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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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I Know thats an Off topic Question but will there be 3D Portraits in this Game. Because i imagine it to be very hard to match the different clothing and hair styles off a timeframe like this.
 
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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.
 
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Not sure how I feel about needing to manually send merchants to move goods between markets, I worry about micromanagement. That said it does seem trade flow is fully dynamic depending on where supply and demand is, which is a HUGE step up from EU4's static system.

"Base prices" huh. How high are modified prices of goods capped? Can they shoot into the stratosphere if the supply is totally cut off?
 
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Why the color gradient darkening outwards from the main city of the market. Is it the extent to which a location belongs to a market, as in darker = easier to make it switch markets?
 
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So will trade goods chain across markets then? Like if there is demand for spices in the London market will it try to buy spices from neighbouring markets, causing them to have an increased demand for spices, meaning they will look for spices in neighbouring markets until eventually this need is met?
 
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What happens when like austria your country is present in 3 different markets? Do you just take stuff from all three of them or do you have to choose from one and trade from the others like Eu4?

It would be a bit op to have access to the goods of 3 markets xd.

Also, what are the requirements to set up your own market? As Austria you want to have your own. What do you need?

Lastly, how does the game simulate venetian and genoese trade between the east and Europe?

Amazing DD. super hyped
 
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Not sure how I feel about needing to manually send merchants to move goods between markets, I worry about micromanagement. That said it does seem trade flow is fully dynamic depending on where supply and demand is, which is a HUGE step up from EU4's static system.

Looks like Burghers with their small scale trades will remove a lot of need for micromanagement.
 
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Hello Johan

First of all I really enjoed reading this and last weeks dev diary, making for a wonderful basis of the system. But it has left me curious about some things.

In Meiou and Taxes to set up the economy we have certain unchangable data about the start date like population and locations of recources. But how large all the industries are, and what the prices of goods are is deterimened in a process we call the SIM where we run a few hundred years of simulated economy on that start date to establish the equilibriums.

I am wondering if you do something similair, having to assign all the buildings to every location and dictate their exact size would be a lot of work, something that would have to be redone every time you make larger ballance changes. So what is the process for setting up the world? Is it by hand or is there some automated process. And in that case, is that a tool available to mods.

And secondly, to observe the sim we've created python tools that read data we store in the game.log file. Things like prices, industry sizes, population data. So we can get easy and quick overvieuws of the world economy. Are you working with any nice data visualization tools on the macro scale. Ones you don't even really wanna look at as the player but really useful for making the game. Like taking the average loyalty of every country over time so you can see if AI is reforming to agressively. Or the prices of certian goods in certain provinces as benchmarks for the health of the world economy. If these kinda tools exist that would be amazing for mods as well of course.
 
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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?
 
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It's probably everything I ever wanted a PDX game to be. And we haven't even seen the military/warfare yet...

Question, though: are there lower and upper caps for prices, like in Victoria 3? Or do you really calculate supply and demand uncapped?
 
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