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Intorduction to Trading and Crafting

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    Posted: 05 Jun 2014 at 23:00
So you want to be a trader!  Very admirable of you!  Now that you have established that, let’s get in to the requirements and details of trade.  Some of the information here has been compiled from other sources and condensed for the purpose of getting it done.  However most of this is from my personal experience over a long period of time.  Nothing matches actual experience.  During the time you are focused on the trade research and requirements you should still have a modest army to attack the NPC’s. You will read in a little bit why you want to attack NPC’s.  Before I get started here is a link that will be of great help to you.  It covers several different subjects .Including Trade and Crafting.  Do yourself a favor and start researching additional things as you find time.  Your alliance members can help only so much.

http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/help_forum9.html

 

Table of Contents

Forward

Prerequisites

Chapters

I.                  Basic Buildings and Research for Production of Resources

II.                Additional Buildings and Trade Research

III.              Trade Hubs

IV.              Harvesting and Crafting.

 

Forward

You will at some point in this game be involved in trading (buying or selling) so this information will help you get started.  The common element in all trading is “Gold” you will eventually need, use and collect lots of it.  The items of research that will be in some form connected to Trading will be found in the Research Tree under “City, Quest, Trade, Crafting or Sovereignty”. The research for Magic, Diplomacy and Military are different subjects and not talked about here.

Chapter I. will try to make this easy to understand for the beginner, so it is broken down to the basics. 

Chapter II will cover the much of the research required for trading.  This research will take months to complete

Chapter III will cover the trade hub basics; choosing a hub; selling and buying.  Using trade Hubs has many advantages; broader reach for customers; security for your resources (people cannot steal them from a hub at this time in the game); easier access for your team mates needing supplies;  Normally a lower tax rate than selling out of your town; and finally, the customer brings the gold and picks up his purchase.  You do not deliver.

Chapter IV will cover some of the basics regarding harvesting and crafting;   Research and buildings.  I won’t go into detail on what is best to build or if there is a market for the items you decide to build. Those will be your choice by trial and error.  Do your own market research for that.

There are many buildings and ridiculous amounts of research required.  If you focus on the basic selling and buying for now and do the advanced stuff as you can fit it in, you will still have good results.  I won’t get into the math or other anal details that some people find fulfilling.  By the time you are at that point you will know more than me.  Enjoy the game and don’t let it control you.

Prerequisites

1.       As a favor to yourself, read the “Trading Guide for Dummies” at

http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/trading-for-dummies_topic2648.html

You may go there before continuing if you choose. This link will help you understand some things about trading but not all applies here.

2.      Keep your basic resources (wood, clay, Iron, stone and food) and gold in the green at all times.  Food and other basic resources are consumed by the citizens (unseen) that operate the buildings you construct.  In turn they provide gold through taxes for maintaining various troops and trade transactions. This is all just basic. Change your tax rate as needed.  The higher production levels you have of the basic resources the higher you can place your taxes to gain more gold.

3.      Read the “POP UPS”!  Each item for research has an explanation of what the research is for and what is needed to do the research.  It shows up when moving your mouse cursor over the research item. Don’t waste valuable time on unnecessary research.  If you are focused on Trade and Crafting then those will be your main focus for research.  That does not mean to neglect the obvious research needs such as Ward of Intentions under magic or Exodus under City for examples.  However, you don’t need to research the Biome Warfare (Military) or Assassins Guild (Diplomacy) and other unnecessary buildings not related to your path of focus -Trading.  If in doubt ASK another experienced trader!

4.      If you see (en) following a research item or building that means it enables the following item to be completed. If you see (rq) after a building or research item it means the following item is required before the building can be completed.

 

Chapter I:  Basics buildings and Research for Production of Resources

·       Note:  If you plan to move your city before you get heavily involved in the trade research and building requirements then see F.2 of this section. 

