Resources and Trade:
Determining Natural Resources:
You will occasionally simply be told that a resource is present in a particular province. The original pre-game update is an excellent example of this occurrence. To determine what resources are present, a player may choose to conduct a resource survey which will tell them what resources are present and what capacity that province has for hunting, farming, fishing and mining improvements. A survey of this sort costs 5 gold per province.
New Natural Resources
A province may occasionally develop new natural resources. The White Mist Isle developed a new deer resource over the course of updates 8 and 9. Players have no control over the development of new natural resources.
Resource Generation:
Settling an outpost, march or city in a province with a resource
does not provide the resource. One must build the appropriate rural improvement. For example, if the province has a silk worms resource, a player building the silk plantation would then develop silk resource in that province. The same is true of wheat, soybeans, copper, indigo herbs, or any other natural resource.
Resource Distribution:
Once a resource is produced domestically in any single province the entire nation has access to that resource. So if you developed a sandstone mine in one province, every province would then have access to the sandstone resource (and because hard rocks provide a building discount for things like combat arenas and make the construction of stone walls possible, any city in the nation would have access to cheaper combat arenas and be able to produce stone walls)
Multiple Resources:
Building more then one resource generation type improvement in a province does not generate more then one copy of the resource. If a province has two wheat farms that province still only produces wheat.
If two or more provinces each produce the same resource there is no added effect domestically- the nation still only has access to wheat, not 2x wheat. However, multiple provinces producing a resource has an added benefit when it comes to trade because now each province can trade away that resource (assuming they have access to a trade route).
Manufactured Resources:
Not all resources are natural. Consider for example the clay and pottery resources. The clay resource occurs naturally and is accessible with the clay quarry rural improvement. Doing so provides clay to the entire nation. Any city in that nation can now build a potters workshop, an improvement that requires access to clay to construct. Any city with a potters workshop in it now produces the pottery resource (and each can now export it if they can find a rival nation with no access to pottery yet- see trade section).
All manufactured resources come from city improvements and they usually require access to some natural resource. (Bronze manufacturing requires copper and tin. Linen requires flax. Brick and pottery require clay. Etc)
Trade
Trading requires three things.
- a trade route
- a novel resource to trade
- access to the importers market
Trade Routes
A trade route can be provided by an improvement such as a market or a harbour or in some cases by a civic, such as stewardship. Trade routes are accumulated at the provincial level and are only limited by your access to technologies that allow construction of trade-route generating improvements (harbours, markets, etc) as well as the funds to create them.
Each trade route is also associated with a resource. So if you have the stewardship civic but are not producing any resources in a province, then you dont get to use that trade route because you have nothing to export from that province. Similarly if you have, lets say, clay and pottery generated in a province (from a clay quarry and potters workshop respectively) but only have one trade route (from a market for example), you could only export either the clay or the pottery.
A Novel Resource
When a nation imports a resource, it becomes available to the entire nation; every province of that nation now has access to that resource (just as if it had been developed domestically). If you trade away a source of horses, dont be surprised that the importing nation begins to produce cavalry. If you export flax to a nation, dont be surprised if in a few turns they offer you finished linens in return (because they used the flax to build a linen textile mill).
A nation which already has resource X (either because it is already producing it domestically or because it is already importing it from some other nation) is not eligible to import a second copy of that resource. (example: If the Bannor are already trading the Ir-O-Kee copper, then the Ir-O-Kee have no need for Hippus copper.) This means that if you have 3 provinces each with a potters workshop (each producing the pottery resource), you would need to export your pottery to three different nations (who dont produce pottery themselves)
Access to the Importers Market
You need roads to export your goods to foreign civilization.
If you dont have roads connecting your civilizations you can use rivers, sea and ocean shore-lanes, open seas or even open oceans depending on the level of naval technology
the exporting nation has achieved.
These can be disrupted by bandits and pirates or rival nations.
Importing Goods
Receiving a trade route is a simple thing. You simply have to include in your orders that you are allowing the exporting nation to sell the resource to your people. That trade can be taxed and you will soon begin to collect income from it.
Your nation (and not a particular province) is the importing entity. Your entire nations receives the good being imported. You can use that resource as if you had produced it yourself in a province of your own. With clay imports you can produce bricks or pottery, etc.
If you lose the imported good then all city improvements that are dependent upon that resource can no longer function and cannot generate any resources, wealth or other benefit of their own. If you are importing clay, have no local source of clay and have a potters workshop in one of your cities, the loss of clay imports would prevent your potters workshop from producing pottery or the associated gold.
The Value of Trade Goods
The value of trade goods is dependent upon the transport infrastructure of the nation. If you have dirt roads connecting all your cities then you will receive either 2 or 3 gold for the trade goods export or import. If you have reinforced highways you will receive much more. Better caravan-type technologies will unlock better roads.
An economy is either open (willing to allow foreign merchants unlimited access to their markets) or closed (foreign merchants deal only with domestic merchants in controlled situations). An open economy allows for greater trade but makes enemy spying much easier. A closed economy is the opposite (spying is more difficult, trade produces less gold).
With dirt roads an open economy produces 3 gold per trade resource being imported or exported.
With dirt roads a closed economy produces 2 gold per trade resource being imported or exported.
In all cases the first turn of establishing a trade route results in on gain. Although trade is occuring between the nations, its scale is still relatively small as distribution systems and contacts are put in place. This is primarily a game-balance issue to prevent people moving their trade routes around too much.
