Help me understand local market better

[cupoe]

So have been playing with this new major patch and I'm struggling with this new local market price. Played as Egypt, I made a lot of coal mines but for some reason all neighboring province have very high market price for coal. How do we deal with this? Do we have to make all the related factories on same province with the resources now?

[Alex]

Originally posted by cupoe:

Really want to play the game, but I dont think I can find it fun with current illogical local pricing mechanic.

I've tried to improve the MAPI system, either by tying it to transport capacity, or through creating a MAPI "corridor". Unfortunately, both approaches proved to be impossible to implement, so I simply added bonuses to infrastructure buildings. Maybe they'll change the system in the next patch.

[terchong004]

Originally posted by Alex:

Originally posted by cupoe:

Really want to play the game, but I dont think I can find it fun with current illogical local pricing mechanic.

I've tried to improve the MAPI system, either by tying it to transport capacity, or through creating a MAPI "corridor". Unfortunately, both approaches proved to be impossible to implement, so I simply added bonuses to infrastructure buildings. Maybe they'll change the system in the next patch.

What about feeding the difference between local price and market price multiplied by buy and sell orders into the urban center? Though this would mean all states start with minimum level of 1 urban center instead of zero (which does make sense).

[Alex]

Originally posted by terchong004:

What about feeding the difference between local price and market price multiplied by buy and sell orders into the urban center? Though this would mean all states start with minimum level of 1 urban center instead of zero (which does make sense).

This would require:
1. An overhaul of the urban centers. How early they start to pop up, how many "urbanization" is required to create a level, their output, general re-balancing and so on.
2. A massive yet jury-rigged system to calculate the costs, and feed them back into the province through event-assigned modifiers. Of course, this might not even work, the internals of this game are a bit wacky. Or it could work too well and cause even more lag.
3. Finally, find a good variable to represent those costs. Should they go into transport? Services? A wholly new position? That will certainly screw up compatibility with other mods.
4. Oh, and don't forget that the computer would need to "understand" this system as well. Right now, the AI is rudimentary at best, and does most things related to construction through a simple "predicted earnings" check.

Overall, that's almost half a DLC already, and I won't try to tackle it before the next patch. Maybe they'll improve the system? For example, by getting rid of MAPI and making all buildings consume infrastructure AND transport instead by adding a "logistics" production method category.

[terchong004]

Hmm... An interesting thought exercise at least...
There are a few ways to simplify.

1. An overhaul of the urban centers. How early they start to pop up, how many "urbanization" is required to create a level, their output, general re-balancing and so on.

I would say there's no need to do anything other than start urban centers as level 1 instead of level 0. Everything else can remain the same.

2. A massive yet jury-rigged system to calculate the costs, and feed them back into the province through event-assigned modifiers. Of course, this might not even work, the internals of this game are a bit wacky. Or it could work too well and cause even more lag.

I would try and use the local prices table for the data.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198035484541/screenshot/2294088243484934777/
(Local price - market price) x order balance
This will be the additional value that we want the urban center to earn.
Trade centers are already doing this so it's not even additional work.
Or even set up a "local" trade center for this.

3. Finally, find a good variable to represent those costs. Should they go into transport? Services? A wholly new position? That will certainly screw up compatibility with other mods.

Is this absolutely necessary? The gold mine gives money from minting in addition to the gold "goods". So perhaps we can do something similar to add this income to the urban center. Creating a specific good would be somewhat complicated because we wouldn't want this good to be affected by production PM or inputs.

4. Oh, and don't forget that the computer would need to "understand" this system as well. Right now, the AI is rudimentary at best, and does most things related to construction through a simple "predicted earnings" check.

I disagree. The AI can and should ignore this completely. It doesn't affect any decision making process. Even players won't need to pay any attention. The only purpose of this mechanism is to prevent the loss of value resulting from the price differences in one state vs another state. Instead, the pricing value difference is earned by the pops working in the urban center or the trade center, i.e. traders, logistics, supply chain.

[Alex]

Originally posted by terchong004:

I would say there's no need to do anything other than start urban centers as level 1 instead of level 0. Everything else can remain the same.

A single urban center wouldn't be able to provide enough transport or services capacity for this system to work. But if we increase those values, then the whole system needs to be rebalanced, since it'll clash with the subsistence farms and railroads.

