Re: Olympia - Free Market Economy

From: morrow@romulus.rutgers.edu (John Morrow)

Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1992 17:46:47 +0000

srt@aero.org (Scott "TCB" Turner) writes:

>Welcome to the real world.  If you have a lot of money, you have to
>protect it.  You hire guards, or you buy into a merchant's collective,
>or you build your shop in a walled city.  If there's a limited market
>for an item, and someone beats you to it, that's life.  You missed
>your sale.  Now you have to unload this stuff at a reduced price, or find
>another buyer.

That would be just great if I were logged into an LPMud and could see,
on day 5, that there were no swords to buy or that on day 8 I was
unable to sell my oxen.  This would also be just great if I were able
to see that a large force has moved into town and started attacking
merchants on day 23.  Any SANE merchant would leave.  And that is my
point.  In REALITY, if my men were to march into a town and be unable
to buy or sell items, it would set the stage for a major change in
orders.  I might want them to buy javelins instead of swords if none
are available or if javelins aren't available, bows, etc.  If you
can't sell 5 oxen, try 2 or travel seven days to the next market and
try to sell if you can't here.  That is what Real Human Beings would
do.  To simulate this in a game with one month turns would require the
addition of logical operators such as:

sell 6 5 90 100
  if item(6) = 5 then
    move 306
    sell 6 5 90 100
    move 311
    move 312
  else
    move 312
  endif

This would replace one line -- "sell 6 5".  Now multiply that out by
every buy or sell you execute and you could wind up with a hundred
lines of code or more just to make sure things go off correctly.  Turn
checker or no, bugs will crop in.  I don't think your success in the
game should depend on your skill as a programmer.

Overall, this is a major departure from the current style of commands.
You would need this sort of thing, however, simply to allow your units
to act in a logical realistic manner.

As for guards for merchants, my complaint is not so much that
merchants NEED guards, I can understand they do.  But take a city like
Atnos Forest.  If has a population of 210 with, last I saw, about 90
people in units.  Put in 2 merchants with 50 guards each, since there
is a market there.  Hmm, that is 1/4 of the town's population as
guards.  That doesn't seem to realistic to me.  The support costs,
etc. are also not balanced towards this sort of situation.  In reality,
a real merchant would see the 90 people in units forming into a stack
and preparing to attack the other merchant.  They might leave before
they get attacked.  How do you simulate this in Olympia?

>Back when a certain individual who shall remain nameless broke with the
>hallowed Olympia tradition and started forcibly parting players from their
>money and lives, everybody got very excited about adding all kinds of
>mechanisms to Olympia to protect everyone from such anti-social behavior.

IF it were IMPOSSIBLE to start as a new player in Olympia and survive
the first turn, no matter what you did because of predatory older
players, I would say there was a problem and a mechanism was needed.
Since that is clearly not the case, you haven't seen me on the
bandwagon, have you?

>None of that was ever implemented, and surprise, Olympia didn't collapse.
>Turned out that people had to start spending some of their Skrenta-given
>lucre protecting themselves, was all.

Yes.  The problem of newbies dying was simply a matter of spending
some money wisely in the first few days.  Anyone who read the rules
should realize that.  But you will note that this had nothing to do
with the complexity level of an order sheet.

>Then the Great Skrenta turned of the endless Entertainment tap, and
>there was a similar outcry.  Why, Olympia was virtually unplayable
>without Entertainment!  But nothing was changed, and surprise, Olympia
>didn't collapse.  Turned out that people just had to be a little more
>realistic, thoughtful and competitive with their units.

Yes.  I have two units with Entertainment 3 who couldn't make 6 gold a
week in Pesbrand.  Did you see me complain?  No.  Why?  This change
didn't add 400 lines to my orders sheet.  I am not complaining about
my survivability OR my ability to make a profit, am I?  I know this is
a departure from the norm, but that isn't where I am coming from...

>If and when a market economy gets implemented, there's going to be a
>similar hue and cry.  It'll have a big impact on the game, that's for
>sure.  I for one and going to be upset not to have limitless weapons
>and armors available.  But I can't see how it won't improve the game.
>The things you cite above as "problems" with a market economy are
>precisely the things that appeal to me.

