I’ve been playing the game EA since months now and I absolutely enjoy it. The one thing that I really can’t understand are spices…what’s the point with them? In the past I’ve bought them occasionally and I’ve rarely seen any advantage…in my current town (T4 - 500 people) I tried buying them only to see them abandoned for years inside the trading post until they spoiled completely. How can I use them? I think that the luxury goods section is a bit ambiguos as it isn’t easy to understand what luxury goods do, especially in terms of additional income/happiness.
They just help with t4 happiness atm far as I know, but maybe they’ll be more useful when we get the t5 housing in the game.
Ok, maybe I actually bought them when my town was still T3 but I upgraded to T4 when they still were in the trading post. But even with T4 markets didn’t use them until they spoiled, and I’ve even checked the spices checkbox in the makets section…
Anyway I think it’s not super clear how markets manage luxury goods.
Well, you need to move them out of the trading post into other storage so the marketeers will access them.
How can I move them out of the trading post?? As long as I know you can’t select a specific object to move. You just select to make them available to the city when you buy them. Like I do with all other resources…let’s say I buy 100 iron from a trader, I select to make the iron available to the city and it automatically becomes available for my citizens even if the iron is actually stored in the trading post. I’ve done the same with spices but they were not used…
Works the same way - you click buy and transfer rather than buy and stock which keeps them in the trading post.
I’m pretty sure I’ve clicked “Buy and transfer” with spices but they were not used…I will do another test anyway.
oh they will be used when the market workers get to moving them to the houses.
There is no real need for spices until you get manors. The main thing
spice is good for is to make lots of gold via taxes. If you spend 10K gold
on spice you will make 20K back so 10K profit. Just be careful not to move
too much to global storage as spice does spoil. buy spice and keep it
in the trading post. Then every few years move some over to global.
Spices are a tier 4 luxury. They increase happiness for Manors and generate significant luxury taxes over time.
Ultimately, they will likely be a requirement for tier 5 home upgrades.
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It’s been said before spices give huge gold bonus as a luxury item for T4 houses (exclusively at the moment)
Are we gonna be able to produce spice?
The highest tier houses will stock spices and they count as a luxury item which increases your gold income. Basically once your houses are Tier 4, buying spice supercharges your tax take and hence gold income.
So if you’re sitting around at Tier 4 town center and many fully updated homes, then buying some spice will yeild a significant gold increase for the entire duration that you have spice available.
“Spices” were the classic Imported Luxuries in the Medievalish period (and earlier; there was a big trade in spices from India/Sri Lanka to the Roman Empire) so I suspect by labeling the Top Luxury Good as ‘spices’ they are signaling that it will not be available on the map.
The nearest equivalent top Luxury available without importing from outside the biome might be woolen Tapestries: finely woven, highly decorated and colored wall hangings that were practically required in bigger houses to keep stone and brick walls from sucking the heat right out of the rooms all winter. Introducing these would also require Sheep, and High Skill weavers and (historically, usually women) workers at the Tapestry Looms. That actually would work pretty well in Game Terms, requiring significant investment in a Production Chain to produce them and providing potentially an extremely lucrative Trade Good. Also, the Tapestry Luxury would be most significant in precisely those High Tier residences where Spice currently is significant.
Maybe if, as speculated, Spices will be a requirement for Tier 5 Housing, Tapestries or something similar will become a Luxury for that same housing. Personally, I’d prefer to have the Requirement be available on the map with (extreme) Effort and the Luxury be the Import, but I’m just a player here . . .
Then it is a recipe for disaster waiting to happen.
When two, three or four years of no Spice available at the TP happens, whatever the T5 homes are called will soon be abandoned for lack of luxury goods they demand and were accustomed to, and all our efforts will be wasted.
There are several things that have to “come together” to make the game work, especially at the Higher Tier of residences and even more especially if the population limits are going to relaxed. I guarantee that if there is no set population limit, gamers will IMMEDIATELY try to see just how big a Town they can cram onto the biggest map the game can generate. At the present, 1000 population is barely sustainable, with huge inefficiencies and problems supplying even the necessities. That ain’t going to fly with the general Cit-Building/Survivalist Gamers out there.
Being able to place orders for delivery through the Traders is one potential solution, but I think places too much emphasis on the Traders.
Keeping the Traders as a back up or last resort for Luxuries would be my preference, with a rework of Resources and sources and production On Map for everything Required by the population Tiers. They are taking steps in that direction with the Deep Mines and Quarries and Foresters, but I think they are going to have to do more with other ‘limited’ resources like Pelts and Tallow that can only barely be provided for large populations by putting whole platoons of workers into the barns and/or hunter’s lodges. Gardening, similar to the Berry Relocation now, would be an obvious solution to Willow, Medicinal Herbs, Herbs, and other near-random on-map resources. Making Spices strictly a Luxury, as I noted before, and adding another ‘Tier 5 Requirement’ would be a move along the same lines, but no telling what the Design Team has in mind. . .
This is what scares me.
If we can’t produce it, it becomes a liability.
One solution might be our own ‘Spice Trains’, Teamsters that leave the map with an order for goods we generate.
An overland wagon shop and wheel-smith.
A three or four-year rotation per wagon/round trip, like crops.
Could put a lot of peeps to work when populations rise.
And take them off the map.
Things not seen things not rendered.
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I am finally starting to see the light. Why trade for anything it’s really rather cumbersome. On fact why even click the mouse to do stuff at all. Think of all the hassle we could save if the game just automatically does what we think it should do. Come on crate get with the program!
Go to town, delete a good portion of your Decorative installations all over your housing areas.
See what happens when Desirability falls through the floor.
We’ll wait for your report.
once i bought and distributed spices in my town and my income spiked from 160 to 480 gold per month and lasted till i was out of spices. well worth the investment.
My experience as well: Spices are a Tax Windfall if you can get them.
But, and this is, I think, @Celebrindan’s complaint, I ran out of Spices because no Trader brought any more for 3- 4 years, and my income went back down to Baseline. The supply of Spices - or anything else through the Trading Post - is utterly inconsistent and cannot be relied on.
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