Cornering the commodity market

[unmerged(5369)]

while I was playing my current game, I noticed that I controlled all the suger producing provinces in the America's except for 1, which in my eyes, tells me that I have 'cornered the market' in sugar. So, when I looked to see what sort of prices I was getting for my virtual control of the sugar market, I was amused to see that the price I was receiving was in the 'medium' price range....hmmmm.....now, if I REALLY did control 95% of the sugar trade in real life, you can rest assured that i would be doing some major price fixing and the prices would certainly fall in the 'very high' range, not the 'medium' range. Hmmmmmm...... did the merchants of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries ever practice such monopolistic approaches to commerce? An idea I would like to toss out to the forum: If you do indeed control the vast majority of trade in a commodity, i would like to see the game give you something like a 'monopoly multiplier' that would double the price of the commodity (or something like that) as long as you maintain that monoply on said monopoly...also this would in turn give CB's to a lot of angry, vengful nations looking to get a piece of the pie....
if such a thing does already exist in the game, please forgive me, i'm still new at the game

 

[Emperor of Europe]

Good point and great idea. I hope someone from the EU II team is listening

Regards,

EoE

 

[PatMaster]

If you click on the 'Sugar'-icon, you'll see the leading producer.
Then put your mouse over it and you'll see that you get the incredible amount of '0' VP:s a year
It was a thing that was never implemented

 

[unmerged(3236)]

0 VP
might mean 0.5VP/year. The calculate the vps with 6 decimals(unsure how to spell it) but more likely it is also a uninplanted feature.

 

[PatMaster]

It is a unimplemented feature.
Trust me.

 

[Lucidor]

It's a good idea, I think. Should be some VP in the game for the less violent but affluent country.

 

[unmerged(5380)]

Not a bad idea at all.

Problem would seem that you can't change commodity in a province. What I mean is that when you increase price for sugar, normally what happens is that people elsewhere will start producing it to benefit from higher prices. Certainly over a 300 year period, that kind of change could have quite some impact.

So I think that if you start making this kind of change, the economic model in EU would need to become a lot more complicated, and I think that the warmongers among us might DOW that kind of move.

 

[unmerged(3408)]

The manual is not correct when it says that you will raise the price of goods the more (say sugar) provinces you control. It also says you can further raise the price of those goods by building manufactories, or producing slaves from Africa.

None of this is true.

 

[unmerged(469)]

Originally posted by Petrus
The manual is not correct when it says that you will raise the price of goods the more (say sugar) provinces you control. It also says you can further raise the price of those goods by building manufactories, or producing slaves from Africa.

None of this is true.

Wot???
You're claiming that all the demand-increasing factors DON'T increase prices????

 

[dralizaar]

tis true...owning the worlds supply doesnt help ...although increased demand will increase the price such commodities bring...and by owning a lot of said commodity your production yeidls a lot more cash value...so owning all that sugar is good...but yes its hard to get prices to go up...you want sugar to be worth more? build refineries all over...this will inflate the value...each factory. city improvements causes certain resources to gain value...by building them you icnrease their demands..fur, orient, spice, ivory are the easy ones affected by almsot everything built...facotries, shipyards, tax collectors, justicars, govenors , conscription centers etc... others liek sugar have fewer demands ...go into text.csv it lists what improvements or demands are needed to increase the value of what you have the most of..in this way you can increase your cash big time...plus random event exceptional demand can be very ncie if you build things up...im still shocked by one event i got....


exceptional demand for Navalsupplies in "XXX" yielded 4058 ducats ....this was in the midst of a war to the death with russia as poland hehe needless to say the cahs saved my butt and allowed me to totally max out everything i had buildign wise <this was in 1512> no clue if this event is affected by improvements or not..but if it is..how big can that demand gift be?

has anyone gotten a higher demand event?? and when in game/how much developemtn did you have?


id like to see values of produces be affected by monopolies just like trade centers but thats a future thing i guess

 

[unmerged(5115)]

Even if one countrie as a monopoly over one commodity, that doesn't mean that this country merchent agree about a price. They are still under the concurence of other merchents, even if they share their nationality, it doesn't mean that they are not rivals.

