Market Prices

[Haron]

First: I'm not 100% sure how the prices for ordinary goods work today, but it seems the prices are rather fixed. I suggest altering these prices to a "supply and demand" system.

First, determine the base demand of each good in a port. I say the base demand should be proportional to the population, to increase the incentive for large populations.

Then, prices are adjusted every day based on the supply the previous day. If the supply was higher than the demand, a minimum price is set (a price that will still give a small profit). If the supply was less than, say, 10% of the demand, a maximum price is set (maybe 10 gold above the minimum price, maybe twice the minimum price). If the supply was somewhere between 10% and 100%, an appropriate price is set (maybe lower it by 1 gold for each 10% of the demand that is met).

Why do this? Well, as it is, traders will always prefer "short" trading routes, since there is very little to gain from longer routes. With prices set based on demand, one can probably make a profit even selling tools to Akrotiri. This will lead to more diverse trade routes. It will also make for competition and cooperation when it comes to trade routes - a guild will make sure not everyone uses the same trade route, since that would decrease the profit.

[Captain Jack]

First of all, we already use a supply and demand system. We simply use fixed prices and we do not take in mind population.

In detail, we record every crate traded and every port has its own stock of resources that derives from trading (solely). This stock is simply invisible to players but every port simply has its own (unlimited) warehouse where all the resources it buys and sells are stored there. As players, you only get to see their stock of the resource they sell and gold bars. Then, during the resources update, we sort every port by stock. Then, based on the port position on this list, we give the price that each port offers. This price will be maintained for 3 days where the new resources update will take place. The prices are given like this:

x+4
x=3
x+2
x+1
x
x-1
x-2
x-3

where x is the base price of the resource.

So, we end up to 8 difference prices per resource. There are 2 exceptions if I remember well; cotton and tools where the gap is smaller and bigger respectively. So, Tools cheapest price is 16 and most expensive price is 25, leaving room for profit of up to 9 gc per crate. If you add Indian companies, duke bonuses there, then this can rice beyond 13gc per crate.

I do not see a real reason to abandon the fixed prices model.
Changing prices daily is what we used to do but we changed this in order to avoid micromanagement in every day gaming.

[Haron]

Thank you for the explaination, Captain Jack. It seemed to me that prices change very little, but now I know how they work, at least. I agree that there is probably no need to change this.

I guess the ports buying prices are not very important anyway, since food, rum and tobacco usually will be "sold" at a higher prices using voodoo.

[Captain Jack]

They can be important, depending on the player strategy. Here is a players guide on market, also linked from in-game market page:
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=88#

It needs some improvement though.