·       Here is a link to the Basic buildings.  None of the special buildings are there.   arcanum-illyria.com/wiki/Building_Charts

A.    Marketplace

1.     If you want to be a trader your Market place is your most important initial building to get to level 20 in reasonable time.  This is not saying that your warehouse and barracks and other buildings are not important, but for trading this building is a must. (I will talk about Trade office and Merchants Guild later)

 

B.    Trade Research; view the “Trade” section of the Research tree

1.      Research the five top rows of the “Trade” section of the Research Tree Except for “Blockade Running” and “Break Trade Embargo”  Those can be done later to fill time and are not necessary at this point.

C.    Build Paddock for making Horses.  Keep horses in production 24/7.  Raise to above level 10 when able.

D.     Build Common Ground for making cows.  Keep cows producing 24/7...  Raise to above level 10 when able.

E.     Quest Items to Research

1.      Brewing (en-brewery) Build a brewery to start producing beer

2.      Wine Making (you will need to produce mine later when you want more than one trader)

F.     City Items to research which enables building advanced resource items

1.  Basic Resource buildings required for research items; at least one level 7 of each;  Farmyard (en-flourmill), Lumberjack (en-carpentry), Clay pit (en-Kiln), Iron Mine (en-Foundry), and Quarry (en-Masonry).  Do these first.

2.  If you plan to move your city via Exodus

a.   Note if you plan to move your city via exodus before concentrating on marketing, then do Pioneering first.

b.      Build Storehouse to level 15 and research Inventory Management

c.      Build Warehouse to level 20 to Research Exodus (will take you a couple weeks to complete the items required for Exodus)

G.    Research all city items except Horse Training and Architecture.  Only research Architecture if you are going to build the Architect Building.  If you are a Prestige user, you will not need that building.  Horse training comes later when you get into crafting.

 

H.    Research all 2nd column items before moving on:

1.     Craftsmanship through Bureaucracy

I.       Research Third column order of importance: 

1.          Carpentry (en) Carpentry shop

2.          Pottery (en) Kiln

3.          Stonemasonry (en) Stonemason

4.          Smelting (en) Foundry

5.          Saddle making (en) Saddle maker

6.          Tanning (en) Tannery

7.          Bookbinding (en) Book Binder\

8.          Spear making (en) Spear maker

9.          Safeguard (en-vault)  NOTE: Do not build a vault you will not need it and it wastes building space

10.       Save Pioneering for last if you do not plan on moving your city via exodus (see F. 2 above)

 

J.      Column four; City Research suggested order of importance

1       Leather Armourer (en - Leather Armourer)

2       Smithing (rq - Foundry level 5) (en-Blacksmith)

3       Demolition (for destroying buildings you don’t want or need any more)

4       Defensive Structure (en-City Wall)

5       Fletching (rq - carpentry lev 5) (en-Fletcher)

6       These items you won’t need until you get into crafting: Horse training; Spearsmithing

7       Siege Construction (rq - Stonemason level 5) (en-Siege workshop for siege blocks)

 

K.    Column five; City Research suggested order of importance

1.   Exodus has probably been completed by now, if not, do it.

2.   Forging (rq - level 10 Blacksmith) (en-Forge)

3.   These Boyer, Chain Armourer, Swordsmithing, and Plate Armourer can wait until you are ready for Crafting.

Summary for Chapter I

At this point you can make all of the advanced resource items from beer through siege blocks.  Horses and livestock should also be produced regularly every day.  Horses you need for caravans and cavalry and some diplomacy troops.  There is even a crafting phase that uses horses.  That comes later.  You can sell excess horses on the market.  Cows you need for saddles, leather armor, and siege blocks.  So hang on to your cows for now and produce the end items already mentioned. Raise the level of the Common Ground regularly until about level 12.  You may finish it when you have time and the resources.

 

 Chapter II:  Additional Buildings and Trade Research.

NOTE:  Again I must emphasize that you read the Pop-ups when you are getting ready to research. They will explain what the research is for. Additionally you should be building a small to moderate army for attacking NPC's about now. So do that research in between the trade research. Cavalry works best for NPC’s.

In this chapter I cover a few buildings that you will be constructing for trading and harvesting. A couple you may not need to build yet and I will explain why.  The worst of this chapter is the research.  You have 154 days and 19 hours of research remaining to do to complete all the trade research.  Much of it will be completed before you move on to Trade Hubs and Crafting.  That means you will need to be doing research 24 hours per day seven days per week for that long just to finish trade.  The bad thing about that is you cannot just focus strictly on trade research.  There is much more to the game than trade research.

