I found out I can dismiss a merchant the hard way: I actually wanted to clear a trade proposal I made, and was surprised to see the merchant leave when he had just arrived.
What surprised me however, was that the next merchant arrived at this same trading post, even though my other trading post was 'next in line'. I also noticed that the merchant would arrive in about 0.75 years when dismissing him, while I remember from previous games that it usually took just over a year. When playing I'm too busy to really pay attention to the exact numbers, so I could be completely wrong.
So the big question is: will the next merchant come sooner if you immediately dismiss a merchant?
Edit: cleared up the time reference (I hope)
A while back I tracked merchant visits to trading posts over ~20 years, noting the season and year they arrived, and posted it on the SRS forum. Over 7 trading posts, the average number of visits per year was 1.75, which translates into a visit to a post about every 6.8 seasons, or once per 0.57 years.
At the time I didn't have autotrading set at any of the posts, so I was doing things manually, and whether I bought anything or not, dismissal was pretty quick after they arrived. If I remember right, merchants who arrive but are ignored will eventually leave on their own after some number of seasons (I think it was 5, but I haven't been able to find where I got that, so I could be completely off-base). From your observations, it sounds like the timer for when the next trader will arrive may start on dismissal of the previous trader, rather than from its arrival.
That 0.57 year interval is about equal to my observation now, with dismissing the merchant. Guess the dismissing might not matter after all. I assume the exact interval is somewhat random and not always exactly the same, so I might just have had a few lazy slow merchants before I started dismissing them.
Thanks for the answer. I'll keep dismissing those stupid livestock merchants though, till they finally bring me some sheep!
I may be overlooking something, but I think the two sets of observations do support the idea that dismissing the merchant quickly could get you some number of merchants at a post in a shorter time than letting them dismiss themselves. The 0.57 year interval was also with quick dismissal. And, that 6.8 season interval plus the 5 season (if I'm right) automatic dismissal is nearly a full year, which I think you were seeing when the merchants were left to leave on their own.
Hmm, but if you found them to visit 1.75 times a year on average, doesn't that include the time they wait at the trading post before leaving on their own? In other words, that 6.8 season (month) interval is between the arrival time of two successive merchants. including the 5 (?) seasons they wait.
When I dismissed them manually, I dismissed them almost immediately, so within the season/month they arrived. That is at least a few seasons sooner then they would ride off on their own. Might have to experiment at some point, but I'm too much immersed into aligning trees and farms right now. :D
Edit: cleared up the time reference (I hope)
I see what you mean and I think you're right, but for that 20 year period I would generally pause the game on a merchant's arrival to write down the information I was tracking, do any trading I wanted, and then dismiss. So, I'd estimate that the in-game time a merchant spent at a trading post was insignificant compared to the interval between visits. Also, because of the quick turnaround between arrival and manual dismissal, the several season waiting time before the merchant leaves automatically is not part of the 1.75 visits/year average.
Here's what I'm thinking is going on: There's an (approx.) 6.8 season interval between when a merchant leaves a trading post and when the next merchant arrives at the same post. Although, like you say, there may be some randomness to that interval, I don't think it changes. What does change, though, is how long a merchant sits at a trading post before being dismissed. Because the 'next merchant interval timer' doesn't start until dismissal, delaying dismissal will delay the arrival of the next merchant. I think this is consistent will your original observations, including the out-of order visit if you manually dismissed at one post, but not at another (which would then have the auto-dismissal waiting time tacked on).
Sorry, I misunderstood you the first time then. I thought your 20-year observations were without manual dismissing the merchant. I'll try to dismiss merchants at one trade post but not the other to see the difference. Although I'm not really disciplined enough for these kind of tests since I'm still fresh at the game (or at least it feels that way).
It would be neat to see if there's a difference. I still have a saved copy of the game I collected the data in -- I may have to get back to it and let all the merchants wait until they leave on their own. What would be nice is if I could track when a merchant leaves the trading post, but without notifications of that in-game, I doubt I'd keep up with it well.
And ... I know what you mean about still being fresh to the game. I've still got so many things to try out in how I play out a game.
Good luck with the sheep. :)
Hehe, thanks. The livestock merchant (merchants?) has come by about 10 to 15 times now, almost every time with cows. The seeds merchant also keeps bringing in Plums, sometimes even 2 seeds at once (what is the use of that?). They made me build a third trade post just to get some sheep and more seeds. They will come, eventually.
Maybe we need to trade games. I've had so many Livestock merchants over the last few years, quite a few with sheep, when I'm looking for food, that I'm starting to get upset. Yelling at a computer game ... real mature, huh?
You're only as old as you act, right? That probably means we're 5 years old from time to time.
The seed merchant is still pretty absent, but a nice general merchant had Apple seeds, Peach seeds and Beans seeds all at once, combined with some stone and iron. Lucky me.
I have food in abundance: 40000 in storage, another 5000 in trade posts (after spending 2500 venison for those seeds), with only 160 citizens. So get into that boat and bring me some sheep :D
That whole data gathering I did for merchant intervals also included tracking how often the different types of merchants visited a colony. Given experiences like we're both seeing, and many others I bet have also seen, it was surprising that over the 20 year period, the numbers of the different merchants was the same.
We're all at the mercy of the RNG god.
RNG loves me right now, so I'm not complaining. I've only seen one more livestock trader, and (s)he brought sheep. After that, it was general merchants all along, with several seeds I still didn't have.
