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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WayneLigon" data-source="post: 674104" data-attributes="member: 3649">For trade, I'll normally look at my map and decide what things are produced where. The big things to look at are the things everyone needs: food, luxury items, clothing. 1. I'll take a copy of my map and make circles, label them things like 'ivory' or 'gold'. 2. Then decide who wants what, and why, and how much they want it. 3. Start to draw lines between a sources and destinations. Rivers are the first thing people will travel along. Then the ocean/coastal. Then land routes.4. Look for ways to make it easier, or more troublesome. The trade route can't easily go through the X Mountains, because they are infested with orc tribes. Instant adventure background: cities are always willing to pay for skilled swordsmen to escort caravans through there. The local nobles will put up a bounty on orcs: fewer orcs means more travel and trade = more cash in their pockets.Or there may be an easy trade route. If it's easy, someone will want it for their own, or it can be a corridor of increased prosperity. Cities along this easy trade route will be larger and the people better off. More art and music. Generally more intelligent. They will be more cosmopolitan: they seen other cultures and races more often than other places do. I look for, or create, synergy. If a city is on an easy trade route AND it's a major source or destination AND it's on a river, etc, etc.. then it's likely to become a major power. It'll be larger. More services will be available. More nobles. Look for things to draw trade artificially. City X is a major city because it's near both a major iron mine AND a dwarf citidal: crafts from this city are better, and sell for more than other places in the region. It will attract more people to it.City Y is small, more like a town, because it's near an elven forest. The elves have a long-standing treaty that only so much wood can be taken, or so much land can be farmland. Thus, this city will not grow much. But it may have access to natural medicines and such that other places do not.</blockquote>

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