I think what PaleBluePixel is trying to approach it from economic stand point where its more efficient to build a unit and sell it than having workers to directly build dust. From this point of view, I have to agree. This is also why he and others suggest that the price should be lower.



However, as TheWhetherMan pointed out, Roving Clan got a cut on whatever you sell to the market. This may not balance the game play but at least there is downside to the "selling units" strategy.



Yet, from tactical combat stand point, selling your units to the market will back-fire you because Roving Clan has a trait that gives mercenaries 2x health, and if the units you sold have like tier 3 iron, this will post (not a lot but still some) threats to you as those minor nations mercenaries have no armor at all.



This sound like something that "ohhh this only benefit Roving Clan" and yes I have to agree; and this is exactly what I meant from my 1st statement that the price is a bit too much and I hope that the Dev will address this issue someday to balance the game play.

I'm not saying that selling units in itself is an exploit or overpowered, only that the cited price you get for these upgraded units is completely out of whack. In fact, I can buy out the unit for a lower price than I sell it for! The buy out price is 1074. The sell price is currently 1132. So I can buy out lots of them, and then sell them immediately, and spend that money buying even more, and selling again for huge profits. Is this not an exploit? The price becomes lower as I sell many of them, but I can simply repeat the process with another unit type.

Note that the buy/sell ratio of an un-upgraded unit is much more reasonable. Buying out an un-upgraded ranger costs 435 while it sells for just 126. Buying out should probably be expensive, as it is for the un-upgraded unit, and selling should probably be punished a bit, as it is for the un-upgraded unit. I think this simply and very clearly a minor glitch in the mechanism for pricing unit upgrades with dramatic consequences.



I still don't see how Wild Walkers have anything to do with this, the problem is the same with every faction, even minor faction units: Selling upgraded units is extremely lucrative.

Empire mint and mill foundry have the same cost of 75 production and boost +5/6 and +15% gold and production respectively. However, at any point you can convert any 1 production to 3 gold by making and selling units, meaning production is worth 3 times more than gold, making the mint a terrible building for its price compared to the foundry. Until this bug is fixed.

PaleBluePixel wrote:
I'm not saying that selling units in itself is an exploit or overpowered, only that the cited price you get for these upgraded units is completely out of whack. In fact, I can buy out the unit for a lower price than I sell it for! The buy out price is 1074. The sell price is currently 1132. So I can buy out lots of them, and then sell them immediately, and spend that money buying even more, and selling again for huge profits. Is this not an exploit? The price becomes lower as I sell many of them, but I can simply repeat the process with another unit type.

Note that the buy/sell ratio of an un-upgraded unit is much more reasonable. Buying out an un-upgraded ranger costs 435 while it sells for just 126. Buying out should probably be expensive, as it is for the un-upgraded unit, and selling should probably be punished a bit, as it is for the un-upgraded unit. I think this simply and very clearly a minor glitch in the mechanism for pricing unit upgrades with dramatic consequences.



I still don't see how Wild Walkers have anything to do with this, the problem is the same with every faction, even minor faction units: Selling upgraded units is extremely lucrative.

Empire mint and mill foundry have the same cost of 75 production and boost +5/6 and +15% gold and production respectively. However, at any point you can convert any 1 production to 3 gold by making and selling units, meaning production is worth 3 times more than gold, making the mint a terrible building for its price compared to the foundry. Until this bug is fixed.

Just going to say that from what i've seen so far, the supply/demand parts of the market still need tweaking in general.

PaleBluePixel wrote:
I'm not saying that selling units in itself is an exploit or overpowered, only that the cited price you get for these upgraded units is completely out of whack. In fact, I can buy out the unit for a lower price than I sell it for! The buy out price is 1074. The sell price is currently 1132. So I can buy out lots of them, and then sell them immediately, and spend that money buying even more, and selling again for huge profits. Is this not an exploit?



The price becomes lower as I sell many of them, but I can simply repeat the process with another unit type.

Note that the buy/sell ratio of an un-upgraded unit is much more reasonable. Buying out an un-upgraded ranger costs 435 while it sells for just 126. Buying out should probably be expensive, as it is for the un-upgraded unit, and selling should probably be punished a bit, as it is for the un-upgraded unit. I think this simply and very clearly a minor glitch in the mechanism for pricing unit upgrades with dramatic consequences.

Let's be clear. If you can generate unlimited dust with buy/sell loops, that's obviously an exploit they need to fix. Can you generate unlimited dust this way?



