12-12-1999 04:25									#31
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Well, I think that specific idea would take up too much memory. Along the silk road, say, you'd probably have scores of merchants. And polling all the merchants every time a unit moves would indeed eat too many clocks. I'm sure we can come up with a reasonable compromise. Each 30-sq area of the map would keep track of which merchants going through it or something to reduce the combinatorial or search explosion.

BTW Java just isn't all That slow. Exectution speed is probably within a factor of two of C or C++ for most real tasks. Graphics is what eats up Most of the time in cutting edge games, and we will not be having marching units or other BS like that

	13-12-1999 02:30									#32
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Mark:
I'm not sure what idea you say is too expensive in memory... storing merchants routs in map squares?

	13-12-1999 02:49									#33
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What about considering cities in-the-route (cities where the cargo passes through in its way to the destination city)? I think cities (or provinces if you prefer) of this type can get a benefit from this passing routes (services paid by the merchants to people at the city). I guess a lot of cities had flourished in this way, specially those with ports receiving cargo from abroad and being the gate to inland.
What do you think?

Rodrigo

	13-12-1999 03:08									#34
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Yes. The merchants clearly need to know their routes. But giving Every square a pointer to Every merchant that goes through it could be substantial. Maybe its also manageable, depends on the number of merchants. I am most worried about modern times when they will go all over the place! But we'll figure out a decent way to do it no problem.

	13-12-1999 21:18									#35
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I'm a little bit confused.

Every square doesn't need a references to every merchant. Every square just needs a list of references to those merchants that use it. For most squares, that list will be empty.

	13-12-1999 23:15									#36
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Shimmin:

That's what I said. A square would need a pointer to every merchant that goes through it.

Quick estimate... Average trade path length = 50 squares (320x200 map though it might change) 1000 merchants in the late game.
Giving each square a poiter requires 50K pointers. That's a lot of memory for something that isn't core to the game.

	14-12-1999 00:04									#37
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What do u do about modern times when u merchants can go everywhere just about and u also have coorperations to worry about (any the should be put in there someway of interaction, thats for the econ model).

	12-04-2000 02:13									#38
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In reviewing the Merchant Model, I have come up with a proposal to modify the Merchant agents themselves in a small but meaningful way. By giving the merchant agents a lifetime similar to characters, adding different kinds of merchant agents and a maximum number of trade routes, we can diversify the trade market within Clash. The numbers in the chart below need to be revised for the game. I just put some numbers in, Mark or Shimmin (if he’s still with us) can probably better fill in the numbers.

Merchant Chart

“Unit” /Max#Routes /MaxCash /Tech /Lifetime /Cost
Merchant /Base /Base /Currency /Base /Base
Trading Comp. /2x /3x /Banking /1.5x /3x
Corp. Merchant /4x /6x /Corporation /2x /5x

	16-04-2000 20:37									#39
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I think that one merchant should be able to trade many different goods at the same time.
If there is a trade-route between two cities/regions it should involve all goods that are profitable in the same route. I think this would save some memory too. Instead of having 25 'terrain improvements'as trade routes u have one trade route which is belonging to xxx (merchant number 3 from venedig).

	17-04-2000 01:32									#40
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What ever happened to this thread?
I remember it was a fun one!
Is shimmin still with us?

	21-04-2000 06:19									#41
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TK:

I see what you're saying, but at least as I'd envisioned it the player wouldn't know anything about individual merchants/corporations anyway... Only when they got to the point of being represented by a character would they be more noticeable than overall trade. However, what you suggest would be easy to do if it turns out there is some real advantage to it...

Stuff2:

A merchant/Corp. can certainly have more than one route. What you suggest seems kind of artificial in that a second good from a source city may well be more in need elsewhere. And so why should it go to a particular city, as opposed to the merchant who bids highest for it regardless of the city of origin of the merchant? I don't understand what you mean about ' terrain improvements ' as trade routes either... I think merchants will really work best if each merchant may have several routes, and each route stands on its own.

Rodrigo:

I wrote shimmin several months ago, and he was too busy to do anything further. I assume that's still the case... Merchants won't be implemented until at least demo 6 anyway, so we can keep discussing things at our leisure for the moment.

