Trade Village

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Long: read only if interested.

Well, there is a good deal in what Pacho says that the trade network will take shape in unpredictable ways, but I think that a planned network has a slightly better chance of succeeding than one that is left entirely to luck and chance.

There are three things that throttle trade, that I can think of off hand. One is when you can't get there so you don't bother trading. One is when you prefer not to trade at all because you don't need to because you are self sufficient and the last is when you don't trade because it is too dangerous.

Drowner is trying to address the first issue. How do we get people to where they can trade? If he's unlucky he's going to find the spot he selects for his Trade Village is the far side of the least populated end of the map, but I think Drowner has been around long enough to figure out how to place himself better than that. He might want to wait awhile before he settles on his final placement, and put himself in a midpoint between two active villages in a relatively central part of the world. And he might try to arrange to be on a large continent, to facilitate cattle droving.

I wonder if roads will ever be practical? That is something I'd like to experiment with. The only "long distance" road I know of on the old map was the road to SwampCrazed. It got a lot less traffic than it might have because nobody could easily figure out where it started. It seems to me if some road building grinders took a look at the lay out around the village Drowner plans they might be able to run some practical arteries through for people with the patience to take a cart or herd of animals. If the road turns out to be an advantage people will settle along it and make permanent homes. If it turns out to be a disadvantage they will settle along it, and then either quit or move. Experienced players may turn up their noses at the idea of any kind of travel except beer fueled teleportation but newer players looking to get their first heifer or two cast for a sausage grinder might think a long trot at slow run for an hour and a half was a nice change from harvesting q25 carrots.

And of course Drowner might well want to place himself on the very corner of the continent where two long stretches of river with many off branches meet, to encourage people to take the water road.

The success or failure of a road is one of those unpredictable things. It depends on how much crime the new map has. Is everyone going to be hiding off water, out of sight and frantically building brick walls? Or is everybody going to feel safe enough with a claim to protect things and all those eager young rangers plaintively posting on forum that they will-travel-to-get-crime-scents.

If Drowner (and other people) want trade to work they need those rangers. In the last map thieves and griefers had the upper hand. Is this because murder is more fun than solving crime? Is this because their are more nasty people in the world than kind and supportive ones? Is this because the game is still unbalanced in favour of the bad guys? I dunno.

But anyway, my answer to Drowner's first question is that mega security is the way to go. I'm sure there is a way to make spamming every village with a crossroad to get to the Trade Village reasonably safe. Put the incoming crossroad into a double brick wall with locked gates and it will be more practical to trade your way to power than it will be to sneak in, batter through the walls and steal stuff from the unguarded market place at night that only turns out to be q15 chantrelles anyway.

If he -and those interested in having trade work - can solve the security problem then the distance problem will solve itself.

It seems to me that a trade network should be trading in low-q goods much more than in high q goods. There are only so many people who can afford a q200 Thane's ring. But there might be a lot of people interested in starter seeds, or a barrel of q50 water or boatload of q62 soil.

There is one way to ensure that Drowner's village becomes a central hub. He just needs to plant a hearth fire within a brick enclosure, publically announce the hearth secret to be "Noobie" and then have an escort service leading the noobs to those roads and rivers. (He'll have to supply boats, of course, but if he accepts boats in trade people can come in with them and hearth home with the goods they trade for them.) With nice long arterial roads going out to decent territory to settle, a police force of eager young rangers glad to investigate petty crime, and all the type of materials noobs might need available for ready purchase, he'd be able to get the buyers in, I think.

Here's another suggestion. Say I want to sell 6 bars of high q steel to a purchaser who I don't know. If Drowner acts as a broker I arrive, drop my goods off to be picked up by an alt vault and go wander off to browse the market stalls or fish or something. The purchaser arrives with his goods and upon inspection his goods are picked up by yet another alt vault, before the first alt vault is summoned and delivers the steel. I then get a pm to say that my goods are ready to pick up. Handled properly Drowner ensures that I can't be mugged, nor set up my purchaser and if either one of us is bent on robbing him, well, of what? We never get access to anything except the goods we drop off until we have access to the goods that are ours already.