Monastic Grange, Hospitium, promotion tips?

[Yatagan]

I'm pretty far into a monastery-focused (abbey goal) game on challenging difficulty and so far have been getting by OK. However, lately things have slowly started to fall apart and I am trying to figure out ways to optimize before things spiral uncontrollably. A few big areas have come to mind, the monastic grange and the hostel that can host visitors.

The grange building is confusing because unlike the Warehouse/Granary you cannot choose how many workers it has (they auto-fill) and you cannot build expansions. This means I have 4 workers dedicated to doing the workload of probably 1-2 people (as things are nearby) instead of working more productive jobs elsewhere in my monastery. Am I missing anything here or is there a way to reduce the number of workers below 4 or expand the grange to more than 4 storage slots?

The Hospitium where you can have wandering travelers and monks stay with you also confuses me. I built a small one long ago with a single worker and 7 visitor slots. Almost every visitor I get demands a winery (which is endgame so I don't have yet) and Abbatial Church (Also endgame and I don't have). Due to this many of them leave with like 20% satisfaction. Some of them though have more reasonable needs and leave happy. Regardless I almost never get any donations ("Donations this week" has read 0 gold since I built it and I have never ever seen it say anything else) and when I do it's like 3 candles which isn't worth much. This is a huge drain on my resources as they eat all my food etc. What am I missing here? Is it just down to the fact they demand winery's and the endgame church or is there something else I've missed to get donations out of it?

Also promoting from Novice to Brother/Sister doesn't seem worth it? It does not seem to nearly double their output like the UI indicates it may and they require double Monastic Food which is a huge drain on resources. Due to the 75 villager cap I cannot produce everything needed myself so I import a lot of the required materials (mainly bread and cheese for now). Am I missing anything here or does it just need some balance tweaks? It's called challenging not mathematically impossible. :P

[Bored Peon]

I did that challenge last night. I recommend the hospitium to have space for 50 visitors.

Promotions
Do these because the workers stop getting moved around once promoted.
Promote your copyists first so they make more scripts faster
The production output is 50% with each you promote.

Hostpitum
- Normal visitors is about a dozen straggling in in small groups of 3-6
- Visiting monks another 10 or so.
- Abbot has a retinue of 8-10
- Then Abbot likes calling in a Mass or Council which is another dozen or so
- Recommend building it AFTER you build the Abbatical Church and Winery. Otherwise lots of guests will only get 63 for missing visiting those.
- Donations are items and it depends on the visitors. Tools, scripts, candles are the common rewards. I think at one point I had like 50-60 tools in it.

The Abbott also comes back to visit after you complete the Aspiration for more visits with some good rewards.

Refectory
You want multiples of this. Set them up for 1 slot rustic food, two slots monastic.
Then make sure to have 2-3 workers to be able to restock while people are consuming, one worker will cause shortage.

Monastic Kitchen
I set up four, one for each type with 4-5 workers each.

Chapel
Make sure it is large enough for your 150 + visitors.

Level your trade routes, makes it far easier to trade in the volumes you want.

Monastery makes a crapton of money. At one point I was up to about 5k in trading a month. Remember to put your splendor on the Bailiff office to boost the trade prices and on the emissary office to boost their ability.

Double or triple up on the production buildings like Herbs, berries, scripts because putting 20 works to produce 1 item seems a lot slower than say 4 items being produced at once by 5 workers.

Grange unfortunately is a waste of workers because as you siad too many doing the job of 1. They get promoted last, lol.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3436775887
That was what I finished with.

Monastery is easy to expand upwards.

[Yatagan]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Remember to put your splendor on the Bailiff office to boost the trade prices and on the emissary office to boost their ability.

Wow lots of awesome tips in here! Thanks for writing them up.

To start for this bit specifically can you go into more detail? I'm unaware of any splendor buff mechanics for emmisary/bailiff. I have a tiny simple shack built for each one. Is this a massive mistake? LOL

[Yatagan]

Wait I completely missed this mechanic and it isn't mentioned in any of the help pages, just the part list for the building. How extreme is the boost? (Like how much additional % trade boost would, say, 25 splendor give me?) I've been playing this entire game with the flat 10% boost to trade. Also are the boosts only for that section? I.e. do I want the trade boost on the bailiff (global trade buff) but the "learns faster" buff on my monastery person so it affects the monks? This would be a huge help I think I've been completely missing!

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Yatagan:

Wait I completely missed this mechanic and it isn't mentioned in any of the help pages, just the part list for the building. How extreme is the boost? (Like how much additional % trade boost would, say, 25 splendor give me?) I've been playing this entire game with the flat 10% boost to trade. Also are the boosts only for that section? I.e. do I want the trade boost on the bailiff (global trade buff) but the "learns faster" buff on my monastery person so it affects the monks? This would be a huge help I think I've been completely missing!

Yeah, the splendor buffing Bailiff, Emissary, and Courtier is EASILY missed.

The difference will blow your mind, literally.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3437479508
I am getting 4g per meat I sell.
I bought the boar for 3g. so making about 15-16g each boar.
increase trade volume and POOF trading becomes profitable.

Common Wares is another good recipe to profit on.
With the discounts for splendor suddenly some of the prices do not look so bad because you actually make money trading.

