One Banker Nation Ruling

General
#1

One banker Nation explored
I’ve looked at the One banker nation strategy in some depth now. Starting from the same database I set up a game and run from Turn 0 the following examples.

Test 1) No orders - just run the game.

MARKET PRICES
Product Leather Bronze Steel Mithril Food Timber Mounts
Avail 6930 4620 3825 600 29250 5925 2400
Buy 9 11 13 113 3 10 18
Sell 6 7 8 71 2 6 11

Test 2) No orders other than 325s (Natsells) of around 25k value (basically food @2).

MARKET PRICES
Product Leather Bronze Steel Mithril Food Timber Mounts
Avail 7380 9886 3375 593 67792 10326 2400
Buy 10 9 19 123 2 9 26
Sell 6 5 11 73 1 5 16

Test 3) No orders other than all gold in the game sent by all nations to the Long Rider. Minor changes to gold levels to test 1) (948s 10%).

MARKET PRICES
Product Leather Bronze Steel Mithril Food Timber Mounts
Avail 6930 5040 3825 563 30750 6375 2340
Buy 65 102 117 981 14 93 194
Sell 36 56 65 541 8 51 107

Test 4) No orders other than Tax of all nations to 100% and 325s of around 25k value (basically food). Ie testing to see what a a large amount of gold in the game does.

MARKET PRICES
Product Leather Bronze Steel Mithril Food Timber Mounts
Avail 7110 8219 3465 600 111942 9093 2490
Buy 15 17 24 185 3 16 41
Sell 10 11 16 123 2 11 28

Test 5) No orders other than Tax to 100% and 325s of around 25k value (basically food) and all gold in the game sent by all nations to the Long Rider. Ie a large amount of gold in the game and it all under one nation.

MARKET PRICES
Product Leather Bronze Steel Mithril Food Timber Mounts
Avail 7650 10996 3510 570 275474 9093 2400
Buy 170 175 329 2617 9 202 520
Sell 88 90 170 1350 5 104 268

Test 6) To emulate a Grudge game: No orders other than all gold in the game sent by all 11 other DS nations to the Long Rider. Minor changes to total gold levels in the game as compare with test 1) (948s 10%).

MARKET PRICES
Product Leather Bronze Steel Mithril Food Timber Mounts
Avail 6840 4500 3465 563 30750 5775 2550
Buy 36 60 67 516 7 51 101
Sell 23 38 42 324 4 32 63

This basically covered the broad spectrum (you can tell I was trained as a scientist uh?!) of possibilities (there are other options of course but I think the results are clear). My reading is as follows:

Tax @100% basically doubles the market if everyone did it (upto half if some players did it) and although has an inherent disadvantage (low loyalties throughout the nations on high tax) is probably okay.

One Banker nation: leads to 4x the market and has minor disadvantage (which can be dealt with by sending slightly less gold). Although it doesn’t give unlimted gold to the DS, it does deal with their very major disadvantage of a (relative to FP) weak economy. (Note it doesn’t, IMO, allow you to get extra product as the raised buy and sell prices preclude this).

I propose that we ban the One Banker Nation strategy. There is no effective counter that an opposing team can employ to deal with it.

For now we’ll do that by hand :

“You may not send gold with the intention of bumping up the Market prices”

It’s simple to moderate - if players feel that the market has been bumped unfairly get in touch and we’ll check the orders. If we find that it has occurred, we’ll remove all the gold received from that banker nation and we will consider further measures. (Note sending gold to nations is still fine for other reasons - it’s easy to moderate).

This is the simplest short term solution and workable, especially if players abide by this ruling. Players are generally very ethical, so a hand moderated ruling will work well. We do something very similar in Gunboat and find it works fine.

We will not make any changes to the market prices in current games, even if the banker nation tactic has been used. However, from Monday we will enforce this new ruling.

I intend to take no action about using high tax rates or market buy-outs to affect the market prices. They are tactical choices, with both positives and negatives, and there are strategies which opposing teams can employ to counter them. (Eg Emmissaries for low loyalty PCs, ease of Threatening for high tax nations, and selling product and keeping a low gold level for reducing the impact of Buy-outs).

If this hand moderated rule is broadly popular, I’ll look at implementing code changes. These will aim to emulate the present market, with removal of the One Banker nation strategy. No doubt this will have minor changes to the market code, but I feel that something needs to be done here.

Please discuss and give me your feedback.

** Thanks to everyone for bringing this to my attention; it is very, very much appreciated. **

As from Monday you cannot employ this strategy.

If you have sent in orders for a game which runs on Monday or later, and which would break this new rule, you should send in a new set of orders.

