Posted December 31, 2015
End of july I have one ship, no buildings, juuust enough to get promoted for the second time (didn't make it in June), maybe I should study your save instead. I think I used low starting money, otherwise I should have done better.
If I can find my backup disk easily I might have a save to upload tomorrow, the current game is not much to study. No promise, I'm between moves and have only a vague idea where most of my stuff is.
I attached my prices instead. Those are easy trade difficulty, same as yours. Sell prices are kind of final unless people start acting up later, but I adjust buy limits all the time as my needs and cash change. How much I buy for manually is more fluid, thats why I trade without routes for a long time. Its mostly based on the default prices (those that the first admin shows), but I go way above them for things that sell for a lot, buying furs up to 900-1000, iron goods 350 to sell, even more if I want to build something right now.
Not going to type a million quote tags this time, brackets will have to do.
> I guess I'm a complete n00b.
I think you are doing quite well actually, the learning curve is a bit brutal, one kind of expects player production to be an easy cash cow like it is in most other games.
With only super cheap material production its no wonder you were worried about profits. Your next move should be iron goods, something that actually sells. And ships, always ships.
> No, I didn't. I thought you left it at zero to let him buy infinite, up to that price. Kinda like "MAX" on ship trades. No wonder it seemed like I was always snagging deals before he had the chance.
If you want MAX enter something huge, ships max out when full but the admin needs a limit. You currently buy timber only until you have ten. That stuff is expensive in Lübeck but its a good idea to do it like that anyway, as insurance when you forget to bring in cheaper logs from elsewhere. Wine will still look like it does not work, imports seem to arrive right after the admin trades, leaving the good price until the next day.
> Is that kind of how you set up Leubeck at the early game? What would you have done differently? As you can see, my company value is just shy of 70k.
I would aquire more ships before building so much, first crayer weeds out pirates and does tavern escorts to bring in more ships. If I can't take some pirates' ships I let them escape in a bad state, buys me time while they repair and can't bother my trading ships. No need to do that with tavern mission pirates, they despawn on their own a short time later.
Buildingwise my game looks quite similar actually, 3 brickyards, 1 workshop, 1 sawmill, 2 houses... after a year. Fisher will follow, ideally before the starting hemp is used up. Second office is most often Malmö or Danzig, this time I picked Stettin. The sawmill is for convenience to avoid some shipping of bulky timber, not having a ship available to peddle wine and furs costs me money too, might as well use pricier trees instead.
Because I am afraid to build early, I give many loans from my spare cash. More ships in the future from defaults, and some welcome grain for the winter. Using the money yourself you could expand faster, I insist on stability or at least the illusion of it. And I enjoy the manual trading phase, the game doesn't care at which time you join the producers. Not even the intro mission really, you can ignore everything the uncle writes if you want to.
Don't get lured by the 3-6-9 bonus into building more than you need, it gets a little cheaper, but that doesn't help if the good piles up in your warehouse.
Not related to building, but if you have a ship somewhat aimlessly going around trading, the courier with three parcels in the tavern is a nice side mission. He just orders you to the next town somewhat nearby, no attacks and you can still trade for yourself, if you move promptly ~5k after 4-5 stops.
> Why does buying a ship decrease company value?
You hand them a pile of cash and a lot of materials, while they work those things are not yours anymore. When the ship is done you should get its value added.
> I'll get my promotion July 1, but there's no way I could have made enough cash by Jun 1, even though I had the reputation for it.
Oh my, I didn't mean to brag, having learned to play from those extreme builders, my "occassionally" doesn't feel like much. Unless the mayor election is in October (or November, patrician rank in a month is tough too)
and you insist on being mayor in the first year, there is no reason at all to hurry. Even then you could just check the townhall when starting the game and start over to roll a better schedule.
> Is there an advantage to higher rank? All I could see was it increases the cost to join the guild.
Most things are directly tied to reputation and/or wealth rather than rank, but you need to be council member to ask for expansion of the city wall (and other, far less useful stuff) or talk to the prince, patrician to be elected major even though AI can do it on a lower rank. And being major allows you to mostly skip the council, just build the big wall to protect your brickyards... and of course the alderman missions, building a town from scratch is fun, smoking out pirates can pay millions (only if you let them plunder that much). Probably nothing you need currently, just do your stuff and don't worry about promotions, as long as you join the guild at some point they will come eventually.
The guild fee is tied to your wealth (rich=expensive) and your reputation (popular=cheaper), changes daily so it can't be rank, it is capped somewhere but I don't remember the amount. One doesn't usually feel the reputation bit much, but it may be worth checking for a discount the day after eliminating a pirate or something like that. Join when you have some spare cash around or wait until you're wondering why you're not becoming travelling merchant.
About feeding the poor not working early on... there are those hidden town production buildings that make the stuff you trade. These start out half empty and need workers at the beginning of the game. Given a choice, workers pick the more popular employer and you are a nobody compared to the town, meaning you get almost none until the town's buildings are fully staffed. I think thats all that is going on there, but I never tried feeding the poor so early.
That was quite a compact pile of questions, I won't answer any more this year! Have a good nye.
Post edited December 31, 2015 by flickas