How to make money?

[Fußball]

So for a player using modified roads, the ranking of economic buildings looks like this:

1. Mines
2. Port
3. Roads +1
4. Farms +1
5. Market +1

Of course skip anything you can't yet build. The mobility of the roads is nice, but getting the really big income generators first is an absolute must when possible.

Without modified roads (i.e. they do nothing economically) the order would look like this:

1. Mines
2. Port
3. Farms +1
4. Market +1
5. (or lower) Roads +1

So currently in the vanilla M2TW roads provide no bonus what so ever? That seems very foolish if CA intended roads to provide an economic bonus, yet they gave them no bonus. But then again I have noticed many other things CA has not had the time to fix, has left out or simply has not made possible.

And one other question which is slightly on topic. Which file do I open to rewrite this value and what do I rewrite it as to remedy the problem? Please excuse the noobish question as I have not had time to devote to modding and working with the game.

Tschüß!
Erich

[Foz]

So currently in the vanilla M2TW roads provide no bonus what so ever? That seems very foolish if CA intended roads to provide an economic bonus, yet they gave them no bonus. But then again I have noticed many other things CA has not had the time to fix, has left out or simply has not made possible.

And one other question which is slightly on topic. Which file do I open to rewrite this value and what do I rewrite it as to remedy the problem? Please excuse the noobish question as I have not had time to devote to modding and working with the game.

Tschüß!
Erich

Check out your export_descr_buildings.txt file in the main data folder. If you haven't unpacked, you'll have to do so to get at it.

Then if you do a find for "road" you should jump right to the entry for city roads (there is a nearly identical one for castle roads right after it though lord knows why, they could easily be combined). It should be easy to see each of the two road levels in there. Each should have (IIRC) a commented out ability (comments are denoted with semicolons ;) that looks something like this:

;trade_income_base_bonus bonus 2

I don't remember the exact wording, but that's probably close. If you simply remove the ; from each of the 4 lines like that (2 for city roads, then 2 after that for castle roads), your dirt roads will grant a 20% trade bonus, and your paved ones will grant 30%. Easy-peasy lemon-squeezy.

Roads/Ports define how many routes you can get I think it was.
Markets/Wharfs determine the income amount you get for each resource.

Remember in RTW Ports giving you extra trade fleets?

That's a shame, because the vanilla roads sure suck a lot compared to what they could be (they could be like ports). As it stands, it looks to me like a settlement always trades with its connected neighbors by land provided they are owned by you or not at war with you - i.e. no building is responsible for granting land trade routes. I just checked in on one of my saved games, and a settlement with no roads or markets had the most land-based trade routes in my empire, lol.

Port can be higher than mine if you're capturing a new city with a sizable population. For smaller cities, I go mine first since port income takes a while to develop. Port income definitely goes up as population goes up, might be tied to city development as well, aside from the population of the city.

That makes a lot of sense. I had noticed the trade was constantly going up, but never really thought about why. A larger population would require larger quantities of the imported goods its using, and could also produce more of its exports. It also may involve the population of the settlement's trade partners too, since they would have similar supply and demand effects from their own population level.

[Tusk]

I don't remember the exact wording, but that's probably close. If you simply remove the ; from each of the 4 lines like that (2 for city roads, then 2 after that for castle roads), your dirt roads will grant a 20% trade bonus, and your paved ones will grant 30%. Easy-peasy lemon-squeezy.

Is this addressed in either of the 2 patches? If so, is it 1.1 or 1.2? Just want to know how much trade I've been missing out on...

[Foz]

Is this addressed in either of the 2 patches? If so, is it 1.1 or 1.2? Just want to know how much trade I've been missing out on...