	26-04-2000 23:00									#42
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Mark's right about my busy-ness. Actually, I just completed a senior design project yesterday, and look forward to having time to contribute again starting next week or so.

Which threads would be most fruitful for me to read to catch up on the last six months of development?

--RS

	28-04-2000 02:41									#43
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Hi shimmin:

Good to have you back! Actually, I don't think anything much that was done previously has been invalidated. So other than this thread, the best place to look is the main economics thread. Other than that we have been working on the demo 5 specifications for several areas... but since we weren't thinking we would get to merchants in demo 5 there isn't much there you need to be aware of I think. The demo 5 econ thread probably would be a good thing for you to look over anyway, but as I said I don't think it will be essential.

	17-11-2001 21:17									#44
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Well, obviously shimmin is long gone...

But the good news is I have a crude version of the merchants up, and they should make it into Demo 5.1 unless I screw up majorly.

The merchants I have now make point-to-point trades. They are designed to move goods mostly between cities that have sources of different Specials. It also occurred to me that in addition to the long-range merchants, there maybe should be local ones. The local ones would just try to reasonably distribute goods that are available somewhere within a province throughout the province as practical. Between the two types I think we can simulate much of the trade benefits that happen in real societies.

Any opinions?

	17-11-2001 22:40									#45
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I thought that all the goods produced in a province will be available in any part of it, so local marchents won't be needed.

Are you saying that production and demand will be handled in the map square level? That seems overly complicated.

	17-11-2001 23:03									#46
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Hi Yoav:

Yep, that's the way it works right now. It is one of the things F_Smith convinced me to try for good or ill. The basic logic is that infrastructure needs to be associated with a square since territory can change hands by square. And if you need the infrastructure there, might as well do the production that way too. Another advantage is that players can't play games with province size to make the economy work better just by moving lines on the map. They could do that if all goods were distributed throughout the province for free.

Playtesting will tell if there are problems with the current approach. But don't worry, the player really doesn't need to do anything active to make trade work. Just not tax it so heavily that it disappears. Since the square-level economy is already coded, I'm not changing it until problems are found with the way its done now. Too many other things to do!

	18-11-2001 13:58									#47
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OK, if the CPU can handle it (and will continue to do so even in the final game) then I don't see any problems.

We should just keep in mind that local merchants, while having the same rules that long range merchants adhere to, have different characteristics.

Local trade requires a smaller investment and is generally a less risky business (so it doesn't need a big ROI to be worthwhile) even in the ancient world.

Normally we'll want to make sure that no grain is rotting in one map square while ppl starve in the next one, excluding wars or other special conditions.

	18-11-2001 19:47									#48
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quote: Normally we'll want to make sure that no grain is rotting in one map square while ppl starve in the next one, excluding wars or other special conditions.

But I think this should be a possible event, to a certain extent, if infrastructure is insufficient, or if the player has no real control over that particular province (example: local warlords warring against each other...). AFter all, a map square is 100kms long, and if you have absolutely no roads between two squares, how could you transport food from one province to another?

By the way, I have a somewhat basic question that didn't turn up anything satisfying with the search engine... How is province size variability determined? How can the player modify province boundaries? How do they change without any player intervention? None of the models I have read really seem to deal with this... But maybe I have missed something big? Thanks.

	18-11-2001 20:20									#49
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quote: Originally posted by Yoav Sissman OK, if the CPU can handle it (and will continue to do so even in the final game) then I don't see any problems.

Well, that of course is TBD, but I think it will work ok.

quote: Normally we'll want to make sure that no grain is rotting in one map square while ppl starve in the next one, excluding wars or other special conditions.

I'm with Mikael... historically it Has happened quite frequently that famine persisted relatively near to other places with quite adequate food. Even 100km or less away, I believe. The issues are transportation infrastructure, and the market power of the starving or societal will to get them food.

quote: Originally posted by Mikael How is province size variability determined? How can the player modify province boundaries? How do they change without any player intervention?

