Originally
posted by
Slagpit:
You should see the following general market trends on a server without any big wars:
1) Tech prices will get very high quickly and will slowly fall over the round
2) Food prices start cheap, will peak in the middle, and will slowly fall for the rest of the round
3) Military prices bottom out in the middle of the round and will rise in the end of the round.
That's just based on how the game is designed. The bots have good fundamentals and follow supply and demand principles when interacting with the public market so that's what you should expect with the latest style of bots.
You guys are saying stuff like the market prices are wrong. If they are wrong then you can resell and make a profit, right? Food is expensive right now because there is high demand. If I forced the bots to sell food for $40 then the public market would be empty of food for any reasonable price. There was $7.3 B spent on troops over the last 24 hours compared to $280 B spent on food. Without any major wars, I would expect food to be very expensive and for military to be very cheap for this time of the round. I'm also told that human players don't often pick CI. Why are low military prices a problem then? I'm also told that farmer is a very common strategy for humans. Why are high food prices a problem then?
For FFA it is very easy to change the number of bots. That is a setting that is specific for each server. It is also possible to change the strategy makeup of the bots. If you guys like to farm rainbows and don't like how the bots "mess up" the market then I can add more rainbows to the server. That's no problem. But so far we aren't communicating that well and I still don't quite understand what the problem is.
I completely missed this post, sorry Slagpit. You are 100% correct that we are failing to communicate, we are just used to a certain trend, and have doubled down on that, as it works with the way FFA was setup. Basically there are a few points on how ffa is played that differs from 1a.
-Wars are short, one side always blindsides another side, and with only a few exceptions, one side is dead after a few thousand missiles. Military prices do not tend to spike unless over brief periods (Usually I am the only one other then bots buying military for most of the sets).
-Most players play techer or oiler/farmer, when you are trying to run a large amount of countries without micromanaging each one, it is a lot easier to run either of the above two. One you just get land, the other you get your land fast and tech. I have done cashers a few times, but techer income is triple typically. Im ok with tech selling for less and other play styles become more useful.
-Prices on market are almost solely controlled by bots as the main supplier, and the main purchaser, so changing anything with bots completely changes everything that we tend to expect. 1a the market is player run, as the bots are all farmed into submission. Most people arent willing to do that with 16 countries. I am damn efficient at it, and I have a tough time.
Ways that this can be improved from both of our perspectives.
-Random PS attacks from bots on player countries. Forces players to keep a minimum amount of defense at all times in every country, also makes military consumed without a war present. If an attack succeeds, perfect, if it fails, no problem, the militaries are consumed either way.
-A higher fluctuation in sell price on stuff the bots put on the market, this will make market crashes a bit slower as prices are more spread out, rather then making a wall at one point.
-Remove decreasing explore rates, with bots being free land, explore is completely useless after around 8k acres, might as well buff it, bring more cash to the table on explore cashers and farmers that FFA players like to run. I would go as far as removing it, and making one of the bonus lines to increasing the rate on top of that. Making it possible to make a super explore country. (Building costs will be the breaking point, but it would be fun to balance that).
-Player run Indys are not very successful passed a certain point, the chance to military expenses helped this, but not by enough. I think that increase private market sell price of turrets will also add to the variety of country styles players will run.
The more valid strats the better, I think everything will balance itself after that. Right now though we need players to run stuff other then techers (And I am guilty of that this set).
As for the statement that a demo can make a lot of money with the current market, the answer is no. Since you made that post, prices have crashed below 2/3 of whatt it was that the time (Which is why no one had SOs up for it). Food I had an SO up for 65 for the last week. Most of the food is put on within $10 of the highest price, but I am not willing to go that high. The cost is high if even one person decides to dump and I would lose money too. Right now I suspect in the main techs bots buy, the production made by players is double the market. The issue isnt the players, it is just the change to the bots, that the players could not possibly predict how it would affect the FFA market, so I suspect a lot of low NW finishes this round.
