Welcome to the second dev diary! It's called
"Going that extra mile"
Since I am busy with real-life stuff currently, I didn't have time to integrate resources back in to the mod, about which I wanted to talk. But I think I can share something else, which will be useful and necessary to understand when you want to play with the mod later on. So for the next few diaries we'll dive a bit "behind the scenes" and see how the mod will work now. I'll explain fundamental ideas and concepts, and show a bit of code. Hope it won't be too boring ^^
Trade Range
As you know, the old mod version also had "trade ranges" that differ depending on the tradegood. The idea is that this value represents how far away a good a)
could and b)
would be traded in the Middle Ages. I assign the values based on my own research and my own discretion, because it is an abstract concept and there are no actual real-world restrictions on distances for trade. But I check a few things when deciding traderange, and these are:
1. "Shelf Life"
Some goods tend to spoil fast, especially if you consider that in medieval times there was no refrigeration or canning technology. If you take milk for example: Today, you can import fresh milk from the Alps all the way up to Scandinavia, or even into the USA (if that is
sensible is another question altogether). But in the Middle Ages, without refrigeration milk would have spoilt after a few days, and even transporting it from say Berlin to Munich would have been impossible without it spoiling. That's why people invented cheese (probably): Cheese stays fresh for a long time, and you can even transport it to other cities. That's also why the Hansa (and people in general) needed INSANE amounts of salt for salting herrings or meat. Salted meat/fish stays fresh for a long time, and this need for salt for preservation was a major factor contributing to the demand for salt, which eventually lead to it being called the "white gold".
So in the game, "Milk" and "Raw Fish" will have a very short trade range, while "Cheese" and "Preserved Meat" will have a longer one.
2. Value
There is a reason the Silk Road is called
Silk Road: Silk is a fabric that is sought after everywhere, expensive and lightweight. It could easily be transported in rather small quantities and still be worth the trip for the merchants, in contrast to e.g. salt which would only be profitable as a bulk good (as contrary to some common myths, salt was
not worth its weight in gold). So "Silk" as a tradegood would have an even larger traderange than say "Cheese".
*
3. Weight
As said above, silk is both valuable and lightweight. Now take gold for example: It is also valuable, and was transported around a lot both in the form of coins and in the metal itself (you might not know, but especially in the early Middle Ages it was common to pay in "weight" of gold, because local people in Scotland wouldn't know the exact value of a Byzantine coin, nor that of an Arabic or the other hundreds different coins that got minted). But gold is seldomly found as perfect nuggets, and the "Gold Ore" tradegood that represents the form gold is found means a big chunk of stone with a little bit of gold in it. Now theoretically this is also valuable already, as the gold is in there. But if a merchant were to buy that rock and sell it a few hundred kilometers away, he'd have to transport the entire rock all the way, which would significantly boost his transportation costs and possibly make the thing unprofitable. It really comes down to common sense, so "Gold Ore" will have a traderange comparable to "Milk", even though it does not spoil: Because transporting it far away simply is stupid - it'll have to be smelted to "Gold" near the mine.
That being said, here are some pictures to illustrate how far different traderanges are on the map:
All take Münster as the arbitrary starting point, and are increasing in size: Minimal (<50), Short (<100), Normal (<200), Long (<400), Very Long (<800), Extreme (<1600).
Traderange will actually increase over the course of the game, based on a few different things:
1. Technology
New ideas and concepts regarding trade were developed during the Middle Ages, including but not limited to the
Double-entry bookkeeping system. This technological progress allowed the economy and especialyl trade to grow quite a bit, laying the groundwork for the later developments (which tend to incorrectly be attributed
only to the Renaissance and EU4's timeframe). Therefore, traderange will increase by
5% for every step of "Trade Practices" technology the
importing province has. So a Venice with high trading tech can import things from further away than say a tribe in Scandinavia.
2. "Trade Fair" Modifier
There are some new concepts in the mod about which we'll talk about at later point. For now you should know that there is a possible "Trade Fair" modifier which certain provinces can have, that boosts income a bit and also gives an additional one-time
5% increase to that province's traderange (meaning products it wants to import can be further away than usually possible).
Thus, the total traderange for "short" at Trade Practices 8 and with a Trade Fair would be 145 instead of 100 - a potential 45% increase! Another reason to invest into Trade Practices, even as a feudal ruler...
Well, that's it for today!
Why traderange is now more important than ever, and how exactly tradegoods are imported we'll talk about in a later dev diary. As a bonus, here is a sniplet of code that shows how the traderange triggers look (it actually hasn't changed much since V1, but I guess few people comb through the files):
And in case you missed it: Here is the link to the
last dev diary
*click! - Nice smile!
