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Tinto Talks #10 - 1st of May 2024

Welcome to another Tinto Talks, the final of four on the economy system for our secret game with the code name “Project Caesar”.

Today we will talk about all the things related to trade, including markets, merchants and trades. This talk is heavy on tooltip screenshots, and a lot of concepts to digest, so I recommend checking it through multiple times.

Markets
Let's start with the markets themselves. These are dynamic and will change through the playthrough, as countries can create new markets and disband their old if they so desire.

Each market has a center in a location, and the owner of that location is in control over that market.

Every location and coastal seazone will belong to the most fitting market, which depends on the market attraction of the market, the distance between the location and the market center, diplomatic factors, and more.

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The Riga market has control over much of the Baltic region in the start..

A market has merchants, who have a power depending on buildings and maritime presence in the market, and a merchant capacity which depends on the infrastructure for trade that country has in that market. The Merchant Power impacts in which order exports from a market are executed, as there is not an endless supply of goods in a market. The Merchant Capacity impacts how much goods the merchants can ship.

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This is the source of the Hanseatic League’s merchant capacity in Riga.



As you can see in the market screenshot, every good has a local price, and a supply vs demand value as well, let's take a look at the beer price in the next tooltip.

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Cheap beer, must be paradise…

Prices change every month towards the Target Price, which depends on the supply and demand of the goods in the market, and the current price stability. Price stability can change through the ages as well.

Supply & Demand
The supply of each good in a market depends on several factors.
  • The output from RGO’s
  • The output from buildings
  • Base Production
  • Burgher Trades

So what is ‘Base Production’? Some goods like clay, lumber, sand and stone are produced in every market, without the need for specific RGO’s, even if an RGO with that raw material can produce much more, and there are buildings that can be built to provide these as well.

Also, your burghers will trade on their own, if they have the capacity for it. They will attempt to address needs within the market, and can trade in a slightly shorter range, thus enriching their estate. There are laws and privileges that impact them, like the “Trade Monopolies” estate privilege that the Hanseatic League has granted in the earlier screenshot, which reduces their own merchant capacity by 25% to increase the capacity of the burghers by 100%

So what about demand? This is primarily from the maintenance, input, and construction of buildings, recruiting and maintaining armies and navies, and the demands of the population, but there are more sources as well.

Of course, trades themselves impact supply and demand as well.

Trade
You can use your merchant capacity in a market to either export a good from that market, or import a good from another market. Of course that market needs to be within your trade range, which is not world-spanning in 1337.

A trade is a variable amount of goods shipped from one market to another market, purchasing it for the local price in the exporting market. The longer the distance between the markets, the more capacity each good will require to ship, and higher the maintenance costs will be.

Trades have an impact on the last land location they are in before leaving the market, and the first one they enter in the importing market, giving boosts in development to them over time. A trade always has to trace a path on the map.

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Our merchant power makes us get the amount of goods we want in Riga.

There are also the Sound Tolls, if you pass through Öresund or the Bosphorus to consider.

Diplomacy and Trade
There are many diplomatic factors that impact the trade and market mechanics of Project Caesar.

First of all, you can “Deny Market Access” to a nation owning a market, which will reduce the attraction of their markets on your locations, but also make anyone with merchants in those markets upset with you.

You can also request and/or offer market access preference making it likelier for a country’s locations to belong in a certain market.

If you dislike paying Sound Tolls, you can always try to ask for exemption for it through diplomacy with the country controlling the strait.

Some countries have isolated themselves completely, so you need to negotiate a specific exception to allow you to export or import from their markets.

There is also the possibility to embargo a country, which would block the merchants from that country to trade in your markets, and also to not be allowed to move through your country. Of course, this a legit casus belli, so use with care.

Other aspects to Trade
Each market can have specific goods banned for export or import, with one common example being that muslim markets will ban import and export of wine, beer and liquor.

We mentioned in an earlier Tinto Talks that Markets will have stockpiles, so that surplus can be stored for a rainy day. There are buildings that will increase the amount that can be stored.

There is also food in the markets, with prices adapting to the supply and demand of food as well.

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Västra Götaland är Sveriges Kornbod!

There are also automation options where you can assign trading completely to the AI. You can also lock some trades so that the AI will not interfere with them.

Stay tuned, next week we’ll be talking about mercenaries, levies and regulars!
 
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Surely this must mean that London is actually a province, with individual locations like the City of London, Westminster etc, with the political centre being Westminster and the Financial centre being being the City? If so, that is really nice. Please tell me that you call it the market location The City of London and not just London:)
He said market is named according to location, so London is probably the name of the location
 
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will spices be one good however cloves are separated (like in eu4) or will spices include cloves or will the spices good be split up into multiple goods for the multiple spices.

if I was playing curonia for example and I would want to convert back to the baltic paganism, would it be possible and if so would it be like eu4's system or would it be different
 
I think I've figured out the icons. Size depends on city size I think. So big diamond means city, circle means town, black dot (Astrakhan) means bare location. Star means capital of idependent country, dot means capital of subject country, empty means not a capital.

