Too much peace too much for Dwilight

[Indirik]

A month? I wish. It all went down in like half a week.

D'Hara has been getting TMP and "Too Much Snow" (the winter version of TMP) practically every day for, as of Monday, 23 days. Add on the days since then, and that's 27 or 28 days. So 4 weeks. How can you say that it snuck up on you when you've been getting the warnings for almost an entire month?

As for the rest, I don't see why not having enough gold for food should affect infrastructure maintenance in any way. As I said, it only costs about 50 gold for both militia pay and maintenance costs. That's peanuts, and there *was* enough gold collected to pay for it too. Imo, the food should be paid last, and maybe result in loyalty and control drops instead of having everything fall apart if it can't be paid?

But you've already paid for the food. The seller already has his gold. Where did it come from? The game is not about to let you have all that food without paying for it somehow. And I hardly think a morale/loyalty penalty counts as paying for it.

Edit: Fixed a typo...

[Indirik]

If the region's taxes can't pay for it, the food turns around and goes home.

Define "the region's taxes can't pay for it".

Does this mean that it would only use the gold that has accumulated so far in the tax coffers? Then auto buys would always fail on tax day, and probably the day after. And if the lord was using most of his gold income to buy food, then they would probably only work on the actual tax day itself, or the day before.

Or does this mean that it can't buy more than the region's predicted tax collection be? What if that gold, for some reason, never shows up on tax day? What if the lords raised taxes very high to increase his predicted income on the day of the sale, then lowered it back down to keep the locals from getting pissed? Or what if the region gets looted, or an infil steals most of the gold? Or the banker cooks the books, or the region lord loses his position and most of the gold is used for overhead?

And what would happen if, either way you do it, the gold that is collected on tax day doesn't cover the trade balance? Does the game forget about it, or take it out somewhere else?

These are all situations that would have to be covered. I'm sure there are more. I'm not trying to be difficult here. Just trying to think of ways to manipulate the system, and exploit the design. Because you know people will try it.

[Vellos]

How could the game tell, though, if my production is about to drop to 0% or not?

Doesn't the game track how much gold will be collected from each day based on its productivity? Is tax rate factored in each day, or just on tax day? I'm guessing each day.

If that's the case, the game should know on any given day how much money has been collected: it knows for the purposes of looting tax gold, so why doesn't it know for buying food? Thus, it should know how much is available to be spent, right?

The game knows how much is available to be looted, so it can know how much is available to be spent.

The side-effect of this is that major shipments of food arriving the day after a tax day would almost always get turned around and sent home, which would be extremely annoying. So I guess that dukes would need to set up a manual purchase for the day or two after taxes come in.

[Vellos]

Thanks Vellos you just ruined one of my long term plans. That is one reason why most Dukes I've seen limit automatic food purchase to a reasonably low threshold. I have tried to investigate using automatic buying to damage a realm we were in a "cold" war with, but turns out they don't use any buy orders and just ship stuff in for free, real shame. I've been waiting for the chance to try it on a realm that actually buys food.

Um, I made that whole spiel about how to reign in a duke as a joke, because I assumed nobody would hate the social contract enough to exploit such a loophole that makes no sense ICly. No duke's steward would close down the city's entire infrastructure to buy vastly excessive amounts of food. That's an obvious exploitation of the code.

Or am I crazy in thinking that this code differs wildly from how this would work "in real life"? Realism would seem to dictate that, if there's no money, the low-ranking nobles who run these transfers would turn around the caravans and send'em home: they won't starve, they're reasonably well-to-do, it's no concern of theirs if some peasants starve. But they would not sell off the entire military infrastructure (and the tournament grounds that just hosted a huge tournament) to buy some extra food. They wouldn't have that kind of authority.

Conveniently, having such a "buy limit" also removes the exploit and makes more sense for playability, and sounds like it is codable. Woah. Realism, gameplay, and feasibility, all in one package.

[Sacha]

What about letting the Lords put money in a 'trade account' of sorts? Instead of taking the gold from food sales out of the region's income itself, Lords would pay for it out of their own pockets (or someone else's pockets depending on where the gold comes from). So, for instance, Lord Kepler puts 300 gold in Keplerville's trade account and sets a buy order for 30 gold per 100 bushels. Trader Bob shows up in Keplerville with 1000 bushels and decides to sell them. Trader Bob is paid 300 gold out of the trade account and goes on his merry way. The food is dropped in the Keplerville warehouse, the trade account is now empty, so when Trader Bill shows up in Keplerville to sell some bushels too, he's !@#$ outta luck, because there's no more gold in the trade account.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Man it sounds like the pursuit of an easier lazy way to do things just makes it all the more complicated than simply micromanaging your trades every so often. Even once a week, going to CaravanOffers.php and putting in a new offer would suffice. That comes directly out of your currently held gold for buy offers, and (probably) directly out of your warehouse for sell offers. I've never used it to sell since I'd do a manual caravan run, but I know that this option is the preferred method of choice if you want control (kinda, for some reason it always forces me to put in 300 gold when I want to put in 240 gold at 80 gold/100 bushels).

The moral is: Don't be lazy? It's not even that hard either since you'd be fine updating even weekly for a busy realm.

