Trading Posts allow you to do other things with your villages. You don't need to trash the landscape with quarries and mines and you don't need to farm if you want a more dense town population.
Here are some strong economies you can build with trading posts. The more trading posts you have, the more you can do. Obviously, you can produce some or all of the primary components instead of buying them if you want that part of the production to be home based.
1. Firewood - buy logs and sell firewood. Each log is worth 3 or 4 firewood. You will need stockpiles and wood cutters at each trading post.
2. Warm Coats - buy wool and leather and sell warm coats. You will need barns and tailors for each trading post.
3. Steel Tools - buy coal, iron, and logs and sell steel tools. You will need stockpiles, barns, and blacksmiths at each trading post.
4. Ale - Buy fruit and berries and sell ale. You will need barns and taverns for each trading post.
Success will require you to manage your trading through placing orders and auto-purchases or full blown micromanagement.
Logs to firewood is best profit by far. With educated workers:
Buy 1 log at 2, makes 4 firewood which sells at 4=14 profit
Little profit in warm coats. If you custom order wool at 6 and leather at 12 cost is 18 and sell at 20.
Wool coat better. Custom order at 6, sell at 15=9 profit
There is no profit in steel tool at all if you custom order the items need to make it.
Iron tools have good profit. Inputs are iron (5) + log (2) = 7 cost. Output is two iron tools @ 8 = 16 income.
I have a couple of tailors making warm coats, and a couple of blacksmiths making steel tools. These serve to maintain the inventory for citizens' use. All other tailors and smiths make wool coats and iron tools for export. I review every year or two to make sure raw materials are in balance and the stock of steel tools and warm coats is good.
I also sell ale and import fruit. I have standardized on two fruits and ignore all the rest. Importing fruit is good, you can place special orders from all the merchants, and there is no penalty, save that they only will give 3 for firewood.
For that reason I don't like to trade firewood, except for imported logs. I have a hard time maintaining firewood inventory for local consumption. I suppose I just need more TPs importing logs, but I don't like those town I have seen that have the river lined with TPs and choppers and piles of logs and firewood.
Don't forget one of the best uses for a trading post:
Trading venison, beef, mutton, and chicken for fruits and other food. The meats are all worth 3 while all other foods (except egg, which is 2) are worth 1. So for every 1 venison you trade you get 3 of another food. This is a helpful strategy to keep your town growing and build up a good stockpile of food. And when you custom order fruits/nuts/vegetables/fish and such they stay at 1 cost, so no mark up.
Trading posts are also useful to get rid of all your mushrooms as they take up so much more space in your barns then all other foods! Or to trade away excess fish for fruits your town may be missing.
I am by no means a huge trader, at most I build about 6 Trading Posts on a map, as I like to manage them myself (and it is too time intensive after 6). I don't like the auto trade option as it won't let you choose what gets traded for what. For example, I do not want to be trading firewood to a food trader at a value of 3 each when any other trader values it at 4.
I agree with
@Bobbi that if you want to trade coats and tools, best to stick to iron tools and wool coats. I make them to trade for warm coats and steel tools.
I also agree with
@solarscreen that firewood and ale are good items to trade. And that if you don't want mines and quarries all over your map, trading Ports are essential to keeping your people supplied with the resources they need.
An important step to maximizing your trade depot economy is calculating trade profit and also what YOU NEED for your design.
When you provide primary components, you make more profit but profit is not the only reason to trade. If you don't want to farm or herd, buying and trading can break even but provide the items you need for your village.
I'm glad this thread is getting responses! There are some very successful traders out there and everyone can benefit from the results obtained in developing these trade depot economies!
Also, you'd think those lousy seed merchants would take the hint and go away after you turn them down 20 times ;)
I am usually by no means a great trader, either. I think the rivers lined with trading ports and stock piles are ugly. But this style of play is starting to grow on me, as it opens so many options. Mainly I trade firewood and ale, with some wool coats thrown in. I trade mushrooms, mutton, beef and venison for fruits or whatever else I need. I no longer build quarries for any reason, but do use mines.
