MERCHANTS

[Jurand of Cracow]

I've set trade multiplies to 1.85 basing on my careful research, what are the normal faction budget proportions when game is played by AI or by player but without tricks.
For me it looks like merchant trade income is something like normal trade income or smaller, so that is 1.85 multiplier (less than 2.0).
All these is described on my wiki even with some statistical budget data.

Tomek, could you elaborate how have you counted that different categories of trade in your histogram? You've started a new campaign for each of the factions?
If so, then I think there's a kind of problem with your assessement. Namely: we've observed that the merchant income is between half and the whole of the trade income from the settlements for the player. However, we don't know how efficiently does the AI manage his merchants and what bonuses does he get? As said, we think the AI has major problems with that management. What follows - maybe the hole in it's finances won't be of such propotions, but smaller?

[tmodelsk]

Tomek, could you elaborate how have you counted that different categories of trade in your histogram? You've started a new campaign for each of the factions?
If so, then I think there's a kind of problem with your assessement. Namely: we've observed that the merchant income is between half and the whole of the trade income from the settlements for the player. However, we don't know how efficiently does the AI manage his merchants and what bonuses does he get? As said, we think the AI has major problems with that management. What follows - maybe the hole in it's finances won't be of such propotions, but smaller?

I've launched hot seat campaign as Norway, played 10 years and then 'activated' my - player control over those faction in histogram,
and on next turn I could play as each of these factions.
My observation is that AI plays somehow 'random' with merchants, sometimes more effective, sometimes less.
But AI has little chance against determined human player.

[Lifthrasir]

@ tmodelsk, I've read your description in the wiki. I'd just like to have feedback from players using it

From my opinion, I think we can remove them. I'm not in favor to a "half way" solution (keeping some of them recruitable from some buildings).
Regarding priests, that's a bit "tricky". If priests (all levels) are removed, heretics has to be removed as well (how to get ride of heretics without priests?). Then, how will it work for Pope elections?

[Alavaria]

Regarding priests, that's a bit "tricky". If priests (all levels) are removed, heretics has to be removed as well (how to get ride of heretics without priests?). Then, how will it work for Pope elections?

Heretics -> Assassins, well recommended really, the game loves turning priests into more heretics too much. AI obviously doesn't know how to use this though, meaning it is a very useful option, but

The pope election one is real trouble though. Also, muslim factions need their imams to access the jihad mechanic.

[Lifthrasir]

Heretics, what a pain in...
Anyway, I think we should just focuse on merchants for now. For some other stratmap characters, if we start to modify them, it will requier quite some changes.

[j.a.luna]

In my opinion, i like the idea of half way, for two reasons, one is for dont lost strat models( i like see in the campaign map merchants of different cultures and resources) and the two is that merchants give you some benefits for your economy( i think that if you have the monopoly of gold or.other resources with merchants is historical and funny to get it the trade world)
With a half way(reduce quantity of.merchants and you have it in importants buildings as guilts, trade centers, capitals...)

[Lifthrasir]

Don't you think it might give an advantage to developped factions compare to the others? I mean these factions would be able to recruit merchants much earlier than some others. That would give them another advantage.
By removing them, it wouldn't change much your/the AI incomes as it would also be adjusted (see tmodelsk explanation above).
Monopoly: does it really worth it?

I can't see much difference between the current system and the "half way" one. You will still need to manage them anyhow. All in all, that's why I mentioned that merchants should stay as they are now or they should be removed entirely.

[Navajo Joe]

Lifth,

I agree 100% in that to get rid of merchants and build trade income via the buildings in the settlement.

A very good point about priests/imams, I would not be sorry to see the back of heretics, another bloody nuisance, but the Pope election from the Cardinals is problematic.

[Slaytaninc]

My opinion is also to ditch the merchants.

[umbracatervae777]

If Merchants is going to be removed and economic buildings are buffed, then i agree.

[Jurand of Cracow]

It would be fine if only Capitals or the Highest Mechant guild buildings generated a merchant

Guided by this opinion of one of the intellectual fathers of the SSHIP I’ve prepared

A proposal for a modification of the Merchants in the SSHIP


Pros and cons of the merchants – a reminder

I’ve exhaustively presented them here, this is just to sum up the main points, to include other player’s arguments, and to set them in the order of importance.

The cons:
1. require much of the micromanagement from the player. It gets very tedious as the game progresses.
2. the AI is weak at handling it and they probably don’t provide much income.
3. there're many exploits possible.
4. there’re some other negative issues: snow-ball effect strengthen, little meaningful choices provided for the gameplay, they’re not presented very historically.

