How could a game about medieval economy overlook such an integral element like war? Mercatorio focuses on production, logistics and trading; military conflict can be represented via protection as an economic good that can be produced and traded like any other service or good.
How Can the Medieval Economy Ignore War (?)
A game about medieval economies cannot afford to ignore such an integral element as warfare; yet Mercatorio provides this feature by abstracting war into an economic service called Protection which can be produced, sold and traded like any good or service produced and traded within it.
One source of demand for protection arises from town governments who are charged with security responsibilities but lack their own troops or guards to deploy.
Protection services may also be in high demand from operations handling valuable products, like gold mining and minting into coins. Town governments provide steady demand, which helps keep prices relatively steady for such services.
Building a career around protecting others.
Beginning early, players can act as knights to offer protection while earning weaponry skillpoints that will enable more advanced production methods later on in the game.
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