Quote from: Bobbi on June 21, 2014, 08:58:21 PM
I am usually by no means a great trader, either. I think the rivers lined with trading ports and stock piles are ugly...
You are really going to hate when we have the King of Trading challenge!
Prolly won't be the champion! But probably not going to do the nomads or the dead village either. Don't know how. Never killed a village. Hated the nomad achievement. And the uneducated. Let's do a vegetarian challenge.
Quote from: Bobbi on June 21, 2014, 09:06:51 PM
Prolly won't be the champion! But probably not going to do the nomads or the dead village either. Don't know how. Never killed a village. Hated the nomad achievement. And the uneducated. Let's do a vegetarian challenge.
I have that one in my back pocket too. We will see that next month. Now are we talking full on vegetarian? No fish?
I tried a no meat village early in the life of Banished and health dropped way down pretty quick. I think I know what I need to do to fix that though.
No fish, no hunt, no livestock. Buy wool or freeze your a** off.
Nuts!
Quote from: solarscreen on June 21, 2014, 09:10:29 PM
Quote from: Bobbi on June 21, 2014, 09:06:51 PM
Prolly won't be the champion! But probably not going to do the nomads or the dead village either. Don't know how. Never killed a village. Hated the nomad achievement. And the uneducated. Let's do a vegetarian challenge.
I have that one in my back pocket too. We will see that next month. Now are we talking full on vegetarian? No fish?
I tried a no meat village early in the life of Banished and health dropped way down pretty quick. I think I know what I need to do to fix that though.
I have one of those started. It is named Boltona. I wrote a story about its founding. They eat nuts for protein, and buy wool. They can't keep sheep because that would mean slaughtering some. They don't eat fish, either. They are quite healthy. I wouldn't be happy living there, though. *wicked grin*
I like trading for nuts to get cheap protein, but can you set auto-trade to ignore meat and eggs and only buy nuts? I've not figured out how. I'd also like to be able to specify which fruits the trader buys. I hate ordering because I'm such a cheapskate. I also hate trading 3 firewood to the food merchants. In my largest town I've switched all trading posts to selling only ale.
@rkelly17 I feel your pain re: buying fruit. But, if you place a special order for the specific type of fruit that you need, firewood will be the only item they will discount in exchange. So place your special order for fruit, and stock only ale at that TP, and you should be good.
Yeah, in my 500 farmer challenge town all I'm selling now is ale. I'm growing the cherries myself, since it is a challenge to have lots of farmers, but I could see taking the hit of orders in order to make ale to sell. I'm still not totally comfortable with auto-trade, but that town has too many ports to do it manually. I have more to learn.
Quote from: rkelly17 on June 24, 2014, 09:39:53 AM
Yeah, in my 500 farmer challenge town all I'm selling now is ale. I'm growing the cherries myself, since it is a challenge to have lots of farmers, but I could see taking the hit of orders in order to make ale to sell. I'm still not totally comfortable with auto-trade, but that town has too many ports to do it manually. I have more to learn.
In my 500-farmer town, I just started setting up auto trades this morning. The first couple worked okay. Very tedious though, clicking those tiny arrows to change the priority, chasing after the commodity as it moves up or down in the list, and trying to see around the dialog box that pops up each time you hover. :o >:(
Quote from: irrelevant on June 24, 2014, 09:52:04 AM
Quote from: rkelly17 on June 24, 2014, 09:39:53 AM
Yeah, in my 500 farmer challenge town all I'm selling now is ale. I'm growing the cherries myself, since it is a challenge to have lots of farmers, but I could see taking the hit of orders in order to make ale to sell. I'm still not totally comfortable with auto-trade, but that town has too many ports to do it manually. I have more to learn.