[Yatagan]

Wow so that alone seems to have fixed my problem and explains why I was struggling SO MUCH. It seems like 1 splendor = a 1% boost, so I dumped all my money into decorations and got my 10% buff up to 90%. The actual result is a bit confusing because that doesn't seem to equal double price (190% total) but is more of like a 30% boost (honey went from 5g each up to just under 7). Still amazing though and has turned my ~1100 monthly trade income into like 1400+ and it will only get better from here.

I'll work some of your other boost in but this alone will massively increase my profits. No wonder I was barely scraping by the entire time, thanks for the tips!

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Yatagan:

Wow so that alone seems to have fixed my problem and explains why I was struggling SO MUCH. It seems like 1 splendor = a 1% boost, so I dumped all my money into decorations and got my 10% buff up to 90%. The actual result is a bit confusing because that doesn't seem to equal double price (190% total) but is more of like a 30% boost (honey went from 5g each up to just under 7). Still amazing though and has turned my ~1100 monthly trade income into like 1400+ and it will only get better from here.

I'll work some of your other boost in but this alone will massively increase my profits. No wonder I was barely scraping by the entire time, thanks for the tips!

Is this the part where I get to say I told you so without making someone angry?

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

The difference will blow your mind, literally.

[Yatagan]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Originally posted by Yatagan:

Wow so that alone seems to have fixed my problem and explains why I was struggling SO MUCH. It seems like 1 splendor = a 1% boost, so I dumped all my money into decorations and got my 10% buff up to 90%. The actual result is a bit confusing because that doesn't seem to equal double price (190% total) but is more of like a 30% boost (honey went from 5g each up to just under 7). Still amazing though and has turned my ~1100 monthly trade income into like 1400+ and it will only get better from here.

I'll work some of your other boost in but this alone will massively increase my profits. No wonder I was barely scraping by the entire time, thanks for the tips!

Is this the part where I get to say I told you so without making someone angry?

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

The difference will blow your mind, literally.

Haha, yeah I think so. I saw your screenshot and was like there's no way that's what that means... but it was!

[Yatagan]

Am I also correct that the trade bonus only applies to the faction of the person providing the bonus? It seems like if the Bailiff gets the boost it only applies to the two trade routes from Labour and if the Emissary has it then it only applies to the routes from the Cleric group? I sell most of my stuff to the Kingdom route because it arrives about a day before my Cleric trader does, so that's unfortunate for me lol

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Yatagan:

Am I also correct that the trade bonus only applies to the faction of the person providing the bonus? It seems like if the Bailiff gets the boost it only applies to the two trade routes from Labour and if the Emissary has it then it only applies to the routes from the Cleric group? I sell most of my stuff to the Kingdom route because it arrives about a day before my Cleric trader does, so that's unfortunate for me lol

Nope, the bonus is for everything and it can only be generated once.
Meaning if your Bailiff has the trade bonus your Emissary and Courtier will not generate it.

[Yatagan]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Nope, the bonus is for everything and it can only be generated once.
Meaning if your Bailiff has the trade bonus your Emissary and Courtier will not generate it.

Huh, I wonder if I am having a bug then. When I sell honey to the Abbey (Kingstone? I forget the exact name) it sells for like 7.2g each, but when I sell it to Davenport it only sells for like 4.5g each (LESS than the default 5!). What else could cause this? I don't have any temporary event buffs/debuffs for trade and as far as I can tell nothing else that should drive it negative, nonetheless to be different from the Cleric routes. I may have the 10% trade boost cleric edict but even if that was the only different it wouldn't cause the huge difference in price?

I did have bulk trade active because at the start of the game they buy almost nothing but I recently got rid of that now that the routes are upgraded enough to handle my output, so that should get rid of the trade price debuff there. (Also idk if it's 10% or 20%, the selection page says 20% but the active effect summary page only says 10%)

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Yatagan:

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Nope, the bonus is for everything and it can only be generated once.
Meaning if your Bailiff has the trade bonus your Emissary and Courtier will not generate it.

Huh, I wonder if I am having a bug then. When I sell honey to the Abbey (Kingstone? I forget the exact name) it sells for like 7.2g each, but when I sell it to Davenport it only sells for like 4.5g each (LESS than the default 5!). What else could cause this?

You have an inherent trade bonus of like 10% when trading with the same faction.
If you click on the book, then the edict and privileges page it lists all your temporary and permanent bonuses and penalties.

[Yatagan]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

You have an inherent trade bonus of like 10% when trading with the same faction.
If you click on the book, then the edict and privileges page it lists all your temporary and permanent bonuses and penalties.

Hmmm ok great to know - I'll keep messing around because I'm pretty sure these % aren't adding up but I'll also play a bit to let my recent changes settle some.

Do the Bailiff/Emissary/Courtier buffs *always* apply to everyone? I.e. it doesn't matter which you pick for which, just which you have active total?

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Yatagan:

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

You have an inherent trade bonus of like 10% when trading with the same faction.
If you click on the book, then the edict and privileges page it lists all your temporary and permanent bonuses and penalties.

Hmmm ok great to know - I'll keep messing around because I'm pretty sure these % aren't adding up but I'll also play a bit to let my recent changes settle some.

Do the Bailiff/Emissary/Courtier buffs *always* apply to everyone? I.e. it doesn't matter which you pick for which, just which you have active total?

Yeah, only one of that type allowed active at a time. In other words no stacking up three trading bonuses by having all three with it.