 I will try to lay out a sequence of what research to do and the buildings that goes with it.  I am assuming that by this time you have completed all of the top five rows of the Trade Research Tree except for Blockade Running and Break Trade Embargo.    If you want to do some crafting before you finish this research you can but it is not recommended.  It will just slow your progress on trade research.  It will be up to you on how fast you progress.  You need to choose what you want to do, I can only help guide.

 

A.    Research Cotters (en-cotter) then build a Cottage and a cotter. (minimum of one per city)

 

B.    Research Foraging (en- harvest herbs, mineral, and hides) and Grape Picking (en- harvest grapes for wine making).  (Save “Scavenging” for later; en- cotters to pick up armor left on the field after a battle). 

1.     I recommend you find a source for grapes and harvest them as much as possible (be careful to not deplete the vineyard of grapes by sending too many cotters).  Don’t sell any or give them away.  You need 3960 bunches of grapes for one barrel of wine.  You will need many barrels of wine over time.  One Cotter harvests 100 grapes at a time. Convert your grapes to wine every chance you get.

2.     Much of what the Cotters gather (hides, animal parts, minerals and herbs) will be used later in the game in crafting.  Save what you gather.  The hides initially will be used to make Skinners and later for crafting; the grapes for wine.  So now you will be a little ahead by gathering these items early.

3.     This is why you attack the NPC’s they drop Hides and animal parts and you want to collect them.

C.    Research Guilds

 

D.    SKIP the research on Miners’ Guilds and Herbalists’ Guilds for now.  You won’t need them unless you have lots of rare mineral mines or rare herbs in your area.

 

E.     Research Skinners’ Guilds (en- Skinners’ Guild)

1.     Build one Skinner’s Guild up several levels.  At level 20 you can have 60 skinners in your city.  A second Skinners’ Guild will allow you to have 30 more.  It takes 40 hides to build one skinner.  Keep your cotter’s working gathering hides for skinners (and grapes of course for the wine)

2.     Skinners can gather Rare Earth Elements and animal parts.  Again use your armies to kill the NPC’s.  Hopefully you re building your armies by now.

3.     Rare Earth Elements are gathered after you kill the escaped essential elements.

4.     Air Salt is easiest to find, Earth Salt a little harder, followed by Water Salt and finally Fire Salt which has only been found in the south west area of Elgea so far.  Gather them and hold on to them for the future use.

e.      NOTE:  Don’t just kill the Escaped Essentials  and walk away.  Send your army to camp on the tile for a day or until you can send in your skinners to gather the spoils.

F.     Research Merchants’ Guild (en- trader research, en-Trader)

1.     Your merchant guild will take a long time to get to level 20 but for now get it to level 5, then slowly go up.

G.     Research Trader (en-traders)

1.     Once completed build your first trader but only build it in the city that will be used for your initial trade center.  You can build more traders later in other cities or multiple traders in one city.  But for now pick one city for your trader.

2.     Your first trader will not cost you any wine.  The second or third will cost one barrel of wine.  Remember to be stocking up on grapes.  Additional traders cost more barrels of wine required.  i.e 3rd trader 2 barrels, 4th trader more barrels, etc.  Your 8th trader if you want that many will cost 21 barrels of wine.

3.     Your first trader should go into your alliance Trade Hub.  Will talk more about hubs later.

H.    Research Trade Office (en-Trade Office)

1.     Build a Trade office

2.     This enables you to place your trader in a Faction (Trade) Hub.  But you are not ready to put your trader in a hub yet.  There’s more on hubs later.

