Economy and trading

[Lailantie]

After playing for a while, making mistakes and learning, I have the greatest issues with trading. I read the guide on trading and it all makes sense, but somehow I haven't gotten the hang of it, it seems all so complicated and laborious.

I figured out that you have to carry what you want to sell to the trading post, and assign what you want to buy to the warehouse. Is this right? Sometimes it takes such a long time that stuff only arrives when the trader has long gone. Is this how it works?

When I open the trading window of a merchant to see what is offered and demanded, I can not hover over the people in the menu to see what I have. I need to close the trading window to check my resources, and while I do that, I forget what the trader wants. In addition I can not find any prices.

To find out the price of a cow I need to enter one cow to the trading window. And then I would want to know how much of a resource I have to sell to make up for the cow. Again I need to type the resource into the trading window and then calculate how much more of that resource I would need to sell to make up for the cow.

On top of this, there is this brownish space where you enter the amount you want to buy or sell, but the cursor isn't there. You need to click it each time to be able to enter a number. There are tons of clicks and changing windows involved, including calculations, try and error, to buy a cow and sell some charcoal.

I also read that the products of the villagers' gardens can be sold to the town. I can't figure out how this works. They don't offer me anything and I can't buy anything from them.

And, like I read in some other posts, I am constantly in minus and pretty soon I will run out of money, and I have no idea why.

Any comments, feedback or help greatly appreciated, thank you.

To the developers in case you read this - please make trading more convenient :-)

[juliejayne]

Agreed that the trading UI could be much simpler and logical. It is also a very small typeface for those of us with poorer vision, even when the general UI is increased in size.

Regarding the villagers gardens. You have to have click on the silver coin in the granary window to indicate that you will buy from them. And have the appropriate buy from local and sell to local percentages set in the treasury.

[Lailantie]

Thank you Juliejayne, this helps. Now if finally some trader who offers shoes would show up... my families are leaving because they have no shoes :(

[chaddid]

There is no trader who offers shoes. This is my "gripe" or hope for an improvement in future updates. You will learn all 5 trade towns. Right now, they always want the same things, they always offer the same things. So you will learn what to keep stocked in your trading post. Make a trading post and a trading port. The trading port is the only way you can get glass, and you will need that later.

But I will keep wishing, the trading system gets a little tweak. I want to see these towns randomly ask for different products, randomly have different products, price changes, etc. Right now it's just very shallow and not very realistic. But as it stands now, once you learn the towns, you will see, produce massive amounts of Salt, a LOT of charcoal and a TON of sunflower oil. You'll make plenty of money then.

[Ghost_Of_Warzone]

First of all, head to your town hall and adjust rents and taxes.

Second, when a messenger arrives... pause! You can still work the game while paused. If you click on an offering it will tell you how much you have in stock and how much you have for sale.

When you click on a demand, same thing. It will tell you how much you have in stock and how much you have to sell.

HOWEVER... even if you have a gazillioin of something, you cannot sell it unless it is already in a trading post.

[Lailantie]

There is no trader who offers shoes? I could have sworn that I saw shoes being offered in the past, just no idea from where. I'll keep an eye on this. So this means I have to produce shoes myself? I'd need leather, so animals and leather production? This sounds complicated, I feel I'm not there yet. Sigh. Salt - where can I find salt? Please?

As for the adjustment of rents and taxes, I did that, but just in tiny steps. As I didn't know where this would lead. I still haven't got a "feel" for the game's economy. I don't think I ever clicked on offers or demands, good advice, will try. Thank you both!

[Lailantie]

I really like this game. I like building, the graphics, the production chains and more. I definitely love the option to build gravestones which show the name and age of the deceased! But I am spoiled by my favourite game Medieval Dynasty, which I played for almost 1500 hours. It is very forgiving, easy and casual. And I like this.

In Medieval Dynasty, your villagers only need a house, food (no variety, no matter which food), water and firewood. That's it. You need to make a LOT of mistakes until a villager leaves you. You can cook a huge variety of complicated dishes but you don't have to. It's for fun and it doesn't have any consequences. You don't need a worker in any animal shed and your livestock will still survive. (Needless to say I lost a cow and a bull in Ostriv because I thought I can send a worker later on.)

Many players of Medieval Dynasty complained about the poor economy, that some raw products bring more money than further processed ones for example, why we can't give clothes to our villagers and why we should cook complicated food if there's no consequence, but actually that's what I like about this game.

I just did a research what I would need in Ostriv to make shoes. I had not taken the villagers' stats for serious, where you see the status of their clothing. I could have guessed they would deteriorate, but there was too much information so I was a bit overwhelmed and ignored it. I have exactly one cow, and it was quite an adventure to get her after I lost the bull and the cow before (and also the money). I also have a sheep fold but no trader with sheep comes around. The cow trader also hasn't been there for a while.

So once I have a bull, I'd need them to make babies, those babies need to grow up, then they need to be slaughtered to get hide, then there's a whole leather making machinery. And then I need a shoemaker. This would most probably take a lot of time. If I had realized I'd need shoes earlier, I would have prioritized the cows and not gone for sheep and limestone. I know it's my fault as I ignored the villager stats and I'm used to play easier games. So I will let those families leave, what should I do. Or start over. But I'm not sure if this game is for me. It is for sure a game for all those who wanted all this stuff in Medieval Dynasty, where I hoped the devs would never implement it.

