Stockpiles are only for market leaders- what's your opinion?

[ero_sk]

Johan said that stockpiles are only for market leaders. What's your opinion about this?

This might be me not understanding what markets (or stockpiles) really represent, but the idea of only market leaders being able to stockpile goods doesn't sound right to me. It prevents non-market leaders from stockpiling goods to prepare for wars, but also puts the market leader at advantage if it goes to war with one of its neighbours in the same market. Still, I truly hope that I'm missing something here and there are some good reasons for this decision and that it will make sense gameplay-wise. I just don't see how right now.

 

[Ispil]

It's a stockpile for the market, not any one country in it. It is owned by the owner of the market center (not the same thing as the market leader), but the way that it works (given all other description) is that the goods flow out from the stockpile to the market center, and then out to the locations in that market.

They're a market-level thing, not something that only the market center owner benefits from. When you're under siege, presumably you're cut off from the market no matter who you are. They're not about wartime sieges, but for handling flux in trade supply and demand to "smooth over" things like winter.

 

[Álvaro Núñez de Lara]

As Ispil explained, the stockpiles are for all the market members benefit, not just the owner of the stockpile building.

 

[Kaspar Osraige]

I think, and do not take this personally, a lot of people think about markets like Vicky 3 markets. When they should be thought of as EU4 trade nodes, just dynamic. They do not really have a national affiliation, but are rather a fact of nature thing.

 

[Ispil]

That and trade goods are location->market->market->location, with maybe more market chaining in-between. The state is the one initiating market trade, but the goods don't go to any given state: they go to the market, and then to the locations in that market.

 

[Mef]

I think, and do not take this personally, a lot of people think about markets like Vicky 3 markets. When they should be thought of as EU4 trade nodes, just dynamic. They do not really have a national affiliation, but are rather a fact of nature thing.

They don't work like EU4 trade nodes, though. There isn't some abstract 'trade value', you have actual goods being produced and consumed.

 

[Álvaro Núñez de Lara]

That and trade goods are location->market->market->location, with maybe more market chaining in-between. The state is the one initiating market trade, but the goods don't go to any given state: they go to the market, and then to the locations in that market.

This. And the based on trade power within the market, those trade goods in the market get distributed between its participants.

 

[Mef]

This. And the based on trade power within the market, those trade goods in the market get distributed between its participants.

No, they get distributed in order based on market access. Merchant Power is for the order in which exports are executed.

 

[PK_AZ]

Also, it seems to me that player can create new market basically on the whim (by building building; getting other location join marked is different thing, through)

 

[Mef]

Also, it seems to me that player can create new market basically on the whim (by building building; getting other location join marked is different thing, through)

Johan said that you can create a new market center for 1000 gold (not final values obviously) but if that market can't influence a lot of locations around it, then it would be a pretty bad investment.
Of course, if you're on the edge of another market and don't get access to the goods you need, it might be your only choice.

I would imagine it being very frustrating if you can't get access to basic construction materials because everyone else in the market gobbles them up before you. If you make your own market, you would at least have guaranteed access to those.

 

[Ispil]

Also, it seems to me that player can create new market basically on the whim (by building building; getting other location join marked is different thing, through)

I think the cost was stated to be 1000 gold, so it's not necessarily cheap. Though it is also quite likely to end up screwing you over in the long run if you wind up depriving yourself of convenient trade goods from the previous market that you happened to share.

 

[bokorthedust]

This. And the based on trade power within the market, those trade goods in the market get distributed between its participants.

I'm not so sure about this part. From how I understood it, trade power plays a part only in inter-market trades, intra-market is based purely on each location's market access.

 

[Álvaro Núñez de Lara]

I'm not so sure about this part. From how I understood it, trade power plays a part only in inter-market trades, intra-market is based purely on each location's market access.

Yes, I got the concepts mixed! Too many new concepts.

Though not sure how you do it intra market based on market access though. So if you are further away you go after others closer? I mean thats fine as long as there are ways to directly increase your market access.

