Suggestion for modifying trading.

[Cassini]

In the past few days, I've come up with a list of things that still should be changed or considered for modification (since rattling off a list a mile long 2 years ago during the Beta testing).

1. Trading with increasing cost per subsequent purchase (or decreasing price with each subsequent selling) ...

As is, a player may dump their entire inventory of a particular stockpile (or purchase a 'traders' entire inventory) and receive the initial price listed for each item (8 credits for the first item and 8 credits for the one thousandth). During the Beta, things were REALLY messed up till they were corrected (mostly), but there is still room for improvement.

In a real market, attempting to sell a large quantity of an item at once will cause the market price to drop till enough buyers are interested in picking up the 'excess' in the marketplace. Conversely, if a buyer is attempting to purchase a large quantity of an item (beyond normal market clearing activity), the price will rise for that item until enough sellers enter the market to clear the demand. So the price for the first item purchased is NOT the same as the subsequent items purchased (when making large purchases, the price continues to rise till the buyer either gives up - or enough sellers have entered the market to meet the demand of the bulk buyer). On the way down (dumping a large, unusual quantity), the market price will continue to drop until enough buyers enter the market (at a much lower clearing price), to 'soak up' all of the excess market availability.

This principle can be applied here to both reward proper planning on the player's part and to also finally reign in the 'traders' aspect of the game.

Make the price listed by the trader's report be the OPENING price for either buying or selling. Then for each subsequent item purchased, the price will either rise 1% (if the player is buying) of fall 1% (if the player is selling), till the price hits 50% of the initial offer pricing by the traders - then all subsequent items sell at this clearing price. So if the initial price for buying an item starts at say 10.00 credits, the second item will sell for 10.10, the third at 10.20, the tenth at 10.94, until the 42nd item hits 15 credits then each item after that is capped at 15 credits (market circuit breaker). The software 'slider' would handle all of the calculation (of course).

This would act as a STRONG incentive for a player to NOT dump their inventory of an item onto the market at once (they'll only receive slightly over half the 'market price' for their large 'dump' should they do so). The items can still be sold - but if done all in a single round by the player, they'll only receive just over half the market price per item compared to 'small' quantity transactions. Conversely, purchasing large quantities of an item during a round would cause a price rise for each subsequent item - making it prudent to either make small purchases each round to keep the price from rising too rapidly, or having to face paying a steep premium if purchasing a large quantity in a single round. If purchasing 50 items with a starting price of 10.00 under this model, the total purchase price for all 50 would be 645 credits (rounded), with an average price per item of 12.89 credits (the player has paid an 145 credit premium to conduct this transaction).

[Cassini]

I'm having the break this up, the forum won't let me post it in a single posting...

2. City Quality of Life asset enhancements...

The city quality of life enhancements (health, education, entertainment, security) could have an additional small bonus attached to each category.

Health - slight improvement in population growth rates for each asset.
Entertainment - improvements in immigration rates (both folk and from zone to zone)
Education - bonus Bureaucratic Points assigned to each (a better educated population makes for more productive citizenry later on).
Security - each asset would permit a slight increase in the maximum entrenchment percentage in the city hex (can't get too carried away here).

[Cassini]

3. Round (turn) 'demands' made to the player that have specific goals.

Some of the demands have goals for which I haven't been able to find within the various reports (% of population as soldiers - the program gives graphs of the raw numbers but not a percentage that I could find, average civilization security level - again, each city lists its own level, but I haven't been able to find a table that has average civilization stats. All of the items that are used for demands to the player (choose one of the three or make no choice and pay the consequence), need to have those statistics shown in the clipboard - so the player can merely look up the clipboard for the relevant stat (and maybe the clipboard would list what the stat was 5 rounds prior so the player can determine a trend).

[Cassini]

4. Mountain terrain temperature

It appears the program drops the temp for 'low mountains' about 5 C or so (compared to other lower level terrain at similar latitudes), and about 10 C for 'high mountains'. The lapse rate in dry air is about 10 C for each one thousand meters gain in altitude (earth standard). So high mountain terrain (in an earth like atmosphere with little moisture) in the game (so being about two to three thousand meters above average ground level), should be at least 20 C cooler than lower terrain at the same latitude and possibly as much as 30 C cooler. Low mountain terrain (presumably being about a thousand meters or so higher than average ground level), should be at least 10 C cooler, even more if the atmosphere is 'thin' or exceptionally dry.

This would make those mountain ranges true barriers for troops without the enhanced protection uniforms offered by the game. A bit of chrome, but still enhances game experience.

