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.
Live game view
Live view of one of the many towns in the world of Mercatorio, each one with a full range of mercantile exchanges trading scores of products and services at prices determined by local supply and demand.
Seasons
The game is season-based and resets at the end of each season. Season 7 started on May 1st and runs until July 31st. 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 7 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
The long list of features and improvements on the drawing board, as well as some continuous efforts.
transportation costs for delivery of goods into town centreguides on how to set up basic production and trade routes- a lot more buildings, products, and production methods
clay pit and ceramic kilnhunting lodge, hides and leatherhjell, vignoble, smokerydairy, butter and pastieshoney, wax and candles
- more historical context added throughout the game
region-specific production methods, like vineyards in the south, stockfish in the northbuilding purchase and saleimproved travel UI for ships and cartsability to move to other towns- unknown territory and exploration
notifications for important events and issuesdeeper and more influential skill system, unique production methods unlocked at the higher levels- mastery of mercantile skill allows trade presence / warehouses in other towns
- production bonuses from production on higher-grade resources
rework household sustenance to give more control to the playerfree-form binding contracts with other players (akin to church deliveries), monetary or prestige penalties for breachesaccess to more statistics and graphs about production performance, trade, and state of the towntown culture mirroring the skills of players, town- or region-wide bonuses, unlocking unique products- manors: ability to found and build in an independent domain anywhere on the map
- herd management for animals in production buildings
- improved and varied bots
- impactful roads
- seasons, harvest times for crops
- more crops, crop rotation, multi-parameter soil quality
- weather variation affecting harvests
Play Mercatorio
Season 7 started on May 1st and runs until July 31st. 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.