How does TRADE work in the game?

**Belisarius Invictus** · 03-25-2007, 04:37

Originally Posted by Foz

As a side note to this, there may in fact be no max trading distance - it's in the city's interest to trade as close to home as possible, so there should be no need for an upper limit ever.

Right. That makes sense to some extent. What's unfortunate, though, is it fails to cause exotic goods (like silk) to travel the long distances they did.

What's missing in the current game is the ability for cities to re-sell the goods they import. This would make particular sense for "gateway cities" like Venice, that are on the coast but have the shortest land connection to inland german provinces. So, all those german provinces wanting silk would "pull" it through Venice, because the silk could travel more of the distance over water (more efficient than road).

What would be good is if upgrading your roads increased the distance goods could travel. No roads would only allow goods to travel to the adjacent province, while dirt and paved roads would be two and three province trips, respectively.

There also needs to be some mechanism for why certain strategic port cities like Venice and Constantinople were the "magnets" for trade they were. Perhaps larger ports would not only allow more connections, but also reduce the re-sale costs, so such cities could serve as hubs for trade rather than simply consumers of goods.

**vonsch** · 03-25-2007, 06:13

So, can a new building called "trade hub" or "trade nexus" be created and preplaced in those cities? Have it add sea routes and merchant goods. That would give them their strategic significance.

**Foz** · 03-25-2007, 07:55

Originally Posted by vonsch

So, can a new building called "trade hub" or "trade nexus" be created and preplaced in those cities? Have it add sea routes and merchant goods. That would give them their strategic significance.

Theoretically, yes. Certainly most modders could easily construct the new building entry in the EDB and give it the correct attributes. They could probably also add the building to the correct cities at the start of the game. There are further potential snags than just that, though. The biggest one I can think of is that the buildings in the game are all represented graphically in the city during battles, and if I recall discussions correctly, the game has specific layouts that determine which buildings go where. So it's possible that you'd have to make graphics for it, or borrow them from a different building, and possibly add it into the various city layouts the game uses, though I suspect the game won't throw a fit if the trade hub/nexus building just isn't represented in the city - I bet some other buildings are like that already. The other thing is getting it some UI graphics, since it'll have to show up in the area that shows you all buildings that exist in the city. It additionally may need an info scroll, and a building browser entry. I'm not really the man to talk to about that though, I don't work with the graphical end of things, just the text files... I just wanted to give an idea of what might be required, since it's not in the "totally easy why didn't someone do this already" category.

**vonsch** · 03-25-2007, 17:24

I hear you, Foz, but I see sneaky Carl has put two versions of port buildings into his latest 1.23 PF version. One for castles, another for cities. So seems to me we're talking similar. The two versions have different trade effects in his case.

It wouldn't need new graphics, could just use existing graphics for the buildings panel and info screens. (Something like the caravan one might do, since it's only used in the Islamic factions, I think.) The text would probably need changing, but I suspect (SUSPECT, I say) that's not a big deal if we can actually get at the text file. I think AD has done some building addition too.

I haven't observed any ill effects on the battle screen so far, but not sure I've had occasion to fight in one of the cities with the "new" building lines yet.

**Carl** · 03-25-2007, 17:54

It's not new Vonsch. Cities and Castles have had diffrent port buildings from day one. Don't know why as they have identical effects so...

Good finds here though guys.

**Foz** · 03-25-2007, 18:17

Originally Posted by Carl

It's not new Vonsch. Cities and Castles have had diffrent port buildings from day one. Don't know why as they have identical effects so...

Probably planning ahead in case balancing was required. It's easier to lay out the 2 separate buildings from the start and then make changes to either to balance cities against castles than it would be to have to go back at a later stage of the game and try to separate them out from each other if the need arises. It's also likely they wanted to make sure they had two separate names for conditional testing purposes, so they could easily distinguish a city's port series from that of a castle in the various triggers throughout the game, if needed.