The pros:
A) they add both chrome and something to the gameplay: it's another aspect of the game making the player taking care of (what’s the ultimate goal of any game).
B) the SSHIP has already a balanced income for many factions, and the merchants may play a role in it (especially at the beginning). There’re might also be other mechanics using the very existence of the merchants.
C) other issues: it makes you to appreciate your merchant guilds; it makes your faction income less stable providing with some economic swings.


Goals to be achieved

The ultimate goal is to minimize the negative impact of the “cons” on the gameplay, while keeping the positive impact of the “pros”. This means I want to:
* provide player with fun from playing with the merchants and to keep the chrome they provide,
* minimise the bad things of the player experience: the micromanagent horror, and also the use of exploits;
* keep the balance of the income in game (balance between the factions, ability of the AI to handle it);
* don’t break other mechanisms which me may be not aware of.


A proposal

The main elements of the proposal:
1) keep the merchants in game to give the players fun from dealing with them.
2) limit their numbers to such extent that there’s no micromanagement and the exploits are irrelevant (there’s not need to use them).
3) adjust economy so that the balance is kept – both at the beginning, and also later in the game.
4) don’t change anything (or almost anything) else.

Ad 1) The merchants stay in the game
To emphasize: they are just to give the player fun and chrom. The income they generate is not a major source for neither player nor the AI. It’s just an additional one. Getting a merchant will be much more difficult and it will give the player the feeling of an “achievement” (wow, I’ve upgraded the Merchant guild to a HQ and I’m rewarded!).

Ad 2) The number of the merchants is heavily cut down
Only a few buildings and events will provide the merchants (described below). I assess that during the course of the game most factions will have access to 0-2 merchants (from the Merchant guild HQ or from the other sources), few to 3-4 (if they have a Huge City located at a right spot). Only when a faction develops or conquers more large cities and especially huge cities this number can grow, again to a low numbers like 5. For instance, in my Poland’s game in turn 235 I’d have access to only 2 merchants (while now I have 17).

Ad 3) Economy adjustment
The merchants are not meant to be a source of income for the AI. For the player they’d provide marginal income of a very few percentage points of the budget. However, they’ll usually start with better stats as they’ll be available from the Merchant Guild HQ, what already gives bonuses to their stats.

The main compensation for cutting down the number of the merchants will come from the increase the trade income. I think that the adjustment should be reasonable, but not as high as tmodelsk proposed. It’s for three reasons. First, the initial merchants will stay in place so the initial balance is upheld. Second, the AI is (probably) bad at handling the merchants so it doesn’t require much compensation for not having merchants later in the game. Third, there’ll still be a few merchants in the game providing some income. All in all, I think the ratio of 1.3 to 1.5 would be sufficient.

The starting positions of the factions don’t require any changes. The initial merchants will stay in place as they are. At the beginning their numbers are not a problem – each faction has 1 (or maybe some 2). After a number of turns, they'll start to die out. In practice they will be not replaced unless the faction has a relevant building. Dying out is not a problem as the AI is not perfect at re-sending its merchants onto the same (valuable) places, and it’ll be compenstated as the previous paragraph describes.

Ad 4) No change in the other aspects of the game
The changes will be easy to implement. They just requires:
- deleting some entries in the buildings,
- adding them to a few other buildings,
- creating benefits for some interactive events,
- modifying the mission rewards (if possible).

It means there’ll be little disruption to the game mechanics. I don’t know if there’s something depeneding on the merchants but in theory radical deletion of all merchants may lead to unexpected CTDs.

Furthermore, later on, as the SSHIP develops and complaints/proposal for changes will be gathered, it’ll be easy to fix the flaws of the mechanism. If we just remove the merchants, then fixing issues afterwards would be more difficult.


Where do the merchants come from

‘Economic’ guilds HQs
They’re just one per faction, although it might get higher if the’re present in the cities conquered from the other factions. They are available only after a number of turns from Large Cities.
- Merchant Guild HQ
- Adventurers Guild HQ
- other economic guilds – they’re likely to appear in the next version of the SSHIP.

The Hanseatic guild poses a problem as it doesn’t have a HQ. There’re 14 provinces where you can build it, but it’s difficult for many of the cities to grow to the required level. I think it should be considered together with the buildings whether to add a merchant availability to each. I may imagine a combined condition (Hansa plus Great Market or something).

Trade buildings
There are a few trade building chains which should be analysed in the context of providing a merchant – perhaps from the highest level.
- “normal” trade building chain (the Market) shouln’t give any merchant (even though it might be considered for the highest level, in a Huge City).
- the Italian Trader. Don’t get it wrong – it’s not for the Italian trading factions, it’s for the host factions. The highest level requires Large City. I don’t think this building should provide a merchant.
- the Bank: it’s for the North- and Southeuropean nations, the highest level is for the Huge City. It might be considered, I think.
- the Slavemarket. It requires a resource present in 10 rather provincial cities, obviously, in the Middle East and North Africa. The highest level is for the Huge City. It might be considered, I think.
- the Silk Road Stop – requires a resource present in 17 provinces, with only a few of them able to get quickly to the required city: Large City. However, many of the provinces have the both slave and silk_road resources what would make them allowing more merchants. Therefore not both Slavemarket and Silk Road Stop should be included (if any).

