Commodity Trading Prices

For example, player 1 is playing peacefully and is accumulating wealth... Suddenly player 2 decides to make war with player 1. So player 1 now has to shift his game play and start building an army of spaceships to defend his colony. Obviously spaceships require upkeep and therefore most of what he had accumulated in wealth he had to trade for ore and minerals to build the spacecrafts. Then once he is able to keep player 2 from destroying his colony, he can then continue accumulating more wealth and SLOWLY try to beat player 2.

Obviously cultural victory was another possibility, but it depended on the order of the cards (randomness). So one player may have the advantage over another because of how his deck was shuffled...

I recently started one of these. Guess it's a popular genre. :)

It's interesting to see how the three of us differ in modeling the economies. Quest has a very high-level idea, where markets values follow pre-determined graphs. You have a "mid-level" model, where you're manipulating prices directly (if I'm understanding correctly). I'm trying for a low-level model where supply and demand dictate the market. For what it's worth, I think the low-level model answers some of your questions.

In my model, each planet has a local economy represented by 'n' blank spaces that can be filled with either "supply" cubes or "demand" chips (think mini-poker chips). The larger the economy, the more spaces available.

Example: Ceti Alpha VI is a wild frontier world, newly settled. It has a small local economy -- 1 or 2 spaces. Shepherd's World, in contrast, is a galactic hub with 6 available spaces.

Each turn, a single die roll causes some planets to generate a combination of supply cubes and surplus chips. Supply cubes represent resources or commodities produced on the planet. Demand chips represent resources and commodities required by the planets in excess of their ability to produce. Both chips and cubes are color-coded to match one of 5 resources in the game.

Not all planets produce or require the same resources. Not all planets generate supply or demand every turn. All production and consumption is statistical. Think "Settler's of Catan" in terms of rolling dice to see what's produced. Not every hex produces every turn, and the resource produced is not the same for each hex for a given number.

If all the spaces around a planet are filled with chips and cubes, its trade economy is "stalled" and it can do nothing more until someone trades with it.

Rather than manipulate prices directly, this system relies on a "market chart" that shows the value of each resource based on the number of supply or demand tokens on the planet.

For example, precious metals have a relatively flat, but relatively high market value. People can survive without them, but they generally want them all the time. Food, on the other hand, has a relative low value when demand is low, and is almost worthless when there's a surplus, but skyrockets in value during times of great shortage. The market curve to food is therefore non-linear with respect to supply.

This curve, coupled with the planet's "economic spaces", handles the situation where players dump a large quantity of goods onto the planet. Once the player "buys out" all available "demand" chips, he sells any remaining goods at the "surplus value" on the market chart.

Given that each planet generates fixed supply and demand resources in a statistical way, it should be possible to determine if it's got a balanced economy, one with a trade surplus, or one with a trade deficit. This gets to your question about miners buying food for $6 and selling it for $5. Since this model is statistical, that's always a possibility, but we should be able to design planets that are theoretically stable, economy-wise. We could also design some to be revenue sinks or sources.

All that remains is to supply events that affect supply and demand of various resources. We can also introduce drains on the players' resources. For example, players can purchase more ships over the course of the game. Some have better hauling capacity, others better armor, speed, weapons, etc. Some events create hazards that favor one type of ship over others.

Example 1: the "Outbreak!" card makes "Medicine" highly valuable on a planet for a short period of time. Faster ships -- which generally have lower hauling capacity -- have a better chance of delivering the supplies before the shortage ends.

Example 2: the "Raiders!" card creates a resource shortage on the affected planet, but puts pirates in orbit for 'n' turns. Players whose ships can fight their way through stand to make a hefty profit.

I like this model because I can understand how to balance it, at least approximately. As long as the average worth of all commodities match, I can let 1 unit of Medicine equal 1 unit of Energy or anything else. The game then becomes about staying agile enough to exploit the statistical fluctuations in the system -- what you're calling "flux", if I read you right. But I don't have to model the flux. The dice supply it for me. I *do* have to make sure that the events in the game don't favor a particular resource too heavily.

What scares me about this is the unseen complexity. I haven't actually tried to crunch the numbers, yet. The combinatorics of the planetary economic system worry me. Say planet 'A' supplies 2 kinds of resources and demands 2 others. Based on the production dice, there's a fixed percent chance per turn to generate each one. In order to balance the resources in the marketplace, I have to compute the likelihood of all possible combinations of supply and demand. Then I have to do this for all planets. Once I have all the distribution curves, I have to use them to generate the monetary values for each resource given its surplus or shortage. It's daunting.

But...

If I can work it out, it will answer the questions you're asking about pricing.

I'm excited to try it out. Hoping to get a chance over Christmas break.

Hope you both continue to post as you develop your respective models.

Mark

I think in Mark's situation, he is thinking that trading is to be done via Starships. In my situation, traders arrive at the planet's outpost and complete their transactions... There is no need to have ships with HULLS. Ships are simply used to defend a planet and it's installations (the colony). Obviously ships can be used on the offensive also... But they are NOT involved in TRADE.

So basically the trade the is being done is via the Outpost installation. And there would be a market trend graph to determine what price commodities are selling for. The merchandise would be deposited at the Outpost. Now there would be cards that could affect the prices of commodities. For example: An outpost upgrade that produces +1/-1 trade values. And basically whatever the trade value of the commodity, if you are selling you add +1 or the opposite, if you are buying -1 to make the price cheaper.

The problem I see is TRACKING how much money and resources each player has. Obviously I think a concept such as a BANK is essential. You are not going to sit around and accumulate chips... With the commodities, it just makes things worst. So you would have to have a warehouse (your outpost) where you can stock all your resources and a bank to keep track of credits. It still is a *serious* task to keep track of everything nice and neat...

But I personally like the "simulated" graphs which make the economic flux obvious (from the graph itself). I think it would be a simpler implementation and therefore be more playable. But that is just my opinion...

I meant to mean CARGO HOLDS not hulls (no need to have ships with CARGO HOLDS...) And again, ships are not involved in trading, only warfare/defense.

The other thing which is a problem is to determine how a colony *produces* resources. I think the "market" idea solves trading issues (between the market and other players). But I am not sure how to handle production of resources. This is another *roadblock*.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. That's exactly how Settlers works. What I meant by "...an exchange rate dictated by the amount of clay available in the game" is that the *players* determine the value of the clay based on how much they have and how plentiful it is. It's a real, unregulated market.

This system works great for Settlers, but has a couple of problems when adapted into my game. First, the "AI" players in Settlers feel no market pressure. You can always trade with the bank: 4 of any resource can be exchanged for any other resource, no matter how much or little is available of the second resource. In addition, there are several "3-to-1" ports available which reduce this exchange rate to "three of anything for something else." There are also some specific "2-to-1" ports, where players can exchange 2 of something specific -- like wood -- for 1 of anything else.

This works in Settlers because players control the 3:1 and 2:1 ports, and can always accept or reject trades with other players. Humans watch the market and make decisions accordingly. In my game, players trade with "AI" planets, so I need an algorithm that understands the market and drives commodity prices accordingly.

This does make me wonder, though, if there isn't a simple rule for exchange that could replace the market chart. For example, maybe the price of a commodity is equal to the number of demand chips showing for it at the planet. For instance. Planet A has 2 food demand chips showing, so food sells there for 2 Trade Units.

If a planet has no demand markers for a commodity, players can't sell it there. There could be a central "space station" that will purchase any commodity at 1 Trade Unit per two resource.

Dunno. Bears some thought. Simple is better, for sure.