Markets are a total joke

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

AI in Stellaris is bad because they just don't have code for a lot of situations. Check out the change log for Glavius' AI mod, it's pretty much a revelation you can't unsee afterwards Yesterday I defeated a swarm in a war and their stations were lvl 4 but building slots were empty. It's just sad.

Yep, that's why i first stated that Stellaris AI has ALWAYS been bad. It's not 2.2's fault, Glavius AI was pretty much a necessity even before.

 

[anamiac]

Before this market I had to think over my economy whever there was a "crisis", now nothing of it bothers me any more because I can always instabuy something I need instaselling something I have plenty of.
Haven't you forgotten there was and still is a similar mechanic? Yes, right in diplomacy, but there were certain conditions there to be met, you aren't getting any trade if you are galactic menace.

Before 2.2 I generally had an economic crisis once per game. Now I'm having a crisis once per decade! It is very, very easy to end up producing too much end products (tech + alloy) and negative on raw materials (energy, minerals, food). The market wasn't created for the AI to cheat with. The market was created to make the game playable, because it's economy is too difficult for a player to manage easily otherwise. One of the main reasons for this is the pop promotion mechanic: You build a few alloy foundries on your planet and suddenly all your miners become metallurgists and you're consuming more minerals while simultaneously producing less.

 

[--Yigito123--]

Before 2.2 I generally had an economic crisis once per game. Now I'm having a crisis once per decade! It is very, very easy to end up producing too much end products (tech + alloy) and negative on raw materials (energy, minerals, food). The market wasn't created for the AI to cheat with. The market was created to make the game playable, because it's economy is too difficult for a player to manage easily otherwise. One of the main reasons for this is the pop promotion mechanic: You build a few research stations on your planet and suddenly all your miners become academics and until your population grows you're broke.

...Don't build research stations until you have the free population to fill them without starving yourself of workers? That doesn't seem to be very complicated situation to get out of.

 

[vortexsurfer]

Before 2.2 I generally had an economic crisis once per game. Now I'm having a crisis once per decade! It is very, very easy to end up producing too much end products (tech + alloy) and negative on raw materials (energy, minerals, food). The market wasn't created for the AI to cheat with. The market was created to make the game playable, because it's economy is too difficult for a player to manage easily otherwise. One of the main reasons for this is the pop promotion mechanic: You build a few alloy foundries on your planet and suddenly all your miners become metallurgists and you're consuming more minerals while simultaneously producing less.

Alright, let's introduce a mechanic to ease the burden of another mechanic we've just introduced. Sounds perfect

 

[Jman5]

...Don't build research stations until you have the free population to fill them without starving yourself of workers? That doesn't seem to be very complicated situation to get out of.

On the contrary. It is a complicated situation to get out of once you have done it because demotions takes years and years. Also base growth of 1 pop can take nearly 3 years. It's deceptively easy to get yourself into a bad situation with one or more of your resources and it can be quite tricky and take many years to right the ship. And that's assuming you have resource stockpiles to sell off. You make one bad decision at a time when your resource stockpiles just happen to be low and you have to jump through all sorts of hoops to survive it. Remember that when you hit 0 resources you take various types of resource production penalties.

 

[Tisifoni12]

Perhaps some day the potential for economic warfare. We have no fleet, but if they attack us we crash the galactic market !

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

If I was responsible for an abstracted Market in Stellaris this is the concept I would try.

5%-15% in addition to what you produce goes to the market (internal or global). The exact amount could be different depending on policies and things like that. You could provide less to the market for some short term goal. So you could decide how large or how big of an impact you want your civilian market to have, especially on the global market.

You could then get positive or negative efficiency to your resource and refining industry based on the strength of the markets (internal or global). That is if there is bad supply of something it would give a production bonus for that resource, if the price drop you would see a production penalty of that resource in your empire. This should work on both the global and internal markets and be the civilian part of the economy effecting the general economy.

So you might get a direct multiplier to said resource production that is not an additive bonus to the production rate of resources, this could then go from say -25% to +30% or something, or whatever is suitable for balance.

