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Managing Trading

Started by Bluebird88, August 03, 2021, 10:49:44 AM

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Bluebird88

I was wondering if people might be willing to share a bit about their approach to trading. I feel like I spend a frustrating amount of time managing my trading posts, so I was hoping for some strategy ideas.

I used to focus on one major export good, which seemed to work okay, but I find it a bit dull. I'd really rather be able to produce a wider variety, but that seems to create a lot of problems for trading for me. I was using the CC specific trading posts (farm supplier, industry supplier, dry goods), but the maximum of 5 traders couldn't keep the post stocked with multiple trade goods at once. I was hoping to make a cash economy work, where I stocked the general trading post with a variety of goods and traded for coins, but the trader (so far at least) seems to max out at 750 guilders, which only covers a fraction of what I want to trade.

How do you manage? A bunch of  specialized trading posts that stock one or two items each? Larger trading posts stocking a variety of items for direct trade? Something else?

Thanks!

theonlywanderer

#1
What is your goal for trading?  You trying to get food, supplies, both?

I suspect your supply problem is on the producing side.  Some products take a long time to produce and so there just isn't enough available each time a trader shows up.

I find using firewood as my main trade good to be the most straight forward commodity.  For instance, you can use 1,000 firewoood at a value of 4 each to buy 4,000 logs at a value of 1 each if you manually trade.  If you auto trade, logs are now worth 2, but it still comes out ahead even if you get 2,000 logs for 1,000 firewood because you'll convert those 2,000 logs in to 8,000 firewood (educated workers of course).

As you continue to build up more firewood, you can stock all your traders.   Set each trade port to accept food from all 4 food groups if you want food because you never know what groups they'll bring and often they only bring 3.  So if you have 500 firewood in the trader, that's 2,000 value so you can set each food group to grab 650 value.  That way no matter which food groups show up, it has the potential to max out the trade anyway.   If you have 4 ports you change each port to have a different food group first in the list so that each group has the potential to come first so you'll maximize your chances of getting all 4 food groups.

This type of trading can pretty much make farms useless because so much food will be coming in, so your community can now focus on making other things.   There are quite a few industries in CC.

The other route is to use the firewood to trade for basic supplies so your community can turn them in to better products.   You will likely need to have farmers, but if done correctly I guess you could set it up to get both food and supplies, but supplies just cost so much more and since you can free up the manpower, it's better to produce the basic supplies all the way to finished products and then trade those off for whatever it is you need at that point.


Next you can use ditch firewood all together and go charcoal.    The amount of charcoal (55) you get from a log is amazing and the most powerful overall option even with charcoal being worth 3.    You setup as many brickworks as you need to produce charcoal and trade for more logs that you keep turning back in to way more charcoal.   Just like the firewood/log scenario above, you'll have so much charcoal you can use it to trade for everything else you need.

Again, once you get your main consistent trade good setup, your other trade ports can be setup to trade your manufactured products that aren't as plentiful.  Since they are secondary trade items, you'll be fine with whatever supply you can produce.

Bluebird88

Thanks so much for such a detailed response!

I'm usually trying to trade for tools, clothing, logs, stone, and occasional building supplies, lumber, etc. I don't think my problem is on the production end right now - for example, I can see that I  have 1000 ale in stock, but it's not making it to the trading posts before the trader comes again. I think I'm trying to stock more than the 5 traders can manage. I also have a fairly steady supply of "byproducts" that I'm trying to trade away so they don't clog up my storage barns (wool, leather, feathers, bonemeal, tallow) but I can't seem to stock enough of them to make it worth it (e.g., I'll set the TP inventory to 1000 of each - which I definitely have in storage - but when the trader arrives, I'll only have like 500 feathers to trade).

Your strategy of having one main trade good to rely on and then having the secondary products just bring in whatever they can sounds like it's probably the way to go.

theonlywanderer

Another aspect of managing stock for trade ports is to make sure the production building and storage area for each particular trade item is located as close as possible to the port it's serving.  Makes it easier for workers to move the products around.

Ale is a tough item to use for trade.  You need many breweries, which also requires massive amounts of whatever food your converting which then competes with your bannies food source and storage.   If you try to produce the cherries, for instance, it also takes large amounts of space and time for that.  Simply put, there is a lot of work involved in the chain to produce enough value for efficient trading.  To be really effective you need to trade for the cherries.  So you need however many food ports setup where you order from every single trader only cherries in order to keep the breweries stocked and working.   It's a interesting challenge to work out the ratios.

The best items to use for trade is anything that won't be in competition with the bannies.   Charcoal being the exception for reasons stated in previous comment, it's kind of over powered and there will be plenty for trade and use.






Bluebird88

That's really helpful, thanks!

brads3

i don't use the auto trading option for varius reasons.i pause the game when a trader arrives and manage what goods i want.with my setup of mixing mods, merchants bring a lot of goods that i don't need. generally my maps are villages or towns not huge cities. for the most part they try to produce what they need and trading is to get rid of un needed suppplies and to acquire seeds and livestock.

once a TP is built, i check the inventory. whatever item i plan to ship, i set the TP to half of the amount. say i am sending beeswax, i'd stock half of the amount of beeswax available at the TP.this helps compensate for the way the game scatters items all over the map. after a few years,double check this amount to make sure you are not shipping more than the bannies are producing.

we have so many mod options now thanks to the great modders over the last 5 years. use these to your advantage. trade posts that bring specific types of goods are helpful. with more TP's built, more boats arrive each year.  having multiple TP's means you have several trade goods as well.

the way the game organizes the inventory of the TP affects the way they are stocked. it does not do this alphabetically. i think the TP inventory order is based on the order the items loaded to the game. since mod orders are set for the mods to function together, there isn't really a way to change the order to help with these inventories. we must find another way to solve this issue.  let me try to explain how this causes problems. say you have the pine mod and CC. pine mod must load above. hence pine items load before the main mod items,in this case CC. when stocking the TP, the vendors will run all around the map stocking the pine mod items BEFORE stocking the CC items. it doesn't matter that you have furniture close by in high quantity. the bannies will run all the way over to get turprntine or pine boughs 1st.  when you check the trade menu of the TP, you will see the order that the items are being stocked.the vendors stock top down. they will skip to the next item in the lst when there is none of the top item or they have stocked the full amount set. if 1 is produced by the time, the vendor walks back to the TP,he will then walk bock to get that 1 item. all the while leaving the other items on the list to stock pile.

having mutliple TP's helps solve this. you can change what items each is stocking.in the case of my example, the CC items would be moved to a different TP so they would be stocked quicker. another thing that helps is using markets to help move the items closer to the TP.these too can prioritize items different than you want. there are different mods for these, hence not all markets prioritize the same items. nor do they all store the same stuff. CC markets usually store everything. a KID market will usually store mostly the items the bannies need such as food,tools,clothing.RK has a set of carts that help with the various flags. by using markets to bring speciific goods closer to the TP,  you can have more workers than 5 at the TP. you might have 5 at the TP and 4 more moving the itmes via markets. so 9 would be helping stock the TP.