Originally posted by terchong004:

I would try and use the local prices table for the data.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198035484541/screenshot/2294088243484934777/
(Local price - market price) x order balance
This will be the additional value that we want the urban center to earn.
Trade centers are already doing this so it's not even additional work.
Or even set up a "local" trade center for this.

This might work, although I'm against adding even more trade centers. Those gobble up way too many pops already.

Originally posted by terchong004:

Is this absolutely necessary? The gold mine gives money from minting in addition to the gold "goods". So perhaps we can do something similar to add this income to the urban center. Creating a specific good would be somewhat complicated because we wouldn't want this good to be affected by production PM or inputs.

Gold minting as a substitute? Hmm, I'll investigate that.

Originally posted by terchong004:

I disagree. The AI can and should ignore this completely. It doesn't affect any decision making process. Even players won't need to pay any attention. The only purpose of this mechanism is to prevent the loss of value resulting from the price differences in one state vs another state. Instead, the pricing value difference is earned by the pops working in the urban center or the trade center, i.e. traders, logistics, supply chain.

If that doesn't affect anything, then what's the point of doing it in the first place? No, transferring the loss into transport or services should do something, namely, make the goods more expensive in a way the AI might understand. It is barely able to play the game as is.

Anyway, we need to see what they might improve in the next patch first.

[TheCollector]

Is it really worth all the effort?
How fast can you research up to MAPI 95% and what small effect does MAPI then have on your economy? It should be only a few percent GDP.

If you want to simulate transport, you would also need to create jobs for people to earn the money.
I would rather try to give ports and railways or excess infrastructure a diminishing effect on the local prize modifier " ( 1 - MAPI ) " .
eg
0 railways -> ( 1 - MAPI )
1 railway -> ( 1 - MAPI ) / 2
2 railways -> ( 1 - MAPI ) / 3
...

[terchong004]

Originally posted by TheCollector:

Is it really worth all the effort?
How fast can you research up to MAPI 95% and what small effect does MAPI then have on your economy? It should be only a few percent GDP..

In my previous post:

What happens here is that, in state A, there are a lot of sell orders and no buy orders. Therefore the local price is (85% x 20 x 100%) + (15% x 20 x 25%) = 17.75. That means that the logging camps sell wood at 17.75 each.

In state B, there are no sell orders, but a lot of buy orders. Therefore the local price is (85% x 20 x 100%) + (15% x 20 x 175%) = 22.25. That means the furniture factory buys wood at 22.25 each. There is a value of 4.5 that is lost.

Apply this to the whole economy and you're potentially losing 22.5% of GDP.

Zeppelin tech increase MAPI. This is tech you can get after 1900. In real life, it's a WW1 tech.

[Alex]

Originally posted by terchong004:

Zeppelin tech increase MAPI. This is tech you can get after 1900. In real life, it's a WW1 tech.

Yeah, but how can zeppelins even affect MAPI? Can you imagine a zeppelin big enough to carry any significant amounts of resources? Or the size of the blast if that thing has an accident?

The devs simply threw out a half-finished stub of a feature and assigned bonuses to random techs.

[TheCollector]

Originally posted by terchong004:

Apply this to the whole economy and you're potentially losing 22.5% of GDP.

Zeppelin tech increase MAPI. This is tech you can get after 1900. In real life, it's a WW1 tech.

The 22.5% is the worst case for 85% MAPI if you decide to build production only in states where the produced good is not consumed. It is an incentive to spread production to more provinces instead of centralizing it until you reach 95% MAPI.
Compare the 22.5% MAPI loss to the economic losses of your import/export market balance.

I agree that having Zeppelins give a MAPI bonus is nonsense ... They most likely just wanted to attach the bonus to a Level IV tech and they used Zeppelins to strengthen this tech. Alternative would have been to add a new late game tech for MAPI bonus.

Imho most important factors for MAPI should be market liberalism like laissez faire and free trade and sufficient market logistics / infrastructure like ports and railways connecting states and markets. I would appreciate it if railways and ports could connect states and so eliminate MAPI between those states, treating the local markets of connected states like one market.
More efficient production methods for ports and railways should reduce the negative effect of MAPI further.