Buff Caravan, River port and Market?

[eyelurker]

Currently trading building doesn't really doing anything to affect your income, they usually only have miniscule gain of like +50 assuming the settlement has a decent trading income

The only trading building that are useful are Market and that's because some public building are locked unless you build/upgrade until you reach Market in addition Market serve as training ground for spy and assasin. However anything past that give more law debuff(more corruption) while give little in return.

Any consideration to give this building fixed income of about +500 or +1000 depend on tier since right now trade building are too expensive,time consuming, gving you law debuff and it rewards with essentialy nothing except utility function for Market case.

[Shoebopp]

Seconded. As of right now, the only real point of building markets... is to unlock Hellenistic Poleis or Academy. Those trade buildings, as eyelurker suggested, need value in of itself

[Shoebopp]

I'm not sure if a fixed income bonus fits the fixed income system in place. Right now, the sum of all the walls' upgrades' fixed income bonuses (1300) and the sum of all buildings requiring maintenance cancel each other out. This may be intentional, so giving the trade markets a fixed income bonus might throw things out of wack. Then again, Pergamon's Un/Supervised Hellenic Administration equivalents give fixed income bonuses...


A possible solution that follows some rules of good gameplay is to drastically buff the trade_base_income_bonus. According to https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/archi...p/t-70877.html, each point increases the current trade by 10%. This kind of multiplier forces the player to make choices: should I spend a huge amount of mnai upgrading this region's trade by a multiplicative factor? Does this region even have good trade income? But if it does, would building higher levels of markets destabilize the region?


The math regarding trade vs corruption can be a bit weird. In general, a +1 trade_base_income_bonus increases income by up to 150 for a decent 24000+ size coastal settlement, while -1 law decreases overall income by 150 for a faraway settlement. So the max level of markets (+5 trade, -3 law) would normally give just 300 mnai. Of course, many other situations can arise from this.


The settlement could have less than zero law, so the law malus would have no effect on this lawless hellhole. You'd get the 750 mnai trade. Of course, if this settlement is far from your capital, the corruption would become obscene, but corruption can also be capped. On the other hand, if this settlement is right next to your capital, then all the more power to you.


I personally find the law penalty good for gameplay reasons. It forces the player to think ahead where to build clusters of markets in their empire. However, the trade_base_income_bonus should be buffed to increase the number of settlements in the average empire that would generate more income from a higher level market. The proposed implementation is: +1 trade for levels that don't introduce a law penalty, +2 trade if it does. Overall, level 5 markets would net you +8 trade and -3 law. For a huge city not too far away from the core of your empire, that's an easy 750 mnai per turn. The total cost of upgrading to level 5 markets is 36000 mnai, so this is roughly the equivalent of upgrading a mine to level 2 in the Iranian Plateau.

What do you think?

[eyelurker]

I'm not sure if a fixed income bonus fits the fixed income system in place. Right now, the sum of all the walls' upgrades' fixed income bonuses (1300) and the sum of all buildings requiring maintenance cancel each other out. This may be intentional, so giving the trade markets a fixed income bonus might throw things out of wack. Then again, Pergamon's Un/Supervised Hellenic Administration equivalents give fixed income bonuses...


A possible solution that follows some rules of good gameplay is to drastically buff the trade_base_income_bonus. According to https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/archi...p/t-70877.html, each point increases the current trade by 10%. This kind of multiplier forces the player to make choices: should I spend a huge amount of mnai upgrading this region's trade by a multiplicative factor? Does this region even have good trade income? But if it does, would building higher levels of markets destabilize the region?


The math regarding trade vs corruption can be a bit weird. In general, a +1 trade_base_income_bonus increases income by up to 150 for a decent 24000+ size coastal settlement, while -1 law decreases overall income by 150 for a faraway settlement. So the max level of markets (+5 trade, -3 law) would normally give just 300 mnai. Of course, many other situations can arise from this.


