Mercatorio Web game

The Mercatorio July update is now live, with new content and some handy new features.

Dealing with markets

As those around you, be it bots or other players, make their business decisions and adjustments, this will often impact your businesses operations as well. If the supply of a crucial product is reduced or the price increased, you may experience shortfalls and production disruptions. If the market demand is reduced or your price undercut, your cashflow may be impacted.

Order splits

With new other split feature (available in warehouses), this impact may be reduced.

Let's say you need some ropes for your operations to run smoothly and rely on the market for obtaining them. Previously you'd have to choose between setting a high price, paying extra at price spikes even when you have reserves, or setting a low price and risk not getting the inputs your operations require.

By splitting the order, you can have a regular order component set near the typical price, which will supply your business at good rates during normal times. Then you split out an "emergency" section which offers a much higher price but activates if supplies are running low.

Similarly, you can set up orders to sell incrementally larger volumes if the price goes up (say 10 units/turn at price 5.00, 5 units more at price 6.00, etc). The warehouse now supports setting up to 3 different prices for each product.

Urban dwellings

Towns are growing and the new row-houses are introduced to house the commoners. They require more maintenance than the current cottages, but promises to free up valuable urban real-estate.

Balancing and other updates

Town

• Town range increased from 40 to 50
• Outpost range increased from 20 to 30

Transports

• Handcart cargo capacity increased from 20 to 30 (trade routes need to be restarted or have a cart added or removed to be recalculated)

Buildings

• Mines no longer require forest to be removed

Products

• Firewood storage size decreased from 40 to 30
• Timber size decreased from 20 to 15
• Lumber size decreased from 30 to 20
• Charcoal size decreased from 10 to 8

New productions methods

• let rowhouses 1
• let rowhouses 2
• let rowhouses 3 - master
• make windows 2 - master
• gather firewood 3 - w/ axes
• split timber 3 - w/ axes
• logging 4 - master
• make rope 2
• make rope 3 - master
• sawing 3 (firewood)
• tan hides 3 - master

The bottom tier (0 / simple) production methods have been merged into 1 / basic. This should not have any gameplay impact as both are accessible from the start.

Skills

• Skill gain is now capped at utilization of 25 labour for production methods requiring less than this. So eg. split timber 1, which uses 3.5 labour will top out skill gain at 7.1x production.
• Many production methods have been given a boost in skill gain (eg. split timber 1 now gives 0.4, up from 0.02, a 20x increase)
• The motivation for the change is to reduce grinding at the start and better balance skill gain by reining in some overpowered production methods.

Other mechanics

• Warning pop-up when attempting to trade at unusual price or volume (like accidentally selling a cog for 1.00)
• Mark-to-market accounting option for household workers. Enable this to get the same production cost as you would have gotten if buying labour from the market.
• Prices in trades can only have 3 significant digits, and the last needs to be 0 or 5 if the first is >= 5 and even if the first is >= 2 (this change happened a few days ago).