Perhaps part of the problem with this is I have never lost to someone that I was trying to beat( at least, that is if both this person and myself are both fluent in the game and its workings). I have played matches where my enemy had more resources then I did and I still prevailed
most games are "buy and forget", sins is different, anything you buy becomes a drain on your resources for maintenance (making this a very viable strategy). additionally most other games are created thru one resource, usually money. in those games the "market strategy" cannot translate, because your dealing with someone who has nothing to bargain with and someone with everything.
as well some of the games your talking about dont have resource nodes, and that bunks market strategy too.
all in all SoaSE is designed in every perfect way for this. it has a large enough map to allow for such a strategy (if you dont have enough materials here, you wont be winning. at least if the game is created effectively)
there are 4 resources in teh game
3
my current picutre of the games resources is that each of these races uses 2 of the 4 resources for production, research, upgrades and the like
exactly (2/3) but you need both of the resource in order to work. so the strategy flies nonetheless
which brings up another point, if you go to dominate ONE market, you will affect one race significantly, another moderately, and the last not at all. so be CAREFUL.
because now instead of hording riches, I can now build stuff with it.
there's a "soft cap"
when your resource input equals your resource drain (or nearly so) from constructed maintenance, then you really cannot build more ships. (so go get more planets!)
this is a keystone reason Market Domination strategy should work.
You cant feel a loss for what you dont have.
aha, here is where your wrong. mostly due to the soft cap
I'm sure you'll already know that by the time you read here.
That is why I said what I did. In an RTS, the game was over before the resources were a problem I had either won, or lost because they had ganged me. Even then I made them play for 2 hours longer then they would have liked. I was easily worth 1 1/2 times there number.
I'll believe that your so godly
when I see it.
however if you defend all the resources, you lose because you are too spread out
you get around this by defending target resources and not putting a huge emphasis on the planets you aren't defending.
besides, you can always just send your fleet going to wherever you need.
2) 3 unigue resources and one generic(credits)
from what we know there is no generic resource.
Ok. If Player 1(P1) has 50% of the "metal(ResourceA or RA)" in the map, lets say the other empires have all the rest. lets make it easy( not sure on numbers, just what if stuff) and say 100bt(bt = billion tons) are in the game map. That means P1 has 50bt of the metal under his control. 10bt on hand and 40mt being mined from various colonies. This means that the average share of metal per player would be 12.5bt of metal. P2(our player) has only 8bt of metal in his/her domain. 4bt on hand and 4bt in various colonies being mined. The operational costs of an average in metal is say 10t per/month(welds, repairs, etc.) the construction of an average fleet that P2 has would take about 100,000t. That leaves 3,999,000,000t of metal left in P2 empire, altogether, per year, P2 get 230,000t of metal from his/her colonies.
or... instead of bringing some out of scope analysis lets put it this way.
1 has 5 planets of target resource
anotehr point: most planets (supposedly) produce one major resource and the others minimally, forgot to point this out
target resource is major in 1/3 of 50 planets (~16) so the player has 1/3 of the market under his control at 5.
4 other players have to split 11 planets, down to 2-3. now they are going to have the other planets in excess (3~4) players who depend on the limited resource are going to have difficulty getting past this. severe difficulty
so far this is an (assumedly) pretty small game, but as the number of planets grow so too does the ease of potential, its easier to grab more planets with ease.
this person isn't going to be toppling any empires, but he's been pretty conservative.
now someone going for market domination should go for a significant amount of the metal always. more than in the last demonstration
My point, yes P1 has more of everything. But this by no means, means that P2 is affected by anything P1 does to the market. Also, the other player probably wont need as much metal or any metal, unless they are all the same faction and most likely P2 would have more metal then what he/she was given.
mistake number 2: your assuming your going after your own target resource.
a smart market analysis (or rather... just a glance at your screen) will tell you that you should always strive for teh resource that is the primary of most of the races in the game (i.e. if your TEC and your going after 5 advent, go for the crystal, regardless of whether or not you use it)
Just because a faction controls more of a thing does not mean that faction neccassarily sets the price of the thing. If some one buys from that faction, then yes, but if they have enough of their own, then no.
the idea is to force them to not have enough, and for you to have excess.
that should be more than easy enough with a soft cap.
A good example is something my father does. He plays World of Warcraft, and in that he has a monopoly on Essence of Air. From what I understand, a fairly high valued good in the game. He went from 20gold to 300 in a few days. Well, that is all fine and dandy, so why doesnt he say go out and monopolize the copper market? In WoW, everyone and their brother uses copper. THe answer is simple. There is tons of it. Tons, and tons, and tons, everywhere. Sure it is a valued commodity, you could farm the stuff if you wanted, hell, I have. But there is so much of it on the market that you couldnt possibly corner it, because five minutes after you are the only one in control of the market, some one else comes in and places up twice your number of lots at cheaper price.
answer: soft cap. there will always be more demand than supply with a soft cap, it is specifically designed to be that way.
Why can my father corner the market on Essence of Air, but not Copper? Simple, there is much less Essence of Air then Copper availible for sale. Another reason is the fact that there are hundreds of DIFFERENT items on sale at the auction house at any given time. There are 3 different items, there are hundereds.
well of course you can monopolize a small resource with ease (1 person out of 6million, although I dont think I believe this. I haven't played the game though) but if your 1/6 people monopolizing 1/3 resources isn't all that hard.
unless if your enemies/allies catch onto your ruse.
