Trade v2 - an Introduction / Heads up

Upkeep is still paid for units that you put up for trade?

Torn Sky wrote: are you planning on changing the way we get gold or is it going to stay pop*4*tax will caravans be a tradeable unit

Hi TS,

No, no current plans to change the way you get Gold (from town taxation, gold resource square harvesting, theft, killing NPCs, quest rewards, trade etc).

Yes, caravans will be a tradable unit.

Best,

SC

Hi All,

INTRODUCTION TO TRADE v2 - WHAT, WHEN & HOW

We've talked about the enhancements to the Trade system (Trade v2) for a while, and as it grows ever more imminent, it's time to give you all a heads-up so you can start planning for what it will mean.

These are the most important facets of Trade v2:

MONETISATION OF THE ECONOMY
At the moment, the Illyriad economy exists as a barter system: you swap some of A, B and C with another player for X, Y and Z.

Trade v2 moves the gameworld to a monetised economy: where you buy (or sell) A, B, and C in exchange for Gold.

All Trade v2 transactions will require Gold as the mechanism of payment. 

Players will still, of course, be able to swap goods if they wish, but the game will only enforce the sale of goods, not the bartering of goods - bartering will be at each players' risk.

The most obvious benefit of the Monetisation of the Economy is to set a particular value against each item, and a coherent way to assess relative worth.

To explain: if on the marketplace today you trade 4000 Wood, 20 Swords and 4 Siege Blocks for 20000 Clay, 2000 Gold and 15 Bows then it's impossible to tell the relative worth of each item.  How much Clay do you get for a Sword?  How many Bows do you get for 10 Wood? 

People currently accept trades because they are good value for them at that moment in time.

But by saying that 1 Sword is worth 7 Gold and that 1 siege block is worth 146 Gold (or whatever the local market - ie the players - chooses as the value), you can assess relative worth and whether each and every particular trade is good value or not *against the marketplace*. 

You can, of course, choose to accept a more expensive deal than the current marketplace would suggest is the correct value for other reasons (such as proximity to your city, the traders' alliance affiliation etc).

Monetisation makes the market more efficient.


BUY ORDERS AND SELL ORDERS
At the moment, when you wish to trade in the marketplace, you say "I am selling A, B and/or C for X, Y and/or Z", and it is up to another player as to whether they accept your trade.

With Trade v2, buying and selling are split into two separate processes.

You can say "I am buying Wood for 4 Gold per Wood"... and you can simultaneously say "I am selling Wood for 5 Gold per Wood".

In the Trade interface buy and sell orders will be separated out.


PRICING
The marketplace will be driven entirely by player interaction: it is up to each and every player to set their own buy price and sell price for each item they wish to trade, and you (the market) will set the prices.

You can only, however, change prices or cancel a trade order once every 5 minutes.

Prices at player towns (in the same way as the current marketplace works) are set entirely by the player who owns the town.

However, at hubs there will be some "market intervention" in the pricing of items in the form of particular Factions placing orders to either buy or sell items at the hubs that they own.  The prices they set will be driven by their own levels of supply and demand, as well as influenced by local, regional and (to a smaller extent global) prices.

For example:  if a Faction that uses a lot of Infantry unit has recently lost a lot of troops, it will want Swords.

It will place some "buy orders" for these swords, or will buy up some of the sell orders that other players have placed at the hubs already. 

However, the faction isn't stupid - it'll also look and see (depending on how desperate it is for the swords) whether it can't pick them up cheaper elsewhere, perhaps from another player nearby (or another Faction) that it's friendly with; and it will also react to changing market conditions.

We generally want players to be competing economically against other players, not against the computer-controlled faction, and so faction prices are likely to be generally established at less profitable levels than player prices.


TAXATION
Yes, we know you hate taxes in RL, but we want to give you an opportunity to hate them ingame as well.

Every buy and sell transaction will be taxed in Gold.

Tax will be paid on the transaction by the recipient of the Gold, and it will be removed at source during the transaction.

