Markets are a total joke

[methegrate]

The first thing I'd really like to see changed is genuine AI participation. I feel like the ideal case should be if I can open the market tab and realize there's a huge war going on somewhere just by seeing the price of alloys and volatile motes.

Re: pricing responsiveness, I wonder if a right approach should be to have market resources that influence price rather than the current time-based return to baseline. At least to start it could be very simple:

• The market has a supply for each resource which starts at 0. Every resource has baseline buy/sell prices, which are the prices for that resource when the market supply is at zero.

• As empires buy or sell, the market's supply fluctuates by a corresponding amount. Supply can go below zero, as this isn't an actual economy but a pricing model.

• Prices change as the market's supply of a resource fluctuates. The more of something the market has the less it costs and vice versa. If there is any movement of the price due to time it happens very slowly. This should be a logarithmic, rather than linear, model.

So take food for example. At game start the market has 0 Food. The baseline price at 0 supply is 1 energy for 1 food. If I sell 1,000 units of food, the market's supply goes to 1,000 Food and the price drops to the outcome of our pricing model at Market Food Supply = 1,000. Then if another empire buys 1,500 units of food, the market's supply goes to -500 Food and the price spikes correspondingly.

If no one has bought something for a long time and the price is above baseline, the price can very slowly creep back down toward baseline to incentivize purchasing. The same for if no one has sold something for a long time and the price is below baseline. This mechanic wouldn't be fast at all, but would exist to encourage new entrants to the market.

This would seem both effective and fairly simple. It wouldn't require a massive crowd of variables, only one new variable per resource with a simple single-formula calculation per resource variable. But it seems like it would be much, much more responsive than the current model where I buy/sell, wait six months, then buy/sell again.

 

[SpectralShade]

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.

I don't think it is a bug as much as a design feature to avoid that the AI's economy crash and burn within a few years of gametime because it is simply not up to the task of actually playing the game.

That said, to me it seems the problem with resources is simply giving the player too few of certain items from jobs (especially before all tech advantages are researched, which is problematic given the random nature of research). So they invented the market as a 2fold fix.

1) it helps the AI by giving it access to infinite resources, so even if it can't play the game to any degree of competence, it can at least get what it need to appear as being in the game.
2) letting the player get access to resources he simply cannot produce himself of a needed quantity.

In my current game this means I'm selling 5k of minerals or food every now and then and buying either alloys or consumer goods for them. It seems to me the derived resources simply mess up the calculations for the AI and ability of players to progress proper and keep up with the pace of his own population needs. (it's even funnier when you read the description of minerals, and it still says that it is used for constructing ships, yet I have yet to see a ship need minerals).

And I am early game, really. I also need to allocate modules on starbases to things I didn't need to spend modules on before (weapon modules on bases that aren't at my border to keep piracy down, sometimes trade modules at the borders too just to be able to grab those trade resources, resource silos to be able to increase your caps, which you could use research for instead previously). This all adds to a change in abstract resources as well (like a lowering of naval cap and resources spent on protection energy creation instead of using them on actual energy creation).

Simply put, they never balanced things before releasing it and the AI hasn't got a clue how to deal with all these new mechanics.

 

[Kinkness]

but our planet as a whole IS selfsustaining...

Is it? That's questionable, and will it be when we have an over population? questionable.

But i do respect the completely fair point you bring.

 

[SpectralShade]

Is it? That's questionable, and will it be when we have an over population? questionable.

But i do respect the completely fair point you bring.

well we aren't pulling in resources from "mikes magic market" to fill in any needs

 

[Anemetius]

You are right. Its just another click addon, nothing more. No depth in it. Even if galaxy was destroyed by Contingency you could buy infinite number of resources from thin air.

 

[anamiac]

The thing is, it isn't really that hard to simulate a realistic economy. I can do it with 4 variables:

1. Initial volume of commodity in circulation. The higher this number is, the more you can buy/sell before impacting the price.
2. Yearly economic growth/inflation. Affects the variable above.
3. Economic self-adjustment percentage. This represents the ability of your private enterprise to spring up in response to price movements, and serves to move the price back to equilibrium
4. Economic Sensitivity. This exponent represents the amount of speculators in the economy. This also has an impact on how much your purchases/sales impact the price.

I've attached a simple Excel file that you can play around with.

 

[Taritu]

The assumption is that there are civilian economies which are not taxed/levied by central governments.

This assumption, of course, falls flat in the case of gestalt governments.

 

[Tisifoni12]

Are there some AI (and player) empire types that are excluded from the market because they are extremely hostile, xenophobic, isolationist or prefer central planning / economic independence

 

[vortexsurfer]

Are there some AI (and player) empire types that are excluded from the market because they are extremely hostile, xenophobic, isolationist or prefer central planning / economic independence

I haven't met a species without access to the market

Edit: reading the config files, there are indeed three civics that exclude a species from the galactic market: fanatic purifiers, devouring swarm and machine terminator