I.       Research Trends and Guild administration

1.     Trends opens up more research options

2.     Guild Administration allows more harvesters in your guilds (12 days to complete)

J.      Research Efficient Trading, (rq-level 5 Merchants’ Guild), Selling (rq – level 1 Trade Office), and Procurement (rq-level 1 Trade Office)

K.  Research Trend Analysis, Speculation and Market ledger

1.  You are now preparing for the Trade hubs

L.   Research Traders’ Luxuries, Trade Promotions, Trade Notes and Trade Reputation (rq-level 10 Merchants’ Guild)

M.  Now you can research the Herbalist’s and Miner’s Guilds.  Follow those with Herbalism and Geology.

 

1.     Only build the buildings if you have a reasonable population of rare herbs or mines in   your area.  You will need various rare herbs and minerals when you get to Crafting.

N.    Research Guild Bureaucracy

1.     If you need some other shorter research done in other research trees, do them before you start this because it takes 30 days to complete.

Summary Chapter II

Once you have reached this point you are ready to start getting into a trade hub.  You can go to a hub earlier but it will cost you more time and gold to trade.  You can finish up the rest of the trade research in weeks to come.  By the time you finish the research to this point you will probably have three or more traders if you were diligent to find and harvest the grapes and make the wine.

 

Chapter III.  Trade Hubs, Selling and buying

This chapter might be a little confusing because you can’t view the instructions and follow them at the same time.  So copy them down so you have them with you the first time or ask for help.

Note:  Try to put your first trader in whatever Hub the Alliance has been using as a transfer Hub.  Usually alliances sell cheaper to their own people than to the rest of Illy and most times they transfer items for pennies. Continue to do the research of trade items while you are trading in the hubs.  You can place traders in as many hubs as you want but don’t put two in the same hub.

To trade in the hubs you need to have a trade office and once you have a trader you will not need the Merchants guild to buy or sell, however, if you have not completed your research keep it and get it to level 20.  You will also want to keep a few caravans in the trade hub for moving items, and gold

A list of Faction Hubs can be found by clicking on the red fist icon under the Alliance Overview Icon.

A.     How to choose a Trade hub.

1.     Go down the list of hubs and find a hub that is located in the Region you want to trade in.

2.     Click on the Hub name and click View Faction

3.     Look at the standings at the top of the page first.  Your standings and the alliance standings should be in the blue or on the positive side.  If it is in the red, do not trade in that hub.  It will cost you more gold in taxes and people may not buy from you there.

4.     Next see the left column for how many hubs they control (left top).  Check the coordinates to see how far they are from your city.

5.     If you decide to place a trader there do so, if not, look for another hub.

B.      Once you have located a hub, send your trader there.

C.      Send some items to that hub so you can place them on the market for sale. 

1.     The initial shipment should be with only 3-5 caravans Include Gold with your first shipment to pay the taxes on the sales.  Usually $500,000 gold is good for the start,

2.     In the “Orders” window where you ship out items via caravans click the box in the lower right corner that says “After delivery stay and await further orders.”  This will keep those first few caravans in the hub to be used to ship items such as gold or resources back to your city when you need them.  Or to pay for purchases you have made.

3.     You can ship resources from any of your other cities but do not check that box.  Let them go, drop of the resources and go back home.

4.     If you chose you can have some vans from your other cities stay at the trade hub and use them to ship resources too.

a.      Example; if you have 5 cities you could send 5 vans from each city to stay at the trade hub to make larger transactions.  It is your choice.  I just keep a few in the hubs.

 

D.     You are now ready to sell (or place buy order) items in the hub.

1.     To list items for sale, your screen location must be in the home city from which your trader has been sent.

2.     Click on the Markets and Prices Icon located below the Trade Overview Icon

3.     Click on the item you want to sell/buy.

4.      Go to the location drop down box at the upper right and find/click on your trade hub

5.     Click on the Place Sell order button to place a sell order (click Place Buy Order to place an order to “buy” at your set price)

6.     Fill in the quantity and the price you want to sell/buy for and click "check".  This will show you how much tax it will cost to place a sell order or how much gold you will spend on a buy order.

7.     Now click confirm to post your listing.

E.      Buying for the asking price  from another trader works in similar fashion

1.     Under Sellers, find an item you want to buy and find the price you are willing to  pay, and at a distance you are willing to travel to get it. 

