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Dismiss Merchant

Started by Kaldir, May 28, 2014, 01:38:53 PM

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Kaldir

It started to feel a bit live a private conversation, so it's good you jumped in here.  ;D

So far I've seen pretty consistent behaviour of the merchants (but still with very limited data). If I dismiss two at the same time, the next two for those trade posts will arrive at around the same time. It gets harder to track this behaviour though with my town growing, without writing it down (and I don't feel like that while playing yet).

I've often used the time the merchant sits there for restocking as well, and before yesterday never dismissed the merchant (didn't know I could ??? ). Now I'm often dismissing them, especially the livestock and seeds merchants since I now have everything.

salamander

Quote from: rkelly17 on May 29, 2014, 06:20:56 AM
You guys are having a very interesting conversation here. Mind if I jump in?

I'm with @Kaldir, it would be great to have some additional perspectives.

Quote from: Kaldir on May 29, 2014, 08:57:47 AM
So far I've seen pretty consistent behaviour of the merchants (but still with very limited data). If I dismiss two at the same time, the next two for those trade posts will arrive at around the same time. It gets harder to track this behaviour though with my town growing, without writing it down (and I don't feel like that while playing yet).

Unfortunately, I still haven't gone back to the game where I collected the original data -- I'm kind of anxious to see what I can get done in my current game.  It may be, though, that with the information I already have, I may have some information about the order of visits to several trading posts.  I'll look back at the original data to see if that's the case.

mariesalias

I still manually manage my trade ports and I always dismiss them when I am done with them. I agree that dismissing them seems to bring them back sooner. Occasionally, I'll be distracted with something else in the town and miss one until it has been there for awhile or leaves on its own. If you dismiss them at the same time (or very close), the do usually come back together (or very close).

nmid

@rkelly17 @salamander @Kaldir
They leave after 3 months / 1 season, as long as you don't have a trading window of that port open.
If you have it open, then they stay for ever.
I leave my fruit merchants with 30k fruit trapped, for almost 6-9 months occasionally :D.

@salamander I did read your thread about 1.75 visits per port, per year.. but when I started expecting it in my starting years of the city, I found that it wasn't that high.
I didn't actively track the visits, but it was more like 1.25 visits or about every 3 seasons.
I remember this because it made sense.. 3 seasons gap between visits + 1 season docked would be 1 trader per year.

@Kaldir May I suggest  a mini-tweak to get better traders? Save the game before the trader is about to touch your port and if you don't get a good trader, reload the game.
For the starting 5-10 years, I reload the game a number of times to get the stone/log traders that I want.


Kaldir

#19
Quote from: nmid on May 29, 2014, 10:33:52 AM
@rkelly17 @salamander @Kaldir
They leave after 3 months / 1 season, as long as you don't have a trading window of that port open.
If you have it open, then they stay for ever.
I leave my fruit merchants with 30k fruit trapped, for almost 6-9 months occasionally :D .

That is cool info. I didn't know they would stay forever. I'll might make use of that, although... (see below).

Quote from: nmid on May 29, 2014, 10:33:52 AM
@Kaldir May I suggest  a mini-tweak to get better traders? Save the game before the trader is about to touch your port and if you don't get a good trader, reload the game.
For the starting 5-10 years, I reload the game a number of times to get the stone/log traders that I want.

I know you get a random merchant with reloading, but it doesn't feel good for me personally to do that. So I just let it happen, adding to the randomness of the game and as such to the difference between games. Makes me adjust to other circumstances, especially with regards to livestock and seeds. I like to play the game that way, without getting the max out of it. Just like I hardly ever have fully optimized farms and cemeteries.
But thanks for the tip anyway. :D


Edit: the seasons reference is a bit confusing sometimes. When I talked about seasons before, I meant more like months (early spring being another season than late spring). I think @salamander was using the same reference. You however use the term season correctly. Sorry for confusing this thread with the somewhat weird season reference.

rkelly17

Thanks for the info, @nmid. Since I often only have one or two trading posts I keep the window(s) open all the time so I can add firewood as there is a surplus. I had no idea I was trapping the merchants! I suppose that this is so you can hold them while you accumulate the goods you need to trade.

nmid

Along with accumulating goods to trade out .. it's also to get free storage :P (at least in v 1.0.1 with ports having 20k weight limit).