If we aren't talking about unlimited dust, but an efficient way to convert industry to dust through the market, it gets murkier. You said you can buy a unit for 1074 and sell it for 1132. Here are some questions/things to think about:

-Roughly how many times can you do this before losing dust?

-If making the unit requires strategic resources, what is the market value of those strategic resources?

-If you are stacking the buyout reduction tech and empire plan to make this possible, what was the opportunity cost of getting them?

-Is pursuing this strategy worth giving your opponents the option of buying heavily upgraded troops of a type they might not have access to?

-If there's a Clans player in the game, is pursuing this strategy worth feeding him the entire game and potentially dealing with beefier versions of your elite troops?

PaleBluePixel wrote:
I still don't see how Wild Walkers have anything to do with this, the problem is the same with every faction, even minor faction units: Selling upgraded units is extremely lucrative.

Empire mint and mill foundry have the same cost of 75 production and boost +5/6 and +15% gold and production respectively. However, at any point you can convert any 1 production to 3 gold by making and selling units, meaning production is worth 3 times more than gold, making the mint a terrible building for its price compared to the foundry. Until this bug is fixed.

The empire you're using is relevant because not all empires are equally suited to all victory conditions. If your strategy is to convert the Wild Walkers' industry to dust through the market, which win condition are you aiming for? How does a pile of dust translate to that win? Is this strategy more efficient than just building the things you want?

Kruos wrote:
It already exists, it is called the 'stockpile'.

Except it's not at all balanced. The stockpiles are worthless and don't even scale properly with game speed. That and it needs to be researched.. what? So much in this game doesn't make sense...

TheWhetherMan wrote:
Let's be clear. If you can generate unlimited dust with buy/sell loops, that's obviously an exploit they need to fix. Can you generate unlimited dust this way?

If we aren't talking about unlimited dust, but an efficient way to convert industry to dust through the market, it gets murkier. You said you can buy a unit for 1074 and sell it for 1132. Here are some questions/things to think about:

-Roughly how many times can you do this before losing dust?

-If making the unit requires strategic resources, what is the market value of those strategic resources?

-If you are stacking the buyout reduction tech and empire plan to make this possible, what was the opportunity cost of getting them?

-Is pursuing this strategy worth giving your opponents the option of buying heavily upgraded troops of a type they might not have access to?

-If there's a Clans player in the game, is pursuing this strategy worth feeding him the entire game and potentially dealing with beefier versions of your elite troops?



The empire you're using is relevant because not all empires are equally suited to all victory conditions. If your strategy is to convert the Wild Walkers' industry to dust through the market, which win condition are you aiming for? How does a pile of dust translate to that win? Is this strategy more efficient than just building the things you want?

I haven't tried doing in unlimited times, but free cash even for a few turns is very obviously not what the devs intended. This is cash worth many times what heroes cost on the market. As stated it takes no strategic resources at all, I use tier 3 iron equipment. But the point is not that buying out these armies is overpowered, the point is that selling them on the market gives you way too much when you produced them the normal way, making them much more lucrative than any dust-related building you will ever produce again.

My strategy is to use armies to destroy my enemies. A huge pile of dust translates into upkeep for many large armies in the field zerging the enemy, which is what happened. But that is not how I want to play the game, without this exploit I could only afford 1 large army. I met some of the units I had sold in a minor faction army, but they were very easy to counter. Besides my former units will be used to destroy the units of the other 6 factions in the game as well.



Again, which faction I play is irrelevant, I could do the same thing as Roving Clans and probably make even more. Or Broken Lords. Are you still seriously suggesting that the devs should not decrease the selling price for upgraded units?

PaleBluePixel wrote:
I haven't tried doing in unlimited times, but free cash even for a few turns is very obviously not what the devs intended. This is cash worth many times what heroes cost on the market. As stated it takes no strategic resources at all, I use tier 3 iron equipment. But the point is not that buying out these armies is overpowered, the point is that selling them on the market gives you way too much when you produced them the normal way, making them much more lucrative than any dust-related building you will ever produce again.

You are looking at the reward (lots of dust) while ignoring some of the costs (please reread my posts). There's more going on here than dust per industry. After you build a dust building, the city can build other things. You are locking down at least one high industry city to farm dust. When you build a dust building, your opponents get nothing. When you sell mercenaries, your opponents can buy them. If one of your opponents is playing Roving Clans, he is paid on the spot (this pleases him).

