Again continuing with my obsession for rebalancing player's power.
I intend to use that kind of "share & pick" system in one of my (amateur) board game.

I also assume a few new things are implemented in the game, like variable amounts for reserves.

- Say the market owner raised the taxes to 25%. After a few turn, the sum of these taxes makes say 1000.
- Say there's 4 players in this game. Player 1 leads to score, then player 2, then player 3, then player 4. Player 3 is also the market owner.

The market owner would have the right to make 4 packages of those 1000.
Then he asks the player 4 to choose the one he wants, then he choose one, then player 2 choose one, then player 1 take the last one.

=> we can see that could not really work, since the market owner, who get to pick second package could just make packages of 499, 498, 2, 1.

But:
Now imagine the taxes would raise , , and .

Say that 25% tax raised 1000 + 800 + 600 + 800 (random numbers). That make a grand total of 3200.

If the market owner, when sharing those 3200 have to make equal packages of 800, he could choose for exemple :
Package 1 : 800
Package 2 : 200 + 300 + 300
Package 3 : 300 + 500
Package 4 : 800

Then player 4 pick the first, he choose the package he need the more. Then player 3 (market owner), pick the one he prefers (and he had to double-guess "I knew that player 4 knew I wanted this one, but I knew that player 4 prefered that one"), etc player pick up to player 1, who get a package that he may not need in the end.

All shares are equal . That will tend again to
- boost the last player
- "nerf" the leading one ("800 are meh when the tax got me 1200 : I'm more like yay for 2000 guys !")

Of course, if the leading player is the market owner, he will tend to makes tax goes to 0% (because, hey, who really in needs of 800 when you're allready rich ?), and the last player to score would tend to make the taxes goes to 25% (because hey, I don't have a good trade system anyway).

But this could lead to political problems with your approval in the senate, so would you really raise the taxes if you're under say an industrial regime ? Would you really removes taxes if you're under an ecological regime ? Though choices ! :)

The regime could also decide of the nature of you would tax. So an industrial senate would maybe raise tax. Ecological would raise maybe. "etc".

Would you try to conquer the market owner place + raise the taxes + try to pirate traderoutes ? Or would you try to get that place and make 0% tax and devellop your leading empire, getting new ennemies in the process ?

Also, last thing to add a little of depth to this (if not enough :p), packages sharing could not be made equal, but proportionnal to the scores. Or maybe a trading technology would allow this, I don't know.

For exemple :
- player 1 got a score of 1100
- player 2 got a score of 900
- player 3 (market owner) got a score of 700
- player 4 got a score of 500 (total of scores are 3200... random numbers but just like the raised by taxes in the previous exemple, to make proportional calculations simple here :))

Then player 3, which is still the market owner in our exemple would have the right to make "strictly proportionnal to the score" shares. So, by magic of mathematics, in my exemple, there would be a 1100 package, a 900 package, a 700 package and a last 400 package.

Player 4, which is the last player in score, pick the first.
Now he WOULD take the 1100 package, right ? But... Unless the market owner understood perfectly that player 4 in fact need mostly food and share a juicy 800 + 100 package... Player 4 will make the choice to pick that 900 package OR he will get the 1100 one... But is it really sure ?

That is not all :) :) :)
Now players picked their packages. What if... What if they had to secure "physically" the packages back to their home ?
Are you "alien enough" to pick that juicy 1100 package and escort it to your home to profit of it or will you let it go to another one because you can't secure this first piracy target ? Did you forget to pay the pirates, or not, last turn ? Are you the "pirate owner" ?

Mmm... There could be a "pirate owner" title after all too !!

:)

This is all now.

What do you guys think of this ?

Hi,



This idea is interesting on several points, but as you stated, it seems to be more adapted for a boardgame than a game system in ES2 :).



The first thing is how the market is envisionned in the game as a system: it is meant to be an alternative way to trade resources, access units, etc. and should not become a systematic mandatory stop for a player during his turn routine (although it will be recommended to check it regularly!) The tax adjustment for the owner is meant to be used as a semi-passive advantage.



Another thing is how taxes affect transactions: currently it's all transparent and instantaneous, based on the paid only; so we have no notion of reserve for taxes. This idea recoups with the stockpiles from EL, but we decided to cut them from ES2 for now as it seemed a hard to use system.



These are the main issues of why this system would not necessarily fit in the vision we have for the game currently :)



On the proposed system itself, I do fint it interesting as it could have social play impacts (especially in a board setting). My only worry is the micromanagement it might require from the market owner, and how to compute resources considering the % for the taxes or in the proportional case for score (again, in a board setting :)).

jhell wrote:
Hi,



This idea is interesting on several points, but as you stated, it seems to be more adapted for a boardgame than a game system in ES2 :).



The first thing is how the market is envisionned in the game as a system: it is meant to be an alternative way to trade resources, access units, etc. and should not become a systematic mandatory stop for a player during his turn routine (although it will be recommended to check it regularly!) The tax adjustment for the owner is meant to be used as a semi-passive advantage.



Another thing is how taxes affect transactions: currently it's all transparent and instantaneous, based on the paid only; so we have no notion of reserve for taxes. This idea recoups with the stockpiles from EL, but we decided to cut them from ES2 for now as it seemed a hard to use system.



These are the main issues of why this system would not necessarily fit in the vision we have for the game currently :)



On the proposed system itself, I do fint it interesting as it could have social play impacts (especially in a board setting). My only worry is the micromanagement it might require from the market owner, and how to compute resources considering the % for the taxes or in the proportional case for score (again, in a board setting :)).

I understand all your reasons and agree with most of them. There could be "IHM"-ways to minimize the load (things could automaticly stockpile until one trademaster want to share them, if the role switch or stay say each 10 turn, if you forget this then the next trademaster would be happy to share this for you) but yes, it seems to be a whole new game :)



Raising non- tax could be an avoidable problem : a player's political regime could choose for you what are the taxes. Say industial regime then all your transaction raise tax. The main problem is you have 6 regimes, which is not really "easy to use" in distribution in 4 tax combinaisons. Ex : all transaction need then depending of your regime one another is taxed and a second one is taxed but a little less. That makes 6 categories.

Exemple : industrial regime tax , then then . Military regime would tax as any regime, then then . There is 6 combinaisons of this but it's not easy to understand you're rigth.



Of course, if you drop the reserves "items", then this system fails so it may be no need to dig this ;)



I also liked the social part of this that seemed to emerge all by itself while writing that thread, it seems to be a good concept, I will use this in my boardgame :)

Damn, this one is the second one "I have to write before it vanish" but time is always missing :)