Iron, Noobs, and Raiders.

[Xanthic]

  It's funny, as my camp has grown I've realized more and more how important iron is. We were blessed to get both a tin mine, and bronze mine, however iron was not so lucky.
  Now it's become that we have to outsource to try to find Iron, (joy I'm sure some of you see where this is going), and deal with various Iron traders. Some have been alright, some have been much less than desireable in their trading offers.
  Bricks have been requested by some, however over any kind of a distance carting two chests of bricks end up being worth nothing to these iron traders and hence mean a convoy of multiple boats and players are required to travel over the considerable distance. Granted, I give credit, that's probably one of the most generous of materials that at least can be obtained with relative ease.
  Pearls now that they're in the game have become a trade option too. But at a 1% chance of finding them, and sketchy even on the circumstances of how I obtain them it's become a rather hard objective too. Let alone I even cringe to think of how many of them it would take to even get enough iron to build a brick wall, let alone to make a gate.
  Cavebulbs are another trade option, to some still though even they've gone down in desire. These are somewhat hard to obtain but from what I understand even two chests of them won't net much iron. So for a moderate sized camp, with a grouping of players not power-leveled to be able to find them we're kind of hard-pressed to gather that much to gain even that.
  Beautiful as it is, the worst of it all and even as one so kindly pointed out... iron dealers so rarely even need anything much past the beginning of their trading. So, why fleece everyone so heavily? Are there even any less greedy iron dealers out there that remember that iron is a pretty rare resource most of us can't get access to? Once you're at endgame or reaching that point, why are you still hording? Do they even remember when they were a struggling village? Before the iron mine? All of them couldn't have started next to one.
  In reflection it begins to make sense to me why so many people become raiders. If I were to go out and get mauled by a bear, let my character die and redistribute my points to combat I'd be in great position to actually do something about it. As many have pointed out there becomes less and less penalty for being a raider too. But I hate raiders, and how they screw over what people work on. However I'm starting to see this as a more viable option. At least raiding I'd actually stand a chance of getting my hands on these goods that people hoard. Noting other threads, if I die I can just come back with minimal penalty and try again.

  On an off note, my sympathies go out to every camp that doesn't even have tin / copper to make bronze. I can't even begin to imagine the sad boat you sit in.

[sabinati]

uh you should be able to trade your copper and tin for iron

[Xanthic]

  You want my copper and tin for iron? I'm open to the idea. No one has ever asked for that from us, and I always go through the whole list of what we can offer with people.

[Lothaudus]

Sounds like distance is your biggest pain. Any chance of trading at Constantinople? If you can get to a central place via Crossroads, you can pop back and forth pretty quick. Might be an issue setting up the route (we live a long way away and it's taken a bit to get villages open to setting up jump routes but we've got there in the end) but once done, you can zip up and back in no time with 2 chests a trip.

[kralmir]

id rather repair things like my plow 3 times with bronze bars then once with a iron bar considering both types can repair once but i can get severel bronze bars for 1 iron bar trading

btw, the iron mine owners own it, period. even if they had a solid iron castle there is no reason why they should do a trade in your favour, if they do theyr nice, if they dont they are just normal traders and not greedy ones like you claim.

[arriel]

btw, the iron mine owners own it, period. even if they had a solid iron castle there is no reason why they should do a trade in your favour, if they do theyr nice, if they dont they are just normal traders and not greedy ones like you claim.

Hence the raiding idea, obviously.

OP should remember that not only a raider, but stolen goods too can be tracked. So if you don`t want your own village to come under a blow, you`d need to process stolen metals elsewhere, or butcher that whole another village (as I doubt small households will be viable target for raids, they usually don`t have much metal).

[Xanthic]

  I'd like to note that my implication was that it leaves me wanting to raid. If I ever went down that road too it wouldn't be to help my old village, the village concept would be forfeit at that point. To address kralmir there, it seems he's part of a village that has access to iron. At least one of his alts are. Thuroughly I remember him making much the same complaints in village chat on his main however, prior to trying to embaress me on the forum.
  He's high and mighty now that his alt is with an iron mine city now though, mhmm. Oh well. I think only kind of furthers my point about the iron mine. It's kind of too scarce of a resource, and I still think it's massively over-horded. Whether they own it or not, I'd still think that the prices are too high. It's one of the few resources everyone can't get at, unless you want to be the slave of one of the villages with iron.
  Although I haven't looked into it, I suspect that gold and silver would send shivers down my spine too. At least those aren't metals as dependant as Iron is.