This is mostly TBD. My thoughts right now are to let the player set provinces for land they control only limited by tranportation capability from the province capital to a province square, with a few squares allowed to exceed this limit by a limited amount so that a few odd squares off in a corner don't need to be their own province. This is one of the areas where we will rely on playtesting a lot to fix the balance between reality and fun.

(I have cross-posted this both in econ and govt threads. Please put any response in one of those.)

	19-11-2001 00:03									#50
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See my comments in the government thread.

Cheers

	19-11-2001 12:57									#51
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I think that historically local famine could persist due to war, social isolation of the starving populace, lasting plagues, or government prevention of trade. Maybe there's other possible causes for this that I'm forgetting. In other conditions every local merchant could load a small caravan and garnish a handsome profit.

Of course that transportation infrastructure should have its impact on the cost of traveling, and as such influence the agent's profit margin and his willingness to embark in the voyage. Naturally transportation's importance will increase with distance, so if one part of a province consists mainly of mines and the other parts are more suitable for agriculture then there should be no hunger even with map square based supplyn' demand.

	21-11-2001 16:25									#52
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A question about road infra: when going from square A to square B, the infra of which square is used? (B I suppose)

black market and smuggling:
advantage: don't pay tariffs
disadvantage: trader may be 'deleted' with high law enforcement and military presence

pirates:
just TF's running loose, but with a high chance of having a character as leader.

Province trade:
This should depend on the amount of food available, transport infra and transport tech. And only for food. Other things will be the domain of large-scale merchants. So we could figure out the food distribution for a province based on the above three factors, to avoid having so much small merchants with predictable effects. Since province size and shape will be linked to transport facilities, one could easily assume food transport won't be a problem either. Trading food between provinces (regardless of civ, but with tariffs appropriate) or armies will still be a merchant task.

Exploration:
Traders normally keep their trade routes secret, except when they are paid for revealing them. When a city is the node of a trade network, the information of its existence will be passed down the trade network. ('This silk comes from Chengdu, an enormous Chinese city of marvelous wealth. - Wow. I'll buy it so I can boast against my rivals.') This could be shown by showing only the name, and later the mapsquare on the right place of the map. A government can then hire a character to explore a possible route to that city.

Last edited by Simon Loverix on 21-11-2001 at 18:41

	22-11-2001 01:05									#53
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What is "road infra"?

Cheers

	22-11-2001 05:25									#54
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Simon:

Did you mean road infra (local roads) or just roads with your question? Anyway taking you to mean just roads, I assume Gary will work it so that when moving from A to adjacent square B each road segment (that in A, and that in B) will have the specified effect given the terrain and road travel distance.

quote: Province trade: This should depend on the amount of food available, transport infra and transport tech. And only for food.

.

If I understand what you're saying I don't agree with it. Food should not be handled uniquely IMO, and many provinces will be too large for easy food transport. Food is one of the hardest things to move around. If my merchant concept turns out to be impractical, we might fall back to something like you suggest, but I don't think it will be necessary.

Your other ideas sound reasonable. I'm not sure about the details for all these things. Since the issues are further off in terms of implementation, I've got to go focus on demo 5.1 .


Gary: Check out this post to see about my ideas for handling local roads with a road infra class. That may be overly ambitious, and all we need is an overall "Commercial Infrastructure" class that could include all of: local roads and canals, power grids, water and sewer systems etc. We just have to see what seems the best balance in playtesting.

	22-11-2001 12:16									#55
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This probably have been discussed in the past to some extent, but I wasn't able to trace the discussion.

I can see how food and production units can be just carried around, but can someone explain to me how the merchants transport services?

As I understood, Sp units represent work that is being done , not materials. Now since every square width is 100 km I don't see many people live in one square and work more then a few squares away (unless traveling is part of the job). In today's world people can sometime do that using advanced communications, but more often then not this is not the case.

I can see people migrate to get a better job (especially if they are slaves ), and the rules of supply and demand can and should be used to model that, but the considerations people have here are quite different then those merchants have, and belong in the migrations submodel.