At Towns, the taxation percentage will be fixed and substantial - this is the cost of having an impartial (computer-controlled) Customs, Revenue and Excise man at your town to ensure that the exact quantity of goods you buy or sell is, actually, dispatched to the other town. 

At Trade Hubs, the taxation percentage will fluctuate according to your standing with the Faction that owns the Hub.

There will be minimum taxation amounts in both cases.


VISIBILITY
One of the key facets of economies (in RL as well as virtual economies) is the availability of information about supply/demand and pricing.

Our current marketplace is globally visible: if a player based in Qarosslan puts up a trade it can be seen (and accepted) by a player at the other end of the world in Trome.

Trade v2 limits trade visibility.

Towns will be able to see all of the trades in the region in which they exist. 

We understand that many players will live on a borderline with another region, and so they will also have a (cross-border) radius around their city wherein their trades will be visible.

We will be introducing new trade technologies whereby a player can extend the "visibility" of their town's buy and sell orders.

We do understand that players will want the ability to buy, sell and otherwise participate in trade in regions outside of where they currently reside.

This is where we introduce the Trader unit.


TRADER UNITS
This is a new unit that players can build. 

The number of Traders you can build will depend on your marketplace level (and existing trade technologies) that you have researched. 

Think of them as the trade equivalent of Military Commanders (and yes, we have plans for them to gain XP and be levelled up in the future, with leveling up influencing eg taxation, caravan speed, chance of blockade running etc).

Like Military Commanders, each city will be able to have 5 of them.

Trader units can be sent to remote trade hubs where you can use them, instantly (ie not requiring messenger units) to conduct trade on your behalf.  They will be able to buy and sell at a hub *as if you were there*.

Caravans will continue to be able to move without requiring a trader unit to accompany them.

Trader units can only interact with hubs, not other player towns.

Trader Units will have a carrying capacity of 100.


CARAVANS & CAPACITY
We had originally thought about introducing "volume" to items. 

There are lots of good reasons: why should a single Sword be the same as a Siege Block when you move it?  Shouldn't these items have "volume" so that they take up more space?  And doesn't that then mean you could introduce different caravan types with different capacities (in terms of volume)?

We thought so too.

However, if we introduced "volume" for items as an ingame concept, it would mean that every time you wanted to send a mixed set of items from A to B, you would have to load them in caravan(s) through a drag-and-drop mechanism that would swiftly become tedious (ie this caravan has a capacity of 1,200 and I have 2 siege blocks that take up 900 space in it, and so I can add a further 300 clay etc).

However (and we devs here are gamers too) we decided that this concept - whilst realistic -  doesn't pass our internal "fun test": if it's not fun, we shouldn't do it.  We can't tell you the number of times we've screamed at a game because we're forced to do tedious "inventory management", and we wanted to avoid that here.

Equally, if we introduced different carrying capacities for different caravan types (fast caravans with small capacity vs slow caravans with massive capacity)... then we're in exactly the same situation: not passing the fun test because you would be forced to "load up" your caravans (of different types/capacities) when you move your stuff.

So, we're going to continue to say that everything ingame takes up the same space.  If your caravan(s) can carry 1500 Swords it can also carry 1500 Siege Blocks (which is how things currently stand).

There is one exception here: Gold. 

Gold will not consume any volume/space in a caravan.  You will be able to send Gold (in unlimited amounts) anywhere in a single caravan.  Further down the road we may well introduce some form of banking system for sending money between locations without the need to transport it.

Caravans will start to cost Gold upkeep of 3 Gold per hour per caravan.

We are going to entirely remove the limit on the number of caravans a city can have - you can have as many as you can afford.

We will add an ability to destroy caravans (similar to destroying military units you no longer want) to the interface so that players who do not want the additional upkeep costs can opt out of them.


INDEPENDENT MOVEMENT ORDERS
At the moment, all your trade interactions consist of an outbound and return journey.  You send caravans out to do something (deliver goods, or harvest resources) and when they've completed their order, they instantly turn round and return to your town.

