Ymir – Barter Guide

As i’ve had some independant success in breaking down the systems used in YMIR, i have been asked to write down my understanding of Barter in YMIR. This guide to cover barter in YMIR at a a detailed level to help people understand the factors that increase your income as a player and what drains it in the early game.

Technology Required

All credit goes to Dundin!

• Fair Exchange: The tech that actually gives you barter.
• Privileges: This tech isn’t needed to activate barter, but the policy it will be your primary source of income for your leader which you will need to make any form of income.
• Leadership: This tech also isn’t needed to activate barter, but applies a means of using your leader’s wealth to generate income for your state.
• Governace: This technology will allow a policy that will increase your administration in your cities, which will reduce your waste. Unlike the others on this list, is it not fully required, but it is still very useful.

How You Make Your Money

Establishing the framework for your income

Leader’s Privileges draws wealth directly from your cities and provides it to your leader, so to start you’ll want to maximize the value on this policy as you enact it (25%).

Leadership has among it’s other effects a value called “leader’s contribution percentage.” This is a percent of how much of your leader’s wealth that he gives directly to the government, the higher it is, the more income you will have. Place this percent as high as you can afford to maintain stability (reasons to lower it will be discussed later).

The game at this stage will also have a rudimentary form of tax that is called “Voluntary contributions.” This is effectively a 20% tax on your population that you have no control over [yet] but will provide a useful supplement to your income, though less than it may seem otherwise that i will discuss with Waste.

Raising Your Income

You now make most of your income through wealth generated in your territories. Any action you can perform to have your territories generate more wealth will benefit your income. This goes from anything between just placing more farms or creating more industry. I would recommend creating as much industry as your state can support that will involve your porcos selling goods to one another, as alongside a modest bonus to your population’s intelligence from the population having more goods to buy, the buildings that produce these goods will generate wealth, raising your income.

Reducing Your Involuntary Expenses

Idle buildings which were once useful to have pre-barter to cycle active population between various jobs are now detrimental instead of useful to you as an inactive building will now drain your income by 1c each per turn. Unless a building that you use infrequently is absolutely vital or very expensive to rebuild, I would suggest to either destroy it or set it to low priority and eject the population from the structure instead of just deactivating it.

You will also find that you have a penalty to your income called “waste.” This is a loss of tax [voluntary contribution] from inefficient administration. There is little you can do to reduce this easily, though it is generated from 2 factors, State Power less than 10 (though less than 0 is when it gets significant) and low administration in your cities. Leadership will make your capital more efficient, which keeps your capital important as a location to focus your industry in, if possible. If you have Governace, the Local Authorities policy will be useful in reducing the waste in your cities as well, alongside other policies that could raise your State Power if it’s causing a penalty to your income.

Managing Your Voluntary Expenses, and State Owned Resources

If you look at your resource stockpile you will now see a new option. State Resources. If a resource is listed as a state resource, you buy it as it’s produced. This has several uses, one of which being that many industries suffer a penalty to production if they don’t have someone immediately buying the goods they produce as they produce it. Industry that provide goods bought by your Porcos will not have this problem (pottery, for example) as your population will buy the goods. What i feel the most important part of state resources though is that this expendature will bypass any markup from waste in the territory, providing you a means of acquiring things in advance that later you will appreciate having been effectively cheaper. Use this on resources that you plan to ship between your cities or use yourself as a leader (construction and army production).

Another thing to take note of is that you now have to pay an upkeep for your armies and some buildings. While your economy is still young, you may want to reduce the volume of troops in your armies or reduce them to Militia to keep them from burning a hole in your wallet. Many structures will provide an uncomfortable drain on your economy (walls and forums, for example) Having natural terrain used in the form of your wall will help reduce the expenses of fortifications if they are necessary, where as the forum will also provide a resource (which sales will be taxed) and wealth (which will also be taxed) so many buildings that have an upkeep may happen to actually result in a net profit.