Life on the Road: Merchant Tradition, Caravanners and Better Wagons
OCTOBER 12-26, 2026 / DEVELOPMENT UPDATE
For a trading colony, the road is part of home. Merchant Tradition gives trade an ideological role, and the Caravanner expansion adds practical travel choices. The same stretch of updates also addresses the less glamorous details that make transport usable: sleeping animals, cropped wagon artwork, shared tether posts and saved travel injuries.
Give trade a place in the ideology
Merchant Tradition requires Ideology. Its documented trade memory grants +4 mood for five days after a qualifying goods trade of at least 100 silver. Travelling adds +2 mood, while fifteen days without trade can produce a -2 memory after the relevant grace period. These are specific game rules, not a reward for every exchange or every click in the trade window.
The original Trade Envoy role requires Social 6. In .100 it expands into Caravanner, keeping its trade benefits and adding non-stacking 10% travel and pack-animal capacity benefits. Assigning multiple specialists does not multiply that same bonus indefinitely.
Forced March has a cost
Forced March is a player-ordered six-hour travel option with fatigue and a saved five-day cooldown. It belongs to the assigned-role system and requires Ideology. It gives a caravan a decision to make when time matters; it does not turn travel into a permanent free speed increase.
Negotiated passage adds one silver offer in eligible human goods demands. It is a conditional alternative within the supported encounter, not universal immunity from hostile factions. Check the actual event and available command before counting on a safe route through an enemy's territory.
Make attached equipment visible and manageable
The .101 change keeps attached animal wagons visible when their pullers lie down or sleep. The .102 update repairs east-facing clipping and improves pulling-animal clearance. Multiple animals can share a tether post, with individual release controls and a saved custom name; existing single-animal posts upgrade through the system.
The caravan's People and animals list gains attached-cart icons in .107. They identify the equipped vehicle, its puller and, for animal wagons, the rope leader. A spare cart carried as cargo does not appear as attached. The icon reports equipment, not a guarantee that every animal and pawn is ready to travel.
Travel history should survive treatment
The .108 save fix addresses a caravan event letter that retained an injury reference after that injury had healed or been removed. Unresolved decisions reconnect only to the exact injury on the correct pawn. Missing injuries stay gone, while resolved letters keep their history without retaining a stale treatment target.
Taken together, these changes support a colony that trades, travels and remembers what happened along the way. Role effects, native save behavior and rendering paths have focused checks, but a live departure, overnight stop, return and save/reload remain valuable acceptance tests. The newer visiting-trader world markers are covered in their own post because they represent a different system from player-controlled caravans.