NEW UNIQUE TRADE MECHANIC
The venetians have unique trade mechanics, and that starts with an unique ability of their scout.
- Venetians scouts can trade with newly discovered neutral trade posts
Basically, how this works is that when your scout discover a new trade posts, he can interact with it, and it gather a sum of gold equal to what a merchant would gather with the distance between the trade post and your starting TC. The action can be repeated, but from the second time onwards the scouts will get only 20% of the first trip. A new scout can get the full effect once more on every trade post, so this is basically a way of trading food for gold in the super early game.
To balance that, the venetians doesn’t have access to professional scouts tech, so they can’t hunt animals with their scouts.
NOTE: The scout doesn’t trade automatically with the TC, only when you have a market the scout trade automatically with it.
- Venetians don’t have access to trade ships. Instead, all ships are considered trade ships, and each generate a specific amount of gold, compared with a standard TS.
- Fishing ship - 30% of a TS
- Transport ship - 40%
- Galley - 75%
- Galeass - 300%
New UTs available at the market:
Age 2
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Silk road - Traders can be assigned to scouts on trade routes, a bit like the sheeps follow the scouts in the age 1. Traders assigned to the scout, will move 30% faster and have +2/2 armor. Each scout can get a maximum of 5 traders.
The same thing happens on water, where a maximum of 5 trade ships can be assigned to a patrona (nor of that on a later post).
cost: 300 food 250 gold
NOTE: It’s enaugh to assign a scout/patrona on a trade post for traders/trade ships available to follow it when they are near. The scout/transport ship of course slow down to the speed of the buffed trader/trade ships.
-
Mude - Traders wood cost removed, but gold cost increased by 25 gold (100 gold total).
cost: 300 food and 200 gold
Age 3
-
Golden bill - Cut the buy/sell fee in half.
cost: 250 food and 400 gold
Age 4
-
Insurances - when a merchant or a merchant ships is killed, you get back it’s original cost in gold and all the gold that the merchant was carrying in that moment (so for merchants is 75g + 75w transformed into gold for a total of 150g, for merchant ships is 100g + 300w transformed into gold).
cost: 800 gold
NOTE: This new mechanic and UTs replace the old UTs effects and the bonus of fixed prices at the market.
Description
So, venetians were expert traders, this shouldn’t be a shock to anyone, so a unique trade mechanic is suited.
I took inspiration for the mechanic from the voyage of Marco Polo, that traveled with his familiars to China, and opening the doors for new economic opportunities with his city. In truth, Marco Polo was hardly the first amo in the venetians to go through such voyages, but still, this was a the norm for the venetians patricians, that often traveled to open new trade routes, or bargain favorable prices.
Marco Polo, this appearance could be used for the skin of the venetian scout too.
The mude instead were regular periodical trade routes financed and commanded the Republic itself, and not by private citizens.
The golden bill instead was the really convinient agreement struck with the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire after the help of defeating the normans. This bill, contained several edicts that were really advantageous for the venetians (more than for the byzantines).
What do you think of this mechanic? Do you like it? Do you think that it’s balanced? Would you make some changes?