- Implement rot for food on the market - this should be done anyways because otherwise putting food on the market on a deal you don't expect anyone to accept is a way to save food from rotting. The amount of rot would depend on a "virtual time", representing travel time for food, which will NOT be added, i.e. trading remains instant, but we simulate the travel time of the food through rot. In other words: The further away your trade partner, the more food will be lost in transit.
Brokered deals will have dramatically reduced rot. Either half or even none at all. Since only traders can broker... - 48 hours delay for offers to become available for trading, but they are available for brokering immediately. This represents the time delay of moving food around first to the market place and then to the recipient vs. sending it from the one to the other directly via a broker.
- I'm thinking about some advantage for unrestricted offers, but haven't yet come up with something good. But I want to encourage people on that. The only idea I have this far is to make the black market simply a copy of the regular market with all restrictions lifted. If restricted traders aren't 100% safe, I believe more people wouldn't bother to restrict them.
- We need automatic offers, on the old system of "if stockpile > x then put y bushels on the market for z gold" resp. "if stockpile < x then post an offer for y bushels for z gold". It needs a bit of work to integrate it with the new tax system and all, but it can work (bonds required could be taken from the tax collection, bonds gained would be added to the tax income).
I like #1. Trades brokered by traders not being subject to rot at all. (Note: Once food offered for trade is subject to rot, don't forget to rot food if the deal is canceled by the lord, or if the trade time expires, as well as if the deal is accepted by a lord.)
I like #2. 48 hours seems like a decent time. Enough time for traders who are on the ball to see it and act, if they can. Not so much as to be deadly to a lord who really needs food *now*.
I like #4. I would suggest that the food be added to the market in small increments, perhaps in 50 or 100 bushel lots. These massive orders of 500+ bushels are just way too hard to fill. Also, perhaps all auto-orders could be Open orders?
#3... I don't think this will do anything. If I want the trade with only my realm, the fact that some dishonest trader *could* use the order anyway will not convince me to use open orders. After all, *any* trader can use the open offers, but only the bad guys will use the black market, and they stand a chance of getting caught if they do. *Some* chance to catch the thief is better than *no* chance to catch the thief.
Some additional ideas:
- Restrict the length of time for which a restricted order can be posted. Max length of 4 days for Realm Only, 7 days for Allies Only, and the full 14 days only for Open offers? This may conflict with the auto-orders, though: if the auto-order is restricted and gets canceled, the auto-system would just repost it next turn. So maybe if an auto-order expires, then it won't be reposted for another 4 or 7 days?
- We were talking about fees for accepting offers. How about we turn this around, and put up fees for posting offers? Make Open offers free to post, but implement fees for restricted offers. Allies Only could be a fee of a couple gold, say 2-5 gold per offer. Realm Only to be twice that, or 4-10 gold per offer. (Not sure what a good fee would be to give incentive for rural lords to post Open offers, but not make it extortionate if they don't. I think even a small fee would convince may rural lords to start posting less restrictive orders.) Rationale is that it takes time/money for the Marketplace to screen traders to meet the desired restrictions. For Open offers they just let anyone buy it. But for restricted offers they have to verify the identity of the trader.
