- Location
- Finland
Good point.
I don't see Bretonnia having much that empire does not, but it is one more place to buy/sell stuff.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
I don't see Bretonnia having much that empire does not, but it is one more place to buy/sell stuff.
That shipping marble for a currently planned one time expansion doesn't make a trading hub. Or a willingness to be a trading hub for others. Hell erengrad is the easiest to reach city for the eonir aside from salkalten.
Bretonnia has a lot more arable land than the Empire, so may be a better place to buy grain from.
It's also a diversification issue. It was mentioned that the Eonir wouldn't want to be dependent on the Empire. Trading with Bretonnia as well mitigates this risk.
Couronne is about the same, and Marienberg is much easier. And once you have an established shipping route people are going to use it to trade other goods in both directions, because it's such an obvious way to make a profit.
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Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
Only Certain licenced institutions are permitted to deal in it, obviously
The Empire would certainly want to curb that tendency though.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
I wish you'd present evidence instead of assertions.
The expansion of the walls is a one-off. This is the first time in thousands of years, and the next time will also probably be thousands of years away. And that means that the amount of stone is capped at what they can use for this expansion- it's a project, not a market.
Metals are recyclable, and there's artisan mining- it's how they've met their own needs for centuries. Needing a bunch of new metal is predicted on making a bunch of new metal things- and we don't have any ideas what those things might be, so we don't know what the demand is going to be either. Research needed.
And luxury runes at scale? At scale is maybe a wagonload every few years, given the size/value difference.
We've got three houses out of 25 who are dabbling in trade. The ones doing spices because we basically forced them into it- the demand didn't exist before we went and created it.
So again, if we want long-term trade here, we are going to have to sell it to them and create the demand ourselves.
We'll need to negotiate a market somewhere and get elves to start their own trade caravans, or we'll need to negotiate for dozens of human traders to have access to Laurelorn.
(If cityborn elves have to sleep a few nights under their wagons, do they give up their rights as city born? How strict is that rule enforced for rivers who aren't nobles?)
I think 'non-renewable raw materials' is a better label; they don't need grain or meat the way the dwarves do, and the charcoal only beats magical flames in some areas of crafting that require magically neutral heat. (Plus trees may or may not be seen as a renewable resource to be harvested? Idk how elves do that sort of forestry, but there's not a lot of wood used inside the city walls, and it should be one of their most abundant resources.)
So I'm not even sure of what the upper level on charcoal demand is, but I'm guessing much, much lower than an equivalent human city.
- Location
- Finland
Which i why Eonir will want that harbor and boats, Empire wouldbe hard pressed to stop them if they have ocean going trade.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
Sufficient incentive, not manpower. The debate is whether there's anything they want enough to make it with their while to do transhipment.
If it exists, my position is that we haven't found it yet, so trade speculation is counting chickens before we have eggs.
I don't see how they could.
The thing is, once you've built and trained a merchant navy and all the infrastructure associated with that, there's going to be a very strong incentive to maximise the value you get out of that navy. They're not going to burn the boats after importing the marble, and the elves who're sailing the boats aren't going to want to lose their jobs. They're going to want to keep trading, so they will. If they don't, another House is likely to jump on the opportunity.
That may be something which we'd have an active interest in curbing... or we may want to extract more personal concessions for the RoW road (such as personal training from the Grey Lords).
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
Sure. But they did completely stop building boats before and let their docks decay. They can do it again. The incentives aren't all visible to us.
They presumably stopped because there was literally no one to trade with. They were at odds with Ulthuan and Naggaroth and the Karaz Ankor, Araby hated elves, and Nehekhara imploded, so for a long time there were no friendly ports to visit.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
My understanding is that the issue comes up if they have an actual home outside of the city, which is why House Fanpatar can't fix up their tower.
- Location
- Finland
Why?
Based on what?
Apart from "make them reliant on Empire" or "empower EIC", i don't see the point.
And i honestly find both of those bad ideas in general.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
Eonir.
The Asrai are the ones that live in Athel Loren, by Bretonnia.
Quite the opposite, I'd say. We want Laurelorn to be an alternative to Marienberg in the long term. We'd want Eonir merchants visiting foreign ports and buying and selling goods there, so they can in turn trade those things with the Empire's merchants.
Tasoli
Life is for Living
- Location
- Behind the Keyboard.
What? No Eike has bought choarchal from Erengard and paid villagers for the transport. Go re-read her update it is there. She just pretended it was to appaease Elves rather then being trade but everybody is getting paid.
- Location
- Earth
The incentives are spelled out in the update:
The point is less about the direct trade that building the walls makes, or about any individual project, and more about the idea is that the balance of power is changing from the expansion, and that trade provides an avenue to political influence, so the Houses themselves will find themselves incentivized to find their own sources of trade.
