AtEM DD3: Trade & Colonization

Today I bring you two new mechanics. Both are primarily targeted at the stars of 1.2 but anyone else with the right geography can theoretically still interact with them. Both of them are very different than anything I’ve implemented so far, and both are still very rough. To manage expectations: I’m unlikely to do much more work on either of these for a while, but your feedback will be critical in determining their direction & balance. I’m especially interested in how the numbers feel-- is something too strong? Too weak? Please let me know! I’ve opened channels in #suggestions for both of these mechanics.

The North of Middle Earth was dominated by trade. References to a thriving and interconnected economy abound; Thranduil’s elves consuming Dorwin wine in barrels brought from Laketown, Dale growing rich off the flow of gold from Erebor, spears crafted by the Dwarves for the foreign King Bladorthin. This region simply would not be complete without a mechanic to represent the mutual prosperity brought by international trade.

Currently there is only one exporter and one good: Dorwinion and their famous wine. Wine is an equipment produced at vineyards, which at game start only Dorwinion can build (other countries may receive content to build their own). Several Dorwin states also have the ‘Wine Country’ modifier which provides +100% wine production.

You can spend wine on all kinds of neat bonuses. Each decision costs 1000 wine and grants a powerful modifier for 100 days. The currently available bonuses are stability growth, war support growth, consumer goods reduction, organization recovery, improve relation cost reduction, and ideology drift defense reduction. I’m \*very\* interested in how powerful you feel all of these to be.

Produced wine gets distributed between the stockpile (for your own consumption) and the export market according to your trade law (and any other goods to market modifiers you might have). Stockpiled wine works like any other equipment, but exported wine does not stockpile; any not sold by the end of the day disappears. This is to prevent wild fluctuations in wine availability on the market. Any other country whose capital has a market (another new building type) can purchase wine from the market at a base rate of 8 per civ per day. Just like with resource trading, everybody wins! The buyer builds up their stockpile of wine, and the seller gets an extra factory.

But wait, it gets even better! Remember that market building I mentioned earlier? It’s pretty powerful: -1% consumer goods, 5% trade deal opinion factor, +1 local building slot, and +5% local build speed per level, with a maximum of 5 levels per state. You can’t just build these willy nilly, however. Each upgrade requires the state to possess 100 prosperity. What’s prosperity? Well,

Markets gain prosperity by being involved in trade. Every level of trade route (ie, every civ someone pays for goods) adds daily prosperity to the seller’s capital, a smaller amount to the buyer’s capital, and an even smaller but not insignificant amount to every market in between. There will, of course, be ways to boost a state’s/country’s prosperity gain, mostly through focus. Two ideas I have not implemented and would like feedback on: prosperity gain factor from infrastructure, and a new tech line in Organisation to improve prosperity gain.

This feature obviously has a lot of room for growth, so let me set the scope. Every exporter slot involves a lot of esoteric script, so new exporters require a good reason to exist. Erebor will eventually export precious metals that they generate through their own mechanics, but I do not currently plan on adding any more goods to the Celduin system. Between wine & precious metals (which will provide hefty lump sum bonuses like political power, factories, equipment) I don’t see a good niche for another good.

I have no plans to export this feature to other parts of the map. While trade is obviously an integral part of any organized society, it is not as iconic to any other region of Middle Earth, and I would prefer to keep each area unique with mechanics and content that exemplify what makes them special. That’s not to say I will never implement a trade route somewhere else, but I would need a very compelling case for it.

I plan on making a custom map mode displaying markets, but for now enjoy my 5 second photoshop of markets and their connections:

That big grey blob segways nicely into today’s second topic: colonization. While I have chosen to represent many of Middle Earth’s underpopulated regions as belonging to a country anyway, some areas were simply too empty for this to be anything but immersion breaking. A new country-- known simply as ‘Wilderness’, now represents these wastelands. At the moment it only controls the areas of Dagorlad and Rhovanion shown in the picture. I’ll investigate expanding wilderness into Arnor, the Misty Mountains, and Mirkwood when their time comes. I’m overall happy with how Gwaithurium works so I don’t intend to replace any of those tribes with wilderness. It would obviously represent Eregion quite well. I may revisit this decision when I touch on bordering regions, especially Rivendell.

Enough talking about plans; how does the mechanic work? To start, you must research Colonization technology. This is located in the farming tab where, by popular request, I’ve implemented a tech line to boost recruitable population.

Once researching the basic colonization technology you unlock decisions to begin colonizing any wilderness province that borders one of your core provinces. This decision temporarily costs some civs and permanently some manpower, as well as preventing you from starting any new colonies until you either complete this one or let it burn down.

Once you’ve finished gathering the necessary supplies and settlers, you gain control of the state-- but no core yet, you have to work for that.

Fortunately, you don’t have to rely solely on the 2% natural growth to bring your population high enough: the first colonization tech grants 5000 monthly colony growth, with each subsequent tech increasing that by 2000. There’s a political power decision to boost this by 25% for 100 days, and a medical equipment one to gain a flat boost. There’s ways to spend each type of support equipment, actually; I wanted to reward countries that were willing to invest more in their colonies.

Most interesting perhaps are the resource decisions. Wilderness states have 1 of each resource that they are able to produce. You can spend engineering equipment to add 8 more up to twice per resource per state. Any resources that you do not develop will disappear when you integrate the colony.

Exporting ‘civilisation’ into an empty land is no easy business. All sorts of monsters and outlaws inhabit the shadows of Middle Earth, and they won’t take kindly to your fancy walls and laws.

For those of you who don’t know, I integrated my other mod, Population based Garrison Requirements, into Ride for Ruin in the 1.1 VorV update as a game rule toggled On by default. This means that the +100% garrison requirement barely cancels out the tiny population modifier on most wilderness states. You had better make sure that garrison gets its proper reinforcements, because if resistance reaches the 90% threshold…

The uprising is small and poorly equipped, so very few countries will struggle to crush it within the 100 day timer, and if you defeat it the state receives a hefty resistance reduction to represent that the danger has been cleared out. I will likely decrease the timer by ~50% and add some negative effects to the colony at the moment of revolt in a future patch. If you fail to crush the incursion within the time limit, the colony will revert to its natural state-- all the buildings, resources, and population you added are razed or expelled, and the wilderness regains ownership.

You may have noticed that Dagorlad no longer exists on the map and realized that this interferes with Mordor’s ‘The Eye Looks West’ focus, which annexes/puppets Dagorlad. This focus now unlocks decisions that allow Mordor to bypass the entire colonization system, including the research, and just throw orcs at the problem. For the hefty sum of 150,000 manpower (which is probably too much-- please let me know how the balance feels to you) it can gain control & core of a neighboring wilderness state in only 7 days.

These changes, as well as several bugfixes, are now live in the beta branch. Please let me know what you think of them!