Advanced Hellenistic Era NES - Part 2

[1889]

Re: Re: Lydian Orders

Originally posted by Micha
Our counteroffer thus cannot exceed 3 talents per turn for each of the both.
Furthermore, we need to constrain the import of timber to 6 talents, since the 8 talents paid before are too much of a burden for our economy. In exchange, we offer to sell colonial territory to you if you should wish so.

(OOC: Personally I don't understand the impact of the numbers on these trade deals, so what ever numbers work for you are fine by us.)

I will buy what ever territory you wish to sell. A land without borders is a wonderul gift, Thank you.

[Tassadar500]

To: Lydia
From: Carthage

So we will give you fish for four talents? That sounds good.

[1889]

Lydia is pleased to import four talents of Carthaginian fish.

[1889]

Re: Re: Lydian Orders

To Bosporiam Greeks I accept your offers. Please verify that this is what you mean.

You import 3 talents each of our fabric and marble and you want to reduce your timber exports to 6 talents. We will import 6 talents of your grain.

[1889]

Re: Re: Re: Lydian Orders

Persian cattle for Lydian Marble - The high quality of our marble is just the thing you need to show off the fabulous wealth that has come to typify Persia.

This may have been missed before.

[Micha]

Re: Re: Re: Lydian Orders

Originally posted by 1889
To Bosporiam Greeks I accept your offers. Please verify that this is what you mean.

You import 3 talents each of our fabric and marble and you want to reduce your timber exports to 6 talents. We will import 6 talents of your grain.

Bosporian Greek to Lydia
Exactly. Though you are already importing grain from us for 8 talents / turn. But the remaining deals sound good.

[1889]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Lydian Orders

Originally posted by Micha

Bosporian Greek to Lydia
Exactly. Though you are already importing grain from us for 8 talents / turn. But the remaining deals sound good.

Well why don't I just save the 2 talents also? What is the difference between importing 10 or 2 talents worth?

[Micha]

Since there are still questions about the new budget / trade system, I will explain it again. As an example I will take Lydia. ( )

Economy
Efficiency: 60% [base +50, food +10, goods +12 (+3), infra +5, dissent -7 (-3), multicultural -10]
Income: 145 talents (+13) [242 talents * 0.60]
- taxation : 197 talents (+14)
- trade (exports) : 25 talents (+11) [timber (BospGr 8); pottery (Carthage 7; Macedonia 6; Egypt 4)]
- agriculture : 20 talents
- mines : 0 talents
- Other Income : 0 talents
Expenses: 99 talents (+5)
- upkeep (army): 55 talents (+1)
- upkeep (navy): 17 talents (+3)
- trade (imports) : 24 talents (+10) [grain (BospGr 8); timber (Persia 6); iron (BospGr 6); paper (Egypt 4)]
- Other Expenses : 3 talents (-9) [Piracy]
Cash Flow: 46 talents per turn (+8)
treasury: 0 talents
Ressources: [pottery, fabrics, marble, (timber), (grain), (paper), (iron)]

Efficiency - This determines how much of your raw income is really flowing into your coffers! Especially war and unhappiness as well as a lacking feeling of unity amongst your peasants (multicultural) lead to lower efficiency; Out of 10 talents Lydia´s economy produces for the state, only 6 go into the royal treasury.
More diverse food, goods and better infrastructure help in increasing efficiency.

Income - This is the amount of talents you get before costs. That means if you had nothing to pay for (no imports, no military, no corruption etc.) this is what you´d get into your coffers.
In brackets you see how it´s calculated.

Income: 145 talents (+13) [242 talents * 0.60]

Lydia´s economy generates 242 talents, of which 60% (145 talents) can be used by the monarch. The rest goes... well, noone really knows that... (black market, swamp of corruption, ...)
The number 242 is the sum of all incomes, including export revenues. So if Lydia would gain another 10 talents from exports, only 60% of that would go into the coffers, which would be 6 talents.

Expenses - This is how many talents are taken out of your coffers each turn. It is a simple sum of all payments, including upkeep and import costs. You will notice that expenses are not effected by efficiency. This is why (as long as your efficiency is below 100%) import costs weigh more than export revenues.
A trade like marble (5 talents/turn) for timber (5 talents / turn) looks like a nothing-lost situation, but in fact you would only gain 3 talents (5*0.6) and pay 5.

Cash Flow - well, this one´s a no-brainer. Take the income and deduct the expenses. There you go.

