Hi, I was actually involved in the Ascaron community forums when Patrician III was first released internationally and helped refine the translation, and I thought it would be fun to make a gamefaqs FAQ for the game in English now that the game has been rereleased at GOG.com.
My corny spreadsheets on Production costs may still be circulating...
Anyway, I'm trying to figure out the formulas for how much a city will consume.
I think the following are the salient variables:
1) Size of the three economic classes in the town.
2) Whether the needs for a given product have been filled recently.
3) The season. (It seems people want more timber in the winter?)
4) The location. (Furs and timber are more needed further north?)
Obviously, if only 1 and 2 are important then it's a matter of looking at 3 or more cities of differing sizes that have no supply problems at all and then extrapolating the constants for each product per unit of population for each class via the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra.
For that it would to have a nice contest save with a fully supplied towns with populations of 10k, 20k and 30k. If anyone knows anything about calcing towns demand, I'd love to hear about it!
Thanks.