PaleBluePixel wrote:
My strategy is to use armies to destroy my enemies. A huge pile of dust translates into upkeep for many large armies in the field zerging the enemy, which is what happened. But that is not how I want to play the game, without this exploit I could only afford 1 large army. I met some of the units I had sold in a minor faction army, but they were very easy to counter. Besides my former units will be used to destroy the units of the other 6 factions in the game as well.

To be blunt, you are playing against the game's weak AI on standard difficulty. Your situation this game tells us next to nothing about balance. In my MP games, I haven't had enough spare industry as any empire to farm the market. I've sold wounded, outdated units. As the Cultists, I've sold many minor faction units in the mid and late game, when my DPT was around -100. Why don't you come out to the next Tuesday Night Fight? You'll have fun and get to test the market in a more meaningful setting.

PaleBluePixel wrote:
Again, which faction I play is irrelevant, I could do the same thing as Roving Clans and probably make even more. Or Broken Lords. Are you still seriously suggesting that the devs should not decrease the selling price for upgraded units?

Yes I am. It's possible that they should tweak the numbers, but I haven't seen enough in my games or in this thread to convince me that selling a stream of upgraded units to the marketplace is highly overpowered or an exploit. In fact, it's a horrible idea in many situations.

TheWhetherMan wrote:


Yes I am. It's possible that they should tweak the numbers, but I haven't seen enough in my games or in this thread to convince me that selling a stream of upgraded units to the marketplace is highly overpowered or an exploit. In fact, it's a horrible idea in many situations.

An exploit doesn't have to be a good idea in every single situation. But fine, whatever. I don't have more time to spend discussing this. You don't feel that buying tons units only to sell them in the next round for huge profits is evidence of an exploit. I think it is. I don't care anymore. bye.

Can units you sell in the marketplace wind up being used against you?

steveg700 wrote:
Can units you sell in the marketplace wind up being used against you?

I met a unit I had sold on the marketplace, along with two centaurs.

What is the most useless and easily countered unit in the game? Would be fun to sell it to my enemies, only to destroy it a bit later, as when the US sold tons of weapons to Iraq before the gulf war. Except these are useless and faulty weapons.

Most useless unit? Cuiltist preachers.

With that said if you are rigged for indu production and then sell tier 2 stock units you can very quickly have 3-4 heroes and all luxuries.

I tried this on my most recent game. Impossible difficulty went from being a serious challenge to a complete cakewalk. I wouldn't quite call it an exploit, but most definitely is something that needs to be changed. Exactly as PaleBluePixel said, I went from being just barely able to support one decent army to being able to support five, plus being able to assign heroes to each of them, plus being able to retrofit every unit as new techs became available, plus being able to increase research and production at cities much faster than would otherwise have been the case, etc, etc, etc.

theweatherman knows his stuff.

Whooboy...



Playing Cultists on Impossible Difficulty, Fast Gamespeed, I could sell fully upgraded preachers (73 prod) for 170+ dust starting turn 20-ish, era II. I could produce one per turn while still having enough workers to earn a lot of dust and influence by ordinary means. On the other hands, mercenaries still sold for much more modest prices, despite themselves being tier 2 units.



Either faction units produced in a city are sold at full rather than half(ish) value, or the accessories (necklace, ring) are hideously overvalued. And being preachers, I had absolutely no fear of them being used against me; rather the opposite!



Please tell me this will be looked at, or that some to me unknown factor in MP balances it.

TheWhetherMan wrote:
You said you can buy a unit for 1074 and sell it for 1132. Here are some questions/things to think about:

-Roughly how many times can you do this before losing dust?

-If making the unit requires strategic resources, what is the market value of those strategic resources?

-If you are stacking the buyout reduction tech and empire plan to make this possible, what was the opportunity cost of getting them?

-Is pursuing this strategy worth giving your opponents the option of buying heavily upgraded troops of a type they might not have access to?

-If there's a Clans player in the game, is pursuing this strategy worth feeding him the entire game and potentially dealing with beefier versions of your elite troops?





The empire you're using is relevant because not all empires are equally suited to all victory conditions. If your strategy is to convert the Wild Walkers' industry to dust through the market, which win condition are you aiming for? How does a pile of dust translate to that win? Is this strategy more efficient than just building the things you want?

none of this should matter at all. If you can buy something then immediately sell it back for more, then that's just straight up broken. It doesn't matter how many times you can do it or if it actually helps you reach a victory condition.



that is not how market/shop systems are supposed to work in any kind of realistic(or even unrealistic) way.

