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[Ardas]

Sounds great. I actually wanted to build a merchant haven/single city state once my guild would catch on, that would facilitate huge amount of trade and be sorta like Venice or Lubeck. Or Vasir.

it will probably take time and loadsa money, but if there is some unlcaimed land on the coast, we could combine the two ideas and have ourselves first metropolitan city in the enlightment style.
there will be probably a lot of conflict with SCTG, but bigger they are, the harder they fall. At least peope will stop crying about me trying to rob the royal treasury.

[vagel7]

Fil, there is a huge gang of people running towards the tavern. My assassin-senses are telling me that they are not friendly.

[Terenos]

As a noble I can administer lands (1 D/y per parcel..Meh.), Raise troops from that land, (which I can barely pay for).
As a merchant I can make ridiculous profits inside of 5 seasons. I can simply buy cargo space or acquire a mighty navy. I can acquire raider promotions and steal the manpower to acquire an army.  Or just hire mercenaries. Look at the system, theres no limitation on Merchants except coin, and thats freely flowing.

The system needs addressing. And soon, as it is fairly broken. If you doubt its brokenness look at the personal coffers of the merchants, and at the coffers of Elbreth. And yknow what? There is nothing we can do, to improve our finances based on land. Under the current rules, our ~30D/year is all we're damn well getting(Barring conquest). If you want to cite historical precedent, I believe the only things I need to say are Agriculture. Though if pressed I may have to go so far as saying Animal Husbandry.

I'm not asking for absolute balance. That would reduce the joy of both sides. But when we were doing just fine without merchants, then merchants were introduced and their sudden profits became a requirement to get our hands on. Well that changes the scope of things, and can make those of us who joined in the beginning feel a bit left out.
Let me reiterate my point, the wealth of merchants is redefining every part of this game And they are removing the need for the nobility.

What is necessary is for each side to have separate means of advancement of their wealth. As a nation we are limited severely in our methods of advancement. As a merchant, wealth flows easily and freely. And with that wealth can come everything. We can as players, impose some rules against merchants gaining the same power as nobility. But clearly a merchant can become a military power (See SCTG). How pray tell, can we nobles gain this same level of power within the current rule structure? We cannot. And we therefore must seek an alteration of the rules. I, personally prefer nerfs, to buffs. Its easier to maintain control of something spiraling out of control that way. But I view the creation of a path for nobility to increase their wealth as required.

In addition, I would advise you keep from making any number specific proposals Ardas, until we know if things are going to change. Also.. I don't think you're gonna get your monopoly.  Too much opposition, as you may recall.

[CyberGenesis]

The easy option is just to tax the crap out of merchants, but as Terenos said a balance is more preferable

With the changes i proposed, i've already evened out the gains to be roughly 30/yr for merchants, but that is of course on Tier 1 goods, and the gains are multiplied by the tier, but can also be evened out by making the tiers cost more while maintaining the same increments.

Again, the issues are negated by the fact that we have nothing we can spend money on. Who of us is going to just -give- money to a noble? Loans? Sure, but there lies the issue that we can only hire merc DEFENDERS we can't flat out hire an army and take over. Do i have plans that would be served by allying with a Noble or king? Of course i do. Would i get curbstomped if a noble descided to kick my ass for being uppity? Hells yes i would

I support the tech idea terenos gave and we've been tinkering with it. Its a decent system, and there's no reason we, as merchants, wouldnt contribute. Besides, the richer the nation, the more profits WE can make. Most of the tech ideas we have increased the value of the kingdom and doesn't affect us

If all i can spend money on is making more money, that'll get boring really fast. I'm not opposed to 20% taxes if it's getting put to use. Problem here is that with the changes i proposed before taxes are going to start to hurt more and more. 10% tax on a 1.2d sale (2inc gain) is .12d, leaving only .08d over base. Given that ideally you only paid .8, thats still only a .28 profit per good sold, .56d per 2 hold ship, 3.36d per season so 13.44 per year assuming stable and maximum gains. So realistically somewhere around 10d for a merchant in a year, per ship.

[Iituem]

Not enough time to do a post tonight, tired out from school, but I have rebalancing the trading system high on the priority list.  It is pretty much flat out broken right now - landed nobility really should be making more money than merchants right now, especially given the level of development of most of the cities and provinces we're dealing with.

So yes - complete system rework needed for that.

[CyberGenesis]

But to make them richer, you simply need to increase the gains off land. Unless you want to start only allowing resources to be purchased that are produced in an area, and allow the nobles to start developing their area to produce goods. Makes us purchase the goods from them, giving them direct income beyond their land taxes

[Ardas]

The easiest fix would be to simply lower the amount of available cash that each city has in a season. Also, crank up the costs for goods transport and storage and you are set. I believe that no substantial taxes have been paid so far and again, most of the money in my case at least was a years of poor trades and hoarding of money to get to the amount needed by a guild. Try fixing it by adjusting the numbers, not rules. Also, the money that nobles get should be incerased, be it by rules and an actual technological take-off with new farming methods and crops brought from overseas and so on. Also, taxes and royalties. I keep talking about my desire for monopoly, but that would give the king a reason to keep the merchants around and they would contribute with a lump sum in exchange every year.
the guilds can and should be taxed, but first you should let someone create one, and then we could adjust the profits.