Making profits - Now let´s come to the interesting part!
There are basically two ways of making profits: Sell something at high prices or buy something cheaply that will increase your efficiency. Since the first option is somewhat self-explaining, let´s elaborate on the second one:

- trade (imports) : 24 talents (+10) [grain (BospGr 8); timber (Persia 6); iron (BospGr 6); paper (Egypt 4)]

As you can see, Lydia is currently importing grain at 8 talents per turn. Since grain is a food ressource, it increases efficiency by 10%. Right now Lydia has 60% efficiency, so without grain it would be 50%.
Now let´s look at the income:
without grain:

Income: 121 talents [242 talents * 0.50]

with grain:

Income: 145 talents [242 talents * 0.60]

You see the difference? Due to the additional food ressource, Lydia has 24 talents more to spend! At what cost? A mere 8 talents! So Lydia´s profit out of the grain trade is 16 talents each turn!!!

I hope this shows the working of the trade system well enough to encourage higher prices on foodstuffs! Exporting food to a rival for less than 8 talents is like paying tributes to them

[1889]

Thanks Micha. So you mean Im not importing 8 talents worth of Grain from the Greeks, but rather I am importing Grain and they are charging me 8 gold for access to that resources. (Did I make the difference clear?)

Well thats something to think about. I'll still approve all the deals and will continue to pay 8 for grain.

[Micha]

Originally posted by 1889
Well why don't I just save the 2 talents also? What is the difference between importing 10 or 2 talents worth?

And this is where the game gets fuzzy...
Technically, there´s no benefit in paying more for certain imports.
This is because of a major disadvantage of the current trade system: There are no amounts of goods, just a yes or no.

I am counting on the player´s goodwill here; Lydia, as a country with more inhabitants than Crete, should also import more food than Crete. And since there´s no way to determine how much food Lydia is importing, the value of the trade is just higher for Lydia than it is for Crete.

This is well for trades involving NPCs, but if two player countries just agree on exchanging food for 1 talent per turn, there´s little I can do. Then I would probably have to step in and say "You puny little humans, if you want to trick me I will show you!" and then crush the respective countries by divine force. You know, earthquakes were quite common at that time, as were volcano eruptions, floodings, storms, fires, ...


So, as long as there´s still no amount given, try to judge unbiasedly how much you would need to import and how much that´d be worth...

[Micha]

Originally posted by 1889
Thanks Micha. So you mean Im not importing 8 talents worth of Grain from the Greeks, but rather I am importing Grain and they are charging me 8 gold for access to that resources. (Did I make the difference clear?)

Exactly!

[appleciders]

Egypt to Persia:
We'd like to once again offer you our paper at 4 talents\turn, our grain at 12 talents\turn, and offer to buy your cattle at 10 talents\turn and your copper at 4 talents\turn. That's a total of 4 trades there.

Egypt to Lydia: We'd like to begin importing your silver at 3 talents\turn. Acceptable?

Egypt to Sicily:
Welcome, newcomer! We'd like to begin importing your oil at 3 talents\turn, and we'd also like to offer you the chance to import our paper at 4 talents\turn. Are you interested?

[Micha]

The use of Secret Police

Since I have been asked several times about the use of secret police and then answered through PMs, I will now make it public.
Before everyone starts picking on me let me assure you that nobody has used spies yet to obtain information that has not been visible on the forums.

Any country can use spies in any other country. They can perform different tasks, like spying at secret orders, assassinating people, incite riots, sabotaging towns/buildings/infrastructure, stealing money, making military supplies disappear and numerous other things...
Though they wouldn´t forward entire secret order PMs to you, your spies would instead tell you things. This means the information might be incomplete or even wrong, depending on your funding, the secret police ratings and a bit luck. Also, if your opponent was also funding his secret police, your spies could get caught and either killed you made double agents (maybe without you knowing that).

There´s quite a big chance that your opponent will learn of the espionage, a slight chance that the origin will be disclosed, and an even smaller chance that your spies get caught (see above for possible consequences). Be warned that revealing serious spy activity might result in a declaration of war!

[Micha]

Originally posted by appleciders
Egypt to Sicily:
Welcome, newcomer! We'd like to begin importing your oil at 3 talents\turn, and we'd also like to offer you the chance to import our paper at 4 talents\turn. Are you interested?

Greetings!
Sadly, Rome hasn´t replied to our offer of ceasefire yet, so we are not quite sure whether we will still own the olive farms next year...

We´d be interested in importing paper at 3 talents per turn, though. Any chance to supply us a trade ship? We seem to have run short on these lately...

[appleciders]

Egypt to Sicily:
Unfortunately, we're a little short of trade ships as well, and since Egypt is on a war footing, we don't have anything to spare on a navy. If you can spare any money on ships, we expect that investment will pay off nicely, and we regret that we cannot do the same at this time. Other than that, your deal is acceptable.