The Merchant of Patavium

[SirGrotius]

I'm seeking advice on all things trade. I'm unclear on what upgrading my roads does in terms of trading privileges, and upgrading ports has a similiar effect--by allowing more sea routes--on trade? Does one only trade with factions with whom one has trade agreements or general alliances?

Does squalor have an effect on trade or just total income--okay, I know, just on a settlement's income, but how does one rid a city of squalor?

thanks!

[Morindin]

I'm seeking advice on all things trade. I'm unclear on what upgrading my roads does in terms of trading privileges, and upgrading ports has a similiar effect--by allowing more sea routes--on trade? Does one only trade with factions with whom one has trade agreements or general alliances?

Does squalor have an effect on trade or just total income--okay, I know, just on a settlement's income, but how does one rid a city of squalor?

thanks!

My understanding is the bigger the road, the more goods that can be shipped hence the bigger the trade income, and the same with ports.

By building the improvements combat squalor. You're effectively getting rid of it. RTW uses a D&D like system where a good thing adds a bonus and a bad thing adds a negative.

e.g. +5 - 5 = 0.

All those icons of "squalor" you see isnt the amount as such, but the unhappiness causes by it. Builing a sewer for example effectively removes some of the unhappiness which is effectively "reducing squalor".

A lot of people are struggling with squalor, but quite frankly I havnt been having a problem at all. I do destroy enemy temples ALL the time unless they're quite a highly upgraded temple. For example a Gaul shrine to freya or whatever only gives you +5% happiness. Demolishing that and building a shrine to jupiter gives you +10% on the first level and enables you to keep upgrading and upgrading and upgrading.

AFAIK Squalor has no effect on your trade income. If you look at your settlement details itll tell you all the things that effect trade income under the bottom group.

[Servius]

Roads increase movement speed through the zone and add an unwritten modifier to trade. Some temples and all merchant buildings (eventually including the Forum) also increase trade. Ports do this more tangibly by adding another possible trade route per upgrade level of the port. So, Merchant of Venice, if you have a level 4 port, it provides you with 4 trade fleets (hence 4 trade routes). So long as there are 4 friendly ports within range (also unspecified, at least in the UI) you will have more trade.

Yes, you need trade relations with forgeign powers in order to trade with them (by land or sea). As one of the Roman factions you start out with trade relations with the other three, the rest you have to make for yourself.

Unfortunately, CA didn't deign to provide the same kind of hard data payoff info in the building descriptions. In MTW you could click on a farm and the sheet would tell you exactly how much money that farm was producing. You could also click on it's upgrade and that would tell you the resulting income if you built it. That kind of tangible payoff data would be very helpful in RTW. How else are we to do cost/benefit analysis?