Also if two countries have the same market access how is it decided? On the map market access seems to be very uniform around the same distance.

 

[Ispil]

Yes, I got the concepts mixed! Too many new concepts.

Though not sure how you do it intra market based on market access though. So if you are further away you go after others closer? I mean thats fine as long as there are ways to directly increase your market access.

Also if two countries have the same market access how is it decided? On the map market access seems to be very uniform around the same distance.

I think the ways mentioned to increase it included things like building roads and the like.

 

[bokorthedust]

Yes, I got the concepts mixed! Too many new concepts.

Though not sure how you do it intra market based on market access though. So if you are further away you go after others closer? I mean thats fine as long as there are ways to directly increase your market access.

Also if two countries have the same market access how is it decided? On the map market access seems to be very uniform around the same distance.

Countries don't really matter inside the market, the market access of their locations does. So if two locations have the same market access value (though that could be rare, given that the game operates with two decimal points for most calculations), I guess something like tag order in EU4 could be the ultimate deciding factor for who gets the last grain of grain if it comes to that.

 

[Johan]

I'm not so sure about this part. From how I understood it, trade power plays a part only in inter-market trades, intra-market is based purely on each location's market access.

You are correct.

 

[Johan]

Countries don't really matter inside the market, the market access of their locations does. So if two locations have the same market access value (though that could be rare, given that the game operates with two decimal points for most calculations), I guess something like tag order in EU4 could be the ultimate deciding factor for who gets the last grain of grain if it comes to that.

Technically its 5 decimals, but yeah.. if thats a tie, its either lowest location id, or highest.. (I can't recall what the algoritm uses)

 

[Thorum]

Technically its 5 decimals,

Glad to hear there's hidden decimals to stop rounding errors from accumulating with the huge amount of locations

 

[ero_sk]

Thanks for all the answers, especially @Kaspar Osraige and his hint at thinking more in terms of trade nodes in EU4 than markets in Vicky 3.

This leads me to next question though. And by no means am I criticizing this approach, I'm just genuinely curious as I might have been thinking of markets in too modern terms where a market is more of a country-oriented concept. With the way markets are implemented in Project Caesar (and by slight extension trade notes in EU4), what sort of historical trade dynamics do they represent, even if in abstracted way? Are there some canonical examples for multiple markets in a single country (apart from colonial territories)?

 

[Ekyman]

This leads me to next question though. And by no means am I criticizing this approach, I'm just genuinely curious as I might have been thinking of markets in too modern terms where a market is more of a country-oriented concept. With the way markets are implemented in Project Caesar (and by slight extension trade notes in EU4), what sort of historical trade dynamics do they represent, even if in abstracted way? Are there some canonical examples for multiple markets in a single country (apart from colonial territories)?

I think it represents the flow goods around local trade networks and into long-distance trade networks (and vice versa). That is, the idea that trade moves around locally and eventually some amount of goods ends up at some sort of center of trade (and I use that term very generally), where it enters the long-distance trade networks. And in reverse, the idea that long-distance trade sends goods to trading hubs (again, used generally) and from there it the goods circulate around the local trade networks to where they need to go.

EU4 is the extremely abstract idea of that where goods are just gold generation, local trade towards a trading hub is just the combining of that gold in the local trade node, and long-distance trade is various countries dumping that gold into their treasury or making sure it moves in a specific direction. Caesar is the more concrete version where goods are actual goods production, local trade towards a trading hub is the transfer of goods locally and the surplus of various goods in a specific market, and long-distance trade is the export and import of specific goods to/from specific other areas that have/need those goods.

I'm certainly no expert on early modern trade but using the market map we have it makes sense to me that f. ex. a village in northwest Russia trades their goods locally towards (or in) Novgorod and then there's some surplus and there's demand for those goods in the area near Moscow so some merchants are running trade between those two trading hubs, then in Moscow the goods get sold at a local market to the people in the nearby village who want them. And of course the villages with easy access to Novgorod and Moscow have an easier time doing this sort of buying and selling than the isolated village out in the haunted forest.