Thoughts on Market Mechanics and Potential Exploits

CyberPtra

I’ve been thinking more about the game’s market system and wanted to share a few thoughts and potential concerns. Overall, I appreciate the concept of a free market for trading and exchanging resources—it adds depth and strategic variety. However, I foresee a few issues that might arise, especially in the context of multiple accounts and early-game exploits.

A) Multiple Account Feeding Exploit

Currently, players can't send or receive aid during initial protection, but they can use the market system. With the new feature that giving free resources to newer kingdoms, it opens the door for abuse: a player could repeatedly create new kingdoms, funnel resources to a main kingdom through the market, and then delete those feeder accounts. This cycle could be repeated indefinitely.

Potential Solutions:
1) Restrict Market Access During Protection: One approach is to disable market access for kingdoms still under beginner protection. However, this wouldn't stop resource feeding after protection ends using “free resources.”
2) Expire or Reclaim Unused Resources: Another solution is to allow free resources during the 120-hour protection period, but reclaim all unused resources (gold, iron, wood, food) once protection ends. That way, a kingdom begins its post-protection phase with all buildings and military units built using the free resources, but no excess to feed others. This ensures a fair start without stockpiling.

B) Balancing Market Volume with Infrastructure

Another idea is to tie the functionality of the market system directly to the in-game "Market" building.

Suggested Mechanic ("unit" is a single unit of iron/wood/food/MP)

Introduce a cap on how much a kingdom can trade per hour, based on how many market buildings they’ve constructed. For example, a kingdom with 10 markets could only trade up to 100 units/hour (10x the number of markets), while a more developed kingdom with 100 markets could trade 1,000 units/hour.

This approach introduces strategic decision-making—players will need to invest in infrastructure if they want to actively participate in the market. It would also help keep prices balanced and reflective of actual supply and demand, while discouraging spam trading or artificial inflation. It also prevents/slow down feeding (as per concern above)

C) Mercenary Units – Expanding Market Utility Across Races

With the introduction of Magic Points (MPs) and the ability for Elves—and to a lesser extent, Humans—to sell magic, it seems like a natural next step to allow other races to participate in a similar system by lending out their military units as mercenaries. Eg. Gnomes can lend out their RTs

Kingdoms could offer their units for hire via the market, allowing players to lend troops as “mercenaries” to support other kingdoms, especially smaller or newer ones.

Suggested Mechanics:

Unit Lending Cap: A kingdom can lend up to 10% of any unit type they currently own. This ensures balance and prevents large kingdoms from overwhelming the system.
Market-Based Contracts: Mercenaries would be listed as non-negotiable "contracts" on the market. Players could purchase these contracts to receive temporary control of the unit(s) involved.
Fixed Pricing: Each contract would cost 90% of the unit’s gold-based training and armory costs (excluding wood and iron). This provides an incentive to use the feature while keeping prices fair. And it is a net loss to the lending kingdom.
Contract Expiration & Return: Contracts would expire after 6 hours (or a time determined by the developers). Any unused or surviving units are automatically returned to their original kingdom after the contract ends.

Strategic Benefits:

Support for Smaller Kingdoms: This system enables smaller or developing kingdoms to collaborate and pool forces to challenge larger powers—adding a tactical layer to warfare and diplomacy.
Economic Options for All Races: It allows all races to participate in the economy in meaningful ways, similar to how Elves can sell MPs.
Encourages Market Activity & Planning: Lending and hiring mercenaries becomes another dimension of market strategy, especially in preparation for coordinated attacks or defense.

I have no idea how difficult the coding will be... But just a thought.

TheKeeper

CyberPtra Mercenary units would be incredibly insane difficult to code as the way you propose it, unless we create a "standard" mercenary with same stats for all races

Lord Thane

CyberPtra I like the idea of tying the Market in with a kingdom's actual market buildings - that's a really good one, definitely going to keep that in mind for future dev.

I'm not sure about limited the market during protection. On one hand, it does sort of make sense just to keep everyone in their own little bubbles, but on the other hand - it would add some fun to the otherwise boring startup protection. I'm not really worried about multis exploiting it, I don't think there are many (or any even, yet) people willing to risk wasting their time just to get a few measly gp. Maybe we should require people verify their accounts with a text message - like signing up for a FB account lol...

I think mercenaries is a good idea, but not for the Market. I'm thinking that would need to be a whole nother new section to the game, maybe part of an Alliance building section, with Diplomacy actions, Espionage, Bounties. It's a big idea that would need a lot of discussion.

DougEfresh

Saying there isn't any multis is laughable. It was a little known secret one of the top people had 2 kds. Tho they have since deleted both

TheKeeper

DougEfresh We know everything

trupheus

TheKeeper

Wall of shame.

Sinnywinks

What about limiting How many times a kingdom can use the market per day And then also only allowing free trade within Providence members? You could also limit how much someone could get of each supply per day.

Sinnywinks

What about limiting? How many kingdoms you can receive aid from per day And then limiting how many times you can receive aid from said kingdoms per week? There's all kinds of ideas we can come up with For countering the feeder problem.

Nolio

It's a nice thought but these types of measures don't work because people will just stop using the market and go back to trading on the forums. If we disincentivize the use of the market, people won't use it. As long as it's more beneficial to use the market, it will get used. As soon as it isn't, people will work around that.

I would like something like an auction added to the market. We used to go into the forums and post and auction of X amount of resource, and have people offer X:1 for that resource. Once the time ran out, it sold at that price. I would love to see that system added to the market because it's a system that players have historically used, but in unsecure ways. On the market there is security that the trade will be as negotiated and no one can get ripped off.