Trading post is the gate of your settlement to the absolute void…the black hole where you could export everything but also import anything from! The void could be another settlement just like yours behind the fog or another universe…anything you like! But it is absolutely the most realistic and interesting way of obtaining and disposing your goodies, in order to sustain your awesome creation!
No one here says trading should be easy or the only way to go later on! Balance exists everywhere and that is why trading could balance production! Just a sheer example without any implication. You produce 300 wood but require 500 on monthly base. Why should you not have the ability to import the rest of it smoothly, at a given ratio set by the sellers/foreigners (where are you diplomatic corps???) or the “invisible hand” of the market?
The solution here has nothing to do with click-and-done! You still would have to think and forecast the ratio, just how much you would need to import to keep the balance (doesn’t production ratio hit any bells here???)! Also goodies back in those times could be traded for counterpart goodies! Goldman Sachs came much later…apparently. A challenging yet viable trading platform would provide the ABSOLUTE experience! Yes goodies prices will be fluctuating. E.g. wood winter (high demand) 10 ingots, summer (lower demand) 5 ingots (let’s just consider it, we are having a nice discussion here, are we not?). This means that sometimes due to false trading/management you will be faced with a serious question. Drain your economy to buy that single thing you need to survive? OR keep the shiny ingots and let a quarter of the pop to freaking starve or freeze to death! This system could lead you to build a nice industrial machine and just perfect to the bone your settlement!
Some mechanics proposals…
- Again ingots shouldn’t be the basic currency and no specific fiat should be considered here in any way.
- Stable trading (e.g monthly or fixed per certain amount of days) should have cap. Meaning that the trading cart visiting your settlement each month will accept or give you a certain amount of goodies. This means you will have to trade let’s say up to 5 types of goodies of your choice and combination to meet a cap of 1000 items (amounts here are sheer examples!). This cap will be individual with each one of the 5 or so existing traders which gives the interesting property, some of them to be more or less attractive for the goodies, thus requiring you to make nice decisions!
- No one can guarantee that the trading cart will visit you exactly every 1st of month or every fixed 15 days! In the end someone could loot the poor trader or the bull could die midway and leave you in a bit shitty situation. But this is life anything is possible! This possibility could be settled according to difficulty.
- Stable trading shouldn’t be provided early on. You will have to earn the ability! How? Well, first you will have to unlock a second tier Trading Post upgrade and after that…IF your settlement is ugly and you are broke, without attractive and quality industry, traders wouldn’ like to visit you, thus you would have to win their attention! E.g. for trader X to visit you will have to provide a stable production ratio of cheese. Or for trader Y to come you will have to build and upgrade 2 blacksmiths.
- At a tier 4 or future 5, 6…a sea dock could be added (only for specific maps apparently) where you could do the same thing with larger ships, thus 5 or 10 fold caps!