Note: And yes, I know that this is about auto-stuff. My very relevant question is: Is that really necessary? We already have a perfectly good system for intra-realm free transfers of surplus. If we want to be capitalist we can put in the effort that such a system rewards by doing the manual trade offers. Automatic offers are great for firing and forgetting, but to truly profit? I'm pretty sure you still need to manage your transfers and monitor them. At the very least you do not want to just fire and forget, and seeing as how you'd be checking your warehouse anyway, I don't see how the 5 extra seconds to type in a few numbers and click on a button really makes life that much more difficult.

[Vellos]

Artemesia:

I agree about preferring manual transfers. But it does add to the time you have to invest if we do it manually.

Indirik:

Yes, the food arriving on or right after tax day would just not get bought. Sucks, don't it?

Alternatively, caravans could have a "wait time." They could have a default "wait" of, say, 2 days; they will "wait" for a buy offer for 2 days. That would mean that even a caravan arriving on tax day would have a reasonable chance of selling at least some of its food.

The downside to this is that dukes would have more uncertainty about food supplies, as they wouldn't know how much food might just be "waiting" for taxes to come in. Unless that information were provided, of course, but that might be hard to track.

[fodder]

bloody hell.. i didn't realise auto trade works this way.... that's just silly.

manual trade didn't work because it's heavily biased towards having people sell instead of buy. a lord can be just about anywhere and be able to send out caravans with a couple of gold in hand only (to cover cost of caravans) but a duke has to have a ton of gold in hand (or sit somewhere with a bank) to send off caravans to buy or set offer. this especially favours low price trades. also when you send caravans out to buy, you can buy them at different prices, whereas if someone send along to sell, you can't really buy at different prices unless you know when it'll arrive and try to time the offers to known caravans (stupid micro)

only solution i can think of is like what sacha said

treasury for trade and you can set a portion of your region's taxes (ie part of the maintenance cut) to go there directly every tax day as well as manually dump gold in there.. you can't take gold out... sort of like guild/religion global treasury. all auto trades go through that.. if it's dry.. no trade. this would allow a duke to bugger off to war without needing gold in hand to set manual offers every week.

[vanKaya]

I have not seen D'hara in or around Barca for the entire winter. Their are monster attacks in Barca every two or three days. Don't even wait to hear the message of an incoming attack, be proactive. Pick either Rettlewood Thysan or Celtiberia and sit there and wait. If you feel you've been waiting too long ( which I have never seen happen) roll into one of the rogue regions bordering Barca where their are hordes 100% of the time.

This won't just stave off tmp this willHelp your allies

Edit: the miltary of barca was not in barca the whole winter other than their appearance a few days ago which was brilliant and helped out immensely. Shame it was the first time.

[Indirik]

What about letting the Lords put money in a 'trade account' of sorts? Instead of taking the gold from food sales out of the region's income itself, Lords would pay for it out of their own pockets (or someone else's pockets depending on where the gold comes from). So, for instance, Lord Kepler puts 300 gold in Keplerville's trade account and sets a buy order for 30 gold per 100 bushels. Trader Bob shows up in Keplerville with 1000 bushels and decides to sell them. Trader Bob is paid 300 gold out of the trade account and goes on his merry way. The food is dropped in the Keplerville warehouse, the trade account is now empty, so when Trader Bill shows up in Keplerville to sell some bushels too, he's !@#$ outta luck, because there's no more gold in the trade account.

Wow. You just described how the already existing manual purchase order system works.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Wow. You just described how the already existing manual purchase order system works.

Oh come now, not everyone pays attention to all that. And frankly, some of it isn't exactly that easy to note. Well, the manual option actually is pretty self-explanatory and straightforward. It's the new automatic option that throws me in a loop.

[Sacha]

Yes, only now it would be the only way to pay for the food for all the trade options, and scenarios like what happened in Paisley would not be possible anymore. Similarly, all the income from food sales to visiting caravans and traders would also be added to the trade account. Slap a tax on it to get your money out again. I.e. if there is 500 gold in the account on tax day and it is taxed for, say, 25%, 125 gold is added to the region's income on tax day.

[Velax]

So you heard some rumours about people being bolted for giving orders, and just took that at face value, didn't actually find out what the real situation was, and thus, when it became painfully obvious that everyone could give orders to everyone again, you decided that this meant that everyone was just being given the opportunity to get bolted.

And continued in this belief for (IIRC) about three years, despite lots and lots of evidence to the contrary, if you had actually bothered to pay attention.

Well, it wasn't just a rumour. I know of at least one specific person bolted for giving an order.

[Anaris]

Well, it wasn't just a rumour. I know of at least one specific person bolted for giving an order.

Is there a month-long lag in here? ;)

By that logic, you should have advised everyone you knew to stop giving orders entirely.

Lightning bolts are always given for specific reasons.  If you want to avoid getting bolted, and help others do the same, never, ever, ever just take what you hear thirdhand about it as gospel.  Certainly don't take what the person who got bolted said as gospel; he's got every reason to mislead.  Always do your best to get the story from as close to the source as possible.

[Velax]

Hah, it was a bit of a necro post. :P

But in this case, it wasn't third-hand or even second-hand information. I was the one who got bolted. And I can tell you that whoever it was that bolted me (I assume Tom) certainly didn't bother to "find out what the real situation was" before doing it.