Council Positions:Trade Minister

Lady Zeathea’s Guide to

The Office of Trade Minister

Sussex Edition (post County trade point version)

Welcome new Trade Minister. This job can arguably be called the toughest on the Council and almost unarguably the most time consuming. Since you have this job you either did not know what you were getting into, or were tricked. This guide has been written for Sussex and some things may not apply to your county but the basics will be here. This guide is in two parts. Part 1 to explain the buttons, Part 2 to explain the job.

Part 1: Buttons
Finding your Office:
Unlike most of the Council who have their offices in the nice and cozy Castle you have to walk all the way into the County Fair to find yours.
Click on County fair and you will see…


Once in your office you will see the amount of money currently in the Treasury, the amount of Trade state points available and the 4 options: Buy for County, Inventory of the Goods, Buying and Selling Orders, Management of the Grants.

First, note your Trade points. 1 point is worth 10,000 pounds worth of trade. Buying, selling, making and canceling grants. You also are charged weekly for grants. If you have no trade points you will be unable to buy or sell on the County Fair or issue or receive back a grant.

Buy for County: This option allows you buy from the County Fair using the County Treasury funds instead of your own. Also this is the only way you will not be charged the 50 pound tax for buying from the County Fair. This only works on the County Fair.

Inventory of the goods: Here you can see everything the County has in inventory minus Swords, shields and Shafts which are transferred to the Sergeant. By inventory listing of each item in stock you should see the ability to either: Put on sale or Transfer to Grant account XXXXXX. X’s standing for a 6 digit string of numbers. Each item will have every grant that is unassigned listed next to it, depending on how many unassigned grants you have this can be slightly unwieldy. There are things in inventory you will need to keep a close eye on, but more on that later.

Buying and Selling Orders: This only shows you the items you have up for sale on County Fair, or are in the process of buying. It is useless.

Management of the grants: Depending on how you run your office, this may be where you spend most of your time.
First you see the County grants that are currently assigned to players. You can look in each grant to see the amount of money and goods each currently holds.
Following that is a list of completed grants. These are not in any sort of order.

After that you will see a list of any grants that have been created that have not yet been assigned to players.




Créer un nouveau mandate -Using this you may make a new grant. (Note: Unlike mayors, TM’s cannot put money in a grant. Only the Sherrif can do that. However you may add goods to any existing money grant and assign any existing grant)
After clicking the button you will see this screen


Here you can leave detailed instructions about what the grant contains, what to do with it and any deadline there is. Then hit create. Red text will scroll across the bottom of your screen containing the grants 6 digit number.

Part 2: Your job
The role of Trade Minster is that of Provider. In short, you have to make sure you have enough Fodder for the Sheriff, mine supplies for the Mines Superintendant, Meals for Levan, and Wood and goods for all of your mayors. While making money for the county is good it falls second to each of these other tasks. This is for Sussex, each county may be different.

Daily duties – Located at this link is our counties spreadsheet. Here we keep Inventory which must be updated daily. Also the current goods inventory, treasury, and Book value is recorded nightly so that the average can be reported weekly in the TM’s report. I prefer to do the sheet shortly after reset every night.

Fodder – Fodder must be gotten from your mayors. You must set the prices of corn and wheat at a price that will ensure you make some profit, and yet is high enough that mayors will in fact collect for you. It is nearly impossible to get fodder via trade. Mayors will sell you fodder via the County Fair. Anything up on County Fair should be picked up quickly, as a 50 pound tax will not stop a trader from buying large amounts. Fodder will be something you will be scrambling for most of the time.

Mine supplies- Whatever you have to import you will have to trade with other TMs. The easiest way to do this is with MSN messenger (now Windows Live). You can usually find the current TMs by looking at the Positions list in the House of Parliament. Handing them your messenger name with ingame mail is usually the best way to make first contact. You will want to be in contact with your Mines superintendent to find out how quick you are using your supplies and how much you will need to import.

Mayors – Mayors mostly need wood and iron. Some wood can be gotten from Sevenoaks (our wood town) but it usually is not enough to meet every need. Wood should be imported on occasion to keep up a good supply. Wood is not a profit item and should be sold to towns at cost. Iron should be given out carefully, mayors asking for huge amounts should be reminded that there are laws against it being sold to people who are not blacksmiths and they should check to see who is buying it. Goods are currently sold to mayors via Grant to keep them from having to pay the 50 pound county fair tax.
Mayors may request other items, if you do not have it to sell, make sure the mayors post in the mayors chambers to trade with their local counterparts.

Meals – 20 meals a day for Levan. Currently each town is responsible for 26 of these meals per week. 13 at full County buy price, 13 at half that. Hastings, being a capital, is only responsible for 13 meals total, 6 at half price. This can and most likely will be adjusted as the rules change and depending on the ability of each town to meet these obligations.
The Trade Minister should also council the Count on what meals to set each day depending on inventory. Corn should never be used as a meal.

Buy Prices – The Trade Minister determines the County buy prices for each item the county will buy from mayors, from fodder to wool. These prices should be carefully considered, as some items will be used as a trade good.

Grants – Grants should be monitored daily. I keep my own spreadsheet for this. While you should only give grants to those you trust, sometimes you have to give out grants anyways. Keep a sharp eye.

County buyers – I tend to maintain a few county buyers that can buy things from town markets to help shore up the gaps on Fodder and get a few extra trade goods. This should never be to excess, towns should not be bought out of any item.

Writing grants – This can be one of the most painful parts of the job, Writing a grant so that it is easy enough to understand without it being so long that people look at it and close it out in disgust. A big help with this is the list of minimums and maximums found http://forum.renaissancekingdoms.com/viewtopic.php?t=53487
Just remember, not everyone reads the forums, not everyone speaks perfect English and not everyone will know how to use the grant (or where to find it) when they get one. Be patient, its not exactly easy to figure out how to put 20 pounds in a grant with a stick of wood.