30,000 fruit is 4 storage barns otherwise!

rkelly17

In 1.0.2 you can still use trading posts to store excess production.

nmid

Yea...60k worth of weight!
I was just saying that apart from accumalating enough buying power, you can also have a lazy way of storing 30k fruit without having to adjust the port storage settings :)

salamander

Quote from: nmid on May 29, 2014, 10:33:52 AM
@salamander I did read your thread about 1.75 visits per port, per year.. but when I started expecting it in my starting years of the city, I found that it wasn't that high.
I didn't actively track the visits, but it was more like 1.25 visits or about every 3 seasons.
I remember this because it made sense.. 3 seasons gap between visits + 1 season docked would be 1 trader per year.

I agree, the 3 season gap + 1 season docked is attractive because it gives a nice total of 1 year, and because it agrees with all of the conventional wisdom I'd ever read about how often merchants visit -- around once per year, give or take.

But, I have a fair degree of confidence in my estimate given the number of visits I tracked over the 20 years.  I'm not at all attacking your estimate.  Rather, the science geek in me wonders why we're getting such different numbers.

My tracking was done between years 66 and 86, and it sounds like you were much earlier in a game.  Could it be that there's a change in merchant frequency at some point in the game?

Or, maybe we're not quite measuring the same thing.  My working idea is that the interval between the arrival of two consecutive merchants at a trading post is divided into two parts: the amount of time spent at the dock, and the time between the merchant's departure and the arrival of the next merchant.  I intentionally tried to keep the first part as short as possible, so my estimate is really based on the second part only.  Is it possible that your estimate and mine differ because of how long the merchant was allowed to remain at the dock before being dismissed?

Kaldir

Is it possible that the length of the river influences the exact timing of the merchant?

More precisely: the amount of time it takes for the merchant to row from the entering point on the map to the trade post. If the interval measures the time between leaving the trade post and entering the map, instead of arriving at the trade post, then the further away your trade post is, the longer it takes for a merchant to return to that trade post.
Just a theory though, no game experience to back this.

salamander

That's a good point that I completely overlooked.  If I can dig up my old stopwatch, I may see what I can do with the game where I collected information originally.

rkelly17

I have now had two towns (including the Allberger Diaries town) where the merchant arrives at the dock, does his business and leaves heading back the way he came from (read the "Wrong Way Elber" sections of the diaries). At a sharp bend just before exiting the map he (always "he"; maybe men never do ask for directions) turns around and heads the other way. He passes the dock without stopping and proceeds off the map. This affects the time between merchants, so I am hypothesizing that whatever timer is set is based on map-exit, not dock-dismissal.

I also see a similarity between the two maps: A sharp bend just after the river enters the map such that on the mini-map only half of the first leg of the river shows up. Maybe this configuration fools the merchant-travel algorithm in some way? One thing remains true: The merchants all enter at one end of the river and exit at the other. But on these maps something is causing them to go almost back to the entrance before they turn around and head to the exit.

salamander

Quote from: rkelly17 on May 30, 2014, 06:52:54 AM
... so I am hypothesizing that whatever timer is set is based on map-exit, not dock-dismissal.

Also a possibility, and a good observation.  If I get back to my original map, I'll try to keep up with both dismissal and map-exit times.  That could be a problem for me, though, just because the map-entry and map-exit points can't be viewed at the same time -- I'm likely to miss something happening.

Just to make sure we're on the same page, when you say 'exiting the map' you're talking about the entire map, not just the view window, right?

rkelly17

Right. When I noticed the "wrong way" phenomenon I followed the merchants to see whether they all turned back at the same point--they did, by the way--and then followed them off the map. There must be some sort of glitch in certain maps with a common characteristic, but it is beyond my skill to figure it out.