In my 500-farmer town, I just started setting up auto trades this morning. The first couple worked okay. Very tedious though, clicking those tiny arrows to change the priority, chasing after the commodity as it moves up or down in the list, and trying to see around the dialog box that pops up each time you hover. :o >:(
That's the worst feature in this UI, the praising of purchase priorities. Those little bitty arrows are annoying!
Every so often a trader will come in one end and out the other without stopping at a trading post. Is that normal? Also I have one trading post that does not seem to get a visit by a trader at all. The only thing that might influence that is perhaps they don't like being right next to each other. I will have to experiment with locations and see what happens
make sure your trading post open on the big main large river. some bugs about it can happend if you placed it on a lake which is deserved by the river. i remember the seed 1008 large valley. in that one a big lake is linked to the river, but if you put it there it bugs out. i had to remove it and rebuilt further South , right on the river or i would never get any merchant, they were just passing and totally ignoring it.
Quote from: solarscreen on June 25, 2014, 03:25:42 PM
Quote from: irrelevant on June 24, 2014, 09:52:04 AM
Quote from: rkelly17 on June 24, 2014, 09:39:53 AM
Yeah, in my 500 farmer challenge town all I'm selling now is ale. I'm growing the cherries myself, since it is a challenge to have lots of farmers, but I could see taking the hit of orders in order to make ale to sell. I'm still not totally comfortable with auto-trade, but that town has too many ports to do it manually. I have more to learn.
In my 500-farmer town, I just started setting up auto trades this morning. The first couple worked okay. Very tedious though, clicking those tiny arrows to change the priority, chasing after the commodity as it moves up or down in the list, and trying to see around the dialog box that pops up each time you hover. :o >:(
That's the worst feature in this UI, the praising of purchase priorities. Those little bitty arrows are annoying!
Yeah, in my vegetarian town I really need to go in and change the numbers and priorities of all my trading posts (too much stone and iron) but I just can't face the tedium. :'(
I've sort of lost track of/never understood the changes to the trading posts in the most recent updates. When autotrading, do the trading posts honor the production limits set in the Town Hall (or at individual production buildings)?
@salamander From all I've read, they do not.
Thanks, that's what I was afraid of. I guess I really don't understand why autotrading wouldn't respect the limits. Because you have to prioritize your auto-purchases, if the limits aren't respected, it makes it difficult to get the balance of resources you might want through autotrading -- I think a trading post will always spend exported items on the top import in the list before moving down the list. It seems only logical that the limits would have been taken into account.
Thank you redketchup. I shift one trading post further down the river and it works fine. I built another on the top lake and did not receive one trader. I am also playing seed 1008 a very good map in my opinion. It appears that you must have your trading posts on the main path (river) not on a lake to receive merchants. I wonder if it is only applicable to this seed
It is not. I built a TP on a lake (connected to the river) in my farming challenge town, no merchant ever came. I ended up demolishing it. Took me forever to get out the 500 ale that was in it. The only place ale can go is back to a tavern.
it s not a 100% bug but can happends ... 99% lol j/k
yeah the 1008 map ... it s me who find it :) i ve got screwed with this TP as everyone else after me (like Solarscreen) i posted this seed on the game official forum and here... and it made all around the earth ;D ;D ;D
...like me, I've never autotraded in the game ;)
I've figured out, that you can influence/manipulate the arrival of several traders to 'all-the-same-time-rhythm'. In my case, four TP next to another. I was bugged due to the different arrival of the traders so I've startet to manipulate. First trader came - I did nothing, he stays awhile. Time goes by and he auto-discards. Trader 2 came by, instantly set him to leave the port / follow trader 1. Same with trader 3 and 4. Next year, better luck, smaller time gap. First trader came, let him wait, the chance he's still in the port when trader 2 arrives is good. Monitor when trader 1 auto leaves (to come closer to the arrival of trader 3 and 4), instantly set trader 2 to leave then. Same with trader 3 and 4. Another year later (or two), all your traders nearly came the same time, one by one, get the game on pause, trade whatever you need, let them all go the same time and enjoy the rest of the gameyear playing banished, not managing irregular landing traders. That works right now for 190 gameyears very well, they all arrive in a row! I hope this is comprehensible, otherwise I'll try to explain it easier.