Lübeck is a subject country, as is RIga. Köln is not a subject country, so HRE princes are not subjects of a landless HRE country as I speculated before. I therefore think Lübeck and Riga are both subjects of a landless Hanseatic League country.

The Principality of Kiev and Ragusa are subjects, but their colours are different from those in EU4. Ragusa looks quite Venetian and Kiev Lithuanian. Subjects will have a shade of their overlord's colour it looks like. The same is probably happening in Aquitaine.
 
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It's good to hear about dynamic markets.
 
markets may get larger later in the game
they are going to. i think the meta will be you disband the foreign markets as you conquer their centers. locations in the disbanded market will join appropriate markets, some to your home one. at the end of a wc game therell be like 3 markets left in the world
 
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they are going to. i think the meta will be you disband the foreign markets as you conquer their centers. locations in the disbanded market will join appropriate markets, some to your home one. at the end of a wc game therell be like 3 markets left in the world
From what Johan said, no
Even having 1 market for Europe was too big for it to work properly, and big empire would have several market

It's not just about your market being better than the other market, if your market has low market accessibility in a region because its too far from its market center it won't be able to efficiently use the market goods and so the locations wouldn't be profitable
 
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Peace deals with markets and trade, is it possible to force another country to provide you with a specific good for x amount of time in peace deals? Also, would transfer trade power mean you get their merchant power for x time while steer trade would prioritize your neighboring market for exports?
 
So, do you profit from owning the actual market location? From the DD, it seems like the main advantages are for controlling who has access to the market?
From the screenshot of the tar trade, it seems the way you "profit" from the market system is by making profitable trades.

Where owning the market location doesnt give you a specific profit itself, but the ownership of the market location would mean having presumably the most merchant power, which makes making those profitable trades easier, since you get to pick first when it comes to high demand goods for trade.
Peace deals with markets and trade, is it possible to force another country to provide you with a specific good for x amount of time in peace deals? Also, would transfer trade power mean you get their merchant power for x time while steer trade would prioritize your neighboring market for exports?
I dont think those peacedeals would exist as they did in eu4.

Trade based peacedeals would probably let you take over a % of the countries Merchant Power and Capacity and it wouldnt really make sense to seperate them, since you need both to "take" goods from another market.

As far as i understand it, Merchant Power on its own does nothing, because with infinite merchant power and 0 merchant capacity you would get first pick to move nothing.
If you have infinite merchant capacity and 0 merchant power, you would get to move everything that is left in a market after local demand and all other trades have been satisfied.
 
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From the screenshot of the tar trade, it seems the way you "profit" from the market system is by making profitable trades.
Agreed, that is the impression I got.
Where owning the market location doesnt give you a specific profit itself, but the ownership of the market location would mean having presumably the most merchant power, which makes making those profitable trades easier, since you get to pick first when it comes to high demand goods for trade.
It's this I was trying to get a clear answer on, because it's not stated anywhere in the DD. What benefit does the actual market location and its controller get?

We do see in the screenshots above that the market location owner does not automatically have the highest merchant power in it.
 
A tiny, historic nitpick - can you change the name of the Pest market to the Buda market? Buda was historically the capital of Hungary and much more important than Pest.
I second this, although the actual capital of the country was Visegrád at this time.
It doesn't matter what you make it include, if those provinces have better market access to the other market capital they will move and evenutally that market will die. See Johans comments about why the low Countries are part of Londons market and not their own
Looking at the map, it would make sense for Szeben to have fairly good access to those areas though.
 
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You fight a war normally? If you control the market center you can always embargo them ;)

No.

Embargo also blocks merchants travelling through your country. This can make trades much more expensive in capacity required, and maintenance paid.

Might be worth a clarification.

Does one need to own the market center to be able to embargo people ?
 
how much goods you can actually buy from the market..
Do locations buy goods from the market in an order that is determined by market access (i.e. highest access buys all their demanded goods first, then second highest, and so on), or does each location have a limit/proportion on how much it can buy based on the absolute market access value?
I'd assume it's the former, because constructions need their full amount of goods to continue, so having partial purchases sounds like a bad idea.

Edit: Just saw another post which makes it really sound like it's an ordered table of provinces (since if there's a tie, location id or something else would be used). In that case, a location with 10% market access that is 'at the back of the list' in their market and a location with 90% market access that is also at the end of the queue in its market should work the same, even if the absolute numbers look so different?
 
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We do see in the screenshots above that the market location owner does not automatically have the highest merchant power in it.
while yes, i think this would be an outlier, mostly bound from Sweden not having its own Market(probably both due to historical hansa reasons, and so players who start as sweden get to make their own).

The more i look at riga the more confused i get on that point:confused:
Who owns the market of riga ?
Its not sweden who has the most merchant power, nor the hansa, who has the most capacity, nor any of the other top 5 merchants in the node.

If you look closely at the big map, lübeck and the hanseatic league have different flags, so maybe the league is actually different countries, that are grouped in the trade screen due to being in a league
That would explain why „riga“ is missing from the powerful merchant list.