One thing to be mindful of though is to not overdo it too much and make traders outright unable to make the profit. The game hs been concentrating on this issue too much though, that is true.
CG, try fiddling with the base figures, like the trade allowance in cities and the upkeep for ships. We haven't got any costs running yet, so it would be foolish to simply axe everything and then fiddle with things again when they break.

[filiusenox]

Anything important happening besides my impending death/injury and the same old arguement?

[micelus]

Nope.

[filiusenox]

Hey Micelus, you know Kain would help Locanil build his city if Locanil asked, right?
He likes scholars. And he's a moderately good architect.

[micelus]

Great.


This is all long-term stuff though; still in the Storm Coast after all.

[CyberGenesis]

The easiest fix would be to simply lower the amount of available cash that each city has in a season. Also, crank up the costs for goods transport and storage and you are set. I believe that no substantial taxes have been paid so far and again, most of the money in my case at least was a years of poor trades and hoarding of money to get to the amount needed by a guild. Try fixing it by adjusting the numbers, not rules. Also, the money that nobles get should be incerased, be it by rules and an actual technological take-off with new farming methods and crops brought from overseas and so on. Also, taxes and royalties. I keep talking about my desire for monopoly, but that would give the king a reason to keep the merchants around and they would contribute with a lump sum in exchange every year.
the guilds can and should be taxed, but first you should let someone create one, and then we could adjust the profits.

One thing to be mindful of though is to not overdo it too much and make traders outright unable to make the profit. The game hs been concentrating on this issue too much though, that is true.
CG, try fiddling with the base figures, like the trade allowance in cities and the upkeep for ships. We haven't got any costs running yet, so it would be foolish to simply axe everything and then fiddle with things again when they break.

We cant. Lowering the avail of a city lessens the number of players that can be supported. Fiddling with the gains each player can make however only limits them personally.

Already i've got it down to 30/yr not including upkeeps. Increasing upkeep cant be safely done as it would affect nobles as well.

Further Proposal:
Any produced good in a region is obviously being sold from surplus of the harvest/storage that season of whatever isn't used internally. It obviously comes from the lands of the nobles.
Proposal to even things out: 50% of sales to the noble(s) of the city (half of which would go to the king in taxes already. Said taxes can be 'paid' retcon as part of the normal taxes, so there's no "I decided not to pay my taxes and raise an army greater than the king's this year")
-Kings already get taxes off the profits of the nobles
--Nobles now have an incentive to sell their goods and keep their taxes less than extortionate

Businessness inside said cities need to consume the 'sales potential' of a city's goods.
-Each unit purchased by the owner, while cheaper, eats up the avail in the city, but as the business owner would likely be doing this by purchasing directly at the source, a lot of middleman is cut out, increasing the % to the nobles by 25, to 75%. The other 25% goes into the market allowance for the season as usual

Certain goods/types should be used for higher tiers
-Metals into Tools and arms
-Staples into processed foods/luxuries (grapes into wine, etc)
-Wool/Raw Silk into Cloth/silk (silk being actually a luxury, raw being an industry)

The affect of this is not only to limit the fungible goods in a city, but also to remove goods from the sales

It sounds like it adds more bookkeeping, it really doesn't. After running a few random rolls for all of this, nothing really changed in the bookkeeping.

[King_of_the_weasels]

I was working on a system a while ago that required resources for basically everything, but I gave up because I wanted too many variables and couldn't figure out how get the procedural generation right.


I wanted you to find a plant in a forest, then roll for every detail of the plant so the world was 100% unique.


But on note, Filius you need to get a corpse to dissect so I can move to a bigger space.

[CyberGenesis]

We already have the basis for things to be done this way. Doing it removes possible income for merchants, and gives landed nobles income. Course those without land now have a reason to try and get some.

[Ardas]

CG, you are one step ahead with everything already. But yes, the goods tax proposal for the nobles makes sense. And 30d/year is a max figure, not the absolute minimum that each trader will make regardless of the situation, so I think that it should be left at that. Factor in potential costs and any taxes that nobles might be interested in levying and flat payments for any privileges or monopolies and it looks reasonable already. The only way a merchant would make more than 30d is if one found their way to the spice islands and started shipping a load of the stuff from there.

Overall, I will go with anything that CG will implement. I just hope that both sides will see the benefit of granting economic rights and privileges to traders. Again, these things weren't for free, and if Erik were to grant me a monopoly, I would pay him incerasingly bigger sums as the kingdom got bigger and my business expanded (obviously nothing crippling though).