Medieval economy simulator with true markets
- Build, produce, and transport; trade on the market or with partners
- True, organic economy driven by supply and demand
Build a medieval business empire in Mercatorio, a deep economy and trade simulator, where you become the "invisible hand" guiding the world’s economy. Your actions ripple across global markets, putting true economic power at your fingertips.
Succeed by refining products, optimizing supply chains, and striking deals with other players. Find markets for your goods, near or far, while always searching for new business opportunities in an evolving economy. Mercatorio is a persistent, cross-platform MMO running at hourly ticks.
Produce and refine products to fulfil market demand
Play the market or control it
Bleeding edge 11th-century pixel graphics
Track profits and cashflow while building a business empire
Mercantile competition
In Mercatorio, players interact through economic cooperation and competition, sometimes striking mutually beneficial deals and other times competing head-on for market share. The focus is on economic growth, not military combat, theft or robbery. But rest assured, the protection mechanic means shiny weapons are still in high demand, both for the sharpness of their edges and the prestige gained from prancing around with expensive gear.
Production and logistics are core elements in Mercatorio, and will be recognizable to players familiar with town-building or economy simulation games, like the games of the Anno and Victoria series, with chains of production methods refining raw materials into more valuable finished products, and ships or carts bringing raw materials in or shipping the finished products to their markets.
What sets Mercatorio apart is the mercantile environment, where each product will have a distinct market price in each town, sometimes diverging significantly from the price found somewhere else. Those market prices are set directly by supply and demand on order-book exchanges, not by predetermined scripting or formulas. Oversupply and shortages can dramatically affect both prices and supply chains, so it's crucial to evaluate and manage these risks. You want a buffer of crucial inputs to weather supply chain disruptions, but overdo it and you may find yourself in a liquidity squeeze with equally devastating effects.
Mercatorio strives to simulate the medieval economy as historically accurate as possible, with buildings, products and production methods modeled after the activities of the era. Similarly, transport capacities and product weight and size will be more realistic, so while prices for exclusive garments or jewellery may tend to stay in the same range across most of the map, there won’t be a global market for bulky stuff like firewood or limestone, which is more expensive to move around.
Articles
Mercatorio Season 8
Season 8 kicks off on September 1st (at noon CEST), with a completely reworked Prestige system, new map with a new resource, and many other updates and…
Mercatorio Season 7
Season 7 of the medieval economy simulator Mercatorio starts on May 1st and will include new buildings, new products and new production methods. This…
Failing Softly
Complex supply chains and streamlined operations are great for squeezing that last 0.5% of profit-margin. And asset-light operations free up capital for…
Mercatorio Season 6
Season 6 of the medieval economy simulator Mercatorio starts on January 1st and will include new buildings, new products and new production methods. Some…
Regional culture and premium production
Since ancient times there have been regions lending their name to the high quality products they produce, like Damascus steel, Venetian glassware or garments…
Mercatorio Badges
In addition to the main leaderboard, Mercatorio ranks top producers for all products. The new badges will be awarded to the character of every top producer…
Mercatorio Season 5
Season 5 of the medieval economy simulator Mercatorio starts on September 1st and will include revamped and boosted transport operations, as well as many…
Mercatorio season 4
Mercatorio season 4 kicks off on Friday May 16th. The season includes new resources, buildings, products and productions methods. This time it’s especially…
The Mercatorio Councillor
With its wide range of business opportunities and sometimes touch competition, many new players experience a steep learning curve when joining Mercatorio…
Market strength gauges
New market gauges make it easier to judge the strength of supply or demand for your raw materials or produced products at a glance, and simplify the process…
Mercatorio Introduction (updated)
Mercatorio is an economy simulation game with true markets, where prices are set solely by supply and demand, which in turn is always against a counterparty…
Hospitals and Town Health
Healthcare was an important aspect of the medieval era, bestowing great prestige upon the monks and others taking upon themselves to tend to the inform…
Inventory management
Management of inventory levels is an important part of operating a production business. Inventory ties up capital, which may have better uses elsewhere…
Mercatorio Season 3
Mercatorio season 3 kicks off tomorrow, Saturday February 1st. The medieval trade and economy simulator with true markets is getting more products to…
Contractual Commitments
Propose contracts to lock in deals with your business partners. Arrange deliveries or pick-ups at fixed prices and volumes to ease planning and reduce…
Interactive map tool
Introducing the Mercatorio Interactive Map, a powerful tool for the game of Mercatorio. This map features town ranges, resource markers, town stats with…
Price elasticity
Price elasticity of demand (or supply) is a feature of true markets, the change in demand (or supply) for a product resulting from a change in price…
Season 2 changes
Season 2 starts tomorrow, September 14th, at 16:00 CET. The most significant new mechanics have already been introduced, and in addition to that there…
We have a winner!