- Location
- North Wales
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
If we do get a College/Empire Great Deed out of the Orbs next turn, which does not seem that unreasonable for the first set (with any followup sets getting CF), what are the current thoughts on how it could be spent? Our one for Alkharad stuck around for a long while before we put it to use.
Seviroscope is maybe one option.
A tamed and trained Griffon for Eike! A Wolfship for Eike! A knighthood for Eike! A fantastical beast with familiar capacity for Eike!...maybe not.
Anything we'd particularly want for WEB-MAT or KAU? "More Book" seems a little prosaic, but probably an option that doesn't necessitate us using our own scribes for immediate benefit as we get the libraries to do it for us.
Maybe we just hold it in reserve to use on the Eonir/Nordland crisis if it flares up.
Seviroscope is maybe one option.
A tamed and trained Griffon for Eike! A Wolfship for Eike! A knighthood for Eike! A fantastical beast with familiar capacity for Eike!...maybe not.
Anything we'd particularly want for WEB-MAT or KAU? "More Book" seems a little prosaic, but probably an option that doesn't necessitate us using our own scribes for immediate benefit as we get the libraries to do it for us.
Maybe we just hold it in reserve to use on the Eonir/Nordland crisis if it flares up.
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Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
I'm pretty sure we still have the one from Queekish.
- Location
- North Wales
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Man, we are not good about spending these things.
- Location
- Hiding in the walls.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
While there's a strong possibility that many elven goods are superior in many respects, first, there's only so much functional improvement you can reasonably get with very simple items, and second, Laurelorn does have significant class divides. Not everyone is going to have access to the work of master smiths and carpenters, and in the absence of someone paying them at least as much - if not more on acccount of them finding the work boring, demeaning, or both - as their other work would command, they're probably not making spoons and bowls. Certainly, they're not making spoons and bowls en masse.
Furthermore, smithing is pretty much exclusively a Cityborn trade (the Forestborn seem unlikely to have access to spaces where they can reasonably do anything but cold working, and the Priests of Vaul are going to get first pick of limited metal reserves), and seems to be at least somewhat restricted even amongst the Cityborn (see: Priests of Vaul).
Given those factors, I wouldn't be surprised to find that there's a significant market amongst the Forestborn for goods like well-made copper cups, utensils, and cookware. Obviously, they currently have some solution for that, but it seems entirely plausible that such a solution could be supplemented or supplanted by outside sources.
Furthermore, smithing is pretty much exclusively a Cityborn trade (the Forestborn seem unlikely to have access to spaces where they can reasonably do anything but cold working, and the Priests of Vaul are going to get first pick of limited metal reserves), and seems to be at least somewhat restricted even amongst the Cityborn (see: Priests of Vaul).
Given those factors, I wouldn't be surprised to find that there's a significant market amongst the Forestborn for goods like well-made copper cups, utensils, and cookware. Obviously, they currently have some solution for that, but it seems entirely plausible that such a solution could be supplemented or supplanted by outside sources.
Something to note is that House Filuan Teleri renovated one of their dorms back into the dry dock it originally was. Those dorms are one of the major ways the great houses maintain their influence, and I doubt House Filuan Teleri went to all the effort of pulling down thousand year old walls just to make a single ship to carry a one-off shipment of marble.
They could have just hired a kislevian merchant to ferry that stone to them for far, far less than they've spent so far, but they actually went to the effort of building their own dry dock and constructing a ship. They are settling in on the expectation of long term shipping needs, and if it doesn't pan out, then they'll lose a lot of wealth and influence from the failed investment.
Edit: wrong house
They could have just hired a kislevian merchant to ferry that stone to them for far, far less than they've spent so far, but they actually went to the effort of building their own dry dock and constructing a ship. They are settling in on the expectation of long term shipping needs, and if it doesn't pan out, then they'll lose a lot of wealth and influence from the failed investment.
Edit: wrong house
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Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
We've also got our Transcendant Boon from Vlag, but I believe we've used all our other Dawi Boons.
I'm not sure what you're arguing at this point. As @ReImagined pointed out, it's spelled out in the update. The Major Houses are going to want new sources of influence, and trade provides those sources for some of them.
You're making all those arguments on why the Eonir wouldn't want to trade when we already know about stuff they want to trade. You're trying to figure out if the Eonir would want to buy metal when we already know that they do, because they are currently cutting deals to buy ingots from the dwarves at great expense. We already spent an EIC action to find out what goods Tor Lithanel would want to import long-term, and we've already found three things that they'll want to buy long-term (spices, charcoal, and ore) and set up trade routes for two of those. We know that the Eonir are interested in trade with Middenland because we spoke with the Graf's son and he said they're interested in trade with Middenland. What is the claim? That all of this demand is temporary and will dry up in a few years?
It's House Teleri that's turning dorms into docks - they used to be boatwrights, now they're picking it up again. House Filuan will gain influence from setting up the buildings themselves (and presumabely owning and renting them?).
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