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Topic: Barter trading on Widelands

Lawrence
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Posted at: 2023-06-13, 10:34

Here is a suggestion for barter trading on Widelands.

Designate a ship to trade with a team member. If you share a border with the team member perhaps we could use a ferry crossing from one tribe to another but this might not be as easy as using a ship.

Choose the team member that you wish to trade with.

Choose a ware that you wish to trade to the team member.

Choose a ware that you wish to receive in return.

Nominate the trade values; two examples might be:

1) trade one tree trunk of mine (ware A) for one binding of wheat of the other team member (ware B). The simple details might look like [1 ware A - tree trunk = 1 ware B - wheat].

2) trade five hardened wood pieces of mine for one marble column from the other team member. The simple details might look like [5 ware A - Hardened Wood = 1 ware B - Marble Column].

If the other team member accepts the trade values the trading would begin. The ship would be loaded with ware A, travel to the other team members port and be unloaded. The ship would be loaded with the returning ware B and return to the first team members port.

Either of the two trading partners could cancel the trading at any time. The ship would stop carrying the wares when the current ware B has been unloaded.

Edited: 2023-06-13, 10:36

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mxb2001
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Posted at: 2023-06-13, 19:25

Neat. Multi-player only? Then again I figure the AI might handle it too. After we got diplomacy now. Why not trade?


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Nordfriese
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Posted at: 2023-06-13, 21:54

We already do have a functional trading implementation (it's been around for years), it "just" has no user interface yet and markets are not made available in normal games. Since this is one of the most often requested features, I am considering to finish up that project and getting trade usable after I am done with the current naval warfare project (so no earlier than v1.3).


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Nordfriese
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Posted at: 2024-04-03, 20:17

Call for testing

There's an open pull request for Trading that could do with some testing face-smile.png

https://codeberg.org/wl/widelands/pulls/4781

Binaries for Windows and Mac available here (with a GitHub account)

(Currently only useful in Multiplayer, teaching the AI to deal with trade offers will not be trivial)

Edited: 2024-04-03, 20:21

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Ron_of_Nord
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Posted at: 2024-04-21, 00:14

Personally I think this is a great idea with only one caveat, the trade system would be difficult as materials have no monetary cost so how do you decide what materials are of equal value ? For example, how much timber would equal 1 unit of gold ? Ron


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Nordfriese
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Posted at: 2024-04-21, 20:08

This will be up to the players. I imagine there could be several ways players could decide on the relative value of various goods: They could haggle via chat ("I'll send you 1 gold for 10 logs" - "I'll give you 4 logs" - "let's meet at 7" - "Deal"); they could send a take-it-or-leave-it offer (probably easiest for the AI); or they could have a chat auction ("Who offers the most logs for my gold?").
There should not be any fixed ratios, since the value of any particular ware (and combinations thereof) varies greatly depending on each player's individual situation.

I think it is not possible yet to predict how the feature will actually be used most often, so for now we should have the functionality ready, and when there's more feedback about the most common use cases, it can be adjusted to straighten out any rough edges found. That's the approach that worked e.g. for Add-Ons and for Diplomacy and that we're also taking with Naval Warfare.


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Ron_of_Nord
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Posted at: 2024-04-22, 11:31

I agree more feedback will help a lot on this, however there is an very old game , SpaceTrader I think it was called that had a very good barter system. From memory, the system worked on the availability of local resources ,batering was based on what each player wanted or offered and value was scaled on the availabilty locally of an item. Mind you, I last played that game in 1985 so I dont remember all of the details.


The aussies are coming, ya ho! ya ho!

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