@landgrave If you hold open the trade window, the trader will not leave until you close it or dismiss them. That should make it easier for you to try to sync them up.
I still have not even tried the auto-trade option. I guess I am going to have to though if I want to try to participate in the trading empire challenge!
I was really reluctant to auto trade, but in the vegetarian challenge I pretty much had to--too many TPs to do it manually. It turns out that it's not really as hard as I was afraid it would be. Setting it up can be irritating, since you WILL be involved with the little clickers. You can type in the number you want to buy, but you have to use the up/down arrow clickers to move the most important items into higher priority. If you do it as you build the TP it isn't as bad as doing a bunch at once. Of course, if you change your priorities you have to do it all over again.
One big issue for me is that the auto trade deals in general categories, not specific items. Stone is stone, obviously, but you can't buy only wool or only leather, you have to buy "textiles." You can't buy only nuts (cheapest protein), you have to buy "proteins." Etc. You also can't tell your traders, "No, you foolish people, don't trade firewood to food merchants; they only give you 3 credits." If it's in inventory they'll sell it to whomever. I'm not sure how they decide what to sell first. That's one reason I only stock ale to sell after I have all the seeds I want (seed merchants are apparently teetotalers).
So, after you get a certain number of TPs, trying to trade manually will make you crazy, so auto-trading is the option. It's not so bad.
Except when I forget to change the thing at the top of the window that tells the traders when to trade from "Never" to "When the merchant arrives." Then it doesn't work so well.
Quote from: rkelly17 on July 17, 2014, 02:03:33 PM
One big issue for me is that the auto trade deals in general categories, not specific items. Stone is stone, obviously, but you can't buy only wool or only leather, you have to buy "textiles." You can't buy only nuts (cheapest protein), you have to buy "proteins." Etc. You also can't tell your traders, "No, you foolish people, don't trade firewood to food merchants; they only give you 3 credits." If it's in inventory they'll sell it to whomever. I'm not sure how they decide what to sell first. That's one reason I only stock ale to sell after I have all the seeds I want (seed merchants are apparently teetotalers).
Yes, the inability to be specific was very annoying, both on they buying side and on the selling side. You can narrow down the "textiles" category though, by placing orders for wool and not for leather, 90% of the time you will not get leather; occasionally you get a new trader who will bring stuff whether you have ordered it or not.
What really is needed is a button to say, "NO MORE SEED TRADERS PLEASE! NO MORE LIVESTOCK TRADERS PLEASE!" Or at least something for you to toggle to auto-dismiss them when they do show up. Actually, that would be just fine.
Quote from: rkelly17 on July 17, 2014, 02:03:33 PMSo, after you get a certain number of TPs, trying to trade manually will make you crazy, so auto-trading is the option. It's not so bad.
I agree, not so bad. Better than all those decisions, every time, gaaaah!
Quote from: rkelly17 on July 17, 2014, 02:03:33 PMExcept when I forget to change the thing at the top of the window that tells the traders when to trade from "Never" to "When the merchant arrives." Then it doesn't work so well.
Yes, that's frustrating; any particular reason why "Never" is the default, and not "when the merchant arrives?" Other than simple sadism on the designers part? And what is the use of "When the merchant leaves??" Anyone?
edit: I guess if you totally ignore the TPs, you could theoretically set up one set of orders for when the merchant arrives, and another for when he leaves, the assumption being that you would not have bought everything in the boat that you might want, and that you would have restocked trade items in the time he was there. So the big question there is, can you have multiple auto-buy instructions for a single TP? One set, "never buy this stuff," another set "buy this when he arrives," and a third "buy this when he leaves, cause I'm assuming he'll still have stuff left that I want, and further that I will have rebuilt my stock of trade by then." This could allow you to completely ignore those bongbongs. Theoretically.
