How does TRADE work in the game?

[Foz]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[vonsch]

Ah, so it just took changing existing buildings. So maybe Carl isn't already doing something similar.

[Carl]

I could probably figue out how to though, it would jus take a bit of time and effort as theirs a number of the Strings.bin files that i think are involved that i've never bothered to look at. I think a lot is controlled in their.

[alpaca]

Hehe well, it's no big deal adding new buildings.
You just add them to EDB, supply proper descriptions (for example, you have a tree "port" with buildings "port" and "harbor", you'll need {port_name} for the tree description in the building browser, {port}, {port_desc} and {port_desc_short} and the same three for harbor) and you're basically set.
You should also replace the building card in the UI folder, since it'll use the Roman Barracks otherwise (default).

Adding buildings to the battlemap isn't possible yet, and if you don't do that, you'll simply not see them on the map.

By the way, don't have buildings a required attribute that flags them as a castle or city building? I can't look at the code at the moment so I might be wrong there.

[Carl]

Yeah they do, but you can leave it out and it will be avalibile in both then.

[Foz]

Hmm. Maybe I'll mod my game so the wharf series grants export lines like the port series does. It seems like it should be more important than the port series somehow. Oh wait, I can't, because whatever mechanic currently causes export routes isn't the trade_fleet one, and therefore isn't in the EDB at all that we know of. Gravy.

I don't suppose anyone has seen anything in any of the game files that tells the game ports should be giving export routes, have they?

If not, then maybe I will assume it's based on the level of the port. If that is the case, a semi-solution might be to integrate the wharf buildings into the port line for cities.

The port series builds in 2/3/5/6 turns, granting 2/3/4/5 trade bonus. Costs are 800/1600/3200/6400.

The wharves OTOH are 3/5/6 turns with 2/3/4 bonus for 1600/3200/6400. So they're nearly identical to the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th buildings in the port series, just with 1 less trade bonus in each case. It probably makes the most sense to insert them just before the port building with the same build time, then, as a sort of stepping stone to the better building. So the new layout would be:

Port/MerchantsWharf/Shipwright/Warehouse/Dockyard/Docklands/NavalDrydock

Which yields costs, build times, and trade bonuses like this:
800/1600/1600/3200/3200/6400/6400
2/3/3/5/5/6/6
2/2/3/3/4/4/5

I've bolded the port series buildings and their stats, while underlining those of the wharf series.

As always thoughts and ideas are welcome - I wouldn't be posting otherwise!

[alpaca]

Did anybody test if castle ports add trade routes?

[socal_infidel]

Foz -

Not sure if you're talking about actually moving the wharf series of buildings directly into the port line of buildings in the EDB or not...

But what I've done to integrate them is to add the bolded text to the wharf buildings:

merchants_wharf city requires factions { northern_european, middle_eastern, eastern_european, greek, southern_european, } and building_present_min_level port port

or

warehouse city requires factions { northern_european, middle_eastern, eastern_european, greek, southern_european, } and building_present_min_level port shipwright

And then you can assign the trade_base_income_bonus however you see fit...I'm thinking of the following:

1/2/3/4/5/6/7 (a 35% bonus on trade if you build the naval drydock).

Incidentally, does anyone know if there's a max of the number of export lines you can have?

I toyed around briefly with it this weekend. But it seems 3 is the max number. I thought it might have been tied to number of resources, but I added a fourth resource to Constantinople and then built the naval drydock but it still remained 3.

[Foz]

Foz -

Not sure if you're talking about actually moving the wharf series of buildings directly into the port line of buildings in the EDB or not...

Yes I was talking about putting them directly into the port line. The idea was that perhaps the code grants routes only for the buildings of the port series, so including more buildings in that line might actually make the game grant export lines for them too.

Incidentally, does anyone know if there's a max of the number of export lines you can have?

I toyed around briefly with it this weekend. But it seems 3 is the max number. I thought it might have been tied to number of resources, but I added a fourth resource to Constantinople and then built the naval drydock but it still remained 3.

This wouldn't really be surprising given that trade_fleet maxes at 3 in the EDB. While trade_fleet doesn't seem to be correctly implemented, it's likely they coded 3 as the export line limit, already with the idea in mind that they were allocating them via the wharf series.