Now... the market will get an infusion of resources every month based on the overall production of resources. Every resource should now get pooled into packages that can be bought and the price will be changed based on the availability of said resources over the monthly infusion of resources. Packages could vary in sizes and the larger they become the cheaper the price because that means the availability is very high. But you could never buy more than one full package per empire per month to limit one entity vacuum the market before anyone else unless you are the only one buying.

Purchasing should only be a monthly affair and you may buy part of a package or an entire package... that does not matter. That is only a system to divide the sales between several buyers if there is any and should only be a system behind the scenes and nothing the players actually see.

Only a restrict number of packages could be sold every month so the market can never be cleaned out in a single month. Perhaps 1/3 could be bought at max every month.

So if a package is currently at 550 Alloys and I add a bid for buying 700 Alloys I might only get 550 since other might also be buying. But that would also mean the market price will rise quite rapidly.

You should also not be able to buy up the entire stock of the market in one month, there simply will not be logistical possibilities for that, so draining the market completely should actually be impossible, just that the sizes of the packages will become very small and very expensive.

This system would work... it would give realistic bonuses and penalties based on how the civilian economy fare in contrast of how it does on the market. You would get bonuses/penalties based on your share of the civilian market as well. So if the Consumer Good industry is in high demand on the global market and you have a 25% total share (production and trade efficiency) you would receive a bigger portion of the bonus. This would also introduce a trade efficiency trait that that could inflate your production on the global market having a bigger importance than it really is and stealing efficiency from other less fortunate.

THIS would make for an interesting and viable yet abstracted market that WOULD most likely actually work.

***Edit***
The multiplier for efficiency is a driving factor so it should not just multiply the produced goods but also the needed resource to produce. Just making each worker more or less efficient for production rate. So a +20% bonus to Alloy production would also increase the mineral usage by 20% not the conversion rate.

 

[--Yigito123--]

On the contrary. It is a complicated situation to get out of once you have done it because demotions takes years and years. Also base growth of 1 pop can take nearly 3 years. It's deceptively easy to get yourself into a bad situation with one or more of your resources and it can be quite tricky and take many years to right the ship. And that's assuming you have resource stockpiles to sell off. You make one bad decision at a time when your resource stockpiles just happen to be low and you have to jump through all sorts of hoops to survive it. Remember that when you hit 0 resources you take various types of resource production penalties.

It may be a complicated situation to get out of, but it's not exactly rocket science to avoid either. Again, if workers promoting to specialists would affect your economy enough to crash it, maybe you should consider not building buildings that require specialist pops until you have enough free pops to replace them. Looking at your resource income and saying "oh gee, I don't have free pops, another allow foundry would turn my mineral production negative, maybe I shouldn't build it" is not something very hard to do.

If you're making the same mistake over and over again to the point where you have an "economic crisis every decade", maybe the trick is to try not making that mistake.

 

[Kinkness]

The whole market/trade thing is not really needed in Stellaris imo. I find it far more challenging and pleasing to balance out your empire's economy rather than mindlessly fucking up and fixing it by monthly trades on the market. It just doesn't feel right. The introduction of the Trader Guilds was a step in the wrong direction and now this.

At least the market fees should be way higher to discourage people from using the market rather than balancing out their production

Why shouldn't it be? Countries in todays world are not completely 100% self sustaining, and that's on 1 world.. not counting tens and 20's or hundreds of them packed with 10x more people than earth is.

 

[ReynardtheSpaceFox]

I would have agreed completely with OP before this past weekend when I switched to the beta branch. In my first couple 2.2 games after launch, the market was just there and could be used to too-easily fill all the gaps in my production as the prices stayed fairly static.

But I played a game on the beta branch this weekend, and saw a lot of improvement. Specificallly alloys, which I could easily get for (I think) about 12 EC in my first games, were inflated up to consistently 18.3-18.8 EC in the game I played on beta, because so many empires were buying them. It was fluctuating in real time, and every time it dipped to the low 18.00s, it would immediately rise back up to the mid to high 18.00s, cause there was such a run on them.

