Rework to the markets

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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Markets are inefficient for their primary purpose (Sell and buy).

Currently the markets only serve to make market improvements, and although you can sell and buy, you end up losing more than you earn as prices inflate if you buy too much, or they devalue if you sell too much. And these values ​​are never reestablished.

How to improve them?

Just as African cattle reestablish their values ​​over time, the price of resources also reestablish over time.

The ‘advanced market’ card makes this process faster. In addition, this card makes commercial route trade posts provide a little more resources (+ 10-15% (?)).
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I have always thought that there should be some interaction between the markets and the trading posts of the trade route and the native or local populations, so I would suggest the following:

That the commercial positions of all kinds make that the values ​​are restored faster and buying is cheaper, while selling is a little more expensive.

The diligence upgrade makes the values ​​restore a little faster as well, and the iron horse upgrade a little more as well.

But if you are allied with a local population, its effects will be slightly greater than the effects of a route TP. You can also buy cheaper and sell more expensive.

The effects of TP will not be stacked. That is, the effects are not multiplied if you control several TPs on the route, or several TPs from the same local population.

I think this is easy to implement and would help a lot when you want to balance your economy or get out of trouble. It also makes the natives more useful.

NOTE: I have already talked about it, but I think it deserves its own forum to better discuss it.

Other mechanics that I would suggest:

Local trade:
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You can create up to two commercial carts in your market that will move from your market to a TP generating a slight drip of coins per second. Route TPs will generate very few coins, but local towns will generate a little more.

The market must be relatively far from the TPs. Maybe at 40 range?

The enemy will be able to attack them, so the route TP will continue to be better. In addition, your income will not be too much so that the route TPs continue to be better.

Taxes:
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You will have access to 3 buttons in your market that will allow you to exchange coins in exchange for experience once you do the improvement of ‘Mercantilism’ in your church or mosque. (Civilizations without access to the improvement of ‘Mercantilism’ may obtain it in another way).

The Mercantilism upgrade exchanges 1,500 coins for 2,000 experience, so I’ll assume 1.5 coins equals 2 experience.

These buttons will work in a similar way to how the Asian consulate settings that allow sacrificing resources in exchange for exports. Example:
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Button 1: You sacrifice 5% of coins you collect for second.
Button 2: You sacrifice 10% of the coins you collect for second.
Button 3: You sacrifice 20% of the coins you collect for second.

That’s it and I want to see what you think.

3 Likes
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Great post with some awesome ideas. You’d have to be careful balancing it as I can see some potential issues for civs that can start tp and the experience buying as well could cause some issues but on the whole I really like your suggestions especially the change to advanced market and buy and sell rates getting better over time.

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I feel bad, but I’m gonna pick apart most of these ideas :frowning_face:

The values do actually reestablish, it just doesn’t happen over time, it happens through supply and demand. If you sell a lot of food, the purchase cost for food actually goes down and vice versa. As one trade gets more unfavourable, the other actually gets to become favourable, so if it restored over time, you would also be losing out on a favourable trade.

There’s already an Advanced Trade Post card, so this would be cutting into something that could be a function of that instead. I think Advanced Market and Advanced Trade Post unlocking some additional techs might be a better route to go to achieve something like what you’re suggesting here.

I think the role for carts like this would be for sending tribute to allies instead of trading like other AoE games.

This is already basically what Trade Posts do. When you choose to gather experience from them, you are giving up on the other resources they can deliver.

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I understand, but what if you only need a specific resource and nothing else?

For example we are at the end of the game and I only require wood. I think it would be unproductive to sell wood just to reduce its price. Ideally, it should be readjusted over time.

This improves your trading positions, but not your rate of income. Although I agree that the card could provide some improvement that enables a higher rate of revenue per route TP.

It would be great, but in exchange for what …? Warriors …? Experience …?

I would say that the approach is different. Unlike TPs, you will have to sacrifice economy and will only be affordable after investing 1500 gold, so it could be a new option after mid-game. This could help in the treaty to get all shipments out before the countdown ends, or for a highly shipping-focused strategy of supremacy.

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Tributing resources to allies is taxed at ~12% but sends the resources immediately. If you could instead, put those resources onto a wagon that could be physically sent that could have the possibility of 100% efficient transfer (balanced by the time to send and risk of interception).

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I actually do like the idea of the rates slowly resetting towards the starting rate globally, makes it slightly more profitable to gather one resource and then selling it long term.

Though I think for it to be worth it, it has to be decently fast.

the math works out such that i think after 2 wood buy its already better to just gather the wood so say after that 2 sell, how long would it take for that to get back to the original state? 2-5 mins or 5-10 mins

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As a reference I used African cattle. But African cattle have some improvements that make the values reestablish faster.

In the case of markets, we would use the ‘advanced market’ card, TP on the road, and TP in a native town, which would presumably be better than TP on the road.

I think around 4-5 minutes by default. But imagine it could be reduced to 2-3 minutes.

TeenagedApple0 African cattle seem to gain value at almost 1 / s with the ‘Advanced Livestock Market’ card and I suppose with some improvements.

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It would also be nice if markets that do not have a berry picking upgrade do.

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Yeah, the food market upgrades should improve berries too as they are natural resources.

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no, the assymetric markets all do different things. euros get steel traps, natives get the farm techs that improve berries hunts and farms at a larger cost, and non-japanese asians have their weaker cheaper techs, and the more expensive 2 on the right that buff all natural resources. Each civ can utilize berries in different ways, but they’re not common on most maps so its not really an issue most of the time. In fact, aoe3 is the only age game that has any berry related techs at all

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Although I would like to see this implemented in all factions, perhaps it could be unique to some future civilization that its economy is focused on markets. The truth would be interesting.

What civilization could it be? It could be related to the silk road or something like that.

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The ‘royal house of wettin’ offers an upgrade where it restores the markets prices. But I think the markets should always do this passively and slowly.

This improvement called ‘leipzig fair’ in addition to restore prices at once, could make the restore speed faster by 10% (?).
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I think trading like the other AOEs, with native TP would be a good mechanic for the ‘tycoon’ game mode.