Season 1 is officially concluded, with Taillifer Burton the clear winner! Congratulations! For everyone else, better luck next season (starting on September…
Mercatorio Season 2
Season 2 is just around the corner, starting on Saturday September 14th, and comes with three major changes; new scoring mechanics, softening of the building…
Season 1 nearing end
Season 1 officially ends on September 1st, and is now free to play. Take the opportunity to try out the game before joining the competition for real in…
Getting out of dire straits
How to recover from financial collapse: some simple steps to stop the bleed and get the cash flowing instead.
Humble beginnings
Complex production or supply chains can be massively profitable and fun, but they are also, eh, complex, and can be expensive and fragile. How about we…
Season 1 July update
The July update is now live with new features and new content. The main focus of this update has been QoL, especially better tooling for automating trades…
Season 1 June update
The first larger update during season 1 will go live tomorrow June 1st just after 16:00 CET. New ship, new buildings, new production methods and balancing…
Cutting through terrain
Breaking down the complexities of moving through some of the rougher areas of Mercatorio, as well as the tools and automation available to assist you.
Trading on regional markets
Local markets for timber, regional markets for ships, funding and reservations for pending bids and asks. Paying the sticker-price to get that shiny snekkja…
Season 1 kicking off tomorrow
Regional markets makes it easier to find counter-parties for buying or selling ships and carts. Also, season 1 will have bees.
You can’t take your money with you
Even the most successful and wealthiest merchants can’t take their fortune with them when the season ends. So instead they build … churches
Entering final week of free test-run
The ongoing test-run is about to enter its final week, culminating on April 7th. Latecomers still have a chance to try the game and learn the mechanics…
Automating trade with trade routes
Set up automated trade routes to match your production chains and export your products to new markets, or branch out and earn some quick quids in the…
Space, storage and transport
Products in Mercatorio takes up space. And they reside at specific geographical location. Movement of goods is affected by their size, and this is an…
Earning a living
Mercatorio offers a wide variety of ways to build a profitable enterprise, be it based on vertically integrated or highly specialized production, trade…
Carted into town
Mercatorio aims to organically develop realistic patterns of human landscapes through deep simulation instead of hard-coded rules. Medieval towns were…
Climate impact
Climate differences offer unique products and production methods, with wine in warm climates and stockfish in cold climates being the first examples to…
Clothing demand leaves heads spinning
The combined forces of common households now looking to purchase a larger portion of their clothing needs at the market, and the introduction of more…
(No) medieval warfare (?)
How can a game about the medieval economy ignore such a big chunk of it as warfare? Mercatorio is about production, logistics and trading; warfare and…
Market mechanics
Like many real world marketplaces and stock exchanges the mercantile exchanges in Mercatorio are alternating their operation between immediate order execution…
More bricks
New production chain for bricks. More complex production chains require more time and resources to set up, but once operational you reap the profits of…
Mercatorio in early-access
Try out a sophisticated new trading system as well as more familiar production and logistics elements in the free early-access run of Mercatorio.
Seasons
The game is season-based and resets at the end of each season. Season 8 starts on Sept 1st and runs for 3 months until Nov 30th. The game remains playable for part of the time between seasons without scores getting recorded, and this period is free to join.
Season 8 world-map
Blog and updates
New features and quality-of-life improvements will be added throughout the season, with the major ones announced on Facebook and the blog.
Trial, pricing and purchase
When joining the game you get a 48-hour free trial.
After this, you need to obtain a season- or week-pass to play. As the season progresses, the cost of a season pass for the remainder will gradually get reduced.
Buy the pass here
Activation can be found in-game, under Settings.
Feature roadmap
- production bonuses from production on higher-grade resources
- manors: ability to found and build in an independent domain anywhere on the map
- herd management for animals in production buildings
- more advanced automation, navigating abrupt changes while players are logged off
- improved and varied bots
- construction of roads that reduce movement and transport cost
- mercantile skill allows trade presence / warehouses in other towns
- more crops, crop rotation, multi-parameter soil quality
- more historical context added throughout the game
Play Mercatorio
Season 8 starts on Sept 1st and runs for 3 months until Nov 30th. The game remains playable for part of the time between seasons without scores getting recorded, and this period is free to join.
Meet other players at the Discord server, where you can negotiate trades and find ways to cooperate.