(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.

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actually thinking about it this would create to much demand. Probably use land tax only at a rate of 100 barrels per turn for every 1000 acres would be spot on. Oil consumption instead of land tax would probably create the need for 4-6 full oilers in express.

a 10,000 acre country running 100 turns would burn 100,000 barrels
20x 10,000 acre countries running 100 turns would burn 2mil barrels of oil

1x facscist oiler at 10000 acres would make 3 mil barrels

1 oiler per 20-30 countries.

The problem there is the barrel price assumption. If you take last reset the per turn costs are already higher fpr non oilers because oil was $100. The equilibrium point for a farmer at 220% @$36 bushels is $153 oil. The rquilibrium point for an oiler and casher is roughly $220 per barrel but I dont remember. Idealy changes would want to bring oiker to a consistently competative point.... thus somewhere between $153 and 275 per barrel which, under your suggestion would double or even triple per turn expenses.

You also realise trying to nerf the strength of an all-jetter will also reduce the capacity of countries to jet up and retal which means a big fat dominating commie will be almost unstoppable. At this point the best way to stop a jetter is to kill it (something I am against on solo servers). The way DRs work for special attacks need to be looked at because a failed KR or an AB run on a jetter with enough stock is a license to farm the sever with no consequences aside from potentially being killed. The other thing is that whatever change is made to try and nerf jetter will have a workaround within the bounds of the game and hurt players who need to run heavy jets to retal. By nerfing jetter, you are by extension and consequence nerfing other strats that take longer to get going. [/quote]


You make some good points however I think you completely misunderstand what I was saying on the $80 per barrel mark... maybe it wasn't clear.

Let me explain more clearly. Currently if you go to the advisor tab you will see under expenses various categories.

1. Land expense = $10/ acre every turn... where does that go?. It goes nowhere, just deleted from the game if some or all of that is changed to barrel consumption at a comparison of $80 Or maybe even $100/ barrel then you would then have an expense of 100 barrels per turn for land at 1000 acres. This is not tied to the public market price, people will sell for whatever they want, but it creates a baseline demand for oil without really changing the economics much because that money was spent anyways

2. Same with military expenses. More money deleted from the game about $180 for every 1000 turrets per turn. This could also in part be switched to barrels... maybe 1 barrel for every 1000 turrets/ jets per turn and $80.

The price on the market will still be supply vs demand but at least there will be demand.

I was thinking about this a while back.. should automatically apply the bonus points every so many turns to countries.

You can still have the traditional ad bonus turns... they would be bonus bonus turns 😀😀😀

The oiler fix is to have military and population use some baseline oil each turn. Instead of land tax. Probably even better if only jets and land so it penalizes the heavy jet countries more if oil price spikes.

Just convert military expense and land tax amount to oil at $80 per barrel. E.g. where you had $80000 in jet expenses now you no longer lose cash instead 1000 barrels per turn.

Generally I've stayed pretty thin 5000-9000 acres experimenting with a few things. Generally I haven't attracted much attention sometimes I run some reasonable defence.. but, it's still nearly irrelevant I could sit there with 8 mil turrets and eat up expenses.. or 2 million and have a defence that is ok but still irrelevant to anyone who wants to PS.

So do I just run zero defence on 6k acres and GDI? Would you bother to hit a 6k acre demo techer who has the ability to easily jump into 10mil+ jets if needed... or are people just not really clued up enough to think it through. I mean it wouldn't even matter of someone grabbed 10 times.. the favor could be returned no one is safe. Express is weird like that.

What are your thoughts. You spy op 6k acres. Zero defence what are you going to do?

Someone already undercut... they might sell some in the next 20 mins.. but you don't get a very big window :)

The only reason food even goes up is of a democracy pushes it up. If all the farmers collude and set a price that is above $35 then it will just sit in a big glut and stagnate until a demo Comes along and shifts it... or countries are making too much and need to sink some cash into food to not go over $2bil I was nice to you and just pushed it up to $69

But if you undercut it will just get stuck and fall back to 30 something ;)

Increase jets to 150% of current, but also reduce turret expenses to 50% of current expenses. If jets increase and turrets aren't reduced to compensate then a whole bunch of cash gets removed from the game economy and that's less fun because it effects the market quite a lot.

Also it obviously effects heavy jet countries negatively which is the point. At turrets of 50% current expenses and jets are 150% it would be 3x more expensive to run all jets vs all turrets

Stony suggests reducing PS to 20%, I reckon keep it as is 150%. It does keep big countries in check..because you can't really get out of range of midzone countries. But ps at 20% Is not a bad idea.

Changing PS bonus to double buildings would be a wild idea and would change things a lot, counties that got a head start would be able to pull a gap on the rest of the pack much easier being very difficult to retal. I say wild.. not bad it would be an interesting change... to me a super strat would be explore to 3500 acres tech start switch to dictator max weaponst tech military strat and then go into annihilation mode.

