Pyramid #3/52: Low-Tech II

[Turhan's Bey Company]

I didn't go into it here because the article was already complicated enough (though it was addressed briefly in 3/33), but the prestige of a given crop is going to be a significant economic factor. However, it's one based on culture, not technology. Luxury pricing is going to hit some of these values very hard. In a setting which looks vaguely like historical Europe, the beef and pork prices are going to be somewhat higher, and the chicken prices maybe somewhat lower. And in a world that contains something like a historical Europe paying out mad dosh for spices, those price increases can percolate back through the supply chain so that even producers see a nice price bump. But, of course, those adjustments have to be campaign-specific.

There's one other small thing I didn't factor in since I had zero data, but some things travel terribly. Spices, you can pack up in a chest and ship across the continent. Animals are different. Cattle and pigs can be driven to market, but the exercise burns off some fat, so you need to either sell animals who weigh less (and get less money) or fatten them up again (which costs you more). Then again, since they're self-propelled, you don't need to pay much to transport them, so it's probably a wash. Chickens, though, have to be carried to market and need to be fed grain along the way because they can't forage. That may be below any reasonable level of resolution when taking chickens from a village to a nearby town, but might make it less than profitable to buy chickens in Baghdad and sell them in Samarkand.