Pricecap tweak to improve productbalance

Ideas on how the game could be improved and suggestions for subsequent versions of the game

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Guest

Pricecap tweak to improve productbalance

Post by Guest » Thu Jul 21, 2011 3:23 pm

I'm sure this has been suggested before, since it's such an obvious improvement to the game, but I'll just take an other shot at it.
Why not modify some of the "useless" (read= non profitable) endproducts max capped prices and up them a bit to add more variety to the game? For instance bread has a capped price of 200ct. It takes 2 grain to produce a bread. Grain has a capped price of 133,33ct. It would be very fair to up the bread capped price to at least 500ct. And if that's too much, every bit helps. And there are more of such products, like eiderdowns. It would simply add more usable products to the game, without the need of implementing new products etc, just by making some of the existant products a bit more profitable (to the level it is somewhat comparable to other "normal" products).

It should balance the productsprofitability a bit (ofcourse not completely, but just step in the right direction). And please don't only focus on the products I mention, cause there are more that could use such a "fix".

Also the game would get the same improvement by selecting one or more products that are currently unsellable in markets, by making them sellable. For instance benches, bibles, boats, books, deer, horses and mussels).

I also offer my help for finding "decent" cap prices for products. I got most products compared allready in calculations, and am certain I can propose cap prices for products that are either low, average or high (whatever you want) compared to other "normal" products (and share the source-code to check values).
Last edited by Guest on Wed Jul 27, 2011 10:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

Guest

Re: Pricecap tweak to improve productbalance

Post by Guest » Thu Jul 21, 2011 6:08 pm

Utopolis wrote: And please don't only focus on the products I mention, cause there are more that could use such a "fix".
like schnaps?? 8)


But yes, I agree with Uto's suggestion and think it could add more variety to the game. Everybody always produces the SAME stuff to sell. Nobody wants to produce stuff that there is very little profit margin for. Who wants to make a final product that they can get far more for by selling the ingredients instead?

Guest

Post by Guest » Sun Jul 24, 2011 9:14 pm

Uto's numbers are generally spot on.

It would also be good to make every product sellable in a market...BOOKS, incense, BOOKS, boats, BOOKS, etc...
8)

Guest

Post by Guest » Mon Jul 25, 2011 1:58 am

Stonehaven wrote:Uto's numbers are generally spot on.

It would also be good to make every product sellable in a market...BOOKS, incense, BOOKS, boats, BOOKS, etc...
8)
Yeah, but what about Books??

Guest

Post by Guest » Mon Jul 25, 2011 5:28 pm

have Books been mentioned yet ??

Guest

Post by Guest » Sun Nov 20, 2011 7:04 pm

Phoenician trades kindly made us a gift of 9,922 q5 copies of The Good Book.

Alas, the only use that we normally have for old paper would be blasphemy !

Guest

Re: Pricecap tweak to improve productbalance

Post by Guest » Thu Mar 01, 2012 2:38 am

Please, oh please make my babies (Schnapps) sell for more than a crappy price! :cry:

If the value of the goods are readjusted it will actually EXPAND the game play because we will have more variety in our choices. Who wants to produce crap that is sold at under the value of the ingredients? Please oh please adjust this so that we have more variety in our choices.... :cry:

Guest

Re: Pricecap tweak to improve productbalance

Post by Guest » Thu Mar 01, 2012 8:21 am

Of course, this must all be done carefully, so as not to start a general escalation of prices. Let's take two products mentioned above as an example.

If schnapps is raised in the stalls, that is good. Products should probably not sell for less than their component prices. However, the new profitability of schnapps will cause increased demand for an already overly stressed resource: herbs. This will result in further escalation in that commodity, potentially driving the relative price higher than schnapps once again. And in turn, the cost of incense, a near worthless item without any salable market and only one building that uses it, will go higher due to its need for schnapps. Also, every other item that uses herbs, dried meat, honey, spices, etc...will see cost increases, and concomitant shrinking profit margins, again causing economic imbalances.

That being said, a better plan may be to refine the production volumes of herbs at the farm level, increasing their output to bring down the price of the overly-stressed resource in the first place.

Just sayin'... 8)

Guest

Re: Pricecap tweak to improve productbalance

Post by Guest » Fri Mar 02, 2012 4:28 am

I like Stone's idea.

