Knights and Merchants.net Forum

Before main part, i think we just need to put ideas with a lot of text into separated topic.

To start with, i love short games, but i can't play it because of market. To be honest, market just killed this type of game. Reason is not complicated: we can build market, exchange food for trunks/timbers/axes/leather armors and win the game before all your town and army dies of hunger. It makes games with pt shorter than 35 unplayable.
The only way to play without pt now is to block market in map editor. But we shouldn't think that 0 pt gamed can't be long. Sometimes we need market on late stages, but we can't build it. There can be a dynamic script, but we are to put it to every map we want now. It causes copying similar maps with different modes.

My position is that game with any pt settings must be playable. As i said, now only 35 and more are playable. We can play 35, 50, 60, even 120 if we have a big map with lots of space both for building and battle. Time to allow 0-30 =) (ofc it depends on the map. On Blitzcrieg 20 is enough. But type of game is militia+iron. Like on standart map with 35)

Or course, we can allow it with a lot of methods. Fighting citizens, building walls and a lot of other absurd ideas. But fixing marketrush with direct fixing of market is much better all in all.

So, ideas:
1). Allow to build market after metallurgist's. It will allow to play pt 0-15, because in this case if player decide to play with marketrush, we'll be defeated by standart strategy with militia Beginners can suffer a little bit, when they have out of gold without metallurgust or miner, and it will delay their building much more. For this we can do some new messages (optional) like "Sir, our gold stocks are emptying", so player won't forget. But the main problem - this method doesn't work on pt 20-30. It just delay the timing, but doesn't cope with problem. But it allows 0-15 pt at least.
2). Make trade food-something unprofitable. E.g. now fish-->leather armor is 5:1. If we make it 10:1, the power of market rush weakens twice. Someone can ask: but i can still exchange even with this rates. You can. But it became easier to defend. When your opponents spend recourses for market, you can build 3 towers instead. If opponent exchange food for trunks (as the most profitable exchange, but needed processing), he also have to build more sawmils and workshops. So, we have even more recources which we can spend on something useful. Disadvantage: can damage games in very late stages, when you have a lot of excess food.
3). Combinations of 2 previous methods. E.g. do it together, or take a part from both of them, something like opening after gold mine and increase rates in 1.5, and so on.
4). Place for your ideas guys =)

Looking forward to your feedback =)

Tbh I think the game could only get more interesting by making market trades better.
We only have a few decent trades currently. By making the trades even more expensive the whole market would become insignificant in the game.

What about making every ware in the market start out locked, and only unlock each once you complete the first building that can make them?

I.e. build your first woodcutters' -> can now trade trunks
Build your first farm -> can now trade grain
Build your first coal mine -> can now trade coal
Etc.

P.S. I was about to suggest differentiating buying and selling and have them unlocked independently (i.e. build metallurgist -> can now buy coal/gold ore and sell gold chest), but that would probably make it unnecessarily complex.

Esthlos, we thought about that, but in this case we only fix trade food for leather armors. No problems to buy trunks, timbers and axes.

Killer, not all trades. Only food--->something. As for some other courses, i think that this is good idea.

Actually, the best way to stop trade abuse is to actually play well in most cases. Try doing a market rush against Romek or another player who can develop iron in 25-30 minutes. You will get some damage in, sure. But will not be able to win when your base is at 0% efficiency after your attack.

Now, if mutiple players do a market rush..well maybe that would be a different story. I suppose a 4v4 game with 3 market rushers and 1 iron maker would be a bit too over powered. But we can only speculate. This hasn't been tested

Furthermore, it isn't widely known, but my map "Rebound" was designed to for low pt games. All resources are very close, allowing all players a fair shot at 30 minute bases. Low resources are indeed a trade off for the easy locations, but it isn't easy to trade away your starting resources when you barely have any to begin with!

Rebound can't be played with short pt because of low amount of food. Making farms first on short pt is like playing standart 60 pt, or maybe a bit shorter one (50).

25-30 min? Marketrush will defeat you on 15. First militia appears on 10 minute. Even very good player can't cope with marketrush on 0 pt.

Why? You couldn't sell food, so what's the problem if you are allowed to buy axes?
Wasn't the problem about early food -> items trade?
Isn't this the definition of overpowered, an unintended cheap use of something that allows unexperienced players to get the upper hand on much better players?
Sure, if you only take into account extreme cases like bad players vs the best players it won't matter much, but that is too extreme to be a valid counterargument.

Ah, you mean this. In this case it works, i agree. But we must be sure that it won't ruin current market strategies on 60 pt, e.g.

I like Esthlos's proposal, sounds reasonable. THe only thing - when some novice player failed with gold he will need to build bakery/vineyard/butcher's/fisherman's it he want to get gold chests. But ofc he could just get 1 goldchest exchanging stone or wood on it.
It fixes 0 pt rush, or at least make it harder to implement - you still can try to build just fisherman's or/and vyneyard - fish and wine costs a lot, so you can trade them to many wood logs, but you need to build one/two more building/s.
@vovets we can test this - is it still possible to rush in this case ?

In this way player must build two often useless houses. Heh, it should be funny, but inefficial in 99% of cases.
This idea should be discussed with Krom =)

This is exactly what I was thinking of too. Agreed 100%.

Of course, removing the marketplace altogether would appeal to me as much as a delicious bacon pancake topped with sugar syrup - but hey, can't have everything I want, right?

You are wrong. Well perhaps not. Maybe you can't play Rebound and survive with food in short pt, but I and many others can and have.

This leads me to believe that you don't have the experience in short pt games to really know if the market rush is actually that strong. Are you sure that you are not merely speculating?

I play 35 pt more often that 60, do you think that i'm not experienced?

Ofc it can be a special strategy on rebound on short pt, but i prefer to play there with 60 pt and suppose that Rebound is better for 60.

If you say that Rebound is unplayable without starvation in 30 minute peacetime, then yes, I say you are inexperienced.

Maybe some replays of rebound games with short pt, without starvation and with army?