Trade

From BattleMaster Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Trade is the business of buying and selling commodities. In the case of Battlemaster, the only tradable commodity is food, although wood will likely be the next commodity.

Region Lords and Stewards

A region lord travels to either his region or a marketplace and creates or fulfils an offer. Region lords of net food producers (rural regions) will typically create sell offers, while region lords of net food consumers (cities) will typically create buy offers. Several region types are often close to a break-even, and may not create offers of either type, or may do so only rarely. Naturally a lord can create or fulfil either kind for opportunistic trades if they come across any.

It is possible to restrict the sale of food to your realm only, or only allied realms. Realms at war are not allowed to trade at all.

It is also possible to use only one type of offer in a realm--either the city lords create buy offers, and region lords fulfil them, or the rural lords create sell offers, and the city lords agree to them.

Region lords can only trade within a limited distance of themselves, though they can always access their own granaries. This means, however, that they can travel across the island and conduct a trade that sells or buys food from their region, as long as they can find a marketplace.

Stewards operate in the same way as region lords.

Traders

Traders must be at a marketplace to do business, unless they are region lords or stewards, in which case they can also do business in their own region. Traders have a much larger trading range than non-traders, over 500 miles in many cases.

Traders are the only class capable of brokering trades. To broker a trade, they must match up one or more buy offers with one or more sell offers in such a way that the quantity of food matches. In order to complete the trade, the trader must make a profit. Note that traders who are not also lords or stewards can only broker trades. They cannot just buy or sell anything.

Production and Consumption

Each realm and region produces a certain amount of food every day. This is basically synonymous with supply. Likewise, all regions and realms consume an amount of food (unless they have zero population!) each day, and this is the same as demand.

Put another way, a region that produces more food than it consumes can be characterized as a supply region (and can export what it doesn't consume), whereas one that consumes more food than it produces is a demand region (and will need to import what it doesn't produce).