PaleBluePixel wrote:
An exploit doesn't have to be a good idea in every single situation. But fine, whatever. I don't have more time to spend discussing this. You don't feel that buying tons units only to sell them in the next round for huge profits is evidence of an exploit. I think it is. I don't care anymore. bye.

Taking the last line of my post, basically a side note, disagreeing with it and then saying you're above continuing the conversation... and then posting again in the thread... c'mon PaleBluePixel, I want to be on good terms with people here.

Sinsect wrote:
Whooboy...



Playing Cultists on Impossible Difficulty, Fast Gamespeed, I could sell fully upgraded preachers (73 prod) for 170+ dust starting turn 20-ish, era II. I could produce one per turn while still having enough workers to earn a lot of dust and influence by ordinary means. On the other hands, mercenaries still sold for much more modest prices, despite themselves being tier 2 units.



Either faction units produced in a city are sold at full rather than half(ish) value, or the accessories (necklace, ring) are hideously overvalued. And being preachers, I had absolutely no fear of them being used against me; rather the opposite!

You are shutting down production in your only city to make 170 dust per turn, plus whatever the extra workers are making. In your game, do you think this was a better use of that industry than building real units and razing cities? At this point, did you have enough industry and science stockpiles to pop one of each per turn? In a MP game, if you do this for more than a few turns while another Cultist player is cranking out Nameless Guards, my money is on him beating you.

Blissey1 wrote:
none of this should matter at all. If you can buy something then immediately sell it back for more, then that's just straight up broken. It doesn't matter how many times you can do it or if it actually helps you reach a victory condition.



that is not how market/shop systems are supposed to work in any kind of realistic(or even unrealistic) way.

In a thread about something supposedly being an exploit or highly overpowered, of course it matters.



I just did some tests. Both with Prisoners tech, no previous sales or purchases. First was noob/fast, second was normal/normal. In both, full tier 2 iron and full tier 3 iron Warlocks sold for less than the buyout price.



So what am I missing? Does the hero skill that makes units cost X% less production push the buyout cost lower than the sale cost? Did an AI buy up units of the same type just before PaleBluePixel checked its buyout cost and sale value?

TheWhetherMan wrote:
If you think selling to the market as the Wild Walkers is overpowered, I encourage you to play a free for all with a competent Roving Clans player.

Most games do not feature a free for all with a competent Roving Clans player. For those that do, your point may be valid, but this is a minority of games played.



Saying that it works when rare conditions are met is skirting the issue.

Not sure why this has turned into an argument, and the "you're bad, therefore your opinion (..)" is a bit unnecessary. You can see there is a problem simply comparing the ratio of investment-to-return on selling units (particularly those with high tier/production only equipment) relative to stockpiles. The former certainly can be much more lucrative than the latter, and probably shouldn't be.



On opportunity cost: cities with especially high production often end up with little useful to do anyway (especially when your active army units cost 40+ strategic resources).

On creating units for enemies: You can easily sell units that aren't likely to be a threat to you, e.g. slow moving units against your archer army. Or units that are objectively bad (some units have comparatively poor stats for their unit type).

Smauler wrote:
Saying that it works when rare conditions are met is skirting the issue.

By "it" do you mean selling units for more than their buyout cost? I wasn't able to do that with the settings I described earlier. If someone would tell me what to do to replicate that, I'd appreciate it. I want to see it for myself before continuing that half of this thread.

synra wrote:
Not sure why this has turned into an argument, and the "you're bad, therefore your opinion (..)" is a bit unnecessary. You can see there is a problem simply comparing the ratio of investment-to-return on selling units (particularly those with high tier/production only equipment) relative to stockpiles. The former certainly can be much more lucrative than the latter, and probably shouldn't be.



On opportunity cost: cities with especially high production often end up with little useful to do anyway (especially when your active army units cost 40+ strategic resources).

On creating units for enemies: You can easily sell units that aren't likely to be a threat to you, e.g. slow moving units against your archer army. Or units that are objectively bad (some units have comparatively poor stats for their unit type).

Again, in MP I've never had enough spare industry to farm the market. I'm guessing that most of this market farming is happening after players have their games in the bag. It does sound like selling units allows players to convert industry to dust too efficiently, but I'm not convinced that's winning people many games they would've otherwise lost. It certainly didn't make a difference in PaleBluePixel's game.



It's true that dealing with mercenaries isn't always a good reason to avoid selling units, I was just trying to expand the conversation to include all (possible) costs.