Interactive events
- The “Trade Fairs” interactive event should give a merchant (if technically possible). In my experience the events in the SSHIP are very rare, unlike in the Deus Lo Vult or the Broken Crescent. This perhaps might be changed.
- Later other trade event might be coded.

Mission rewards
One may make a merchant appearing in the capital as a reward for a mission. Perhaps it can be conditional on the faction having not more than 3 merchants or something. Maybe we can link it somehow to the Hanseatic guild.
A primer on making it is here.


Other considerations

One may think about making something for the pagan factions. They’re underdeveloped had has little hope to have merchants soon. This might be historical, and they may conquer more developed cities giving them access to the merchants. However, if one sees it as a problem I see two ways of helping them:
- give a merchant for a building typical to a pagan faction (f.e. a temple)
- make a script giving a merchant to such a faction.

For the merchant republics (Novgorod, Venice, Pisa) we may add possibility to recruit a merchant from a normal Merchant Guild, or form lower-tire trade building (ie from a Large City), or from a port/dockyard, or from a building in a capital.

Perhaps it’d be worth/desirable to link some historical events to the appearance of the merchants.

The provinces have also a “capital” resources so it’s possible to make for each faction one merchant. However, once a faction conquers an enemy capital, it will be able to recruit this merchant (what can be somehow prevent).


The outcome

As the result of the changes:
* The underdeveloped nations will have no possibility to hire a merchant after the initial one dies. Occssionally, one be given by an interactive event or a mission. Later on such a faction would develop / conquer a Large City and perhaps get a guild HQ.
* Most of the factions (those starting with Large City or with a Minor City easily upgradable to a Large City) will have the access to 1 merchants after a number of turn (time to devlop a guild HQ), and sometimes also a second one (the second guild HQ), and occasionally another one (due to interactive event / mission);
* the big nations will have access to 1 or more merchants from their Huge Cities (if the buildings allow), plus what the smaller nations have.

All in all, it’ll be 0-3 merchants per faction throughout the early-mid game, later on only a few more. For the empires of 30 well-developed cities it will be slightly more, but not so many players get to that stage, and it also seems reasonable to have them.


So
Ok, guy, this is just my proposal for future. I think it’s reasonable and balanced, but what do you think?

[Ichon]

Hansa might be better as a straight local income trade boost as that is essentially how it was historically- there weren't Hansa merchants traveling to Constantinople or competing with Italian city states for eastern trade. It also should boost some of the smaller cities of the northern areas per income being lower due to population size.

Being restricted to capitals will let even small factions have at least 1 merchant and would represent the elite wanting to import some luxury goods while Great Markets (if that is the highest market building?) will let some of the larger cities add another merchant showing some of the advantages a few of the largest cities obtained as market makers in trade of luxuries and exotic goods. It would also nearly eliminate the stacking etc since most factions would have access to less than 2-3 merchants for most of a campaign.

Making up for the income of merchants could be just a small trade building modifier boost though keep in mind that will make large cities even more powerful since all those modifiers tend to be stacked against population size so perhaps increasing mines or something else or even simply increase King's Purse a small amount. Really even without merchants I don't think income is going to really suffer unless people were exploiting them anyway.

[tmodelsk]

[....]

The outcome

As the result of the changes:
* The underdeveloped nations will have no possibility to hire a merchant after the initial one dies. Occssionally, one be given by an interactive event or a mission. Later on such a faction would develop / conquer a Large City and perhaps get a guild HQ.
* Most of the factions (those starting with Large City or with a Minor City easily upgradable to a Large City) will have the access to 1 merchants after a number of turn (time to devlop a guild HQ), and sometimes also a second one (the second guild HQ), and occasionally another one (due to interactive event / mission);
* the big nations will have access to 1 or more merchants from their Huge Cities (if the buildings allow), plus what the smaller nations have.

All in all, it’ll be 0-3 merchants per faction throughout the early-mid game, later on only a few more. For the empires of 30 well-developed cities it will be slightly more, but not so many players get to that stage, and it also seems reasonable to have them.
[....]

Jurand - I like your proposal very much.
Some considerations :
.

