There was a bug that occurred with the Rikenfriez shop - it was pricing wood to sell at 1g, and buying at 5g. Obviously, we won't be re-opening the shop until we can figure out what happened.

Thanks.

See, the difference here is perspective.

"Dirt cheap" is cheaper than villages sell them at. It is not 5-10gp, because if you sell it at that it will instantly be bought out and resold in another org's comm shop. That doesn't remove them from the economy; villages set the price, organizations follow within certain ranges. If you sell for drastically less, organizations have enough gold to buy it all out and resell for a hefty profit.

Not only do they have that much gold, they can (and do!) spend it in such ways. If you're guaranteed to get your money back, after all... (and you are guaranteed because if you can buy out all their stuff and thus set the price yourself to one that is still competitive with villages, you win).

Also, you are neglecting the fact that a lot of Glom's commodities do not even come from tithing. We built up a large stockpile initially with Chandestri running around to villages that Glom did not own, buying stuff, and reselling in Glom's comm shop. We have members doing that now (especially in villages we don't own) to try to staunch some of the comm-bleeding we've experienced prior to this.

It certainly seems clear to me that, whatever we may all speculate about whether there is or is not a problem, and what's going to happen, we can all agree that price policies in city commodity shops are something that can't hurt and can only help. In fact, until that's done, it might make sense for Ministers of Trade to stop selling through the city comm shop entirely, and instead start stocking commodities in the shoprift of a regular shop, to gain the benefit of price policies. The only downside of that which leaps to mind is the hassle of coordinating with whatever else is being stocked and sold in that shop; and the possibility that your city doesn't have a shop, like Seren's Gargling Pixie, that is essentially being run as a city organ, and none of the shopkeepers are willing or able to share a little shoprift space with the city and coordinate with its Minister of Trade.

I thought about that, too. I think an actual mechanic to account for this within the commodity shops would be the ideal solution, but until that may or may not happen, I suppose that's a good idea.

You're really re-emphasizing that you're hoarding comms. I have all of your prices right in front of me. Unless you think people get all hot over Celest's 12 gold rope or Serenwilde's 8 gold meat, most of your prices are strictly worse than the current village prices. Your stockpiles are simply lost profit opportunities.

Anything Celest has "stockpiled" is sold at rates lower than village prices. Everything else we either don't produce or don't have a large quantity of. Considering Celest pretty recently went years without any villages, or only with the occasional miner-less mining village, depletion of necessary commodities has been a real occurrence. Coupled with the fact that we are a religious government, I don't consider keeping a reasonable reserve for sake of availing it to the citizenry or for renovations and projects as a lost opportunity. It's not like the millions of gold sitting in the coffers goes anywhere, anyway.

If the commodities in the game were actually worth something more than 15 gold, more people would be inclined to care about the trade system. I don't mean this to be snarky- but really, every single food commodity, leather, coal, and most everything else is totally pointless to stockpile or compete over. There's too much of it in the game, just as there's too much power in the game. Lusternia's never been about limited resources, though it's been marketed as such.

The only commodities people seem to care about: gold, silver, platinum, iron, steel, cloth, silk, gems. Because their commodity quests are actually impossible to do without raiding, usually (gems excluded). No wonder people have such a priority for the mining villages.

Don't forget wood. And silver is more expensive than gold, hilariously.

Just for comparison's sake, Magnagora has about 8k wood and a 8-9k gems. If we were releasing at the rate Glomdoring is, and it was being bought at the same rate (likely, as those two are very high-demand commodities), we would now be entirely out of those two commodities.

Even wood is somewhat trivial: I've got a couple thousand in my rift because we'd always load up Estelbar after mulchings and buy out all 250 at 27 gold each. Glomdoring could do the same, likely.

Yes. You're a commune. Cities have to make do with communes' leavings for lumber, for the most part.

Make your rooms out of metal, you industrialized nation!

I always knew civilization was lazy.

Yeah Gaudi is build along the side of a volcano. That is in a desert.

Not exactly "tree friendly".

We do. Except that wood goes to our market. Which is part of the reason we have enough.
Edit: Also, there really are sources of wood outside communes. There are locations around that are forest that get planted with trees or could be planted with trees, allowed to grow to maturity in neutral territory. We have trees in communes, so we get maybe 500 extra in a rl month, and I'll admit that gives an advantage, but it's not an overwhelming one. The majority of stock of wood comes from buying out villages.

I'm sorry... but what are you talking about?

The lowest a village will sell rope at these days is 21 sovereigns per.
The lowest a village will sell meat at these days is either 10 or 13 per.

These are not lost profit opportunities. These are comms that people simply don't use.

I know that at some point, village comm prices were supposedly lower, like eggs being as low as 3 per back in open-beta, but even those are at least 8 per in villages. Eggs are never cheaper than 8 per, and those are the cheapest village comms in existence.

And if an admin says I am wrong - no, you are wrong. Go look at what's been happening and actually follow the in-game activity.

If you tell me that is a bug, I will want to hurt something.

The gold and meat are cheaper, yes, but look at the rest of it. Your metal commodities are literally triple the going rate in the UV. Your gems are double the price that Southgard had about four hours ago. Celest's silk is nearly four times what I paid for it. Man, can't let foreign governments buy out our commodities at these awesome prices. They're totally raiding our stocks for discounts.

Your prices aren't that good, unless you need to make a rope jakari with meat bludgeons.

Please tell me what village I can find steel for 30gp, iron for 27, etc.

I'm pretty sure you don't know what you're talking about here, or you're not actually responding to Ragniliff's post.

Should've clarified. By "your," I mean the collective average of org prices. Except silk, where I really had to pick on Celest. >_>

Still, you know that your prices are worse than the UV's too, right?

Metal comms are literally triple the rate in the UV? Good. You only serve to make my point valid, because the UV villages are new. We have been experiencing odd issues with their prices that we have not seen with any other village yet (similar to Rikenfriez). As a forger, when we just had the mountain villages, it was usually a strain for me to get much of any metals at a price under 90 per. Now, Ixthiaxa has silver prices that always remain at 50gp per bar, iron that always stays below 70gp (but still fluctuates), and steel that always remains at 75gp per. These were bugged multiples times, because you simple don't see prices this low so frequently elsewhere. Ever. Even given this, this is not 1/3 of the price "my org" sells at... so I will just assume the "your" here applies to Celest.

Gems are double the price in Southgard? Gems are never less than 108gp per. In order to get them at that rate, you need to farm rockeaters. The price inflates back up easily once they are bought out otherwise, and takes a while to stabilize. Even at that... glom sold gems at 150gp for the longest time, and now sell at 140gp per. Celest is at 190gp per. Neither of these are really double. Who is "your" referring to, once again?

Silk is four times? Silk is 110gp per in Celest. Villages never sell for less than 50gp per. Where in god's name are you getting your silk? Because damn... I want in on that too.

Really, what is going on in this game? Please, Xavius, explain exactly at what prices you are obtaining comms at. I am very curious now, because these seem impossible.