The economy is layered: local production, city demand, regional trade, maritime trade, and a late-game global trading platform. Prices shift from war, weather, shortages, monsters, alliances, and player manipulation.
Every resource is produced by a tile + an extractor or a workshop. The chain runs:
Map (tile) → Extractor → Refiner → Consumer
Examples:
- Pine forest → Lumber Camp → Sawmill → Shipwright → Longship.
- Iron ore → Mine → Forge → Weapons / Armor.
- Grain field → Farm → Granary → City food / brewery.
- Mulberry → Mulberry Grove → Silkworm House → Loom → Silk Cloth.
There are 126 distinct resources across 5 tiers. The full chain map lives in resource chain.
¶ City demand
Each city has demand for:
- Food — population-scaled.
- Water — population-scaled.
- Construction goods — when buildings are queued.
- Equipment — when units are recruited.
- Luxury — population-scaled, raises happiness.
- Faith goods — temple-driven, raises belief tier.
Unmet demand drops happiness, slows growth, and (sustained) reduces stage tier.
¶ Stockpile and player pool
Two-tier inventory:
- Per-city stockpile — local resources. Used first for local construction and recruitment.
- Player pool — empire-level bucket. Used for empire expenses (research, alliance contributions, marketplace listings).
Resources flow from stockpile → pool via collection cadence. Production rates and pool inflow live in metrics.
Adjacent and near-adjacent cities trade automatically when their stockpiles diverge. Caravans handle land trade; coastal cities handle sea trade.
- Caravans are physical units. Faster on roads, slower in deserts (without Sun Dune flags), can be raided by bandits or rival players.
- Caravan escort patrols (one of the six patrol flavors) protect trade corridors.
Sea routes are higher-volume and faster than land routes — but vulnerable to storms (climate drag) and pirates (Azure Isles' specialty).
- Trade ports unlock at City stage with Shipwright + Marketplace.
- Trade routes are player-defined corridors with leader bonuses (a Merchant-archetype hero on the route doubles income).
In Phase 2c+, a global marketplace opens — alliance-spanning, with culture-specific listing discounts:
- Sun Dune — lowest listing fees.
- Azure Isles — bonus on sea-route listings.
- Jade Lotus — bonus on luxury silk/tea listings.
- River Crown — bonus on grain/linen listings.
Players list resources or equipment for sale; other players buy with their own currency or barter.
Prices shift per-tick based on:
- Supply — total production across the world.
- Demand — total city + recruitment + war demand.
- War — active wars spike weapon and grain prices in the war zone.
- Weather — droughts spike grain prices; storms spike fish prices.
- Shortages — local shortages spike a resource regionally.
- Monsters / NPC pressure — bandit raids cut supply; monster waves (end times) destroy stockpiles.
- Alliances — alliance trade contracts subsidize select goods.
- Player manipulation — a wealthy player can corner a market temporarily; counter via marketplace investigation.
- Production tick — per in-game hour.
- Demand tick — per in-game day.
- Trade route tick — per in-game day.
- Price update — per in-game day, with intra-day shocks for war / storm events.
See metrics §6 + §7 for canonical timings.
Each culture has natural trade strengths and weaknesses. See cultures for per-culture native resources / imports. The asymmetry guarantees no one is self-sufficient — trade is the spine of the political economy.
- Plant your second city next to a complementary resource. A wood city + an iron city = a Forge city.
- Use trade routes, not one-off caravans. Routes auto-renew; caravans are one-shot.
- Watch the seasonal price chart. Stockpile grain in autumn, sell in late winter.
- Don't ignore luxury. Cities without luxury get morale problems even with food and water green.
- Late-game: list specialty goods on the global market. A Jade Lotus silk monopoly funds wonders.
Sources: economy_system.md, economy_resources.md, resource_chain.md, rts_world_economy_design_table.xlsx, metrics.md §6,§7.