Any views on my suggestion in another forum, namely that sell prices get capped around game-start levels, and that a floor be put on sell prices for various commodities?
I think the floor I suggested was FOOD 1, LE + BR: 2, ST & TI: 3: MO: 5 MI: 20
Purpose of the floor is primarily to stop the most miserable of economic situations - but it could also hinder the profitabilty of buyouts (e.g. you will never get to buyout MI @ 12 and sell at 40) so the net impact I am aiming for is a little more stability, rather than an absolute upside to market profits
In my naivety I would expect this to be dead simple to implement
I commented and I heartily disagreed with the concept of price controls. Let’s investigate the “single nation can’t buy 2 products” (which by the way, if you do the math in 51, our single nation can buy any 2 of a variety of products…even with the doubled market…) and it’s originating cause.
Otherwise, I don’t see any previous massive complaints about the market. MoS Issue 2 (regardless of any BF misinformation campaign…) is pretty clear on the one thing routinely accepted throughout the community - it’s complicated but follows some basic laws. Without a single banker driving up all prices, the market, In My Experience, seems to work fine.
sorry Drew, you stout militiaman, this is just too seductive…
“After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited”
that belonged to the constitution, too, didn’t it? :hug:
Mormegil: If you would like to discuss the relative merits of American and German forms of government over the past two centuries, it would be best to take it offlist.
no, I just wanted to tease you by showing that the fact that some regulation is written down somewhere does not necessarily have any impact on the quality of that regulation
I’m amazed…even after Clints testing and results being made public, players are still voting that “Its fine, just something the free need to learn to counter”
For the record, the above was in error. I do believe I was buying at the Sell to Market price when I calculated that… In fact, the market in 51 behaved exactly as it was supposed to providing the code refuses to allow 1 nation to buy out 2 products.
My suggestion of the market generating additional product (as in, adding it to the available product) to compensate for higher than normal single nation gold stores (but not overall gold stores) would have the effect of dampening a single nations effect on the market, without arbitrary, manual rulings ever being necessary.
I’ve just read the e-mail about this OBN ruling, and here are my thoughts. My apologies, I’m famous for long posts…
First, many new or infrequent players may not be voting because they don’t understand the ramifications that a single “inflation machine” nation can have on the game. I play mostly Freep 1650 and 2950, and suspect that I have seen this done once. It was not cool to see the DS erase the advantage my side starts with, by using a tactic which once implemented, would require turns and turns of counter-play to combat. The game is designed so that the Free can be the economic and military powerhouse at the beginning, and the DS get all the non-Noldor cool characters to go assassinating. That is why Turn 10 is a watershed in the basic games; both sides should have been focusing on shoring up their strengths by then. The OBN strategy seems to effectively re-write the game rules.
If I understand from a previous post, there is a rule or control in the programming code that says one nation cannot buy out two or more products in one turn. IF this is true and correct as stated, then the original makers of the game intended for some kind of restrictions on economic warfare to permit reasonable play balance. They allowed risky bids to the market, and buy-outs within reason. Otherwise, why would that computer code exist? If my understanding is not correct, please post to clarify, as this is the first I’ve ever heard of it (assuming I did not miss it in the rulebooks.)
I’ve not voted yet. I feel I lack a certain understanding of the economy process, to make an informed decision. What I drew from Clint’s email is that the DS can basically balloon the economy to the point that the Free don’t actually have a counter-tactic. That is, once the DS ‘crank it up’ the Free have no realistic way of bringing the prices back down again to anything approximating a playable game, before the DS wipe their character set. If this is, in a nutshell, what was intended for me to conclude, then why would I bother playing a game where one side can’t win, while the other side always wins? And remember, the cat is out of the bag, with the e-mail from Harley announcing this rule. Everyone is going to be having OBN in the back of their mind, even those of us who never thought to try to hyper-inflate the market this way. Now we all know it can be done.
In closing, what concerns me most is that those of us who vote actually do have a decent grasp of what could happen in a game. I really don’t want more restrictions on tactics, but I’d at least like to play a game where I can have some chance of winning.
Right now, I’m a vote in favor of restricting OBN. How that is done is something I’m willing to leave to those who have a better grasp than I of ME programming and economics.
