10.4.6 Ministry of Trade

The Ministry of Trade is responsible for obtaining commodities for use by the city government and for facilitating the transfer of those commodities to the Ministries that will use them. The Ministry has three tools it may use to accomplish this ongoing task:

1. Setting the price at which the city will purchase and sell commodities to the public.

2. Setting the price at which citizens may purchase commodities internally, as well as a reserve amount, so that the city doesn't completely run out of commodities.

3. Maintaining 'reserves' of commodities for use by the city proper. Keeping a number of commodities this way will be very important for many city administration tasks.

Commands for the Ministry of Trade:

FUNDS TRADE
 - See the amount of gold the Ministry of Trade has.

CITYWITHDRAW TRADE <amount>
 - Withdraw gold sovereigns from the Ministry of Trade's budget for city
   use, such as purchasing commodities from a village.

CITY COMMS or CITY COMM SUMMARY
 - Shows a summary table of the current commodity status of your city.

CITY COMM SET MIN <comm> <amount>
 - Sets the reserve amount for a particular commodity. Reserved commodities
   are not available for purchase. Only the Trade Minister may do this.

CITY COMM BUY <comm> FOR <amount> FROM CITY
 - Sets the price which the city's commodity shop will pay for commodities
   from its own citizens and organizations with an open trade agreement.
   If set to 0, citizens will use the 'all' buy price instead.

CITY COMM BUY <comm> FOR <amount> FROM ALL
 - Sets the price which the city's commodity shop will pay for commodities
   from everybody. If set to 0, the shop will not buy that commodity, unless
   the seller is a citizen and there is a city-buy price set.

CITY COMM SELL <comm> FOR <amount> TO CITY
 - Sets the price per unit you sell that commodity for to your own citizens
   and organizations with an open trade agreement. If not set, they will
   use the 'all' sell price instead.

CITY COMM SELL <comm> FOR <amount> TO ALL
 - Sets the price per unit you sell that commodity for to everybody. If set
   to 0, the shop will not sell that commodity, unless the buyer is a
   citizen and there is a city-sell price set.

CITY COMM CONSIGN <amount> <comm> TO QUARTERMASTER
 - Transfers the stated quantity of commodities to the city quartermaster,
   where only the Ministry of the Treasury has access to them.

READLOG SHOP
 - While standing in the city commodity shop, you can read the sale log
   of the shop in question.

READREVLOG/REVLOG
 - Works the same as READLOG in HELP CITYCOMMANDS, except that it is a a
   log of ingoing and outgoing city revenue.

WRITELOG REVENUE <text>
 - Lets you write to the city's revenue logs.

CITY CARAVAN LIST
 - Lists all caravans that will be departing for your city, and the ETA
   until they depart.

CITY CARAVAN REQUEST <#>
  - Order the specified caravan to depart immediately, instead of waiting 
    for its departure timer to count down. 
  - This will cost 5,000 gold from the Trade ministry's budget.
  - There is a global message when you do this - be warned!