Hiring & Pricing

Hiring & Pricing is a topic that eludes a lot of players and even watching the trends of town jobs isn't obvious what is going on, due to complex economic relationships and hidden mechanics.

Hiring
Hiring for work means that you put up a job at the town hall for someone - or a peasant to come and work your field. There is no guarantee if a player or a peasant will take your job. However, when a job is not taken it begins to run the chance of attracting a peasant.

Peasant Worker vs Player
When a player works the field, you will always receive a Worker Point, but when a peasant works it, you will only receive a Worker Point about 25% of the time. Fields worked by players also result in about 25% increased product yield.

Peasant Mechanics
The amount of peasants present in a town is never known to anybody, but anyone in the town office who can view the communication logs can monitor whether peasants are entering the city or leaving it (it's never both). A small percent of the peasants in the city will work jobs listed, but it's usually enough workers. For very populated towns, there may not be enough peasants. A peasant will only work a job if it is at least 3 days old. Of the jobs old enough, a peasant will always take the highest paying one. The minimum wage a peasant will work for is 11.01f.

Peasant Mobs
When peasants work a job that is under 16f, this adds to a formula that determines when peasants will begin to mob up. Mobs can be seen by going to Outskirts > Groups and Armies menu. Peasant mobs can do damage to a town's walls, costing the Sheriff stone to repair.

University Courses
University courses have a significant effect on plant and animal fields. For animal fields, Husbandry 1 is recommended as soon as possible. Overall, the courses increase yield. A player should reconsider their pricing after taking a course. The lower prices help the economy in numerous ways and help to cut down on inflation and market stagnation.

The Bigger Picture
Players will take the highest paying job, the same as peasants do, but usually players will do something else if there isn't a good job. So the highest paying jobs compete to grab players, and the lower paying jobs compete to grab peasants. This is why the general advice is to use peasants for plant-type fields and players for animal fields, because animal fields need to be worked every day and the cost of the product mitigates the cost of their daily food. Plant fields have lower priced products and hiring players can either break even the cost of peasant work or it can become more expensive. Competing to hire players for plant fields also tends to disrupt the animal field owners who are carrying more risk, and creates a situation where the hiring costs become higher for everyone, resulting in higher priced goods for everyone, and so on and so forth as inflation goes.

Pricing
Many players simply place their goods on the market based on what everyone else is doing, but this can create a model where prices are always rising for no reason, resulting in a lot of profit per sale but very few sales. Ultimately this creates a stagnant market and can lead to an apathetic town.

A player should sum up the goods obtained (positive) and the cost of work (negative) and adjust prices so there is no negative profit, and optimally a small profit compared to risk carried. This is less important for crop fields, but for animal fields where the overhead costs are higher, this becomes important.

How to track a field
For a player who runs a high-risk field, is very poor, or is trying to figure out optimal pricing or optimal strategy for their play style, a "tracker" is recommended. Each day, write down the day, the actions taken, and the product for the previous day. Leave the calculations until the end to reduce stress and time. If that is too tedious, you can go back through your event log, but this can be even more tedious because of the numerous pages needed to go through.

Market Complications
If the market already has a lot of an item, or if there is no demand for an item, that produces complications that are seen in lower to no sales. Sometimes, players might also choose to undercut players, which is frowned upon. Sometimes an entire town's profession can be uninterested in producing workshop goods, and choose not to buy their requirements. In these situations, it is better to try to do something else than flood the market and hope buyers will come or to trade the items, which results in eating days that could be used towards player progression.

Final Advice
Here is a table with the general recommendations of each field and their products.