2.     You can normally buy partials and sometimes they want to sell the complete amount.

3.     You send the gold and pick up the items.

F.      Transferring Traders or supplies to other hubs.

1.   If you want to recall your traders or transfer them to another hub, make sure you move all your caravans and resources out first.  You cannot move vans or resources without a Trader present.

2.   You can ship from the hub that your trader is in to another hub or to your cities.  If you ship to another hub that does not have a trader present, the items will remain there until a trader arrives and you have vans there to transport.

3.  You can do this from the Trade Hubs window and clicking the Orders tab click on the items to be sent out and the quantity. Then click the destination and send.

 

Summary Chapter III:

You will learn as you go. It is not too complicated once you are there.  You never want to sell at the lowest prices.  When you get to that point and are ready to sell ask for more direction on what to try to sell for.  The idea is to buy items at a low price and sell for a profitable higher price.  Saddles are one of the most expensive items. They have gone for 2750 each down to as low as about 1500 each. I never sell for the lowest or the highest.

Another point;   when looking for a hub, Try to keep it within 600 miles of your city.  It costs a lot of time to ship items great distances.

 

Chapter IV Harvesting and Crafting

A.    I won’t go into details on what you could or should craft I will just try to explain the processes.  By now you should have quite a supply of various animal parts, herbs, minerals, maybe even some rare herbs, rare earth elements and special minerals form mines.  There many different combinations and I don’t have a count for you.   However here is a link for you to go to see what you are up against.  I am not going to decipher it for you...

1.     http://www.puzzleslogic.com/illy/crafting.html

B.    Take a look at your Crafting Research Tree.  You may pre-choose what items you want to focus on regarding a special type of armor, or weapon.  Those is okay, but try to ask around to see if anyone is buying or using that special item you want to build.  If not, check out another. The following link has some info on special armor

1.     https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ashx1jjra-hfdFVkREFoWUVGdk55U2NoUXhiSURXaXc&pli=1#gid=0

C.    If you have researched the advanced buildings in the City Research tree such as Plate Armourer, Bowyer, and Chain Armourer as example.  Here is how I have done my research.  You may want to do it differently.

1.     First off, do not worry about Workshop Specialization.  You won’t need it and it can be researched when everything else is done.

2.     The Special horses research can be delayed until you feel the need for it or want to build advanced horses.  It Requires the Horse Trainer building.

D.    Build a Leather Armourer (for the first level of crafting research) to level 1 and no higher.  Yu don’t need it any higher for just research.

1.     There are approximately 16 items to research with this building and each of them takes 8 hours to complete. When they are all completed remove the Leather Armourer.

E.     Build a Spearsmith to level 1 and no higher for the same reason.

1.     There are about 20 varied spear research items in this first section and they too take 8 hours each to complete.  

F.     Continue with the rest of the research in the first and then the second columns which include the buildings of the Swordsmith, The Chain Armourer, and the Bowyer.

1.   Each special weapons or armor building will have numerous research items to complete. Just keep replacing the buildings with the next one and complete the research until they are all done

2.   Each Chainmail research will take 1 day each to complete;  Platemail 3 days each,  and Bows also 3 days each, and so on..

G.  Before you are done you will rebuild the Spearsmith and the other buildings a second time to complete all the research.

  Summary Chapter IV

You will have 192 days and 21 hours of constant research to complete all the Crafting Research Tree. So be patient, it will come. You also have other areas of research that are more important to complete, crafting should take a back seat to military and trade.  A clue about sovereignty research; the first two lines and the first three columns are all you need for now. Columns four and five can wait because the smart sovereignty user will only use three levels of sovereignty on any tile.   The additional levels are a waste of resources in the long run. That will be spoken of at another time.

This concludes my Trade outline.  I hope you find it beneficial to your game plan.



Edited by GM ThunderCat - 06 Jun 2014 at 06:01
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Cactus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 Jun 2014 at 15:09
Sorry folks!  The title for Chapter one got printed in white and doesn't show up.  This should have been there just above the notes; 

Chapter I:  Basics buildings and Research for Production of Resources

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Chapter I:  Basics buildings and Research for Production of Resources

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Rill Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 Jun 2014 at 20:59
wow! lots of work! thanks cactus!
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