Thanks to Clint for letting us all know about this, and to those of you who are taking time to post about it,
No, because they still cannot buy-out 2 products with one nation. They may buy more product, but the price will still be lower than it would have been. Since this would have about the same effect on the market as a normal buy-out, and the DS have sent a significant portion of their available funds to the one guy, the rest of the team is still going to be financially unstable.
A buy-out strategy has known, effective counter-strategies. There is no evidence that more product would make a buy-out more effective. And since a buy-out is not a single-turn strategy, the amount of orders necessary to make an entire team rich would still be excessive, and the tactic could be countered I think it would be a positive change.
To look at it another way, if the DS loaded one nation with 250,000 gold, then 1000 or this product and 500 or that product would have to have their Buy and Sell prices corresponde to not allow that 250,000 gold to buy them out. But if you increase that to 1500 or the one and 750 of the other product available, the simple division leaves them with lower prices which would thusly keep the entire market with lower prices.
Note, the ONB strategy has nothing to do with buyouts. Buyouts generally spike single products, eventually raising the entire market based on the “total gold” theory providing the buyout allegiance keeps their profits. One wouldn’t buy these ever-increasingly expensive products with the ONB strategy because one doesn’t want to spend the money. It’s all about every nation selling to the maximum and shipping surplus gold to a single nation. The banker should never (in theory AND practice) have to ship gold to product-weak nations (ie Dragon Lord with few pops) - other allies ship gold to the poor instead of the banker.
It’s all about money, not buying HCav st/st, but enough money to survive, max characters, and improve pop centres.
Brad’s correct in that if the market goes up due to OBN (eg 46 to buy Leather Sell at 23) then buying out a product is going to be too hard to do. So the OBN strategy means that you can’t generally do buy-outs (but then there is no need to as the majority of Buy-outs are to bolster the economy for DS). As a side issue it probably makes it harder for FP to use the market to buy stuff for use as well so detriments the FP further (in 1650 games, somewhat in 2950 and no difference for 1000).
FP can’t affect the market economy as the OBN is related solely to the OBN’s treasury (see my data to back that up). They have to impact on the OBN’s treasury and see my other posts about that please (rather than re-post here).
I’ve not experiencd failing to buy 2 products as a player so I can’t comment on that. Anyone done it? Not sure why it’s pertinent though (curious though I am!)
Note: ideally we can post on the sticky thread so that all the information and answers is in one place.
Ok, you’ve shed some light for me. I mis-understood the “how” part of the OBN. Basically, Nations 1-9 sell off whatever they collaborate to sell, that will yield them as a group the best gold piles, individually. Then they send that gold pile to nation 10. When the computer evaluates, it uses the largest gold pile (in this case, nation 10’s gold pile) as the factor. The send-er nations would have kept just enough to stay afloat, living on zero treasuries, while nation 10 would be causing the price adjustments that will eventually “feed” the other nations better prices for the product they do have. So it has little to do with production, but instead affects the price of each unit of product. Is my understanding more accurate?
If so, what the Free could in theory do, is steal all that gold, or at least big chunks of it. HOWEVER, that would mean the Free actually need agents capable of doing so by turn X, by which point the damage is basically done.
Furhter, as a counter the DS could “trans” the gold pile each turn to a new banker, loosing 10% to the caravans. Is that 10% enough to stop the inflation of accumulated gold and re-pricing that occurs? Or does it just delay by a turn or two the inevitable, meaning that the Free would need 10 or more agents to fight this trick, agents that they never have a game start?
Thanks again in advance for your answers,
James
PS, I think there was a post at some point about taking the average of the gold piles. That sounds interesting. That could be modified to take the average of the top three, so that if both groups actually wanted to hyper-inflate prices (assuming the Free were that dumb) then it could actually happen to some limited degree. Or am I missing something?
Faramir,
you now have it right. Banker balances of well north of $200k gold are the turn1 norm. By turn 5, it can be well north of $400k if you want… And that creates quite the excited market…
One minor alteration: The DS only need to transfer it from the one banker to a new banker until the DS team gets the nation message announcing the transfer. Once that happens (50/50 each transfer), the FP have no clue which nation is the banker.
Ok, thanks. And, true also about the nation message. I can see where this would become nearly insurmountable. The Free are less likely to coordinate at the level necessary, especially if new players are on the team. I could see this getting out of hand quickly, and staying that way for the rest of a fairly short game.
Thanks again for the information, I think I can vote now.
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