With Trade v2 we're decoupling the outbound/return cycle of caravans at trade hubs, so you will be able to give your caravans orders to travel to a trade hub and wait (for further orders).

Your trader unit will then be able to issue new orders to the caravans (such as "move on to another hub, carrying X", or "deliver these goods to this city, and come back").

If you do not have a trader unit in the hub, you can still recall your caravans to come back to their home town via messenger.

The outbound/return standard cycle will continue to operate for town-to-town trade as well as resource harvesting.


TRADING IN TOWNS
This is the way we currently trade - between towns.

This will still be supported (although with Gold as the purchasing currency rather than bartering goods).

The system will work in much the same way as it currently does: when a deal is accepted, caravans from both players will leave at the same time - one player will carry Gold, and the other player will carry goods.

The player carrying the goods will have to supply sufficient caravans to service the trade (as is currently the case).

The player carrying the Gold will have to supply a single caravan only to carry the Gold, regardless of the amount.

Trade caravans will - until we introduce pathfinding, unit interception and Faction AI, at least - be safe from attack unless one or other city is under blockade by another player.

At the point we introduce pathfinding, unit interception and Faction AI, we will also allow Trade Caravans to be supported/escorted militarily.


TRADING AT TRADE HUBS
This is where things get different.

Trade Hubs are Faction-run cities scattered across the map.  You can see their locations on the static map here (and when the new Illyriad UI arrives they will be much clearer and visible on the ingame map as well).

Trade Hubs are essentially huge repositories for goods. 

They are invulnerable and non-blockadable.

At a Trade Hub you can not only trade resources but also units. 

Yes, players will be able to buy and sell military units, diplomats, settlers etc.  Before the inevitable threadnaught begins regarding racial differentiators, let me quickly add that units *not of your own race* in your armies or unit pool will cost double upkeep.  Think of it more as "hiring mercenary units" from other races.

To trade at a Trade Hub you will need to have a Trader Unit stationed there. 

Your Trader Units will only be allowed to trade at a Trade Hub if you have a standing with the owning Faction of more than -35.

You will also need sufficient caravans at the Trade Hub to carry away the goods you purchase at the hub - however very trade-focused players will also be able to rent varying amounts of warehouse space from the Faction.  Renting space will be cheaper in the long run than using caravans as temporary storage warehouses.

Trading carried out at Trade Hubs will be taxed by the owning Faction - however the Faction tax will be substantially less than town-to-town taxation, and the amount taxed will also vary according to your current standings with the Faction.

Every amount of tax paid at a Trade Hub will improve your standing with the owning Faction, and the more tax you pay the more your standings improve.


FUTURE PLANS FOR TRADE
We have future plans for Trade and Trade Hubs.

As Trade v2 allows Independent Caravan Movements and routing we want to provide a mechanism whereby logistically-minded players could run paid "Freight/Hauling" operations on behalf of other players.  The security of the goods to be carried would be insured via up-front collateral held in escrow.

We also - especially once Crafting is introduced to the game - want to implement an Auction mechanism.  With the current selection of resources and units, this doesn't make enough sense to do now, but once Crafted and Rare items are ingame we'll revisit this.

We also very much like the idea of Guilds and Banking (especially at a player-run level) and are looking closely at these possibilities.

Finally, it might be possible in the future for Alliances to set up and run their own trade hubs - perhaps in the Alliance Capital City.  These would however be massively expensive endeavours, and would definitely not get the "invulnerability" of a Faction-run hub.


TIMING
soon (tm)

We're into the final stretch on things, and so it is highly likely to be this month (November).

The release will be phased, as we have to retire the existing marketplace system and return orders to the players, and we'd like to give you notice of this before arbitrarily cancelling your current trade orders (!)

We won't be seeding Faction buy and sell orders on the markets until we have a better idea of where item pricing has generally settled, so this seeding will happen after the release of Trade v2.


Best wishes,

GM Stormcrow