Trade
This article describes the latest system currently deployed on testing islands. For the older article, please refer to Trade old. Note that the older article does not describe caravans system still employed on stable islands.
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. Trading is all about creating offers and fulfilling them. It can be a buy offer or it can be a sell offer.
Only Region Lords and their appointed stewards can create offers. Fulfilling offers can only be done in marketplaces whilst creation of offers can be done anywhere whilst stationary.
A character can only see offers that are within trading range at the marketplace. Lords and Stewards can get access to markets (ie.. without having to build one) when they are in their home region. Obviously that is off limits to other lords/stewards/traders who happen to pass by the region and trading opportunities might be lost if there isn't a marketplace nearby.
Region Lords and Stewards
Creating buy offers means you are advertising the fact that you are going to pay for a certain amount of food at a certain price to those with access to nearby marketplaces. You will also be putting in escrow the entire cost of the transaction in bonds (only) at the same time.
Creating sell offers means you are advertising the fact that you are going to sell a certain amount of food at a certain price to those with access to nearby marketplaces. The entire amount of food is put in escrow at the same time.
The amount of food to buy or sell is restricted to certain values for each trade, though you are free to create multiple offers.
The price per 100 bushels is also limited to a certain range (subject to change).
Offers expire after a limited time period which is set at offer creation.
Fulfilling offers basically means you see an offer in the marketplace and you give orders to your underlings to deliver the food or pay for the food. You can only fulfil the order in whole.
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.
Stewards operate in the same way as region lords.
Note that Dukes and Bankers cannot directly interfere with a region's granaries. The only people who can access the granaries are the Lord and the steward of the region.
Traders
Traders must be at a marketplace to do business. Traders have a larger trading range than non-traders.
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, because they do not have access to granaries.
Production and Consumption
Each region produces a certain amount of food every day. This is basically synonymous with supply. Likewise, all regions consume an amount of food each day, with soldiers in the region consuming a greater amount than the same number of peasants, 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).
The following link takes you to the forum article regarding concepts of the system.
