Trade hub development: Where to send merchants?

Ketla Truttensis wrote: This would at least tend to make more exotic items more expensive.

Why would that be desirable? If you want people to trade more, then the items need to be less expensive, not more expensive. Besides, the most exotic items already have ludicrous prices. Crafted weapons and armors sell for far above their amortized advantage*. While there might be situations where that makes sense, I think the prices are established by big players who draw large amounts of free gold from their cities. This drives down the transaction volume.

I've been quite interested in the way this affects rare resources prices. Realistic pricing would incorporate some basic economic factors like rarity, troop cost to obtain (relevant with anatomies), time cost of harvesting, and most importantly the ultimate utility of the finished product(s). There is also a huge amount of speculation in the rare resource market. Players park armies on resources they never harvest (which diminishes supply), but other players have large stockpiles of rare resources. It seems to me that crafting is so slow--even with workshop specialization--that the number of players crafting to sell items is dwarfed by the present stockpiles of rare resources. The only resources that seem truly constrained are elemental salts (although I admit that I have looked hard and never once seen a gharial). Theoretically this should drive down the prices of some of the input resources, but people seem content to just let the unrealistic sell orders sit in the trade hub for months untouched.

I've been toying with the idea of an equipment auction, but I'm concerned that small and midsize bidders would get completely swamped by large players with huge piles of available gold. I don't see a fair way around that, either--if you're not taking the highest bidder in an auction, then you're not really running a legitimate trading floor. There is also an issue of the time to modify trade orders, although an auction might be a good way to make that research line more relevant.

Finally, the current system of posting taxes with a sell order, instead of on a transaction, is a bit difficult. The gold should be held in escrow by the trade hub, and if the sell order is canceled, it should be refunded to the player (perhaps less a small fee). I know you can modify orders after a time, but every time I look at doing that, it gives me a headache.

* Take the total build and maintenance cost of the equipped troops, paid over a period of 3-, 6- or 12-months. The current equipment pricing indicates that it's better for an army of size X to build Y% more troops than buy X units of crafted items that provide a Y% advantage.

I'm hoping that peace will bring greater involvement in crafting & therefore greater supply in the market...

@Kumo: Did the war slow down crafting? Based on the graphs in Centrum, activity seems to have remained fairly strong regardless of whether alliances were fighting each other. The only spikes seem to be the tournaments. If anything, the war seemed to cause a lot of volume in troop production items like saddles, horses, armor and weapons.

Llyr wrote: I agree that the trade system in Illy probably doesn't work as well as it should, largely because most players don't have the foggiest notion about economics.

That's the crux of it. Most folks just aren't sure how to price items. I have occasionally gotten some good deals in Centrum, but that's the exception. I think if you want to offer large amounts of finished crafted goods at reasonable prices, you've got to own the particular rare resource squares required to make them.

I know the point of trade is to make gold, but honestly, you could just make cotter cities and harvest herbs to make millions. Or just get big, but not post huge armies, and bank the excess gold. That isn't necessarily satisfying gameplay. For me, I want to be the biggest at something (beer) and to see my crafted items getting traded in markets and getting used in cities.

In the coming weeks, I plan to try some different experiments in trade. One will probably be an auction attempt. I might write a forum article that explains my reasoning for pricing items a particular way. I might try offering crafted items at close to their yearly amortized value, which is fairly low for biome and terrain-specific gear. I don't know what will happen there... mostly likely someone will just snap them up, and either sit on the items or ship them to Centrum to be re-posted at current market prices. But who knows, it might create some interesting activity, especially for some smaller players.

Brand-- I'm not sure the war slowed down crafting, but I do know that it kept many folks from doing gathering and crafting that otherwise might have. So it may have prevented growth in those areas... So hopefully we see a spike in activity!

Cost, rational or otherwise, does not determine price.