[Pansy]

What would you consider a fair price for iron?

Part of the issue I am thinking is that it is easier for an iron trader to go out and fill two chests and a boat with clay than it is for them to travel all the way to you or to some trading spot, with the iron you want, in order to pick up a similar boat with loaded chests that you have supplied. If they know of any decent clay deposit closer than the trading place it immediately is not worth the trouble, especially if they are being cautious about revealing the location of their mine.

Off hand I know of only two things that an iron trader would want from a bronze miner, and that would be tin tankards - a very low ticket item, and bronze armour and weapons which they very likely don't want at all since they can make steel armor and weapons if they have patience.

The chances are anyone who has an iron mine is a fairly well organized small group, since the iron mine is useless without support from at least one nature player, so that means they tend to be self sufficient.

There are obvious advantages to an iron miner to cultivate good relationships with their neighbours and trade with them - but these are also offset by the fact that in this game the more acquaintances you have the more vulnerable you are. Sooner or later someone you trade with will be gathering intelligence for raiding purposes.

Either this is deliberate on the devs part because they want iron scarcity to become a cause for war, or it is sub-optimal design that is inhibiting trade. My suggestion is for there to be several items that can only be made of copper, of tin and of bronze so that someone with a tin mine has more to offer than just tankards. For example we currently use clay jars to make ink and rustroot elixer. How about adding a copper vessel necessary to make some other useful potion? How about a bronze comb or strigil or epergne? How about bronze funerary figures to add value to tombstones? A copper puzzle charm that raises intelligence? A copper loom heddle that increases the durability of looms stored outside, or perhaps increases the quality of the cloth? A bunch of stuff like this would put more power into the hands of people with other types of mines, and I think that would be a good thing.

For anyone who has persevered to the end of this post, I am still interested in what you think is a fair price for iron.

[sabinati]

there's always need for mansion metal, cellar metal, chest metal, key metal, plow metal, pickaxe metal, scythe metal, etc etc etc, and besides if you don't need it yourself you can just trade it. hell i had an iron mine, a tin mine, and a copper mine, i'd still trade any of the metals for any of the other metals.

edit: there should definitely be more stuff to make exclusively with copper and tin though

[Pansy]

there's always need for mansion metal, cellar metal, chest metal, key metal, plow metal, pickaxe metal, scythe metal, etc etc etc, and besides if you don't need it yourself you can just trade it. hell i had an iron mine, a tin mine, and a copper mine, i'd still trade any of the metals for any of the other metals.

edit: there should definitely be more stuff to make exclusively with copper and tin though

It's not the need that is the problem. Lots of people need metal. It's the lack of incentive for iron metal owners to trade it out. Anything they can trade me for iron I can probably get on my own in less time and keep the production lp for myself to boot. Also, it seems to me that it won't take long before the iron mine settlement will have everything metal we want except for repair metal for the ploughs. If you had a constant need for more mansions, more cellars, more chests and more keys etc. I think you must have been living in a constantly expanding village. If I live in a settlement that isn't expanding why would I need more metal?

Of course there is always the arms race of raising the quality of the metal, but ends up only applying to certain metal items, not scythes, mansions, pickaxes, and keys, etc. But let's say that I decide every two weeks I will upgrade my bronze armor. In that case I am going to be dealing with one and only one supplier of bronze and every other settlement in the area is probably going to be out of luck for trading.

Put it another way: Name the things that a nature/industry duo with an iron mine can't supply for themselves.

Off hand I can think of tin tankards. Once trade gets off the ground very likely we will want copper coins but please don't hold your breath on how soon there will be a safe market in our neighbourhood where we can spend your coins. (Forget gold and silver. If you have gold and silver you belong to a major organized settlement and have no trouble getting iron and this problem doesn't apply to you.)