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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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The map is uhh... interesting for sure
What in particular stands out to you?

There's definitely much to cover, it's a map of borders in all of Europe! A big sight for us. What stands out to me is that Hungary and Lithuania have no internal borders. It's not like they were uniquely centralized in this time period (IIRC) so I hope they don't end up inadvertently overpowered by not having to wrangle feudal subjects like France or Poland.
Since there is fish as a good, I'm hoping it's not an RGO, because to have fish as a trade good, you have to dry it or (most commonly) use salt. Just being able to generate tradeable fish in random locations without access to salt or a history of drying them like in Norway, wouldn't be historical and remove an important source of demand for salt.
Yeah that's a good point. Similarly, I hope desert and steppe provinces cannot magic lumber for shipbuilding out of thin air.
 
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Will markets have to be adjacent to be able to trade with each other? Say a market is landlocked in central Asia, will there be some kind of silk road type of pathing to travel through market zones to get to markets further away? Could you also manually control market routes to avoid tolls if you own certain provinces?

Also, will you be able to found multiple markets within your empire? Like having seperate markets for colonial holdings in the new world, or trade networks out to Asia. Or will they all be part of one big "home" market from your capital?
 
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Will the trade regions be the same as continental regions and areas? Another paradox game eu4 didn't always match up on this. I think Anatolia was a confusing region if I'm not mistaken.
 
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Could you elaborate on how needs are satisfied inside a market? You said in TT#8 that priority is calculated using each location's market access, but how is the market access of a location determined?
 
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If i own a location outside of my own market, Say I'm England and I own Taiwan or whatever, will that potentiall create problems since I'd have to import goods from Taiwan from whatever market it is in into my own?
It would make owning far away locations like that mostly useful for importing rare goods from other markets, rather than building up their own economy as if it's part of your core homeland. Which would be very historical.
 
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There's a thing I really hope is possible. To be the middleman, I really hope you can be a trade empire just moving goods from place to place. And that having control of the mouths of rivers like the Rhine and Danube is amazing, letting your trade far inland with the goods you aquire across the world.
 
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There are also the Sound Tolls, if you pass through Öresund or the Bosphorus to consider

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

dude johan stop. i can only get so ere-
 
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What stands out to me is that Hungary and Lithuania have no internal borders. It's not like they were uniquely centralized in this time period (IIRC) so I hope they don't end up inadvertently overpowered by not having to wrangle feudal subjects like France or Poland.
I'd like to point out the fact that there are also no internal divisions of the Golden Horde, spanning the whole Kaffa market and most of the smaller ones that are cut off on the right.
 
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I wonder if there will be any smuggling mechanics
 
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I'm curious about how will the army battles work out. Will it be the same as the game Europa Universalis 4 or will be a more acurate representation of reality like how you can control tactics or your general's skill will heavily impact it?
 
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Oh, realized I forgot something. Are some things harder to move across larger distances than others? Food should be almost imposible to move across the equator. But also things like marble should be much harder to ship than spices.
 
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