Further edit, if you could to this, you could set it up to buy resources when he arrives, when presumably firewood would be taken in trade, and to buy foodstuffs when he leaves, when other goods would be traded.
I suppose I could have tested this in the time it took to write about it. But I'm about done for tonight.
but... we will have fun with these... 45-60 trading posts ^^ 45-60 merchants to dismiss every year ^^ for 80 years long
You might build that many, but would you be able to fill them up? That's a lot of storage space.
Quote from: RedKetchup on July 17, 2014, 09:06:52 PM
but... we will have fun with these... 45-60 trading posts ^^ 45-60 merchants to dismiss every year ^^ for 80 years long
If you leave the TP window closed they leave on their own after a season. I only manually dismiss if I'm really desperate for more materials. If my farmers don't produce enough in the previous year I just go down the river looking for TPs with merchants. With enough TPs inevitably one of them is a food or general merchant and I can buy enough food to make up the shortfall. Now I just need to remember to turn off that (expletive deleted >:() bonger!
Quote from: irrelevant on July 18, 2014, 02:48:34 AM
You might build that many, but would you be able to fill them up? That's a lot of storage space.
When I auto trade I only sell ale. I set each TP to stock 1000 ale, which buys 8000 units. When I notice that my ale stock is getting above 100-200 I build another TP. Doing that does mean that lots of orchards and taverns eventually get built, but farmers are fun, eh?
If I figured this out correctly, I started setting my traders to buy when merchant leaves because then I can opt to pay with something other than firewood, but this is buying manually, not auto buy. I have never done auto buy because of the food merchant only paying three for that. If I try the new trading challenge, I will have to think of a way around that. Or go insane. Bong. Bong. Bong. Maybe set only a few to buy food and stock those TPs only with ale?
when i usually trade, inevitably i always end up to make 18k-23k trade units each time a boat show up :P
So if I leave a TP window open and pinned the Trader stays?
This might be a big help when I don't have quite enough to buy all the Stone, Iron etc that they have. Or in the current case the 30k of Peaches for my lovely Peach Schnapps.
yes
@Zephormite , if you pinned the window the merchant will stay there till you close it.
Quote from: RedKetchup on July 19, 2014, 08:43:59 PM
yes @Zephormite , if you pinned the window the merchant will stay there till you close it.
Excellent, this will become really useful in the early stages of building my trading empire (Currently running 8 Trading Ports, and I have another 5 placed (Can use at least half of the lake that I started by)
I will post a few pictures of the boats coming into some of my ports as it is quite entertaining.
this trading economy and challenge is just ....... SICK! lol
i am crazy lol
It is completely nuts, I do have to keep remembering to check on the rest of the economy to ensure that it isn't being affected by me concentrating on my Ale & Trade.
Only issue with my map is a serious lack of Stone close to the starting point.
kinda same i had with .... Roaring Fork ?
I'm having the same issue on my new town as well. I'm planning stone houses but building wooden where I have to (when I need a house I'd rather have wooden than none at all), try to get way out ahead on firewood, and hope for the resource merchant.
Managed to get on top of it with Mass trading, to the pont I now have achieved the "Ready for Anything" achievement for the first time.
Constantly trading for more Stone/Iron/Logs, and Peaches. Lots of Peaches for me...15 current Trading posts, another 15 with planned spots already, and I have almost managed to extend to the second lake.
nice! Congrats !
Auto-purchasing fruit sucks. They take firewood @ 3 first, every time. >:(
Quote from: irrelevant on July 22, 2014, 08:15:46 PM
Auto-purchasing fruit sucks. They take firewood @ 3 first, every time. >:(
That's one reason I switch to stocking all ale when I auto trade. I just hate paying in discounted firewood!