Still I think it's a great game. But economy and villager's demands - meh.

[juliejayne]

Originally posted by Lailantie:

There is no trader who offers shoes? I could have sworn that I saw shoes being offered in the past, just no idea from where. I'll keep an eye on this. So this means I have to produce shoes myself? I'd need leather, so animals and leather production? This sounds complicated, I feel I'm not there yet. Sigh. Salt - where can I find salt? Please?

As for the adjustment of rents and taxes, I did that, but just in tiny steps. As I didn't know where this would lead. I still haven't got a "feel" for the game's economy. I don't think I ever clicked on offers or demands, good advice, will try. Thank you both!

Nope, you can buy the leather, from Derkatchi, I think, and sell the shoes back to them. Of course you need to set up a shoemaker. Place it near the trading post with a warehouse. Buy all the leather offered, make shoes, export most and sell the rest to your people.

[Bjørn]

Yes, buying leather, making shoes then exporting the shoes is a nice way to make good profits early in the game, provided you can afford the leather! That and sunflower oil is a must for getting the economy going quickly, in my experience. Easy and quick to make using very few workers.

[Vic_Ukraine]

Originally posted by Bjørn:

Yes, buying leather, making shoes then exporting the shoes is a nice way to make good profits early in the game, provided you can afford the leather! :lunar2019smilingpig: That and sunflower oil is a must for getting the economy going quickly, in my experience. Easy and quick to make using very few workers.

So. This is a good and fairly simple strategy.

[Vic_Ukraine]

Please note: villagers need clothes and warm clothes. You can buy warm clothes until you have established a complex production chain. Merefa sells warm clothes. Clothes - build a cobbler and buy fabric to make clothes. Merefa also sells fabric. Once you grow flax or hemp, build a weaving mill and this chain will be completely self-sufficient.

[Vic_Ukraine]

What you plan to sell regularly, such as oil, shoes, honey, always keep a stock in the warehouse. For example, 3000 oil, 100 shoes, 2000 honey. Yes, when the courier arrives, you can not worry about ensuring the goods are in stock. And perishable things, such as apples, will have to be delivered to the warehouse each time the courier has already arrived. Therefore, pause, conclude an agreement, put this quantity as necessary in the warehouse, put a mark there that it is one-time, hire workers for the warehouse. Time will pass.

[Bjørn]

I also saw salt mentioned above somewhere. The saltworks is also a very efficient building, although it takes a lot of stone to build and draft animals, so it comes a bit later.

But a very useful building: Salt for fish and meat and hides, for selling to the citizens in market stalls, since it counts as food (many times the salt has saved my people from starving, although not very realistic ), and also for exporting One saltworks is enough for hundreds of ppl, but build more as you notice less surplus as the town grows.

And with the new trading mechanic introduced in alpha 5, the more you produce and export, the more the neighbor towns will buy, same for imports.

[Lailantie]

I honestly admit I'm overwhelmed. Things like remembering what each town sells - no way, I'm old and I hate to take notes while I play because it's so complicated. Sure I can buy leather (didn't occur to me because I'm almost bancrupt) and make shoes, but it feels like it will never stop, I'd need to buy warm clothes, buy this and that, and I never seem to have a constant flow of products I can sell. I'm not used to games where fields have crop rotation because of nutrition values, so I never know what I have. (I know that is realistic but in a game I'd rather set one field to one crop and get that crop each year.) Well. I think I'll keep playing a bit and see what happens to my mind and my town when I go bankrupt and villagers leave ;-)

*Edit: can I place a salt mine just anywhere?

[juliejayne]

Originally posted by Lailantie:

I honestly admit I'm overwhelmed. Things like remembering what each town sells - no way, I'm old and I hate to take notes while I play because it's so complicated. Sure I can buy leather (didn't occur to me because I'm almost bancrupt) and make shoes, but it feels like it will never stop, I'd need to buy warm clothes, buy this and that, and I never seem to have a constant flow of products I can sell. I'm not used to games where fields have crop rotation because of nutrition values, so I never know what I have. (I know that is realistic but in a game I'd rather set one field to one crop and get that crop each year.) Well. I think I'll keep playing a bit and see what happens to my mind and my town when I go bankrupt and villagers leave ;-)

*Edit: can I place a salt mine just anywhere?

Sorry to tell you, but if you use ALL your money some greater Lord gives you a free 1000 loan. In fact you may have already had one and not noticed.
If settlers leave, also not such a worry as new ones turn up, fully stocked with all they need for the next year.

If you want to quit, you really have to decide that yourself. I keep giving up on towns because of some aesthetic thing like the way my Rowhouses sit.

[Bjørn]

Regarding goods and writing things down, there are guides

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2041271316

And other ones in the guides section. I used this one and their others when I first started playing, but it hasn't been updated in a while, so there might be others that are more useful now.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2243217692

But you'll soon get into the habit of knowing which goods to store in the trading buildings ready for export and such. But it is a difficult game to get into, without difficulty levels and such (yet?), so it can seem a bit overwhelming. Also read about the different buildings in their descriptions in the game. They explain a lot.

Good luck!

Originally posted by chaddid:

The trading port is the only way you can get glass, and you will need that later.

There was also a glassworks building introduced along with glass, where you can make windows and glasswares