It doesn't appear to be. I stand corrected about the comments, too: I just looked at my freshly-extracted 1.2 export_descr_buildings.txt (EDB), and there are no such comments in it. I'm not sure if they were there in 1.1 or not, just don't remember. It's possible they come from the highway mod I have installed. In any case, here's what the text looks like in my EDB modified to add highways and make roads grant trade bonuses:

building hinterland_roads
{
    convert_to hinterland_castle_roads
    levels roads paved_roads highways 
    {
        roads city requires factions { northern_european, middle_eastern, eastern_european, greek, southern_european, } 
        {
            convert_to 0
            capability
            {
                road_level 0
                trade_base_income_bonus bonus 2
            }
            material wooden
            construction  1 
            cost  400 
            settlement_min town
            upgrades
            {
                paved_roads
            }
        }
        paved_roads city requires factions { northern_european, middle_eastern, eastern_european, greek, southern_european, } 
        {
            convert_to 1
            capability
            {
                road_level 1
                trade_base_income_bonus bonus 3
            }
            material wooden
            construction  2 
            cost  1200 
            settlement_min city
            upgrades
            {
		highways
            }
        }
	highways city requires factions { northern_european, middle_eastern, eastern_european, greek, southern_european, } 
        {
            convert_to 2
            capability
            {
                road_level 2
                trade_base_income_bonus bonus 4
            }
            material wooden
            construction  4 
            cost  2400 
            settlement_min city
            upgrades
            {
            }
        }
    }
    plugins 
    {
    }
}
building hinterland_castle_roads
{
    convert_to hinterland_roads
    levels c_roads c_paved_roads c_highways
    {
        c_roads castle requires factions { northern_european, middle_eastern, eastern_european, greek, southern_european, } 
        {
            convert_to 0
            capability
            {
                road_level 0
                trade_base_income_bonus bonus 2
            }
            material wooden
            construction  1 
            cost  400 
            settlement_min town
            upgrades
            {
                c_paved_roads
            }
        }
        c_paved_roads castle requires factions { northern_european, middle_eastern, eastern_european, greek, southern_european, } 
        {
            convert_to 1
            capability
            {
                road_level 1
                trade_base_income_bonus bonus 3
            }
            material wooden
            construction  2 
            cost  1200 
            settlement_min city
            upgrades
            {
		c_highways
            }
        }
        c_highways castle requires factions { northern_european, middle_eastern, eastern_european, greek, southern_european, } 
        {
            convert_to 2
            capability
            {
                road_level 2
                trade_base_income_bonus bonus 4
            }
            material wooden
            construction  4 
            cost  2400 
            settlement_min city
            upgrades
            {
            }
        }
    }
    plugins 
    {
    }
}

If you want to use highways, you should go get the highways mod, it's very good. If not, then you have a choice:

- You can remove the highways and c_highways - I've bolded them to make this easier. Note that they include the } in case you can't tell, and numerous references to "highways" and "c_highways".
- More simply, you can just add the lines I've underlined to your EDB, those lines will make the roads grant trade bonuses.

Hope that helps.

[Shahed]

I have the Highways mod installed plus I've modded to make roads give bonuses.

It is not working to design intent, however, it is working.

I feel it's much better than when it was not working. Plus you get the nice movement points bonus from highways, no more 24 month walks from Paris to Antwerp.

[Slug For A Butt]

Am I right in thinking that farms still give population boost bonuses? Surely that is important early game? I always build farms first because of that, please don't tell me it's wrong.

[Shahed]

Building farms early game is excellent. A) you get a fixed income increase per turn B) you get population growth increase which translates to more population which translates to more tax revenue.

Ceteris paribus, population growth should be monitored to ensure that growth does not outstrip development.

Growth is very important because the faster you reach higher settlement levels the faster you can construct buildings that give you high level units. You can then outclass rivals. Getting higher level units earlier means less upgrading later on and means more experience in the long run as those units can serve till the end of the game and start their careers earlier.

[andrewt]

That makes a lot of sense. I had noticed the trade was constantly going up, but never really thought about why. A larger population would require larger quantities of the imported goods its using, and could also produce more of its exports. It also may involve the population of the settlement's trade partners too, since they would have similar supply and demand effects from their own population level.

I would say the population of the settlement's trade partners affects it as well, like you said. No hard numbers but experience points to it.