Clint (GM)

#2

Note ideally everyone can reply here rather than the other threads so that it’s all in one place.

Clint (GM)

#3

Thanks for the test data Clint, now this should put a stop to all the polls and arguments on the forum about it. :rolleyes:

#4

So, you could have everyone on a single team send money to a single nation with the intention of him holding onto it and sending it back in small installments (with interest)? That is, as long as raising market prices wasn’t the intent.

#5

Try it, see what happens! :wink:

#6

You can not do it Steve.

Even if you “claim” your intent is not to bump up prices but to protect your gold we all would claim it is bogus.

You can only send gold to another nation if it is in the realm of that nation needing the gold.

tim

#7

Clint, please advise when the code is changed.

It is asked that the person who developed the One Banker tactic (rumor has identified him) come forward and tell us how the tactic was developed. One might suspect someone had access to the code and studied it. Confirm? Deny? Explain?

#8

That was not the ruling.

#9

Clint and All,

I just though of another way to try to bump up prices. Have one nation drop all his troops and even some characters (to minimize cost) and then do maximum nat sells every turn to increase his gold reserve. This would take a few turns but it could cause the same type of market response.

Example might be the Blind Sorceror, drop all your troops, retire a few characters to minimize cost. Try to increase taxes and then have his teammates send him material to be able to continue to bump up his gold reserves to drive prices up.

Just trying to think ahead of how some teams might still try and take advantage of the banker nation.

This has drawbacks as well as advantages, but I thought we might want to debate this in advance.

tim

#10

Sending lots of gold to one nation and pretending its not to inflate market prices? oh come on! Who you trying to kid?

#11

So you have the following situation:

One Nation on a team has a very high debt. He’ll last one turn without assistance. However, if the team sends enough to meet his needs at a minimum, they will be plagued with the repetitive need to send money. The team has enough money spread out to take care of his needs for a few turns and decides to do such.

However, this one player now has more money at the end of the turn than any single player had at the start of the turn (could happen for a number of reasons). This results in higher market prices. The player is able to stabilize their economy and not need much of the sent money. Instead, they begin to build up a treasury, which keeps prices high.

Now, how do you know that the team didn’t forsee this event? Also, if they do forsee the event, would you have forced them to repeatedly waste precious orders sending this player small amounts of cash?

I see serious problems with this ruling, starting with the divination of intent.

#12

Cllint,

Since I publicly criticized, I will publicly apologize. Thank you for being systematic in your approach. As far as the other issues that might arise are concerned, it is best to deal with them as they occur.

As anyone that is familiar with U.S. Senatorial policy knows, it is possible to fillibuster something to death.

An old adage:

There comes a time when you need to need to just shoot the engineers and do it!

(at least that’s how I think it goes…:wink: )

#13

So what needs to happen to the banker nation in game #51 and others? With the new ruling does the banker have to send all of the gold back or is he able to keep it? You may have answered this already but I apparently missed it.

Thanks.

#14

Captain Super,

I think the answer is the nation gets to keep it, they are just not allowed to continue to send money to the nation to continue to prop it up.

Tim

#15

This is kind of weird ruling. I mean I understand it but…

I was in ONE DS game where everyone sent their gold to the WK so we could move the capital north and upgrade the next turn. On the turn sent, 'twould appear to be a “1 Banker” ruling sort of deal. Dunno.

Now remember, I have a small walnut-sized dinosaur like brain, but how does smashing all your gold to one nation and inflating prices help the other 9 members of your team? I mean, if I was Sylvan and saw Timber go through the roof, I’d go “Oh rapturous day, oh lucky me, today’s the day I sell a tree…” or something equally elfy.

Thanks!

Jeffery A.

#16

I think that this is a bad ruleing. I’ve not employed the one banker trick or had it employed against me but surely the simple fact that it is there means that it can be done. Its not cheating but a new tactic!!!

I know at present that there is no counter measure for it but there are theories out there on how to counter it, perhaps we can have a test game to try out those theories.

Ian E

#17

So, you could have everyone on a single team send money to a single nation with the intention of him holding onto it and sending it back in small installments (with interest)? That is, as long as raising market prices wasn’t the intent.

*** Intent is clear here. We’re not a court of law. If you’re doing it so that you get an inflated market then you can’t do that. If the result is that you accidently add a zero or few amongst the team intent is clear etc. If the result is that the market price goes through the roof we reserve the right to act. Stephen - if it’s not clear please feel free to re-write so that it is clear please… (anyone is more than welcome to assist). I’ve spent a lot of time garnering the data, pondering “all known variables” etc and this is the best that I can come up with at present.