• after nerfing total merchants number -> the merchant guild requirement need to be reworked (lowered).
  Right now there's "Merchant on resource" event that gives about 2 guild points (if I remember correctly) and it's fired on each turn, so for ex. your mentioned 17 merchants gives you 34 guild points each turn.
• I will give every faction at least one merchant regardless guild buildings available - just for fun, to little populate map with merchants, etc.

[Lifthrasir]

I've made a poll for the 2 next weeks. So people can vote. That should be easier that way

Regarding merchants, I vote to remove them. I can't see the point of JoC's proposal and I'm afraid that it will be too much in favor of the big factions (and so bad for the gameplay). I'm also afraid that it would increase the complexity of that feature for nothing.

I'm in favor to remove them and to rework the guilds system which is completely inaccurate as well.

[j.a.luna]

Mmm in my opinion i like the idea of Jurand and i voted for his idea, reworked merchants( less merchants in game and play a important role) and also reworked guilts
Lifth, can you explain more your opinion? I dont like remove merchants due tolo i think they give inmersion and funny for the game and it would be eliminate a strat model( less figures in the campaign map)

[Navajo Joe]

​Voted, you know where I stand on this one

[Jurand of Cracow]

Yes, I think some arguments pro and contra for the other options (I think I've made my case quite clear) would be helpful to make an informed choice.

Plus I'm quite interested how the results will be interpreted. The options are: radical (remove) - middle ground (limit the numbers) - radical (leave as they are).
How would be following results interpeted: 3 - 4 - 5.
On one handl the radical solution wins, on the other two "opposit" ones win if taken together into account.

[Lifthrasir]

I don't expect to have much votes for the 1st choice but I might be wrong
If merchants are considered more annoying than good for the game, what's the point of keeping them even in limited amount?

Regarding the guilds, I have already given some inputs. Guilds should be separated in 2 main categories: the craftmen and the merchants. Each of these categories should be also divided in subcategories such as butchers, bakers, blacksmith, etc on one side and like clothes, corn, weapons, etc on the other.
Both main categories should bring bonus and penalties and first of all, be always in competition. For instance, if the player wants to develop the corn merchants then it might improve the incomes from farm. On the other hand, he will also increase unrest somehow to represent peasants underpaid for their harvest and bakers paying the high price for their raw material.

That's just an example and it can/should be "polished" but at least, you've got the idea

On top of that, I think that a bank system woud complete the diagram.

[j.a.luna]

I don't expect to have much votes for the 1st choice but I might be wrong
If merchants are considered more annoying than good for the game, what's the point of keeping them even in limited amount?

Regarding the guilds, I have already given some inputs. Guilds should be separated in 2 main categories: the craftmen and the merchants. Each of these categories should be also divided in subcategories such as butchers, bakers, blacksmith, etc on one side and like clothes, corn, weapons, etc on the other.
Both main categories should bring bonus and penalties and first of all, be always in competition. For instance, if the player wants to develop the corn merchants then it might improve the incomes from farm. On the other hand, he will also increase unrest somehow to represent peasants underpaid for their harvest and bakers paying the high price for their raw material.

That's just an example and it can/should be "polished" but at least, you've got the idea

On top of that, I think that a bank system woud complete the diagram.

Mmm this is other case my friend...if you do this for the next version is pretty interesant and it can remove the figure of merchants...but i continue thinking in a medium possibility...

[Jurand of Cracow]

If merchants are considered more annoying than good for the game, what's the point of keeping them even in limited amount?

I think that they add both chrome for the game and something to the gameplay: it's another aspect of the game making the player taking careing of. Many people like them even with the annoyances. Futhermore, a good game-crafting is based on giving the players "rewards" for their actions - even if sometimes the rewards are of little value. By assigning a Merchant to a guild HG or a mission or an interactive event, I had in mind providing for this kind reward (this would be very small part of the budget). All in all, my proposal is based on saving the positive experience of the player while removing the annoyance: micromanagement and mishandling by the AI.

JoC's proposal and I'm afraid that it will be too much in favor of the big factions (and so bad for the gameplay). I'm also afraid that it would increase the complexity of that feature for nothing

I can't see why it would be the case - on both aspects.
Big factions - there're might be only one HQ per faction (unless conquered from another faction) so irrespectively if a faction has 5 or 20 settlements, there're still be 1 Merchant HQ (or 2 - if for the Adventurers guild is taken into account). If we include more guilds - it'll be more, but still I don't see too much favour for the big ones.
Increased complexity - where's this additional complexity than it's already in the game? The apperance of the merchants is simply dependent on another buildings (or on missions), and because there'd be less merchants, the complexity would be lower.

On the guilds - I don't think we've discussed them at all, and we will have to take whatever MWY prepares for us, good or bad. I just wanted to make some more use of them. But if manage to make him something according to your thoughts, that's all right.