Did I complain about the supply of items being limited simply because
certain things would no longer be available?  Did I complain that it
was going to be more difficult to make money?  No.  My BIG COMPLAINT
is that given the structure of the game -- that you must anticipate
ONE MONTH'S worth of activity -- the added complexity that would have
to be inserted, not just to the game code but to one's ORDER sheet,
would make it VERY time consuming to write up.  This is, in my
opinion, a LARGE departure from the way the game is set up now.  I
program for a living.  I don't want to have to write a complex 200
line program for each of my units, just to make sure that they execute
simple buy and sell orders or attack orders correctly.  The game would
no longer be very "fun" for me.

*I* don't feel that that is the level this game operates on.  If *I*
am wrong, fine.  If everyone ELSE wants to send in 800 line order
sheets, I am not about to whimper about it.  *I* simply don't want to
and I want to point out that THAT is where things seem to be headed
with some of these discussions.

A while ago, someone pointed out adding details on a "take it or leave it"
level.  That is where I think this should go.  If market reform is
implemented, if it turns off a few gravy faucets, fine, but it shouldn't
require that EVERYONE add another 50-100 lines to their orders if they
don't want to.  If you DO, perhaps there should be an advantage to doing so
but I don't think it should be MANDATORY.  In addition, I don't want to
have to send out 20 pieces of E-mail per week just to assure my access to
goods.  I could do that now for some things if I wanted to but, again, I
don't want that to be MANDATORY -- the way things are normally done.

>Personally, though, I think that there should in effect be two market
>economies side-by-side.  One market economy will include the kinds of
>things that players commonly buy and can make themselves: weapons,
>horses, wood, iron, and so on.  The second economy would be "trade
>goods".  Each trade good would be made in limited numbers in a limited
>number of areas and desired in a limited number of areas.  Trading
>would involve buying trade goods where they are made and carrying them
>to where they are desired, hopefully in time to make a good profit.
>Being a successful trader would require knowledge (about what is made
>where, desired where, etc.), the ability to respond quickly to trade
>opportunities, and the cash to float trade expeditions.  Different
>levels of Trade might reveal different trading opportunities.  (Hmm, I
>wonder why Jathar the Trader keeps making trips from W. Argyle to
>Soxneck?)  This is a model that has a fair amount of realism and has
>been proven a playable system in games like "Merchant of Venus",
>"Railroad Tycoon" and so on.  What's more, I think it is easy to
>implement in the Olympia framework.  And decoupling trade goods from
>common goods prevents too much player manipulation of the economy,
>which I think most of the players agree would be a bad thing.

Just remember, though, that things might change over the course of a
month in Olympia is different than in a board game what you can see
everyone's position and movement.  In addition, how do you feel that
the other goods should be dealt with?  You explain quite a bit about
trade goods but whata bout weapons, armors, etc.?

John Morrow - Varian [856]

References

Re: Olympia - Free Market Economy
morrow@romulus.rutgers.edu (John Morrow)
Wed, 17 Jun 1992 21:52:14 +0000
Re: Olympia - Free Market Economy
rsocia@renaissance.cray.com (Rick Socia)
Wed, 17 Jun 1992 23:43:16 +0000
Re: Olympia - Free Market Economy
morrow@romulus.rutgers.edu (John Morrow)
Fri, 19 Jun 1992 23:43:39 +0000
Re: Olympia - Free Market Economy
srt@aero.org (Scott "TCB" Turner)
Sat, 20 Jun 1992 21:31:41 +0000

Referenced By

Re: Olympia - Free Market Economy
morrow@romulus.rutgers.edu (John Morrow)
Wed, 17 Jun 1992 21:52:14 +0000
Re: Olympia - Free Market Economy
rsocia@renaissance.cray.com (Rick Socia)
Wed, 17 Jun 1992 23:43:16 +0000
Re: Olympia - Free Market Economy
morrow@romulus.rutgers.edu (John Morrow)
Fri, 19 Jun 1992 23:43:39 +0000
Re: Olympia - Free Market Economy
srt@aero.org (Scott "TCB" Turner)
Sat, 20 Jun 1992 21:31:41 +0000