Here is my plan for the new MarketPlaces

Each MarketPlace you build trades 50 Tribute for 500 Gold each turn automatically. They are almost like a Goldmine in that they produce Gold every turn, however they take away 50 Tribute as well.

So if you build 3 Markets, you lose 150 Tribute per turn, but gain 1500 Gold per turn.

You can then purchase the market techs that will improve how much Gold you get per turn so that after fully teching up, you'd get 1000 Gold per 50 Tribute.

Which is the same income ratio as a Castle (50 Tribute and 1000 Gold).

There is no manual selling process involved.

Sounds good to me

Sounds good. Maybe add a button so that people can turn them 'on' or 'off'. Give it like a 5-turn delay to prevent pplz from just flippin the switch back and forth

-Biodus-

Hmmm ... i can see people building the market places and then just destroying them once they have the gold they need

Sigh...

I'm going to raze some of the existing marketplace...

I don't like the idea that it automatically trades for you. I like making the conscious decision of selling tribute...of course you'll probably try to tell me that I'm not actually making any decision at all...

I don't mind this idea ...
anything that treats us all the same is really okay (I guess), but then I only have one market.

rex

Ill sell my market asap if thats introduced because I'd lose one castles worth of tribute every turn if I keep it.

yes you would LOD, and thats the point.

you can build a marketplace which is like an extra GOLD income. but it also takes TRIBUTE away so there is ongoing penalty attached.

So its a strategic choice you have to make.
Even big players who believe they have excess tribute to convert to gold are at risk because if you lose some Tribute buildings you could find yourself losing tribute per turn.

but then again, all that extra gold could be enough finance expansions into new territories.

i prefer the auto model as it fits in with the rest of the resource generating system.

all we need to do is get the numbers right.
such that 1 MP isnt going to cost you the game unless its very close, and getting too many MPs or all the techs isnt a sure fire way to win

IMO, knowing whether the market place ratio is right or not isn't going to be solvable until some form of upkeep is around to stiffle large empires.

maybe what we've got now is good, or maybe this new way is better. who knows, we haven't had much time to judge.

but I don't think our judgment will be very clear as long as the "big guy" or "snowball" effect is around. get us some real upkeep to balance the power, and make sacrifices of tribute actually matter to big guys, and then maybe we'll be able to understand what we want from the marketplace.

^

Finance expansion with the extra gold? How much expansion does 1000 gold buy ? Not even enough to build the cheapest troop so there will be no expansion, only loss of tribute. You'd need 20 markets to get enough gold for 1 or 2 decent armys but then you'd lose 1k tribut/turn too. I can't see how anyone would use that option.

what's the strategic choice req?

selling 50 tributes = 900 gold(after taxes)
what's the point in spending 2000 gold for each market and taking 500 gold...that means loosing 400 gold each turn + the market cost!
I don't get it...do I miss something?

I'll tell you what I do:

in 1 turn, I'll build 4 more markets and then I'll sell about 10k(or more) tributes...then I sell the markets back.

the mathematics:
1. buy 4 markets = 4x1500 = 6000(having build tech)

2. sell 10k tributes = 500(1+4 markets) tributes x 20 sales
20 sells x 4(markets) x 200(saved taxes) = 16k taxes less for me

3. sell back the markets
4 x (2000/3) = 2666

so I spend 6000 and got 16000 + 2666 = 18666 which means a 12666 profit.

so what's the strategic choice?

please correct me if I'm wrong


PS. 6000 - 2666 ~= 3400 ~= 800(taxes) x 4sales = 4sales x 500 tributes = 2000 tributes
so, I get profit if I sell more than 2k tributes buying 4 markets.

Last Edited : Thursday, 23 October 2008 - 03:25

But the games are ranked on tribute at current aren't they? so would you really be able to afford losing all that tribute?

I'm how the game would handle it if you ran out of tribute to spend; would it only spend the amount you make each turn and the other market places not add anything?

That's a very good point Blood. Gotta make sure the system doesn't bug-out b/c of that. Probably include a check in the program loop that auto-ends the loop if there isn't enough tribute.

What does anyone think about the button? Allow pplz to turn their MPs 'on' and 'off' with some restriction. Maybe they have to pay some gold/tribute to activate it.

-Biodus-

I just had a funny thought ...
maybe it will generate a negative balance.
I had a negative balance of tribute after disbanding my starting army when I quit last time, but I have climbed out of last in the rank since then so it's working properly.

rex

IMHO the MP Tribute idea should be optional.

As things currently stand the setup does not generate enough gold to finance both troop deployment and tech acquisition at the sort of rates we used to get pre-changes. In addition, with the much more expensive armour techs and lower HP of the troops stacks die faster than they did before which means you have to plough most of what little gold you get into troop production.

There has to be other ways of getting additional cash once the resource piles are exhausted. Why not make Government available after Tax Reform rather than MP? After all it is a direct gold generator rather than a resource/ tribute influenced tech?

You folks are missing something I think ...
this is a source of more gold and as long as we are all being treated the same, there is no difference;

and yes, even if it does generate a negative balance as long as it does it to all of us.
The problem with it is that it won't be treating us all the same because we don't all have the same investment yet in marketplaces

and that's why I made the suggestion I made (i.e. because it's the end product that counts).
If the end product were accumulation of greatest gold treasure, then we would all willingly do our best to invest in the most efficient way to gain the greatest return on our tribute.

We would still have to be careful of how we spend it and it would be even more difficult with folks getting too extravagant.

PS:
Another problem is that games may have to be much longer if we expect to see much in the way of expert and master troops.

rex

Last Edited : Thursday, 23 October 2008 - 14:16

id rather like to see more upgrades like gold mining instead of having this automated market place trading something.

btw i miss the old market places and the old resource system. trading resources was much more fun than having this tribute system. i think taht the tribute system kills strategy because mills, quarries etc. become less important. perhaps im wrong. dont know. gotta go.

Last Edited : Tuesday, 4 November 2008 - 13:32

The problem with your method that I foresee, Rex (ranking via gold) is that it really does "reveal" to a degree what your strategy is.

And this applies as to whether your score is your current Gold or your "net worth", because how on earth would you calculate the current worth of armies, buildings, etc?

Even now tribute has this same degree of showing people what you're doing: people can tell if you're whacking piles, whacking armies, suddenly conquered an opponent, selling your tribute off, etc.

I don't like that. Score shouldn't show off your strategy to any degree.