Balancing prices in an economic game

I'd ask myself these questions:

1) Do I want these resources to be similarly valued, or for some of them to be worth more than others?

For example, in Power Grid, Uranium's value is overall higher than Garbage, which is higher than Oil, which is higher than Coal.

1)b) What ratio do you want between your most expansive and least expansive resource?

For example, in Concordia,here are 5 materials, and each costs 1$ more than the one before: Brick is worth 3$ and is the cheapest material, while Silk (the most expansive) is worth 7. If the numbers had been 1-5 instead, that would have made Brick 5 times cheaper than Silk (and therefore, almost free in comparison), while numbers from 11-15 would have reduced the differences in value to a point where it almost doesn't matter.

2) What quantity of these resources do you want players to handle?

Again, in Power Grid (PG), you can buy an absolute maximum of 18 resources a turn, but most likely will buy 6-9.

3) What scale of money amounts do you want your game to use?

PG uses small denominations: resources cost 1-10$, plants up to 50, and auctions rarely go over 100. By comparison, games like Poseidon (and I assume other 18XXs, although I haven't played them) have shares cost 60-300, and income is about 30$ per share in the end, which leads to much higher numbers.

Once you have these answers, it's easier to set prices. For example, if I want players to work with a few hundred bucks, with the idea that having 1000$ should be a rare occurrence, and I want my players to buy/sell stuff in groups of 10-15, then that stuff (let's call it resources) could cost 30$ each or so. If I want six different "types" of "resources", then I would price them 15-20-25-30-35-40. If you then want another bigger level of investment, something they buy twice or three times in a game (say, a company, or a power plant, or real estate), then I'd start at 300-500, or something like that.

On the other hand, if you want your game to have small denominations (like Gates of Loyang), where money is tight and having 10$ is a godsend, and where every resource costs a chunk of your budget, resources priced 3-4-5 are a good idea.

Hope that helped.

Thanks for the link. I know where I'll be spending a few hours this weekend...

I STRONGLY disagree with you, RadMouse. If you keep numbers low, it doesn't allow for any wriggle room. Also, the significance between each number becomes HUGE.

Look at Warhammer. The difference between a BS3 and BS4 is HUGE.
In Warmachine. The difference between a 3 cost and a 4 cost solo unit is HUGE.
I know they are wargames, but the example still stands. Worker placement games always have a "First one here gets a bonus" type deal. Either a +1 coin or -1 to build and that is a big advantage in these games because making money is near impossible, but when you have it, the world is your oyster.

You need to find a happy medium. This is the case for almost anything in game design. If you are looking for simplicity cards with 1200 hp is probably not the best. Although I would have to disagree with the simplicity of MtG and it playing a positive role in game design... it is extremely simple but a small number means less wiggle room which does not equal a smaller amount of testing. Magic is interesting because each color has strengths and weaknesses. So you pay less as green for toughness because you have bigger creatures but may pay more for a flying creature as opposed to blue cards. There is a lot that goes on there with the costs and economy of cards. Plus, do you know how many broken cards there are? A good amount. This is metigated through different variants and tournament rules for deck building. But its because it's hard to make a 2/2 with flying for 2 because thats too strong but 2/2 for 3 with flying may be too weak. Its tough but I guess adding rarity helps but its terrible game design.

I love simplicity, but giving my game some breathing room is also something I love. The reason Magic is so successful is because they KEEP MAKING NEW CARDS. If you play Vintage you literally have thousands of cards to choose from. Cray cray. It gets people excited to know the game their playing is bigger than themselves. It allows them to get better.

In terms of resources, Magic, to me, got it wrong. They tied their game down by forcing players to create decks based on their resources. There are ways around it but the whole "top decking resources" makes me hate playing. There aee some things that need to be separated from other pieces of your design, and thats okay.

Of course, the link above probably does a better job than me but I thought I'd bring some of my input in :)

Tbone

I have a similar philosophy: keep the numbers low and usually less than 10. In my current Work-In-Progress (WIP) I use low numbers to try to keep the game simple enough.

Take for example "Capacity". It's the total "Firepower" + "Resistance" a starship can have. Its values are 5 to 9. Both "Firepower" and "Resistance" go from 1 to 5... What does this mean? It means you can never have the "ultimate" starship (5/5 = 10 Capacity). So you need to make compromise each time you deploy a starship (even if you have the BEST cards in your hand) to see if it will be an offensive focused starship or a more defensive focused one.

The nice thing about LOW values is that I plan to introduce Trading BONUSES such a +5 or 2x. Small multipliers are good because if you have a value like 3, with a 2x multiplier, it's only a 6 (which is +1 better than the highest card).

Of course there is balancing involved, you won't see a 2x on a 5 point card... That's maybe too much. But ALL SMALL bonuses add up over time and can make a difference in the game. That's my philosophy, slowly build up over time - and this "BONUS SYSTEM" will only be available in my WIPs "First Expansion: Planetary Expanse".

But keeping low values allows me to have different bonuses that are not overly powerful but add to the overall game's gameplay!

Cheers.