Granaries and Trade Reduction

Dear all:

This must have been discussed most likely before - however, I was unable to find the corresponding thread. Thus, please accept my apologies in advance when I bore you with a variant of the notorious "lorica segmentata" discussion ...

Does the trade reduction - when building a "major granary" (please refer to the second granary building option, I forgot the correct designation) - make sense to you?

From an Economic perspective, I am not convinced so far: Granaries are an investment, so they actually enlarge your set of resources available to consumption or to trade.

Ex. g. from a Prehistoric setting: When hunting deer during summer, you were able to generate a big surplus of meat. If you were not able to convert this surplus to some storable dry meat (I chose this technology comparable to a granary's function for illustration purposes only), you would not be able to offer this surplus for barter to the trader arriving in autumn.

Thus, what is the reasoning behind the EB's team decision to actually decrease trade when building the second granary?

my guess would be that with a big granary, goods which were traded before, would now be stored...

And my guess... building your second, larger granary, you give a free bread for everyone in the city...

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Originally Posted by Cute Wolf

And my guess... building your second, larger granary, you give a free bread for everyone in the city...

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What, "free"? No. Never!

I've got a business empire to run, for Tanit's sake!

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Originally Posted by anubis88

my guess would be that with a big granary, goods which were traded before, would now be stored...

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Cute Wolf & Anubis, many thanks for the replies.

Anubis, unfortunately, imho your line of reasoning may not work for two reasons.

a) Let us assume - the only goods actually traded would indeed very fast decay when not stored in a granary (like the meat in the previous example). Why then - before the construction of the granary - had a foreign trader been willing to buy these goods at all?

This is not the Amsterdam flower market of our times where flowers cut in Kenya in the morning will be traded at noon at Amsterdam and then be shipped to Korea in the afternoon (this scenario is taken from Reinventing the Bazaar by McMillan - highly recommended!). The goods traded in Antiquity were restricted to much more durable types of food. Famous example: Garum etc. Yes, if I remember correctly, the Roman Emperors got some ice from the Apennines in the summer time, but that's def. an extreme luxury good, right?

Yes, I must admit that my previous example of dry meat may be misleading - sorry for leading you down the wrong track. Why? Because this unnecessarily narrowed the perspective to the direct impact of the granary on the city's trade level. However, the granary influences most of the times the trade level in a more indirect way: By freeing time that you originally had to devote to maintain your level of subsistence, but that - after building the granary - could now be used to produce trade goods.

b) To show this, here is a (only a little bit) more realistic model to highlight the economic consequences of building a granary.

It is 260 BC and you are a Punic citizen living with your family in Kerkouane.
There are only two economic activities possible:
1) Fishing using a net on a boat.
2) Collecting purpure snails on the beach to be sold to Carthage for a little fortune.

You have 16 hours per day available (no leisure time ...)
You must catch 12 pounds of fish per day to survive.
The corresponding sortie by boat costs you 6 hours per day.
This "investment" generates 12 pounds of fish for sure.
But sometimes (let us say, each second day) you get 18 pounds.
Because you do not have a granary, then this additional amount of fish is wasted - it can not be stored and only you and your family like eating fish.
Thus, in this setting (without a granary) you have 10 hours per day available to collect the famous snails.
Now a miracle happens...
Tanit falls in love with you and - as a nice way to thank you for your loyal services - she builds a granary for free (your wife was very upset at the beginning but then after some second thinking she calmed down - why? Find out below ...)
Because of the granary, you can now store the surplus: Each fifth day you do not have to go fishing, but instead you can immediately start collecting snails.
However, you are forced to "agree" that the revenues of these extra snails should be used exclusively to buy the nice clothes your wife always wanted to wear.
Conclusion: Your wife is happier and you are happier because your wife is happier.

c) Lesson
Granaries increase your income from trade because they increase the time available to generate surpluses that can be traded away in a direct or - more importantly - in a indirect manner.

Hope this argumentation clarifies this issue and its implication to EB: The granary should really increase the trade level.

well, i read somewhere, the romans keep the population happy with bread and circuses... ok, take the circuses out, and you got a free bread for the poors... it's a quite standard program in my country, and most developing countries in the wolrd... free food for everyone in need, the government subsidize them... (free rice in reality, equivalence for bread in greek-roman times..), so they need trade reduction because giving free food requires considerable costs...

Logically the granary should then give a happiness bonus, correct?

Ha, I almost asked this question myself. Ended up thinking "the team will have had a reason for that, without doubt":laugh4:

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well, i read somewhere, the romans keep the population happy with bread and circuses

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AFAIK at some time during the days of the Republic, they gave a free share of grain to the poorer citizens of Rome (the polis, not the whole republic). I believe it was after some Punic war.

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Logically the granary should then give a happiness bonus, correct?

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It does (the big one, not the smaller one).


Btw, nice "poem", Mr Namenlos. Didn't know that one.

Your assumption is that there are no graneries in a province before you build one. However this is incorrect. Instead, the large granary represents the placement of a restriction on the free-trade of goods so that a stockpile can be built for the local population centres. Notice how the granary gives a boost to population? This is because a surplus of stored food will allow a settlement to grow at a rate that would not otherwise be possible if that surplus was traded out.

Foot

I had also thought about this at some point too...

And Foots explanation has pretty much satisfied my uncertainty :-)

As for the Bread and Circuses it went like this.

During Res Publica Romana in times of grain shortage a certain grain ration was available at a low price for all citizens of Rome, including the very rich. This ration was slightly more than one man could consume, but not enough for a family. I cannot recall how large.

Caesar and Augustus started giving out free grain for the urban poor in times of need. Later emperors continued the practise.

Essentially similar policies were pursued to varying degrees (up to and including pirating someone else's grain shipments...) by most Mediterranean realms, city-states and suchlike in the 1500s, for the exact same reasons. Food riots suck and are bad for business.