I went to the market to buy alloys, and it was just too expensive to buy anything more than 250 of them. A couple years later (I gor the FL Ecumenopolis and started produceing lots of alloys) I sold 1500 of them (of my stockpile of 7500) for like 19K EC. And after my sale the alloy price on the market immediately went down to the 16.00s (it was back up to the 18.00s in about 20 seconds as this drop caused another run).

Food and minerals were also going through this, to a lesser extent. Pre-beta, minerals and food were going at about 1:1 (plus minus the market fee) for EC. In beta over the weekend, food was going for about 2.62 and minerals for about 3.00 due to market activity.

FWIW, I don't think there was any rebalancing of market mechanics in the beta, but rather how the AI used the market. Pre beta, in my experience the AI was not really using the market much if at all.

I get what OP is saying about infinite supply (and a "floor" for value), but if it works like it does in my beta branch game, it's actually pretty cool, and with enough empires active on the market the prices are fluctuating enough in real time that you don't really notice this. Granted this is a one game sample size and on the beta branch....

 

[Flyinghotpocket]

This "quick and easy" solution for your probably self inflicted shortcomings is in fact a dumb down and kills a lot of Stellaris' challenge. The game is just too easy with this. As I said before: why not abtract the whole "resources" thing then? Being able to exchange every resource to another infinitely with a moderate fee undermines the whole economic mechanics. You can actually build whatever you want on planets without cosnsidering your needs.

You can support large battlefleets with agriculture economy only, this is a joke

this! when i played driven assimilator. all i built was food. when the crisis spawned. they were an easy wax. i just max traded whatever since food almost never gets mass sold.

 

[methegrate]

A responsive simulation would be nice. Great, actually.

And tbh was sort of what I was expecting... I'd gotten the impression that this would be written as an actual responsive marketplace. Prices would move not just based on your purchases, but on the AI's as well (which would actually have to purchase, not get resources for free). You could corner or flood markets. A galactic run on something would cause huge ripples in pricing. A major war should cause the price of alloys and minerals to skyrocket, an empire going all-in on refineries should make strategic resources cheap af, etc.

But yes, it looks like none of that is true. It appears that the market is as the OP described it, a series of static pre-scripted prices that deviate a little bit based on how much you buy or sell before returning to baseline after a period of time.

I guess I'm surprised, too, because it doesn't seem like this kind of market would be all that difficult to simulate. Maybe this is just my ignorance talking, but it seems like it would be based on fairly simple spreadsheet calculations with variables that already exist. No new art, animation or UI issues, not even that many individual variables to track at once. Just a function of goods bought, goods sold, and basic modifiers.

 

[Belhedler]

You are miles away to understand how impactful that bug is. I'm an experienced player and I was beaten 23 times in a row within the first 100 years. I created the bug report very early this morning. You'd better take a look because it affects all releases 2.2.x and many players.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ing-resources-for-free-in-the-market.1139325/

 

[Orimichi]

I have made a suggestion on the suggestion forum but it seems this forum isn't really read.

I agree that market should be filled based on empire production. I propose a simple solution of this type:
Market mean resources = 5 year of empire production
Market monthly income = empire income * (mean resources-total resources)/mean resources

It's not difficult to implement, and make more sens than actual market. To solve the infinite credit bug of the market you just need to pay/gain the mean between the price before and after the sell.

 

[Tisifoni12]

I said like ages ago that most colonies would aim to be self sustaining, though there would be worlds that focused on extraction and/or processing key resources. If these also presented challenging conditions then perhaps food would have to be imported or produced using hypdroponics.

Rather than doing food production I'd have simply increased the maintenance costs of colonies in challenging conditions.

Trade only in rare resources or technology. Not necessarily all encompassing research agreements, perhaps a small boost toward a specific technology or group of technologies.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

I would have agreed completely with OP before this past weekend when I switched to the beta branch. In my first couple 2.2 games after launch, the market was just there and could be used to too-easily fill all the gaps in my production as the prices stayed fairly static.

