorb the beggars into the workforce.

I don't think the AI uses the overland trade route. It's just for you.

[Jambie Lionheart]

You can encourage competitors businesses to grow in a certain town that you want them in, by buying up their goods and selling them on plus supplying the town with the resources required to make said goods. So for example, Aalborg produces meat. If you wanted to encourage growth of the meat business, for whatever reason; you just need to supply timber and salt to that town and buy up the stock (hopfully making a tidy profit out of it yourself). It works over time, but the AI can be a little slow on the uptake. If you want to do this as a mission, then I'd advise you to start that mission before you officially start it :D

[Thorn Jackson]

Does supplying the town with a ton of bricks, timber, hemp and iron help encourage them or will they just do it when the need arises?

[Jambie Lionheart]

If the town is low on any of the building matrials, then supplying those construction materials will definately help their ability to expand their businesses. It's also partly dependant on demand through out the hanseatic league though. You'd probably get faster and more profitable results if you monopolize the meat industry for yourself.

[AlP]

Originally posted by crimbertjones:

Does supplying the town with a ton of bricks, timber, hemp and iron help encourage them or will they just do it when the need arises?

They do it when there is a shortage of goods, so you'd need to buy out all the meat everywhere all the time. It kinda defeats the purpose.

[Bennie]

Also consider the size that the city is coming from and has to grow to. If it's a 2000 inhabitants city, you can easily grow by keeping the city stocks full and affordable. The moment the city grows larger you will need to also mind infrastructure (improve roads & build wells), as well as redefine your selling prices as larger cities demand more availability (ie lower your prices). You will have to develop a hunch for this as you play. Yet larger cities will require better facilities (hospital, mint, etc). Obviously if limited housing is blocking growth, build housing.
This is such an excellent feature of the game, the further you progress, the more you have to rethink and realign your management. Otherwise, if you would set auto trade and increase the time scale the money would just come flowing in and the game would become boring.

[Gramora]

One thing that does seem to help from what I've seen (no hard evidence) is that if you hand out loans it encourages the npc competition which helps build up the towns.