Jeff - check out the prices and see what impact it has. The market being raised high means that each nation can comfortably natsell for 20k a turn (my estimates are 15k minimum for the nations with the least pcs and quickly raising to 30k within a few turns - each camp being worth around 5-10k in natsells) for minimal loss (10% loss of gold due to transfer). Natsell limits of 40k+ are easily achievable (compared with 20k bottom end) and it will quickly run-away.

Tim- exactly that came up in discussion in the office. It’s a lesser impact and clearly has a disadvantage (Neutrals could be very prominent in such a position). That’s what the code change would be about. We had considered a hard limit. Our Grudge team deliberately tries to keep gold levels high for example (for multiple reasons as DS, and low as FP - 1650. It works to a lesser extent in 2950 but the economies are much more similar in 2950 and 1000 they are equivalent).

i) Maintenance +20k gold send maximum would be one answer to how much gold a nation could received (in total) in a turn but that’s abusable.
ii) Remove the market algorythm that relates Banker nation to prices on the market - seems the best solution. I’ll need to do testing here to make sure that a close approximation to the present market occurs but I’ll liaise with you all about that.
iii) Hand moderated (as suggested above) works fine in most situations I feel.

Ed- I will inform you all. Note I contacted Bill and he felt that there was nothing in the code that would cause such a hike in prices (but to be fair it was from memory). He chatted about the free market problems earlier in the game and commented that actions were brought by GSI to stop the run-away market so I think that the action we take is appropriate. Do you guys feel the same?

FYI gold in the market will impact on the prices of product.

I’m waiting for some more feedback - do people feel this is a correct analysis of the data, that it’s a fair solution and have I missed anything?

Clint (GM)

#18

Hya Ian

I racked my brain to work out how to counter it and couldn’t come up with an effective counter measure. Check out the prices and see what you could do as a FP to impact on the DS that way?

Turn 1 everyone sends money to the banker nation. Turn 2 you make most if not all (plus a profit) of that gold straight back due to the increase in natsell limit and prices of product - ie no clear disadvantage (I’ve experienced this in the FTF and even with 25k army upkeep as DS it was easy to keep nations afloat and churn out characters, create/upgrade PCs etc).

i) Buy all the product as FP and ignore it. Unfortunately that gives the DS even more economy (you’re effectively doing a buy-out for them) and they (and everyone else) gets a free reign with money. Effectively this removes the entire economic aspect of the game such as camp building, attempting to steal gold, bankrupting enemy nations - ie the DS will get a major advantage for minimal disruption. I think that would be a major loss to the game’s strategic element - ie less fun for everyone.

Okay you could hunt down all the camps/pcs that the enemy place but that’s not easily possible. The FP can effectively run as many troops as they want to already (IMO as a player) so it doesn’t help them at all, just the DS (or minimally for them). Okay it does appeal to the monty-haulness amongst us all and that could be fun for a short period of time. Note this is for 1650, 2950 is different but even there it would have a major impact.

ii) Attack the Banker nation - almost impossible to achieve efficiently (ie in such a way that you can actually damage it). If things get hairy then that nation can always transfer the gold to a different nation and you’d have to start all over again (assuming you were aware of which nation it was!) The DS start with 3 hidden pcs - so the likely target of the LR (IK and DragLd are the others from memory) is one that might well be hunted down but having seen it in play it’s very disruptive.

I’m not one prone to snap decisions (as you guys might be aware here! :wink: ) I think this is one that keeps the integrity of the game, keeps it’s appeal and keeps a competive aspect within the game. Thoughts welcome though - I’ve missed things before and I might be missing something now. (Note for now on Monday I plan to implement this plan. We can always allow it should other evidence come to light.)

I’m happy to chat (I expect to! KS on hold for a few days guys!) about this more of course.

Clint (GM)

#19

Oh goodie, I get to keep my money then? I must say, I’m somewhat put off by your rapid about-face on this issue. You’ve been arguing and arguing for weeks now it seems, and then you simply state in your post that there is no effective counter measure, and the advantages are so balance-shattering for the DS that you are going to hand moderate a ban. But these are the things that people have gone to great lengths to convince you of for weeks, as you shrugged them off.

I am glad you spoke with Bill and this appears to be a prime example of the “Law of Unintended Consequences” that the founders of the game perpetrated on the rest of us as they tried to tweak-as-they-go the market algorithm in the early days until they simply, stopped bothering. Sigh…only human, I guess. :eek:

Brad B

#20

One might suspect that many players have had access to the code and studied it over the years. I know a few who have made that claim and have read that claim on this forum if I recall correctly (over how ever many years…). No shadows to chase here Ed I’m afraid.

Brad