The current situation is bad enought that I see that nobody is even bothering to make and sell lower quality beer. Considering the massive gap in production and sale capacity of buildings at higher levels, we're downsizing on market stalls and adding less productive workshops. This will eventually cause the bottom to fall out due to the price cap in place, that price cap ont works if lower quality products lower the average quality too.
Production rate tweaks will help with that by allowing older players to produce goods more cheaply.

Guest

Re: Pricecap tweak to improve productbalance

Post by Guest » Sat Mar 03, 2012 8:10 pm

I didn't mean it to help bigger cities per se. The thing is to find the choke point that is killing a whole range of economic activities. In this realm, the rate of herb production is obviously way too low, given the stress that got put on the resource with the plethora of products that use it. It also makes only so much sense to have the rate of production so tight, given that herbs grow wild, and many are weeds. This is just one of those areas that make sense to revisit and refine.

I am especially sensitive to PK's comments, as I play in another game world where everything is done for the sake of the older players, often at the expense of newer players. It makes for some seriously flawed game play. I am not accusing PK of that, but it does strike a nerve, never the less.

Guest

Re: Pricecap tweak to improve productbalance

Post by Guest » Sun Mar 04, 2012 12:24 am

Hehe. The way this game is built, newer players have a scant chance of growth unless they do get some positive support from the older players.

I see a few points in Upjer's strategy with slowing down growth and creating choke points:

1) it can limit growth so others can catch up, forces larger players to buy from smaller players.

2) slows down the rate at which players move towards the ultimate net worth goal.

3) keeps from one product taking over and players creating completely one dimensional cities - the contests also help with this.

The thing though is balance. If the stats price for some products is going to be as restrictive as it is then new players won't see much of the profit that we saw back then and point 1 above becomes obsolete. Also, specialisation has been greatly encouraged by the guild system. To roll that back meaningfully is a tough ask that I don't have much of an answer to either.
I might seem to contradict myself somewhere but I'm merely stating both sides of the coin sometimes.

Guest

Re: Pricecap tweak to improve productbalance

Post by Guest » Sun Mar 04, 2012 6:25 am

I don't necessarily think that it would need to overthrow the whole game. The bakeries suck beets and grain heavily, however you don't see grain shoot through the roof even though some of those products are profitable to sell in markets. There are a lot of bakeries also. If the prices go up, I think that they will only go up so high. Also if they do go up, the value of EVERYTHING will reflect the "true" value of the product So with the original example: Even if herbs goes up in price because schnapps goes up in value, the herbs actually sell better in stalls too because the overall value is adjusted. Rather than throw the realm into chaos, I can see it benefitting the realm and leading to far more options. Right now we are locked into only producing a few products because the majority suck for market sales. It remains stagnant.

Guest

Re: Pricecap tweak to improve productbalance

Post by Guest » Sun Mar 04, 2012 12:16 pm

What she ^ said

Guest

Re: Pricecap tweak to improve productbalance

Post by Guest » Tue Mar 06, 2012 6:21 pm

There are not a lot of bakeries. Not compared to several years worth of developed breweries and caravans and butcheries. And the stress is not the same on grain as it is on herbs, by a long shot. Though it could get that way in years to come. And the reason beets don't go through the roof is exactly the point we are making here. You can produce a lot of them on a farm. So there is fluidity in the markets, and the finished products will always, as things currently stand, trump the value of the raw beets.

Hope you don't hurt anything sitting on that fence, PK. 8)

Guest

Re: Pricecap tweak to improve productbalance

Post by Guest » Wed Mar 07, 2012 1:59 am

I guess I shouldn't try to explain strategic production capacity vs Optimal production then?
The production rates of final products using the same raw materials are not sync'd up in this game. And that in itself makes it more interesting to play, else it would be a game for maybe geeks only.
Rather, this game caters perfectly to the economist, speculative types as well. A rare combination in a game, may I add.
Going by your comments, you want precise changes in a few things only. I might be getting you wrong though. Problem with that, to me, is that such changes would tend to more and more level the field between products and take away the speculative/strategic aspect of the game. The corrections I was implying to were more along the lines of bringing the divergence from the original intent of the game back in a bit. Natural development of the game is good, but if it exceeds a nominal amount the game mechanics can't handle it anymore. So many things in Kapi have broken down and had had to be fixed over ge past few years, to me - non IT person, it points to only a partially parametric design, it's not perfect and needs fixing every now and then.

All in all, I'm rather OK, even happy with the game as it is, sure, a few things can be fixed, make my life easier, but where is the fun in that!?

Those palings are good for developing balance, of course, lean bottoms help ;)

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