| 1 | | You also have to consider the fact that garrisoning traders in merchant ships can be pretty much micro work (depending on how many ships and traders you have) so if traders and ships had the same costs and each trader gave a 100% bonus it would be more comfortable to just produce ships. Of course this takes some time and if you have too many ships on a comparatively short route they lose efficiency due to the interference of their paths and thus blocking/slowing each other. |
| 2 | | - I absolutely agree with increasing the price for merchant ships, especially wood (a ship totally made from iron is somehow strange). Your proposal for a total cost of 100 wood and 80 iron (analogous to 100 food and 80 iron per trader) makes totally sense for me. |
| 3 | | - 100% trade gain bonus for the first trader and less for further traders (scaling somehow with square root or similarly) |
| 4 | | - armour increase by garrisoning soldiers but not traders (e.g. up to 5 per ship, +1 armour per soldier for a weak buff or alternatively up to 3 per ship, +2 armour per soldier for a strong buff) |
| 5 | | If 100% bonus for the first trader seems to be too much I'd rather implement a tech which either unlocks trader garrisoning or strongly increases the bonus e.g. from 50% to 100%. I think no one would make use of even a 60-80% bonus except for very special situations (very few wood available or too many ships already so they are blocking each other). |
| | 1 | Trader garrisoning disadvantages: |
| | 2 | - a garrisoned merchant ship means a greater potential loss than an ungarrisoned ship because a higher amount of resources can be destroyed with the same effort |
| | 3 | - depending on the number of your merchant ships it can be pretty much micro work to garrison them with traders |
| | 4 | - efficiency drops down when the traders and ships do not generate resources during garrisoning |
| | 5 | - on most naval maps you have less protection for sea trading than land trading because you can't build obstacles/buildings in water - reducing land trading and strengthening sea trading gives you less options for a safe supply |
| | 6 | - huge loss of efficiency: currently you slightly increase the resource generation of a cheap unit by "sacrificing" costly units - it should be the other way round |
| | 7 | Trader garrisoning advantages: |
| | 8 | - trade ships have much more defenses than a single trader and can sustain longer during an attack |
| | 9 | - too many ships on a comparatively short route mean a loss of efficiency due to the interference of their paths and thus movement blocking/slowing |
| | 10 | |
| | 11 | All in all more disadvantages than advantages. I think we can assume that even if traders and ships had the same costs and each trader gave a 100% bonus it would still provide more advantages to not garrison traders. A 60-80% bonus would be useless except for very special situations (very few wood available - assuming we add wood to ship costs - or too many ships already so they are blocking each other). So my proposals are: |
| | 12 | |
| | 13 | - I absolutely agree with increasing the price for merchant ships, especially wood. A ship totally made from iron is also somehow strange. Your proposal for a total cost of 100 wood and 80 iron makes totally sense for me because it means total costs of traders and merchant ships are the same making them more comparable. |
| | 14 | - At least 100% trade gain bonus for the first trader and less for further traders. The bonus should scale somehow with square root or similarly if you add further traders. Implement a tech which enables trader garrisoning (should be very cheap) and/or another tech which increases the bonus per trader (should be more costly). |
| | 15 | - If so, implement armour increase by garrisoning soldiers but not traders (e.g. up to 5 per ship, +1 armour per soldier for a weak buff or alternatively up to 3 per ship, +2 armour per soldier for a strong buff) |
