Dec 9th 2020, 22:53:00
(This applies mostly to solo servers)
The oil market is so brittle due to one country being able to flood the market due to relatively low demand, there is a window where demand does increase due to volume of attacks but in express for example you aren't going to have multiple 20000 acre oilers dumping oil onto the market, without completely flattening the market and that is at peak oil... let alone the startups and post attack phase. And yet the economy can suppport multiple countries of most other strats.
Easy solution that will not effect game balance at all. Convert the land expense into base oil consumption.
1. Land Expense = 10xAcres. eg 10000 acres = $100000 per turn into oblivion (removed from the game economy).
If you have a server with 100 countries at 10000 acres there is $10mil per game turn removed. If land Upkeep is instead oil consumption then $10mil worth of oil is now required per game turn server wide, In a balanced game ~2/100 countries are going to be full oiler to support this basic oil need. The oil market is going to be more liquid, and you will still have the same forces on the oil markets due to military attacks.
How much oil consumption? Probably close to .08*land. 10000 acres, 800 barrels per turn.
This will make oiler somewhat playable by multiple countries, oil market will behave similarly. You will have oil consumption early in the game. There will be no change to the rest of the game economy. NW server wide should be relatively unchanged. Countries would need to start with some oil in the bank at the start of the game. A sensible "your country ran out of oil" penalty would be needed.
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if you wanted to take it next level.
Then also add a % of military expenses could also be oil consumption, this is more expense removed from the game into oblivion. If you went this way then oil consumption could be dramatically increased. I'd think this could be super interesting if it was combined with removing the selling of oil on the private market. This way it would be very different from farmer, and it would be completely driven by market forces.
The oil market is so brittle due to one country being able to flood the market due to relatively low demand, there is a window where demand does increase due to volume of attacks but in express for example you aren't going to have multiple 20000 acre oilers dumping oil onto the market, without completely flattening the market and that is at peak oil... let alone the startups and post attack phase. And yet the economy can suppport multiple countries of most other strats.
Easy solution that will not effect game balance at all. Convert the land expense into base oil consumption.
1. Land Expense = 10xAcres. eg 10000 acres = $100000 per turn into oblivion (removed from the game economy).
If you have a server with 100 countries at 10000 acres there is $10mil per game turn removed. If land Upkeep is instead oil consumption then $10mil worth of oil is now required per game turn server wide, In a balanced game ~2/100 countries are going to be full oiler to support this basic oil need. The oil market is going to be more liquid, and you will still have the same forces on the oil markets due to military attacks.
How much oil consumption? Probably close to .08*land. 10000 acres, 800 barrels per turn.
This will make oiler somewhat playable by multiple countries, oil market will behave similarly. You will have oil consumption early in the game. There will be no change to the rest of the game economy. NW server wide should be relatively unchanged. Countries would need to start with some oil in the bank at the start of the game. A sensible "your country ran out of oil" penalty would be needed.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
if you wanted to take it next level.
Then also add a % of military expenses could also be oil consumption, this is more expense removed from the game into oblivion. If you went this way then oil consumption could be dramatically increased. I'd think this could be super interesting if it was combined with removing the selling of oil on the private market. This way it would be very different from farmer, and it would be completely driven by market forces.