Trade

Trade is the business of buying and selling commodities. In the case of Battlemaster, those commodities are food and wood, and sometimes assorted odds-and-ends type luxury goods.

Why Trade?

To a noble, it's hard to understand the necessity of trade. After all, all nobles receive tax gold just by being members of the aristocratic ruling class, and merchants seem to be in it just to make gold. Why bother? Well, the fact is trade is not always about making profits in gold, and for a realm that doesn't produce enough food to keep all of it's population from starving, trade is essential. In such realms, traders might not make any profits at all, instead performing a valuable service to the state.

A region that receives gold from a trader, however, sees that same gold go into it's coffers and ultimately, into taxes and distributed among all the nobles of the realm. So trade can make a realm wealthy.

Why Not Trade?

Trading itself is tedious and not very exciting. It usually requires monotonous record-keeping of items bought and sold, prices, supply and demand and other esoteric pieces of data.

And since foreign traders can supply a realm in need with food, and region lords and Bankers can send oxcarts to ship food within the realm, it is possible for a realm to need not ever field a single trader of it's own.

As well, trading unwisely can deplete the gold and food of your realm. Worse, exporting food - even to an allied realm - may wind up ultimately seeing that same food be sold to your realm's enemies. Trade is a double-edged sword.

The Basics of Trade

Most trade is concerned with food. Although wood is at this time another commodity, it is only needed by region lords to construct Buildings and to repair Fortifications, and there are rarely any crises where wood is needed but unavailable. On the other hand, regions without enough food face starvation and revolt, making food by far the more important good.

However the following terms do apply to wood, and in fact anything that could conceivably be bought or sold.

Supply and Demand

Food is produced primarily in rural, agrarian regions. In economic terms this means rural regions tend to have a good supply of food. Similarly, food is consumed primarily by the larger populated areas like cities, so cities have what is called a higher demand for food. Ideally, this means that food is purchased in those rural regions and sold to the city regions.

Prices

The Banker of a realm set the prices for both selling food and buying it. To incourage traders to sell their food to a large city, the banker or duke will likely set the buying price in a city to a higher value than elsewhere. Similarly, a food-producing region will have excess food, and can thus afford to sell it, and often at lower prices. Thus, price is connected with supply and demand.

A trader seeks to make a profit by buying at a lower price than he later sells.

Imports and Exports

To import food means to buy it from somewhere else, to export it means to sell food to somewhere else. A trader is the middle-man between importing and exporting regions or realms: his job is one of transport.

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).

Trading Bankers

Bankers have the ultimate advantages when it comes to being a trader. Not only do they control the prices in their own realm, they have access to detailed economic data that lets them play the market for their own gains. See the Guide to Embezzlement and Money Laundering for more info.