Remember merchant placement

[honkajoki]

You get a merchant for having trade power in a trade company region. You place the merchant somewhere. Someone else gets more trade power and you lose the merchant. Someone loses trade power and you again get a merchant. You place the merchant. As trade power fluctuates, this gets repeated maybe every other month. It can be annoying having to do the same thing over and over again, no real decisions to be made, just mechanically repeating previous ones.

When a merchant is lost, the game should remember where it was and what it was doing. Then, when a merchant is gained, the game should check if it has data on previous merchant placement, and if so, automatically place the "new" merchant there. Perhaps even remember this for several merchants.

While at it, this is also worth considering. Didn't post this on that thread as I think my suggestion is a bit broader, and the forum warns against posting to an "old" thread.

 

[annulen]

Then, when a merchant is gained, the game should check if it has data on previous merchant placement, and if so, automatically place the "new" merchant there

This behavior can be undesirable and annoying in case of distant trade nodes. For example, if I had merchant somewhere far in New World (because I wanted to apply trading policy there), I may not need merchant in the same node again several months later. However, it's not possible to return merchant back before they arrive to destination which would result in a couple of months lost. Also, it's often possible to save merchant travel time by moving merchants from nearby nodes instead of sending unoccupied merchant directly to the "new" node. Having an alert flag that merchant became available is quite enough to dispatch this.

Sure, if merchant is removed often because of trade power fluctuations it can be annoying, however it's not a normal situation. Most of the time you can defend from fluctuation by creating "reserve" of trade company's trade power so it stays well above 51%, simply by building a few more marketplaces in area with trade power investment.

 

[honkajoki]

If that behavior would be undesirable in some cases, then it would be best to have an on-off toggle for it. I still think there are times when it would be useful.

 

[heroes133]

I think the better way to fix this issue would be to change the merchant in a way so when you get a new one from Trade Company you get him for 5 years, after this time if the trade power is less then 50% you lose the merchant but in those 5 years no matter what happens you can't lose him.

 

[honkajoki]

I think the better way to fix this issue would be to change the merchant in a way so when you get a new one from Trade Company you get him for 5 years, after this time if the trade power is less then 50% you lose the merchant but in those 5 years no matter what happens you can't lose him.

A possible downside to this would be that within those 5 years, many countries can momentarily go over 50% and gain merchants. Thus the total number of merchants in the game world would be higher, and gains received from a single merchant lower. 50% trade power would be more significant than now, compared to other sources or merchants. Also, some players would likely learn to game the mechanic and get an extra merchant from every possible node, giving them advantage over AI and multiplayer players not doing the same. While I don't play multiplayer myself, I suppose that might create more hassle there than the current situation.

I suppose the balance problem is solvable, or simply ignorable, and thus this might be a nice solution for single player. I'd like it better than current situation. Someone more knowledgeable on multiplayer can comment on that. However, I don't think there's much difference in coding effort between this and my suggestion.