(No) medieval warfare (?)
How can a game about the medieval economy ignore such a big chunk of it as warfare? Mercatorio is about production, logistics and trading; warfare and conflict is abstracted into a single variable, the service “protection” which can be produced and traded like other good or service.
One major source of protection demand are the town governments, who are responsible for security, but don’t field their own troops or guards.
The majority of taxes collected are spent on protection services for the town,
which are bought on the market like any other good or service.
Other sources of demand for protection include operations handling valuable products, like smelting of gold, or minting it into coins. This results in a large market for these services, with the baseline demand from the town governments helping to keep the prices relatively stable.
Price of protection services varying within a narrow band
A career in protecting others
From early in the game, players can perform duties as a knight to generate protection and earn weaponry skillpoints that will give them access to more advanced production methods later.
Knight duty offers quick access to the weaponry profession and generates good cashflow with low investment, as you provide the labour yourself.
Later in the game you can scale up your enterprise at the guardhouse, where you can hire outside help to protect and earn more.
A guardhouse in the foreground with related buildings in the back
(a charcoal kiln and a bloomery for smelting of iron and refining of steel)
The patrol 1 production method of the guardhouse generates larger quantities of protection services. Here the majority of the labour needed is hired from the market (125 out of 150), but with protection services in high demand we’re still generating a healthy profit.
The economy behind it and vertical integration
Protection services are just the tip of the iceberg in the overall economy of course, with a long chain of operations required to produce the arms needed, from mining of iron ore, burning of charcoal, smelting, refining and smithing. And that’s just the activity in this production chain; the workers involved need to be clothed and fed as well, generating demand for very different production chains.
But given our weaponry specialization it may make the most sense to stick with that class of production methods, which include both usage and production of arms.
Arms being forged at the smithy. We’re using both wrought iron and steel with the second variation of the forging arms production method.
Try out Mercatorio early-access for free at: Mercatorio.io
