Ultimate Campaign thought exercise: Trade through the Shackles.

[Mathius]

The Shackles lives by siphoning off some of the trade between the inner sea and Garund.

I think most ships that go through this area would be come out of Sargava.

It is clear that trade runs from Sargava to Cheliax.

I am not sure what other countries would have a treaty with Sargava.

I want to try and use the the the UC rules to figure how much potential plunder travels through the region. Based on these rules it would be a 10 percent of the combined economy total of those two countries.

Now we just need to figure out what the economy stat would be for each country.

The first step would be to figure out the size of each country.

[Mathius]

Based on some super rough estimates I have come up with Cheliax as having a size of 2700 hexes and Sargava as having around 900. This of course assumes that my eyeball estimate of size is remotely close and that every hex is actually claimed.

Another factor is that Cheliax has 367,515 population in notable settlements while 26,600. Since most population is rural i think we can multiply these figures by 10. Based on population Cheliax is 14 times bigger instead of the 3 times geography would suggest.

Looking at ultimate rulership we can determine population of hex but i need to find a way to from population to economy instead of the other way around.

[Joana]

Sargava is actually paying the Shackles pirates protection money to stave off being reconquered by the Chelish navy. Doesn't seem like they'd have a very close trading relationship with Cheliax.

[Serum]

Yeah, it always seems weird to me that Sargava is paying the Shackles pirates money to protect them from the Chelaxians, while also suffering from pirates raiding merchants sailing to and from Sargava itself.

Government vs private enterprise, I guess?

Anyways, it's unlikely that the Chelaxians are trading with Sargava. Most of Sargava's trade is going to be coming from the other countries in the Inner Sea region.

[Joana]

The pirates actually don't raid Sargavan merchants, according to this:

Quote:

They used to raid the shipping of Sargava, but no longer do so; instead they receive a hefty tribute from the former colony in return for protecting it from Cheliax.

[Serum]

Fair enough, although I imagine, being a fairly loose conglomeration of individual ships, not everyone is going to follow along those lines.

Whose shipping lanes are they raiding, then? There's pretty much nothing else down there except for Bloodcove (I believe most of the other colonies are on the southeast side).

[Joana]

Good question. Maybe they're raiding the Andoran/Taldan/Rahadoumi/etc. ships carrying goods to Sargava?

[Serum]

Perhaps? Maybe even foreign ships carrying goods from Sargava. Both of these would technically be loopholes in the idea that they no longer raid Sargavan shipping, but this hurts Sargava long-term anyway.

Ah well, it's not like Sargava has a choice. It's either put up with the pirates' blackmail, or become a Chelish colony again.

[Mathius]

I always figured that Cheliax still traded with them it just cost more since they no longer own the place.

I doubt their are enough Sargavian ships to carry all the stuff so others need to send their own ships.

Most of the goods get through anyway just nor necessarily with the same owner. I am sure many merchants love buying up the plunder from the pirates and then take it to wear it was going anyway. They just have to hope they do not get pirated before the can get away.

[Mathius]

Not that long distance shipping makes any sense when you can just teleport but hey since it goes by ship anyway I would love to know just how much stuff flows through the area.