[Cassini]

5. Group move (graphic NEEDS TO CHANGE).

I've found myself more than once forgetting that I was in 'group move' and selecting on a unit to move (in a stack), thinking I'm in 'move' mode and the entire stack takes off. The graphic NEEDS TO CHANGE when group move is selected. I would suggest having 3 small white arrows (as opposed to the single large white arrow used in single move), so when a player selects a unit in a stack and is in 'group move' mode - the graphic will be something different, alerting the player as to what mode they are in - so no mistakes are made.

[Cassini]

6. Possible addition to stratagem cards - Shadow Administrator...

There is a Shadow Spy, a Shadow Diplomat, why not a Shadow Administrator?

7. Governor orders - option to 'hard' select next PRIVATE asset construction.

Why not add the option to the Governor orders screen to hard select the next private asset construction? The player is already having to pay a 2 PP price to access the screen, this would give the player the option to select the next asset construction (and place it within the zone if it isn't necessarily a city hex asset). A further requirement of having at least 25% of the 'purchase price' come from 'public budget' monies could be imposed.

[SamuraiProgrmmr]

I like this possibility. It would also (possibly) allow the player to sell a few of an item each turn (rather than dumping every few turns).

1. Trading with increasing cost per subsequent purchase (or decreasing price with each subsequent selling) ...

On thing I would add concerns the 'spread' between buy price and sell price.

In a recent game, I had a situation where the sell price for machines was 7.15 and the buy price was 95.27.

At the same time, the buy price for rare metals was 11.23. I cannot tell you for certain what the sell price was (as the save I have catches me with no rare metals) but I believe it was less than 1.0 credits.

These price discrepancies had been in place for 20 or more turns.

In the real world, market pressures would keep these two values closer. Yes, certainly there would be a higher price to buy than to sell and I am fine with that. I just question if it is working as designed to having the Buy price be 1300% of the Sell price.

This happened in a game where there was only one other Major Regime. We were at peace with a 96 relationship (and Friendly status) when the situation deteriorated. Am I being embargoed? Or are the calculations too brutal? Or is it an unforeseen result due to some other strange coincidence of circumstance?

I know this is a game but in the real world it would work a lot like this:

Producer wants to make 10% to 15% Let's be liberal and call it 25% because they are greedy.
Trader (distributor, middleman, etc) wants to also make 10% to 15%. Again, let's call it 25%.
Let's even assume there is another trader in the chain claiming his 25%.

So the math is 1 * 1.25 * 1.25 * 1.25 = 1.953125. Let's round that to two.

Realistically, the buy price should never be higher than twice the sell price. (Truly, it will never get that high because someone else willing to have a smaller profit will step in - this is called arbitrage.)

So I have an example of a game where instead of 2, the multiple was 13. I just don't see it.

I still love the game. Haven't played any other PC games since purchasing this. It verges on obsession.

Keep up the great work Vic!

[Catasteroid]

ORIGINAL: Cassini

I'm having the break this up, the forum won't let me post it in a single posting...

2. City Quality of Life asset enhancements...

The city quality of life enhancements (health, education, entertainment, security) could have an additional small bonus attached to each category.

Health - slight improvement in population growth rates for each asset.
Entertainment - improvements in immigration rates (both folk and from zone to zone)
Education - bonus Bureaucratic Points assigned to each (a better educated population makes for more productive citizenry later on).
Security - each asset would permit a slight increase in the maximum entrenchment percentage in the city hex (can't get too carried away here).

From what I can remember health QoL points already add a small modifier to natural population growth, and security QoL points help reduce unrest, provide a bonus in conflict unrest/zone events and a couple of other effects. Incidentally the private citizens in cities are what buys up excesses of goods on the market to convert to luxury QoL points, consistently removing them to keep the prices and inflation in check.

[Cassini]

Going back to the first post in this thread, I didn't include the limit function in my calculation for 50 items purchased starting at 10 credits per item... the limit function would've kicked in at item 42, so the final price for those 50 items would be closer to 639 credits (not the 645 I wrote).

Using an example of purchasing 1000 items, the final purchase price would be 14,889 (limit function included). Currently, purchasing 1000 items at a 'starting' price of 10 credits would be 10,000 credits.

So for small quantities, this concept doesn't cause any real 'bite' (a premium of 139 credits in a purchase of 50 items with 10 credit starting market price), but for buying or selling LARGE quantities, it does take a serious bite out of the player's pocket.

This would also COMPLETELY eliminate the player's ability to 'game' the trading market and make serious credits that way. Back in the opening Beta, the player could amass 10's of thousands of credits, just by gaming the trading system - practically all of that was eliminated as part of the Beta testing, this little change would make it flat out impossible to use the trading system to make those kind of credits.