Dictator vs republic, there would be massive mismatch.

Other ideas, could make the upkeep for jets a lot more, half the turret upkeep and add that to jet upkeep instead.

If you double buildings taken then dictator with some weapons tech would become 300% better. Very powerful.

Big countries take land from little counties, get fat and vulnerable... keeps a nice balance with smaller all-x. So if you nerfed this explore rates should increase.

Because countries who get big quickly would become very dominate and insulated from reprisal.

What I wonder is if you spy op a country who is an obvious sheep but has the capacity/ potential to convert very quickly into a wolf do you leave them alone or do you just grab them because you can..

I generally play a lean Demo all-x techer, I know the top countries could easily grab me, but I also know I'm stocking way earlier than them and could easily retal anyone in the of I could be bothered.

You could make it work in express

It would play pretty much the same just allowing a longer window to start.

100(800)?

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Was sure I didn't get cash and my tech was priced higher and disappeared?? Teaspoon is confused 😀

Maybe it was just Tspoon weirdness

Thanks. I know I've received 3 turns for being logged out for 3 hours too. So looks like 3h/3 turns 6h/6 Turns

How long do you need to be logged out for the bonus turns in express? seems a bit random to me, but I never really paid attention to it.

The primary server is probably the one that most new players would be best off in, however since the startup is like watching paint dry and also given the fact that they are likely to jump in sometime after starting the experience really isn't a very good one. probably say how boring after playing for 3 days and nothing really happening and quit.

Suggestion 1. turns on hand 200 stored turns max at 1200. That way people can startup without to much of a disadvantage for much longer. so max 200(1200)

That way a new player gets a good rate of turns coming and can actually see the country developing at a reasonable rate. it is still a disadvantage for a late starter you've missed all the bonus, and logged out bonus turns.

Suggestion 2. start the game at time zero with 200 turns and shorten the whole thing by 4 days. That way things start rolling a bit quicker.

Suggestion 3. start the game with 200 turns and 100cs, 200acres, $250k and shorten it by 6 days.


- potential cons. Players purposely delay the start for an advantage, if that even is an advantage... (fix) all bounus and logged out bonus can only fit in the turns on hand.
- all-x is a little bit better can do 200turn batch exploring, however that is not exactly a super power for a country and might actually be a good thing anyways.

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Exploring doesn't use much oil :)

The final price might be a touch high... but outside of warring servers if they have decent value players might think twice before letting them fly.

I think this could be a cool thing in solo servers, possibly warring servers too but might be two different things.

Pricing would need a Sell on private market, but no option to buy on private markets.

Sell Price on private market increases as game turns are given, these things need to get more expensive as the set progresses with $x increase per game turn. If private market sell price overtakes the price players put missles on then its an auto sell.

market starts at turn 400 game time. Completely unavailable before this... not as players play turns

start at $2,000,000 sell on private market. open pricing on public. at turn 400 game time. 1000 acre max tech making one per 20 turns. $100/acre/turn x 20

needs to be an increasing formual for price. private market sell price. something like this.

turn 400 $2mil
by turn 800 $ 6 mil.
turn 1200 $ 18mil
turn 1600+ $30 mil

Greater demand for warfare tech and sdi tech :)

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Hi

Cashers will also get the same bonus they will also have more cash on hand. The only downside would be slightly higher market prices because of more money spent by all countries.

Yes totally correct if farmers are selling on PM they are putting cash into the game economy, but if markets are stale it's obviously not enough.

Add a cashed up casher to the mix and now it's game on. No cash = dead game.

So give countries more cash things work... also will make tech start a little less appealing.

Abolish the land tax its about $10/acre/turn at 100 countries at 1000 acres its putting $1 mil into the game economy every turn.. equivalent of like 2-3 cashers. It's not massive but it will tip the balance I think.

Add to this some reduction of mil expense replaced by passive oil consumption and now you also create some more diversity

Simplify it. If you had a 3 country game. Techer, farmer, Indy. The farmer and Indy don't tech start. Everyone puts stuff on the market who can buy it? No-one has cash and its a Mexican stand off except they are all pointing guns at each other with no bullets in them. Stale mate

Passive income as you play turns by reducing land tax and mil expenses means more surplus money early so countries then decide am I now better off growing and putting spare cash (which might be existent now)into tech rather than burning 100's of turns building and tearing down labs and researching.

Fair point. The private market will be just fine I would think if the main idea I'm advocating was implemented is that just like in real world economy if you want to drive the markets you inject cash. If you want to curb them you withdraw cash.. central banks can do this by sucking cash out or putting it in with interest rates. Governments can do this with taxes and cash injection think GFC.

