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It was Oblivion you uncultured peon!

Hooray for more war!

It's because of how long it's been since we had a World War. Five months. There's been a glut of manufactured resources on the markets ever since the tS/Alpha spat. All this war has done so far is burn off the glut, so we're back to "normal" prices. There's still a lot of warring to be done before we get into historical war pricing. This is why neutral alliances are boring. Don't they understand, without wars, the economy goes into the shitter!

I don't get it Zoot, what's so important about this? Sounds kind of pointless to me.

This isn't the war I wanted to see, but I'm determined to enjoy it regardless!

For Pony!

...But Stratton Oakmont is still rock-solid and is looking forward to a nice long period of peace after the shooting ends!

Ohhh nooooo, now BK might be dragged into a war, um, against its will! Oh the huge manatee!

Brb using this as customer testimonial.

Stratton Oakmont is an independent neutral bank dedicated to providing loans to nations who need them. I urge you to PM me in-game if you still require loan servicing. I will note that your terms as laid out are unacceptable to us, but I'm sure we can find some common ground to work with! I have a long list of satisfied customers, and we've been in business for 8 months now. You can rest assured that we'll be here for you.

That is the day one of my customers meant to send me a trade deal in repayment of one of his loans. Something happened, he got distracted or the game glitched (I don't remember what he said exactly) and the offer was listed publicly instead of to me. Not to worry, Stratton Oakmont gave him a hefty hardship rebate once he informed me. He was still really mad about it though.

Dammit, I was hoping this was a peace announcement so that I could sell rebuilding loans to you guys. Anyhow, in case you need the reminder, Stratton Oakmont will be here for you when it's over. That goes for both sides of the war. Money doesn't discriminate

You deleted while owing Stratton Oakmont a bit over $8 million on your loan. SO has already expensed this amount completely, and you are not on our books, so you are not strictly required to repay it. However, you will never be able to get a loan at SO again unless you do so. That being said, welcome back

Neat! Signed, A different people

Now, this is the kind of free enterprise I love to see in this game!

Completely agree, I love how the market functions, and it's that fact that lead to my observation about prices steadily climbing higher even as my nation gobbled up more and more of it.. I also made no claims to having thought it through completely. I'm not so vain as that. I have already noted that it's a radical change, which is why I advised it be introduced slowly. This, at least, is completely incorrect. Raw resources are OFTEN more profitable than manufactured ones on a slot-for-slot basis. As of roughly 24 hours ago, only steel was higher than the one-slot profit of all raw materials. Bauxite mines were more profitable than gas, aluminum, and munitions. This is without the projects improving manufactory outputs, admittedly, but to say that raws are never worth producing compared to manufactured resources is rubbish. They absolutely are. That some people are/were fooling about the prices they sold out is not the point. Currently if you have one slot to spend on resources and you're already maxed on steel, you don't put it towards another manufacturing plant, you put it to a bauxite mine. This is, again, assuming you want max profitability, and don't have all of the resource projects. A fair point, but even if PPP has held steady for the average nation, the average nation also *needs* more steel. It's not JUST price that's increasing, but price AND quantity. Thus, it makes sense to increase the quantity that can be produced over time as well. Also a fair point and something I did not consider at all. That might also work. I simply thought tying the increased production to something the player could control would be interesting and give the player some new choices to make, particularly land which is currently just something you buy when your population density gets high.

If I might add a facet to the discussion of helping rich vs poor... One of the things that got me thinking about this proposal was that it takes so long to build up a warchest. This has the effect of reducing the frequency of wars, since no one wants to start a cluster!@#$ with themselves at the center unless they are well prepared. Thus, I think that this change would greatly increase the frequency of wars. Now, which nations, the large or the small, get hit hardest by wars? A small nation can be rebuilt from scratch by an alliance bank without any sweat off its brow. A large nation that gets severely damaged, on the other hand, takes weeks or even longer to rebuild, and that demands a concerted effort, a lot of lost production, and it will take that much longer for them to rebuild their warchest as it was for the next war. It seems to me that war should be the limiter on the growth of large nations, not arbitrary rules that limit how much profit you're allowed to make from a given resource. And if we allow wars to become more common, it might do just that.

