Mechant / Horse / Troops suggestion

[Konrax]

Currently:
Each troop you have can carry 1 trade good.
Having goods above troops result in a loss of speed.
Horses give a speed bonus IF horses > Troop count.

What I propose:
Each troop can carry 1 trade good.
Horses give a speed bonus IF horses > Troop count.
Each horse allows for 1 extra trade good to be carried up to the current number of troops.
Each troop can steer an additional trade horse which can carry another 2 goods

Put a hard cap on the number of trade goods you can carry instead of a speed penalty because it would be physically impossible to carry the extra goods.

With the current troop upkeep, a no upkeep merchant could look like:

49 Troops, 98 Horses, with a carrying capacity of 392 and a speed bonus. <---- Still a decent amount of coin, the distance bonus might have to be lowered to balance that level of trade goods, and crafting would still be very profitable (since people actually have money)

What do you all think?

Bonus Feature: Make the horses carrying capacity based on the riding skill requirement of the horse /2 rounded up

[Earthdforce]

Buff strat horses for trading!!

[mandible/splinteryourjaw]

Troops are there to protect the goods within the caravan.  They don't carry anything, but a sword.


A horse is capable of carrying 10-20 goods (hard to say some places have concrete and some have kittens...a horse can definitly carry 20 kittens.)

If the merchant buys an additional horse it becomes a wagon and the amount of goods carried quadruples (40-80 per 2 horse wagon)

If the merchant buys a third horse then he can carry and additional 10-20 goods

If the merchant buys a 4th horse he now has two wagons  80-160 goods


Now troops slow the merchant down so he can buy horses for the troops


1 horse per troop is required to give any bonus,  if the merchant buys an additional horse then he forms a troop carrier and can carry 10-20 troops in the carrier...this pattern continues as above.


in this case maybe we need 2 different items added to the buy menu; a horse that is good for nothing but hauling single goods or pulling the goods wagon and a horse that good for nothing but troop transport (maybe offered as a team rather than single.)


I personally don't believe a person's troop count, goods count, speed or anything should be disclosed...takes a lot of the surprise out of it when a bully jumps on an innocent merchant to find that he has a well equipped army of 66 men=bully gets his butt kicked.

[Konrax]

People are saying No but why?