TheWhetherMan wrote:
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.

In the test I ran the sale price tended to increase over time while the buy-out price remained constant. So, perhaps PaleBluePixel's example came from a late game scenario and yours from a relatively early point in the game.

TheWhetherMan wrote:
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.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was able to win on prior games with Huge Pangaea map, normal speed, Impossible difficulty but doing so was a serious challenge. After producing a few mercs in tier 3 iron to sell in the market, however, the challenge was very significantly reduced. I was able to buy heroes, resources and buildings that I otherwise wouldn't have. This gave all aspects of my overall economy a very significant boost for exactly the reason both you and PaleBluePixel stated. I was able to convert industry to dust too efficiently. Would I have won the game otherwise? Yeah, probably. Did this make it a whole lot easier to win? Absolutely. Would it work in multi-player against a competent opponent? I don't know, but if you want to set up a 1 on 1 game I'm willing to find out.

It seems overpowered



Necrophages/Cultists/Wildwalkers can do this easily



Currently units sold on the marketplace get erased at the end of the turn it seems, so no one is buying them and they're not upgraded nor can they be retrofitted, and they're also REALLY expensive, so never worth purchasing.



Players playing these races seem to need to take advantage of a snowball effect, else you fail?



Personally I feel poor balance



I wouldn't doubt the fix would be a huge nerf to unit sale prices without any consideration towards how it will affect the above mentioned Factions.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was able to win on prior games with Huge Pangaea map, normal speed, Impossible difficulty but doing so was a serious challenge. After producing a few mercs in tier 3 iron to sell in the market, however, the challenge was very significantly reduced. I was able to buy heroes, resources and buildings that I otherwise wouldn't have. This gave all aspects of my overall economy a very significant boost for exactly the reason both you and PaleBluePixel stated. I was able to convert industry to dust too efficiently. Would I have won the game otherwise? Yeah, probably. Did this make it a whole lot easier to win? Absolutely. Would it work in multi-player against a competent opponent? I don't know, but if you want to set up a 1 on 1 game I'm willing to find out.

I tried it out as Broken Lords against a human opponent. If they know you are doing this (which they were) then there are many things they can do.



They can pick up

• Cuts both Way trait (they also take 8% of your sales)
• Market Ban trait which prevents you from selling units
• Timing attack in mid-tier 2 since that is about when your unit prices cross over the buyout price
• Could try to beat you to the Necro heroes which have unit industry reduction trait
  
  

I've never done the buyout -> sell. That's a little too much for me, but for example last game I was building Telsem Warlocks for 675 production, and then selling them for ~1700 dust each. My town was able to produce ~3+ a turn later on (large town/cellular mutation). I do hope it gets reined in a bit

Wow, awesome catch. I tried this after reading the thread and regardless of what you want to label it, it definitely needs attention. For those that are used to city specialization from Civ, this is especially noticeable. So last night I had 4 cities, one of which was located smack in the middle of high-Dust terrain. One of the others was in a very lucky cluster of anomalies and pumping out research like mad. The other two were more evenly spread out on fids and both served as unit producing factories. (AI game, not multiplayer in case that matters) I decided to switch the city with higher production to produce and sell units. I was quickly out-doing the dust city pretty handily. If a production city can leave a dust city... well... in the dust, then something is definitely wrong. It doesn't matter what else I *could* be doing with that city, because I can use that dust to make up almost any opportunity cost. You can buy units, buildings and resources. You can buy research I think through the stockpiles. Not sure about Influence or Diplomacy. One of my friends approaches every game he plays (computer, board, whatever) the same way... how can I buy my way to victory? This fits that bill.

Here's something to consider - What would you rather sell to the marketplace (for any other player to buy). Stockpiles... or your units?

The price should decrease the more of your units are on the market, but i agree that their price is much too high.

PaleBluePixel wrote:
I would suggest enabling a "convert industry to wealth/science" option and greatly reduce the price you get for your units, especially when they are upgraded a bit.

It already exists, it is called the 'stockpile'.

Yeah, stockpiles will be more lucrative for you. They sell for around 750 each, and won't take any additional resources. (so you could sell off your strategic resources which were used in making archers instead)

I don't see this as game breaking because with a few good cities you can be making 1-2k dust per turn anyway

verax wrote:
Yeah, stockpiles will be more lucrative for you. They sell for around 750 each, and won't take any additional resources. (so you could sell off your strategic resources which were used in making archers instead)

Each stockpile costs me 1200 production, and sells for 750 dust. Each upgraded archer costs 375 production, thus can be created much more frequently, and sells for 1069 dust. They don't require any specific tech and are available immediately. Nor do they require any strategic resources - as I said they are only made with tier 3 iron equipment. Clearly creating and selling upgraded units is many times more lucrative than selling stockpiles.

blau808 wrote:
I don't see this as game breaking because with a few good cities you can be making 1-2k dust per turn anyway

I disagree. Era 3 is still early game, and when all workers in my main city (i have 3 cities) are producing dust, they make a total of 90 dust. My single army and four heroes are draining the treasury dry, with a total of minus -20 each turn when all cities concentrate on dust. However I can very easily compensate for that by creating and selling upgraded archers, giving me over 1069 dust every three turns. Thus one single city is capable of paying for 6 armies (my only army costs 51 upkeep, my heroes 106 upkeep), even with all my workers assigned to dust or science.

Yep I noticed this too. Personally it feels odd you can sell units into the market anyway. Resources I get... I mean this does happen in real life, in a sense, but yes they're valued a bit too high.

Simply reducing the sell price to make them less lucrative than stockpiles will solve the problem, especially for units with upgrades.



Also, they should appear in your enemies' armies and attack you a few rounds later!

How do i notify the devs about this problem?

Oh, there's a similar broken thing with regards to Proliferators for Necrophages. The Foragers they create are completely useless due to terrible upgrades and no options to retrofit them, but they still sell for about 1k each, which is very nice considering that one fight with some minor faction enemies can yield four or six of them easily, and you can do this at a stage where your turn income is probably still in the low-mid hundreds.

They have to work on market a little, but when someone start to buy these units you sold and attack you will all of them... you are ruined.. and if no one buy them then there should be fast drop of price. Cause they are abundant on market.

myrec wrote:
They have to work on market a little, but when someone start to buy these units you sold and attack you will all of them... you are ruined..

Especially if the buyer is Roving Clans

Playing as wild walkers (in era 3) I found myself with nothing left to build, but did not want to waste industry, so I tried to pump out units just to sell them again - similar to the "convert to 50% of hammer to gold" function in Civ5. Each of my Dekari archers sell for 131 dust and take only 1 turn to build, which is very lucrative (even though none of my workers were allocated to industry). Much worse however, I created a new class of Dekari archers with all the tier 3 (iron) equipment - and these ones sell for 1096 dust, and only takes 3 turn to build. In other words, every three turns I can rake in 1069 dust, although it requires some micromanagement.



I would suggest enabling a "convert industry to wealth/science" option and greatly reduce the price you get for your units, especially when they are upgraded a bit.

Mansen wrote:
Here's something to consider - What would you rather sell to the marketplace (for any other player to buy). Stockpiles... or your units?

Tough question. In my oppinion, stockpiles would be the lesser evil.

Another idea: sell a mediocre unit en masse in the marketplace (low tier equipped archer, or something like that) while producing the counter-unit for your own armies. Then lean back and wait for the slaughter to begin...