大家好，欢迎来到Grey Eminence第19期开发日记！

Hello and welcome to the 19th development diary of Grey Eminence!

今天，我们将继续介绍针对贸易的系列开发日志。 在上一期日志中，我们对贸易系统的结构（市场和基础设施）进行了笼统的概述 - 现在，我们将探讨系统中两个最重要的流程，定价和交易。

Today, we're continuing the series of dev diaries dedicated to trade. In the previous edition, we gave a high-level overview of the structure of the trade system (markets and infrastructure) - now, we'll explore two of the most important processes within the system, pricing and transactions.

发布时间：2023年4月1日18:09，原标题：Dev Diary #19: Trade Pt. 2

副翻译者：Trihex

定价

Pricing

在单一市场内的任何时间，每种商品都有特定的价格————由该市场前一个月的迭代决定（因此定价与物流一样每月更新）。 此定价影响该市场内所有经济参与者在下一次迭代中的行为————而这些行为反过来又会影响下次迭代产生的价格。

At any time within a single market, each good has a particular price - determined by the previous monthly iteration of that market (so pricing updates monthly, same as logistics). This price drives the behavior of all economic actors within that market for the next iteration - and that behavior in turn impacts the price for the iteration after that.

那么，一种商品的价格究竟是如何计算的呢？ 我们之前提到过，价格主要是由供给和需求决定的，也就是每个市场中的生产量和消费量。给定市场生产的商品相对于消费量越多，其价格就会越低（反之亦然），这听起来很简单，事实也确实如此。

So, how exactly is the price of a good calculated? We mentioned before that it's primarily driven by supply and demand, represented by production and consumption respectively in each market. The more a given market produces a good compared to consuming it, the lower its price will be (and vice versa), which sounds pretty straightforward and it is.

然而，由于市场相互连接并形成更长的长途贸易路线（这种情况在游戏时间线的前半段，在铁路解锁跨省市场之前尤其突出），定价公式还考虑了进口和出口。 这有助于我们解决将商品来源与可能存在的与多个市场连接的遥远节点联系起来的问题：如果不考虑进出口，中间市场将无法让商品沿贸易路线充分流动，除非先囤积大量仓储。

However, since markets are interconnected and form larger long-distance trade routes (especially in the first half of the game, prior to railroads unlocking multi-province markets), the pricing formula also considers imports and exports. This helps us solve the problem of linking a source of goods to a distant sink that might be multiple market connections away: without considering imports and exports, intermediary markets wouldn't be able to adequately move goods along the chain without first building up massive stockpiles.

定价公式的确切参数仍可能发生变化，但其核心本质上是基本价格（基本价格取决于其供应链的复杂性，对每件商品都是静态的）乘以生产量+进口量与消费量+出口量之间的差异比率 . 例如（使用的变量），如果一种商品的基本价格为1，但其消费量+出口量是生产量+进口量的5 倍，则该市场的最终价格将为 5。

The exact parameters of the pricing formula are still subject to change, but at its core it's essentially the base price (which is static per good depending on its supply chain complexity) multiplied by a ratio of the difference between production+imports and consumption+exports. As an example (with non-final variables), if a good has a base price of 1, but its consumption+exports outpaces production+imports by a factor of 5, the final price in that market will be 5.

我们在定价机制中添加了一些平衡，以使其对重大波动和冲击更具弹性：对于任何给定的迭代，新价格被限制在旧价格的 +/-50% 以内。 当然，这不会阻止由于真正的短缺而导致的价格飙升，但确实让市场有足够的余地来消除临时问题造成的轻微贸易中断，例如禁运导致的贸易路线重建。

There are a couple of balancing mechanisms we've added to the pricing mechanism to make it more resilient to major fluctuations and shocks: for any given iteration, the new price is clamped to be within +/-50% of the old one. Of course, this won't prevent price spikes due to genuine shortages, but it does provide just enough leeway to smooth out minor disruptions caused by temporary issues such as re-routing of goods flow due to embargoes.

交易

Transactions

从根本上说，定价系统的存在是为了实现交易——在给定市场的商人与其供应方/需求方之间，或在两个相连市场的商人之间。 这些交易使商品移动并推动游戏的整个经济过程，因此它们是正确模拟的关键过程。 请注意，我们已经对交易系统进行了多次迭代——上述机制可能不是最终成品——但我们相信我们已经得到了一个总体上非常令人满意的解决方案。

Fundamentally, the pricing system exists to enable transactions - between the merchants of a given market and their suppliers/customers, or between the merchants of two connected markets. These transactions move goods around and facilitate the entire economic process of the game, so they're an important process to get right. Note that we've gone through multiple iterations of the transaction system - and the one described above might not be the final one - but we're confident that we've arrived at a pretty satisfactory solution overall.

让我们从本地交易开始——发生在市场内商人与供应商或需求方之间的交易。 正如我们之前确认的那样，每个市场都有自己的每种商品仓储。 该仓储由该特定市场的商人拥有（在多省市场的情况下，仓储被视为由市场组成省份的所有商人共同拥有）。 每当建筑生产商品时，它都会立即将这些商品出售给当地市场的仓储。 同样，每当人口（或建筑、角色）消费商品时，它都会从当地市场的仓储中购买商品。

Let's start by covering local transactions - those that occur within a market between its merchants and either suppliers or customers. As we confirmed previously, each market has its own stockpile for each good. This stockpile is owned by the merchants of that particular market (in the case of multi-province markets, the stockpile is considered to be owned jointly by all merchants in the market's constituent provinces). Whenever a building produces goods, it immediately sells those goods to its local market's stockpile. Similarly, whenever a population (or building, or character) consumes goods, it buys them from its local market's stockpile.