But I played a game on the beta branch this weekend, and saw a lot of improvement. Specificallly alloys, which I could easily get for (I think) about 12 EC in my first games, were inflated up to consistently 18.3-18.8 EC in the game I played on beta, because so many empires were buying them. It was fluctuating in real time, and every time it dipped to the low 18.00s, it would immediately rise back up to the mid to high 18.00s, cause there was such a run on them.

I went to the market to buy alloys, and it was just too expensive to buy anything more than 250 of them. A couple years later (I gor the FL Ecumenopolis and started produceing lots of alloys) I sold 1500 of them (of my stockpile of 7500) for like 19K EC. And after my sale the alloy price on the market immediately went down to the 16.00s (it was back up to the 18.00s in about 20 seconds as this drop caused another run).

Food and minerals were also going through this, to a lesser extent. Pre-beta, minerals and food were going at about 1:1 (plus minus the market fee) for EC. In beta over the weekend, food was going for about 2.62 and minerals for about 3.00 due to market activity.

FWIW, I don't think there was any rebalancing of market mechanics in the beta, but rather how the AI used the market. Pre beta, in my experience the AI was not really using the market much if at all.

I get what OP is saying about infinite supply (and a "floor" for value), but if it works like it does in my beta branch game, it's actually pretty cool, and with enough empires active on the market the prices are fluctuating enough in real time that you don't really notice this. Granted this is a one game sample size and on the beta branch....

You do realize that keep buying Alloys at those prices are ridiculous and the AI can only do that because they don't actually pay anything currently as some investigation seem to indicating. Prices in the beta are artificially inflated for that reason so you should work an economy to sell stuff and ignore energy production since selling is way more efficient.

 

[SpectralShade]

Why shouldn't it be? Countries in todays world are not completely 100% self sustaining, and that's on 1 world.. not counting tens and 20's or hundreds of them packed with 10x more people than earth is.

but our planet as a whole IS selfsustaining...

 

[ReynardtheSpaceFox]

I think in this thread some people are downplaying the penalty for not having a balanced economy, or running up a large resource deficit. If you have to sell one type of resource and buy another, you are getting hit with the market fee penalty for the trade Even if you are only paying the lowest 10% penalty (most of the time you are paying 20 or 30 percent), that's a 10% malus on net resource production, and this "malus" is doubled if you have to sell resources to raise the credits for the trade*. That's significant, and means it will always be better to produce all your needed resources yourself.

This is a way of saying that producing all the resources need yourself is still important, and you ARE paying a penalty for going to the market to balance your economy.

The mechanic might need balance tweaking, but it is good and opens up lots of other possibilities down the line. I am thinking of future expansions, if they ever get diplomacy rolling, where for example you could vote to apply economic sanctions on other empires that might show up in the form of increased market fees.



*i.e. for example if the market was at it's base values (unaffected by empire trades - 1.00 credit for mineral and food), you would have to sell 122 minerals to make up for a 100 food deficit.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Being self sustaining is not the same thing as being efficient or producing the variety of goods that the people living there want. The thing is that people want variety and will almost never agree on what is the best item on anything. Some swear in Iphone some on Android.... no one can agree on who build the best car because that is a relative thing based on needs and wants.

It would be impossibel for every country to sattisfy every need for everyone as long as there are innovative ideas being put forward in other countries.

There is no reason to figure things would work differently in a inter galactic community.

 

[ReynardtheSpaceFox]

You do realize that keep buying Alloys at those prices are ridiculous and the AI can only do that because they don't actually pay anything currently as some investigation seem to indicating. Prices in the beta are artificially inflated for that reason so you should work an economy to sell stuff and ignore energy production since selling is way more efficient.

Hmmm, I didn't know of any bug where the AI was not paying for the market resources - I figured with 16 empires there was enough mass buying to keep it high.

But even if it's bugged now, it's interesting...like I said in pevious post, maybe the balance needs to be tweaked to inflate the prices higher or sustain the effects of simulated surpluses and deficits longer, but it's a mater of striking the balance.