The settlement could have less than zero law, so the law malus would have no effect on this lawless hellhole. You'd get the 750 mnai trade. Of course, if this settlement is far from your capital, the corruption would become obscene, but corruption can also be capped. On the other hand, if this settlement is right next to your capital, then all the more power to you.


I personally find the law penalty good for gameplay reasons. It forces the player to think ahead where to build clusters of markets in their empire. However, the trade_base_income_bonus should be buffed to increase the number of settlements in the average empire that would generate more income from a higher level market. The proposed implementation is: +1 trade for levels that don't introduce a law penalty, +2 trade if it does. Overall, level 5 markets would net you +8 trade and -3 law. For a huge city not too far away from the core of your empire, that's an easy 750 mnai per turn. The total cost of upgrading to level 5 markets is 36000 mnai, so this is roughly the equivalent of upgrading a mine to level 2 in the Iranian Plateau.

What do you think?

It doesn't quite work in pastoral or nomad region because at best you can only build lv1road which greatly limit the capability to trade so buffing trade goods wouldn't do mich good here.

I also need to check the value roads and ports because pretty sure they can score a lot higher because road and trade fleets still beats the bonus market or sometimes even mines would have but i need to check it first.

Also river port still poor it gives +2 trade -1 law

[Shoebopp]

It doesn't quite work in pastoral or nomad region because at best you can only build lv1road which greatly limit the capability to trade so buffing trade goods wouldn't do mich good here.

I also need to check the value roads and ports because pretty sure they can score a lot higher because road and trade fleets still beats the bonus market or sometimes even mines would have but i need to check it first.

Also river port still poor it gives +2 trade -1 law

trade_base_income_bonus (markets, caravans, river ports, port garrison) buffs ALL trade, while trade_level_bonus (roads, Hellenic Administrations) only buff land trade. So caravans still help coastal nomadic regions like pre-conversion Skythiapolis and Paniardis.

[eyelurker]

trade_base_income_bonus (markets, caravans, river ports, port garrison) buffs ALL trade, while trade_level_bonus (roads, Hellenic Administrations) only buff land trade. So caravans still help coastal nomadic regions like pre-conversion Skythiapolis and Paniardis.

The best nomad trade i could have is like 200. With the same time and less money i could upgrade my farm and herd to produce 1500 farm income.

Nomad and trade just doesn't quite work out for now.

[Shoebopp]

Fair point. I'd say that nomads are better suited to farming, but according to special buildings like the Gold Route, the steppe nomads engaged in pretty lucrative long-distance land trade. I would have affected settlements enjoy a trade_level_bonus (huge land trade multiplier) instead of a trade_base_income_bonus (modest overall trade multiplier). That would solve the pointlessness of nomadic trade buildings. I think that trade_base_income_bonus still works for settled markets and port garrisons and river ports, though.

[eyelurker]

Fair point. I'd say that nomads are better suited to farming, but according to special buildings like the Gold Route, the steppe nomads engaged in pretty lucrative long-distance land trade. I would have affected settlements enjoy a trade_level_bonus (huge land trade multiplier) instead of a trade_base_income_bonus (modest overall trade multiplier). That would solve the pointlessness of nomadic trade buildings. I think that trade_base_income_bonus still works for settled markets and port garrisons and river ports, though.

I have checked how much effect trade income bonus effect on trade. While Road(especially highway) and Ports does the heavy lifting on trade income, building all trade building increase trade up to 50% and sometime even double the trade income.

Ultimately trade income is more of a "win more" type of building, useless on their own but if you have high income in trade it will substantialy increased it.

Unfortunately i don't think that was enough since it only benefit at mid game where you're faction is secured. Building Mine, industry, ports and roads gives a much more immidiate benefit.

Although something i realize that the bulk of my economy are done by war since conquering stuff give loot, taxes and more trade. The most obvious example are Seleucid and Ptoleamy both share similiar size starting army composition but Seleucid start with +50 income/turn while Ptoelamy start -3500 incone/turn