I have a proposal: Lets nerf the market.
It is well in meta right now to buy food to get a faster castle age timing. But isnt that counterintuitive or shouldnt “clean” eco without market usage be rewarded?
The theme came up again lately with a lot of players going open fc on arabia, which is only possible due to the market. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0oMzd3s9EU
We can try to help that, if we bump up the trading fee in dark and feudal age to 40%. In Castle age it should remain 30%. So im proposing a staggered market fee depending on the age that you are in. Like this the market abuse wouldnt be that viable any more, but still there would be cases, where you can go for the market.
For the context: Seeding costs 60 wood and than you gather 100 food from the farm. So you have to gather 160 res to get 100food. If you use the market, you can buy 100 food for 130 Gold. So to get the first 100 food, you have to mine less res, if you buy the food at the market.
So initially you need 421s of vill working time to get 100 Food via Farming.
If you want to buy the 100 food, you need 295s of vill working time.
With my proposed market fee of 40% instead of 30% you need 318s of vill working time. Thats a slight nerf to the market. You are still faster in gaining food by using the market, but the difference is smaller and farms are a longterm food source, where the market is just a punctual help to click up. I would think, that like that it would feel like more of a trade off (no pun intended), if you use the market or not to click up after my proposed change. What do you guys think?
Does the market need to be nerfed?
In my opinion it does!