 

[unmerged(3408)]

You're claiming that all the demand-increasing factors DON'T increase prices????

Sorry to say Admiral Yi, but that is my experience. Always interested in pushing the economic envelope of the game I tried an experiment as England.

With a lot of help from the f12 genie I first explored the entire world on Jan. 2 1492, and colonized every cotton province in NA and half of the slave provinces in Africa. I kept track of the price of cotton and slaves on a note pad hoping to identify exactly how the price changed as my colonization process evolved. By 1520 (+/-) I had cities in the NA cotton provinces and cities in African slave provinces.

Now the manual says that slaves will increase the value of cotton and I compared the current price to my notes. There was no substantial change. Same for the price of slaves.

By 1560 I had built manufactures in every NA cotton province (the manual says this too will increase the value of the goods) but I only registered a 1% increase(!). Same for the slaves at 3%.

The manual does say that the value for goods such as slaves will rise over time. I was unable to tell if this rise in the price of slaves was due to the time difference or my colonization efforts.

Still, I concluded that the manual was wrong. I concluded that there is no dynamic supply/demand relationship to the price of goods because the price increase was so insignificant it defies the claims made in the manual. Sadly, building an economic empire is a waste of resources--better put to warring on your neighbors. How dull.

If anyone has had a different experience I would love to hear about it.

 

[unmerged(469)]

Seems that one flaw in your experiment is that you increased supply at the same time you were increasing demand.

 

[unmerged(3408)]

It was a phased development.

First I increased supply of cotton. No corresponding change in the price of cotton. Then I increased the supply of slaves. No change in either cotton or slaves. Then I built manufacturies.

At each stage the manual says I should have had an impact on the price. At each stage I did not witness the impact. Hence, my conclusion.

 

[unmerged(469)]

Maybe you're right.

 

[unmerged(3627)]

What about the promotion of officials increasing demand for sugar/spices/china etc.? Has that been properly tested? I just assumed it worked, but then I want those officials anyway.

 

[unmerged(469)]

Originally posted by Heyesey
What about the promotion of officials increasing demand for sugar/spices/china etc.? Has that been properly tested? I just assumed it worked, but then I want those officials anyway.

I had seen the prices for these things going up over time, and assumed it was function of more officials, but then Petrus throws in this bug about all prices going up over time, so I'm not sure any more.

 

[unmerged(3408)]

No I haven't tested the promotion of officials.

If you still have the manual you can read all about what should happen.

 

[dralizaar]

for testing officails one could always check ratings on a dozen provs then go into save fiels and add all the taxers etc you want then go back and check again..remember its not just your improvements its the other ai nations as well that affect it supposedly

 

[unmerged(4567)]

When I first read this thread, I was interested enough to go back to my 2 previous GC games to look at tobacco prices. In my first game as Spain, I almost cornered the tobacco market and noticed the prices were pretty high so have used that strategy in all 3 of my games. In the first game the 1792 price was 40.20D, supply was 65%, demand was 200%, Spain's production was 1583 units, infrastructure was 107%, and production income was 687.4D. My next GC as England, I did corner the market in tobacco. The only difference in the 1792 numbers were; England's production was 2100 units, infrastructure was 137%, and production income was 1165.0D. In my current game as Vinland, my first IGC, the year is 1762 and the only difference in the 1792 numbers are; Vinland's production is1900 units, infrastructure is 123%, and production income is 947.1D. I went back to 1700 to see if the price, supply, or demand changed. It didn't, nor did it for 1600 but in 1520, the price was 22.73D, the supply was 60%, and demand was 109%. From that limited data it appears that the price is a function of supply and demand but demand goes over 200%, which appears to be a limit, and supply can never exceed 65%. It also appears that the supply and demand for tobacco at least limits out very early in the game.