Dec 14th 2014, 12:39:04
EE is a game where the public market tends to automatically provide a balance between one strategy and another: if one gets relatively strong, more people will play it, driving down prices for whatever good they produce, and driving up demand for whatever they buy, making them weaker and other strategies relatively stronger. Farmer is mostly exempt from this, as the high floor on food prices provides a guaranteed cashout price and increased demand for the whole reset as bushels are the safest item to stockpile. No matter how many people play farmer, there's always a very high floor for the strategy.
This indirectly affects one other strategy, primarily: oiler, as oil is the other easily stockpiled item in the game. With no floor on oil, it likely wouldn't have mattered if the private market price for food was lowered, as oil had no effective floor. Now, with the recent changes to oil, it does. Even better, the floor for oil is effectively market based, as the price of oil will now be directly related to the price of military. However, while it still remains to be seen how this will work out exactly for oil demand, I suspect that it will have little effect on the viability of farmer as a strategy, as bushels will still be preferred for stockpiling and the floor for oil is highly likely lower than the floor for food; there's little reason to play oiler over farmer.
Still, of the two floors, the method used for creating a floor the one used for oil makes more sense as it is a more market based solution. Oiler will never get too strong as more people will play it if it is, lowering prices and boosting other strategies. So, why not make oil the main stockpiled good instead of food?
If the maximum private market purchase price (demo with full tech) were $15 instead of $35, a fascist farmer with 215% agri tech would produce about $196 in value per farm. That'd be about the equivalent of an $71 dollar barrel for a fascist oiler. At that point, the minimum price for oil is highly likely to be higher than the private market sale price for food, and oil would likely be the preferred choice for stockpiling.
More demand for oil would make oiler a much, much stronger strategy, that would be competitive with the rest. Farmer would still be a viable strategy, but destocks would have to be played very differently than they are currently. There'd be other changes in relative balances between strategies compared to now, but in the end none would be any stronger than the others as supply and demand on the market would solve most issues.
This indirectly affects one other strategy, primarily: oiler, as oil is the other easily stockpiled item in the game. With no floor on oil, it likely wouldn't have mattered if the private market price for food was lowered, as oil had no effective floor. Now, with the recent changes to oil, it does. Even better, the floor for oil is effectively market based, as the price of oil will now be directly related to the price of military. However, while it still remains to be seen how this will work out exactly for oil demand, I suspect that it will have little effect on the viability of farmer as a strategy, as bushels will still be preferred for stockpiling and the floor for oil is highly likely lower than the floor for food; there's little reason to play oiler over farmer.
Still, of the two floors, the method used for creating a floor the one used for oil makes more sense as it is a more market based solution. Oiler will never get too strong as more people will play it if it is, lowering prices and boosting other strategies. So, why not make oil the main stockpiled good instead of food?
If the maximum private market purchase price (demo with full tech) were $15 instead of $35, a fascist farmer with 215% agri tech would produce about $196 in value per farm. That'd be about the equivalent of an $71 dollar barrel for a fascist oiler. At that point, the minimum price for oil is highly likely to be higher than the private market sale price for food, and oil would likely be the preferred choice for stockpiling.
More demand for oil would make oiler a much, much stronger strategy, that would be competitive with the rest. Farmer would still be a viable strategy, but destocks would have to be played very differently than they are currently. There'd be other changes in relative balances between strategies compared to now, but in the end none would be any stronger than the others as supply and demand on the market would solve most issues.