I've checked the merchants some, and my very limited data set suggests that a merchant stays for 3 months (0.25 year) if not manually dismissed and that the interval indeed seems to reset when the merchant leaves. I had two merchants arrive simultaneously in Late Winter year 22. I dismissed one right away and left the other alone, who left 3 months later (Late Spring 23). The next two merchants arrived at Early Autumn 23 (the dismissed one) and Early Winter 23 (the one that waited for 3 seasons).
So it seems that dismissing a merchant indeeds speeds up the arrival of the next one, up to 3 months (0.25 year).
Edit: cleared up the time reference (I hope)
That's good information.
If you're waiting for a particular resource from a merchant, manually dismissing could speed things up quite a bit, especially if it takes several visits before you eventually do get a merchant carrying the resource.
Even if you're mostly auto-trading, it might be worth periodically dismissing merchants when you have a chance.
You guys are having a very interesting conversation here. Mind if I jump in? I've noticed that merchants will hang around for a LONG time if I don't dismiss them (this is with strictly manual trading). I've actually used the technique of ignoring them when I'm low on goods to trade. Either they stay long enough and I can then trade with them, or I dismiss them after I stock up and then wait for the next merchant--and do a save and re-role to get what I need. ;) Sometimes it seems that they'd sit there forever if I forget to dismiss them. It also seems that the interval between one merchant leaving and the next arriving gets shorter as my town gets bigger, but that may be because I've got more to do and lose track of time. Not sure.
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.
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.
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).
@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.
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.
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.
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!
In 1.0.2 you can still use trading posts to store excess production.
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 :)
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
I have one map where the merchants all turn around after trading and go almost back to the entry point, where they turn back downstream and exit normally after passing the dock a second time. I suspect it has something to do with how the waterways were laid out during the creation of the map.
it does that on the tiny island seed (at least it does for me)
Anyone else played the Tiny Isle seed, or the original Tiny Isle game, and noticed this?
I just had my third wrong-way merchant. The common characteristic of the maps seems to be that the river takes a sharp turn (just about 90 degrees) just after it enters the map, runs parallel to the edge for a bit and then takes a second sharp turn toward the centre of the map. The merchant always turns around between those two sharp turns.
I've seen that as well...
In my map, once it visits the dock and is dismissed, it goes all the way back to the entry point and then travels all the way down to the exit again.
I assumed it happened because of me blocking the lower river because of an unbuilt port or something.
I'll post pics in a bit, but here are 2 for now.
Yeah, @nimd, that first little bit of river looks exactly like the 3 maps that have given me wrong-way merchants. Note that on the mini-map you only see water at the edge right at the top. As
@slink pointed out, there must be something in the map generation that both creates that geography and triggers the wrong-way behaviour.
I haven't yet had merchants going the wrong way, but there are certain trading posts where the merchant undocks with a quick flip in the wrong direction before heading the right way. Not all the posts do it on undocking. Maybe it's related to what you're seeing. I'll start trying to keep up with when it occurs and what the geography is around that post.
Yes,
@salamander, I've noticed that in the everybody-in-the-market-circle challenge town I've been doing. It's the first time I've had more than 2 trading posts, so more possibilities. I'll have to look and see whether it is trading-post specific.
In my latest town, I've dismissed three merchants at exactly the same time (while paused), in Spring 26. You can see them row out in the first screenshot.
In Late Autumn 26, the first merchant returns, as seen in the second screenshot. That's after 7 seasons, or 0.58 year, which is pretty close to
@salamander's numbers.
A second merchant has just entered the map at this time (not visible on the screenshots), to arrive in Early Winter, the third is not visible yet, but arrived in Winter. Despite the trading posts being near each other and the merchants being dismissed at the same time, there is quite some distance between the returning merchants (first and second were only 15 squares apart when dismissed, half a map when arriving).
It seems there is some randomness involved in the interval between leaving and returning. It's certainly not always exactly 9 seasons, and not exactly the same for all merchants.
I'm just about set up to start some merchant timings at several trading posts. I'll post results hopefully in a few days, at the latest.
As I've worked toward getting things in order, I've noticed the same thing as you -- merchants dismissed at the same time from posts near each other don't necessarily arrive in a group on the next rounds of visits. Your idea that there's some random 'slop' in the visits seems likely. Unless I've mis-planned something, I should be able to estimate all the legs of a merchant round trip ... one visit to the next.
I dismissed all three merchants at once again, in Winter 26. They all left the map in Late Winter 26.
Next merchant arrived in Summer 27. This time is was the 'second' one, the one on the middle trade post, whose predecessor left the map as second. The other two merchants arrived in Early Autumn and Autumn 26.
Edit: I'll leave the rest of the testing to you,
@salamander, so I can go back to creating boulevards and such. :D
I haven't seen any merchants going the wrong way myself. On one of my trading posts they dock backwards though.
Way overdue, but not forgotten. With another couple of hours in the game I should be able to start crunching numbers, so hopefully sometime over the next few days I'll get something here, or maybe in a new thread to keep it organized.
In the meantime, one of the delays has been keeping my population under control. I'd wanted it stable so I could concentrate on the merchants coming and going, but it slowly started to decline -- my stable point (about 20 years ago) turned out to be a broad peak, instead. That seems to be over and the pop's going back up. Unfortunately, it looks like I may be headed for a rinse-and-repeat cycle.
I've started a continuation of this discussion in a separate thread (Dismiss Merchant (Part 2) (http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?topic=197.0)), just to keep things a little organized for myself as I gradually post information that's been collected.