Caesar3 Augustus Ultimate Handbook

Trade

T

rade is the main activity of the Roman Empire, and its profits are arguably the biggest reason for our many conquests.

Your province doesn't exist in isolation. Residents of other cities throughout the Empire have the same desires as do your own citizens. You can make a lot of money by selling them the goods that your farms and industries produce, and keep your own citizens happy by buying goods which they desire but which your own province does not produce itself.

To start trading, you first need to open a trade route. Go to your Empire Map, and click on one of the cities near your own. Those which a re happy to trade with you will tell you what goods they would like to buy or sell. It costs some money to open any trade route. Some trade routes are over land, while others use the sea. The route appears on the Empire Map after you open it, and you will be able to see whether it crosses land or sea.

When you click a city on the Empire Map to see which goods a foreign city will trade with you, you also see a number of baskets next to each commodity. These indicate how much trade the city is willing to do in each good during any given year. One basket displayed above a good indicates a small supply (about 15 cartloads per year), two baskets mean medium (about 25 carts per year), and three signify a strong supply (40 carts annually). If a city has a large surplus of wine, but only a small surplus of pottery, for example, it will sell you more wine than pottery.

These amounts represent annual quantities. After you sell a city its limit of a good, it will not buy any more from you until the next calendar year. These levels of supply and demand remain fairly constant. A message will notify you if they change, which they do from time to time.

scribe's note:

Click the Empire Map button. Your city flies a golden eagle on a black background. Trading cities have red flags. Other cities are not interested in trading with you; ignore them.

Click on any city with a red trade flag. Under the city's name, you'll see what it will buy, and what you can import from it. Click on all available trading cities and study your options. You'd like to find a trading partner that will buy everything that you can produce , although you're not likely to be so lucky. Look for a city that will buy commodities that you're already producing.

When you've decided which city to trade with, click the button that shows the trade route's price. The cost of opening the route is deducted from your treasury.

Trade by sea is impossible without docks, which you should build on the coast of your active river (the one with the flotsam floating downstream). You don't have to build trade ships. Private merchants provide the transportation. All you need do is provide a dock, without any low bridges blocking ship passage downstream of it.

No trade actually takes place until you instruct your Trade Advisor which goods you a rewilling to buy or sell. If you don't do this, some merchants might leave your city without supplies of some basic essentials! You can instruct your Trade Advisor to simply allow any exports of a good, or if you prefer you may tell him only to sell any cartloads of the good over a level you are comfortable with. This protects your own city's needs.

If you instruct your Trade Advisor to allow imports of a good, he looks after how much should be imported, without you needing to get involved.

All imported goods are dropped off at your trade center, if possible. A trade center is simply a warehouse which you designate as such (the first warehouse you build is automatically your trade center. To make a diff e rent warehouse the trade center, select the Trade Center special instruction from its rightclick information panel). A city can only have one trade center, so appointing a new warehouse as trade center automatically changes the status of the previous one.

If your trade center is full, or if a merchant wants to deliver a good that your trade center has been given special instructions not to accept, imports are taken to the warehouse with space closest to the trade center.

Once a trade route is open, merchant boats or caravans pass through your province. If you have goods for export stored in a warehouse, a land merchant stops at the warehouse to buy the goods. As the goods disappear from the warehouse, you can see your city's cash balance rise; very rewarding! Sea merchants work quite similarly, except that they land at your dock, then send the dock's cart pushers over to collect the goods from the relevant warehouse.

A boat can store twice as much as a land caravan. Each carries many cartloads of produce

scribe's note:

Go to your Trade Advisor (you can visit him automatically when you open a new route). Click on the commodity you want to export. Its panel has a button that says “not trading.” Click that button, and it says “Export goods over 0.” That means your warehouses will sell their entire inventory. To keep some of that commodity for your own markets, use the arrow button to choose a quantity. If you change “0” to “2,” then your warehouses try to keep two cart loads in stock for your market buyers.

Trade can move in two directions. The same caravans or trading ships that come to collect your city's exports can also deliver imports. You might need to buy marble, for example, so that you can build oracles. If your city can't grow all four food types, you may want to import the ones that you lack. Caesar might ask you to supply something you normally wouldn't produce; if he requests weapons, for instance, and your province has no iron mines, you'll want to import iron so that you can make weapons to satisfy the Emperor.

scribe's note:

To import goods, click the same button you used to set exports. If the commodity is available for import, the button text now reads “Importing.” You can't simultaneously import and export the same commodity.

Your treasury pays for imports when they arrive at a warehouse, and receives payment for exports when they leave the warehouse. For seaborne routes, payments are made when goods arrive at or depart from the docks.

Next: Water Supply

Caesar3 Augustus Ultimate Handbook

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