Well, I did propose that the change be instituted gradually specifically to avoid the complete upending of the market:

Or a reason to get rich to begin with. I don't see much reason to go above 1500 infra. I can max military during war and max out all the best resources during peace. Sure my tax income will go up, but so would my war reparations. I don't see the incentive to grow past this point (unless one is in Sparta or GPA or a similar alliance), and that tells me something is a bit off, nation-building wise.

That would also work, but I assumed you wanted to keep some kind of limit

After a discussion in the public IRC channel today, an idea has coalesced that I think has merit. I believe that resource production should be tied not to how many cities one has, but by how much land one has (for raw resources) or by how much infra one has (for manufactured resources). What I mean by this is that the number of slots you are allowed for any specific resource should be adjusted higher as your nation grows. It makes no sense to me that a city with 2000 infra can't have more steel mills than a city with 600 infra. You more than tripled the size of the city, but steel production is the same as it was before. The problem leading to this suggestion is that scarcity is increasing. Average nation size grows larger, and larger nations have a higher infra:city ratio. What this means is that while war (the prime use of resources) is getting *much* more expensive as a whole, while the production capacity of the game (as measured in number of cities) is still growing but not as quickly. If we carry this trend forward in time, barring other changes to economics of the game it's easy to see that scarcity will become a serious problem, and one which could possibly threaten to make the game grow stale as building a warchest would become exceedingly expensive due to ever-increasing resource costs. Those of us who have played even as little as six months can easily see this being borne out. The price of steel when I started playing was around 1700. Today I doubt I will ever see it dip below 2000 again. War is brutally expensive, and the production capacity is simply not keeping pace. Demand is consistently outstripping supply. So why would this suggestion make any more sense? Well first of all, by tying production to land and infra, you give a nation the ability to specialize a bit. I feel right now that there isn't much specialization. I joined the game with the idea that I could be a coal tycoon... but then I hit max coal mines and there wasn't anything more I could do. Wash, rinse, repeat for all the other resources. Heck, during the raws boom of the past month, I've had almost max raw material production in all my cities, except farms. I'm not even a big nation. My cities are just sitting at 1500 infra. Giving me a way to increase production of the resources I want to could make the game more flavorful. Second of all, it would serve to increase production over time more effectively than having it just tied to cities. As a city grew, so would its production capacity, and so as nations get larger, they will be able to produce the same amount, relatively (if they choose to, of course). This would tie up the growing scarcity problem, as there would no longer be a point where nations have to consume far more than they can hope to produce. Thirdly, I think it just makes sense. What's the limiting factor on how much coal you can dig out of the ground? Why, the amount of land you have available to mine it out of! What's the limiting factor on how much steel one can mill? The cost of creating the facility and the number of workers you can assign to it! Land and infra, respectively. I think a linear progression of infra/land : slots would work best. As I said, the intent is mostly to head off the scarcity problem, and by making the relationship linear, you'd ensure that you could do just that. However, this would be an enormous change to how the game's economy works, so I'd recommend instituting the change slowly, as a non-linear relationship that became closer and closer to linear over time, so as to not shock the markets. Thanks to Seabass, Kyubey, and Samdoo for the ideas and discussion. Also,

Sheepy, I have some concerns about Blitzkrieg. You write that it gives a bonus during the first 12 turns after SWITCHING TO Blitzkrieg? Not after declaring war? That seems... extremely underwhelming, to put it very lightly. You get a modest bonus for a day, and then you can't switch again for four more days? If that were to be enticing, the day-long bonus would have to be much more significant. That or make it for the first 12 turns after declaring a war, instead.

Glad you asked! Stratton Oakmont is a for-profit private bank run by yours truly. We provide loans to nations and alliances as well as sell bonds to those looking to store some money safely for a set time period while earning some interest. While there are currently no bonds up for sale, we are always taking loan requests, if you're interested. It would be best to message me in-game if so, as I don't get on the forums much.

A bit of constructive advice - Raise the rate you charge on people who take loans, and do your best to find a way to make larger loans. A large nation doesn't need 9.5 million, a large nation needs upwards of 50. The sooner you can find a way to serve them, the better off your bank will be. You're not going to get anywhere quickly by making a net 0.5% profit on the money you move. Stratton Oakmont moves over $1 billion a month. Last month its profit was only $80 million, and its margin on loans (the difference between your savings rate and the loan rates) was closer to 5 or 6 percent. With the rates that you have here, SO would have made only around $5 million after moving a billion dollars.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition: And gentlemen in England now a-bed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.