因此，本地交易总是通过商人发生，他们被设计为永久中间人。 商人无处不在，总是进行本地交易————他们总是以当前市场价格从本地生产商/消费者那里购买/销售商品。 作为对他们无法自主决定交易的补偿，我们对所有本地交易的价格进行了轻微的加价，以支持商人。 确保他们始终有一个小的基准利润水平，从而确保当地经济（特别是自给经济，在 1356 年占主导地位）能够平稳运行。 虽然加价目前是固定的（一如既往，具体数值可能会发生变化），但我们计划将其与一个国家经济法联系起来，但这是另一个话题了。

Thus, local transactions always occur via the merchants, who serve as permanent middlemen by design. Due to their omnipresence, merchants cannot refuse local transactions - they'll always buy/sell from/to local producers/consumers at the current market price. As compensation for their inability to consent, we've added a slight markup to the price of all local transactions in favor of the merchants. This ensures that they'll always have a small baseline level of profit, which ensures that local economies (particularly subsistence ones, which predominate in 1356) can run smoothly. While the markup is currently fixed (and, as usual, is subject to change), we're planning on linking it to one of a country's economic laws, but that's a topic for another time.

现在我们将继续讨论发生在两个相连市场之间的外部交易。在外部交易中我们会发现商人有比本地交易时更多的自主权--事实上，外部交易总是商人自愿的，总是由利润驱动的。在贸易系统的每次迭代中，每个市场都会遍历相连接的市场，寻找有利可图的订单（综合考虑运输成本、关税等因素）。与我们在消费/生产中使用的结算方法类似，一旦所有这些进出口订单被汇总，所有订单将被完全履行（如果仓储允许）或按其实际规模部分成交（如果仓储不足）。最重要的是，商人支付了所有外部交易的初始成本--并因此也承担了其所有的仓储商品在未来的贸易系统迭代中价值降低的风险。

Now we'll continue on to external transactions, which occur between two connected markets. Here we’ll find significantly more consent than in local transactions - in fact, external transactions are always voluntary and are always driven by profit. During each iteration of the trade system, each market scans connected markets looking for profitable import trades (accounting for transport costs, tariffs and so on). Similarly to the partial fulfillment we utilize in consumption/production, once all such import requests are aggregated, they're fulfilled entirely (if stockpiles permit) or partially in proportion to their size (if stockpiles are insufficient). Crucially, it is the importer who pays all initial costs - and thus takes on the risk of his stockpile being less valuable in future iterations of the trade system.

这种相对简单（并且纯粹基于本地/邻地信息）的行为允许跨越数十个市场的长途贸易路线有机地出现。 在此过程中的每一步，当地商人都以获利的方式进口商品，而根本不知道周围环境之外的任何信息。 当然，这确实意味着供应/需求的变化需要时间才能在整个贸易网络中传播，而重新建立路线需要市场状况在整个网络中径向传播（而不是一条路线终止之后所有商人离奇地立即找到下一条最佳路线），然而，考虑到其输入数据，该系统产生的结果之逼真程度让人惊讶。

This relatively simple (and purely local/neighbor-aware) behavior allows for the organic emergence of long-distance trade routes spanning dozens of markets. At each step along the way, local merchants import goods at a profit, without ever being aware of any information beyond their immediate surroundings. Of course, this does mean that changes in supply/demand take time to propagate across the network and re-routes require a radial propagation across all connections (rather than magically knowing the next-best optimal path after the one that just closed), but nevertheless the system produces surprisingly realistic outcomes considering its input data.

总结

Conclusion

本期日志到此为止！ 我们正在继续努力准备封闭Alpha测试，但由于我们的资金有限，我们正在放慢速度。 考虑到当前的开发速度，我们认为可以肯定游戏在2023年不可能发布————尽管我们仍然乐观地认为，随着时间的推移，我们的社区将发展到无需外部融资即可合理完成游戏的程度。 此外，我们也再次暂时停止发布新的开发日志————我们的首要任务是封闭Alpha测试，我们需要将100%的资源集中于此。

That's all this time around! We're continuing to work on getting the closed alpha ready, but due to our limited funding we're doing so at a reduced pace. Considering the current speed of development, we feel that it's safe to rule out a 2023 release for the game - though we remain optimistic that with time our community will grow to the point where we can reasonably finish the game without external financing. In addition, we're also once again temporarily suspending the release of new dev diaries - our top priority is the closed alpha and we need to concentrate 100% of our resources on it.

感谢您的阅读，感谢您在这个充满挑战的时期给予的坚定支持！ 一如既往，我们很乐意回答任何问题并在我们的Discord中聊天————您还应该确保加入我们的Subreddit，并在YouTube、Facebook 和 Twitter上关注我们。

Thank you for reading and for your unwavering support through these challenging times! As always, we'll be happy to answer any questions and to chat in our Discord - and you should also make sure to join our Subreddit, and to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

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