This game can have it by reducing military expenses and the land tax 😀.

People complain about low military prices if the price you can sell for on the private market is higher then the public price will be higher.... problem is if you raised the sell price on pm of jets/turrets to $100 and just left it that way it might not be a good thing later in the reset... but it might be a good thing early on. So the private market prices could be higher early in the reset and then reduce. It has a lot of leverage to control the public market. Once again if they are too high to early on it would do crazy things to countries starting up.

So.... would a fluctuating private market be more useful to game mechanics than the current static priced one?

Outside the box tweak to Indy, troops have a chance to discover some land for you each turn. get the rate spot on and you help mbr and c/i 1 acre per 100000 troops per turn.

Messing with production is NOT the fix for Indy. Decay/decommissioning rate per turn would be a heaps better solution... Creates some demand.

Think about it of game wide there was 1.2 million dollars available spread between countries to buy up military and there are 10000 turrets available bingo turrets are worth $120 yay. If we then say Indy needs more $$$ so we try to fix it by doubling their production more there are 20000 turrets av but still only 1.2 mil so now turrets so now turrets are worth $60 Indy players get exactly the same amount if cash as they did before ie. 1.2 mil in sales. Everyone else however now just has twice as many turrets and now there is even less free cash because mil expenses climb resulting in an even further reduced amount of cash flowing to the Indy players.

Reduce military expenses, and decaying of units would however be a big boost to them.

Did a massive post on this, need a transference of land tax and mil expenses into free cash and equivalent consumption as the only REAL solution to this.

So actually having thought about this more while writing an awesome improvement is just delete the land expense.

And possibly

If you want more food and oil moving transfer some of the mil expenses into this*** however if you did it with food who knows what happens because maybe less food gets converted to cash via pm OR just slightly reduce mil expenses.

Important point to note is this. The whole economy of this game hinges on these factors only as far as I can tell.

Everything is tied to the amount of cash put into the system you can change anything you want production wise but if this is low price of all goods and tech price is low and market will be dead.

How it gets there
Positive factors

1. % of people playing cashers, if this is high things work great, market is alive prices are up and endgame nw Will be directly tied to this

2. The amount of goods sold on private market the other big way to drive the economy because it creates $$$ primarily driven by food sold on pm maybe even more generated by cashers

3. Baseline income produced by every country.. quite a lot generated. Tied heavily to exploration and land created by grabbing. But this probably doesn't vary massively from reset to reset.

Negative factors

1. Land tax
2. Military expenses ***if you tried to fix Indy by giving increase production you actually have a whole game negative effect to every strat including ironically the Indy player by creating a reset wide net increase to military expense and throwing $$$ out of the system.

3. Build costs

These are $$$ thrown out of the game system and the wiggle room to move. And has to be you cannot Increae pci cashers will dominate, cannot increase private market food cost... farmers will dominate. You could possibly reduce build costs but changes dynamics more.

Other random factors
Military destruction by warring maybe something else I'm overlooking.


How much $$$ total is produced by all countries throughout the reset. Endgame NW is pretty much just how big of a slice did you manage to get hold of. If you get a big NW in a casher/farmer heavy reset it's not because you were more awesome than someone who didn't in a set where there were less playing these strats.

Basically this is a what would happen if countries had a bit more cash without any change to production or giving any advantage to cashers.

This is also related in part to my thread on oil. It seems that the thing in the game that would most benefit is a more fluid movement of goods/military bought and sold many ideas/tweaks have been either implemented or suggest surrounding this.

My proposed solutions (these are rough concepts that will need tweaking but I'm sure people who understand the game mechanics Will get the train of thought)

1. There is a $x per acre expense cost this is money deleted into oblivion this should be scrapped more cash = inflation and more goods bought off market. Everyone has land everyone benefits equally (yes bigger countries get more $$ but % wise same benefits)

2. Some of the above could be equally balanced into baseline oil costs effect being a more fluid oil. (ie. Exactly the amount that reduced from expenses transferred to an equivalent oil cost)

3. Could increase food requirement by same mechanism, more food bought and sold.

4. Military expenses are deleted from economy can also be used, a small percentage of $$$ here into equivalent/turn food and or oil will drive demand and stop the stagnating off markets.

5. Private market tweaking has big effects to public market and the economy as a whole if you want to cap tech prices set a max private market price for it could also set a min tech price would be a bit out there but could create a private market for it.

6. Private market could change over time to facilitate gave phases. Minimum Military or any good prices could be tied to game clock start rising at around turn 120 peak at turn x then reduce to current. Tied not to players used turns but game global timer. Not so sure about this idea though.

I actually think there should be a base oil consumption tied to land so it's universal.. could do it to pop but that effects cashers unfairly.

Use the $10/acre land expense or part thereof to make the markets more fluid. People use oil to live 😀