Caravan Business

Load your wagons, pick a road and chase a profit across the realm of Fartherhost. Grain is cheap where it grows and dear where the harvest failed. Silk fetches a fortune in the harbour, if it survives the forest road. Every trip is a gamble between the price you know and the danger you don't.

TRADE ACROSS A LIVING WORLD
• 15 towns, each making its own goods and hungry for others
• 32 goods, from fish and grain to steel, spices, silk and gemstones
• Prices shift every day and react to your own trades
• Failed harvests and wars send prices soaring and roads into chaos
• Fish and fruit spoil on the road: sell them fast or lose them

BUILD YOUR CARAVAN
• Donkeys, mules, horses, camels and oxen decide how much you carry and how fast you travel
• Pack enough food for everyone, or watch your guards desert on the road
• Hire spearmen, archers, shieldmen, swordsmen, crossbowmen, cavalry, mercenaries and healers
• Pay their wages and keep morale up, or they will leave you

FIGHT FOR YOUR CARGO
• Bandits and wolf packs strike on the road, and the richer your cargo, the bigger the band that comes for it
• Turn-based battles on a hex board with forests, rough ground and cover
• Protect the wagon, cut down a bandit captain, rescue a captive or break out to safety
• Win to earn gold and crafting materials, or flee and lose part of your load

KNOWLEDGE IS YOUR BEST CARGO
• Tavern patrons trade gossip about prices and roads, but rumours can lie
• Hire informants to report prices from distant towns
• Plan the shortest route or the safest one, and choose what's worth the risk

CHOICES ON THE ROAD
• A stranded traveller, a toll collector, a hidden shortcut, a storm: every road brings decisions
• Travelling merchants offer bargains you won't find in any market

POWER, LAW AND COIN
• Five factions with their own taxes, laws, allies and rivals
• Earn their trust for better deals, or turn them hostile
• Smuggle banned goods past the city gates, if you dare
• Take delivery contracts, relief missions and bounties on notorious bandits
• Invest your savings at the bank, or borrow to fund a bigger run

FORGE YOUR COMPANY'S KIT
• Bring battle loot to the smithy and forge spears, swords, bows, shields and armour
• Time your hammer strikes to forge a fine piece, or crack the metal
• One set of equipment arms your whole company

Earn achievements as you grow from a lone trader with a single donkey into a merchant whose name is known on every road.