	22-11-2001 18:27									#56
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Hi Yoav:

Services are handled in a unique way in the Clash Economy. Here is an edited quote from the Economy web page.

quote: To simplify the economic system I propose that the price of services should always be set at 1 currency unit. For now I will simply refer to the currency unit as the CC for Clash Cash or simply C to save typing. Among the four sectors in Clash's simple economy, services are the one that is least tied to the land. Also, some services, like artworks are much easier to transport per unit value than goods in the other sectors. I could raise several other arguments, but I would rather hear what people have to say about this. If I don't use services as the unit of exchange, I'm not sure how to set the unit of exchange for a simple model economy like exists in Clash. Opinions and suggestions welcome. The equivalence between services and money allows the government to take its taxes out of the province in units of currency. All that it needs to do is to trade the food and production part of its take for services. This trading will have consequences in terms of structure of the economy. If "cash taxation" goes on for a while, eventually the people will make more services than they themselves would want in order to have enough excess to pass onto the government.

Essentially I picked services as the medium of exchange (and so implicitly easily transportable) because it seemed to give more realistic results compared to using one of the other sector goods (Food and Mfg. Goods). I freely admit it is not correct in simulating how the real world works, although for low amounts of services trade I don't think its too inaccurate. Its just one of those tradeoffs made to get the Clash economy to run in a reasonable, if not perfect way.

	23-11-2001 15:50									#57
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Thanks for the explanation.

I knew that services were used as the global measure of wealth, but the understanding that transporting them was free escaped my mind.

I can't think of a better solution either.

	23-11-2001 16:42									#58
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So large roads and local roads are handled separately?

I suggested limiting food trade to reduce the number of merchants needed because the food wouldn't be transported far. Also to avoid several types of merchants: one could assume it is small-scale initiative to sell their excess to make a penny. Merchants and taxes would still come first. And if there's anything left then, and they can still sell it..

	23-11-2001 17:21									#59
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quote: Originally posted by Simon Loverix So large roads and local roads are handled separately?

That's the current plan...

quote: I suggested limiting food trade to reduce the number of merchants needed because the food wouldn't be transported far. Also to avoid several types of merchants: one could assume it is small-scale initiative to sell their excess to make a penny. Merchants and taxes would still come first. And if there's anything left then, and they can still sell it..

Ah, so I did misunderstand what you were saying before. My vision for the local merchants is that they would just use a simple algorithm to spread locally-available surplusses over the province. The local merchant would look at surplusses and needs across the province and then do as much as possible given transport capabilities and costs. Rather than figure out precise routes and commodities bought and carried I would just do this using a quick-and-dirty approximation.

	21-01-2002 20:33									#60
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Having skimmed this thread, it seems the Merchant documentation on the site needs to be updated.

While reading I also played with some ideas. I get the impression that this model is already implemented, and some of this is already covered, but here goes:

* The merchant operates from his province to other provinces, which could be the same civ or another civ. Another civ would give more potential income. Another race/religion/cultre could also give boosts.

* The merchant starts with a certain amount (with a +/- 10(?) % randomizer) fo money which he invests in bying some stuff and selling it in another place, and as the specs say, he tries to find a valuable commodity to trade.

* When the merchant starts out he does not have much impact on the civ economy as his net worth is not that much. For every trade route, the total gain gets divided in percentage between various factors. That means some part of the gain goes to the merchant himself (raising his net worth and making him more powerful), some part go as taxes to augment the civ economy (variable by the player setting taxes), some part goes to hire guards, workers, some goes to corruption/black market (depending upon civ type/racial traits/social level etc), some to warehouse maintenance. When the merchant starts out he could only have one route, but as his net worth raises by the money generated per turn, he'll get a nice pool of savings. He can try to set up (controlled by AI) another route. Setting up a new route could also be a failure, making that merchant suffer a setback.

* The merchant could have reference to social class/race taking some of the traits of these into account in different calculus. F.instance a merchant from an aggresive race would be more prone to set up risky, long but profitable routes instead of shorter, safer but low value ones. Maybe some cultures/races trade better than others, some don't trade at all.

I think the merchants should be abstract, not moving on the map, neither should it be possible to see the path. Each merchant should just list his trade routes in a simple from (with x goods) to ( with x goods).