Silver trading "cheat"?

[pminuit]

In my lastest game, I refused so many tax increases, I could hardly trade anything with Europe. I noticed silver price has dropped to 3/4, so I got an idea. I sent my entire fleet to Europe, and with the 20k gold I saved up (by trading with natives), I bought 5000 units of silver. In 15 turns, the price of silver went up to 18/19. I then sold all the silver. Even after the taxes, I ended up tripling my money.

It's not technically a cheat, just more bad game mechanics

 

[Icaria909]

It does sound like a cheat. I know that it's simple economics, supply and demand, but during the sixteenth to the eighteenth century most of the european governments had economies based on mercantilism; and mercantilism requires the home country in europe to stock pile it's gold and silver supplies and never distribute it (unless you have to sell it for war). The Dutch, French, English, and especially the Spanish would never have allowed their colonial governors to buy these precious metals for anything. I hope to see a patch that fixes this problem by allowing either an extreamely limited amount of silver to be bought, or alternatively, not allow anyone to buy silver. Although, I love to sell silver, you can seriously make a huge fortune if you play your cards right.

 

[HermannLombard]

Sounds like the Hunt brothers trying to corner the silver market in 1979, when they earned between 2 and 4 *billion* dollars speculating in silver.

 

[milvang]

You can definatly do it. Its bordering cheat, but its really just exploiting mechanics, which is what most of the min-max strategy is about. I tried it once in the original and sold it in my custom house, only to get NEGATIVE 20k for it because it turns out the the sale price was calculated in a signed 16 bit integer

 

[5cats]

I remember that the Hunt brothers lost 2-4 billion because the market refused to lift silver above 7/oz for over a year. They had to sell off their Mexican oil platforms to pay up. Perhaps they held it all these years, worth a fortune now, but so would a lot of things from the 70's & 80's, eh?
All it need to fix it is a +6 on the buy side, like food or lumber. It's a little more stable if it trades at 18/24, or even more, like 18/28, harder to make money on it using this method. Still possible though.

 

[Supr49er]

I would consider this to be an 'Exploit' rather than a 'Cheat'.

Welcome to the Forums milvang.

 

[HermannLombard]

I remember that the Hunt brothers lost 2-4 billion...

You remember correctly, they made it and lost it.

 

[Lajbi]

It was availaible in the old coloization as well. I made the same back in the days by buying coats (worth 1/2) for 30k until it had reached 19/20 then declared independence the prices got frozen then I sold all goods via the custom house. I made tremendeous profit so it was easy to accept all paid help from foreign kings (you know when they offered # dragoons, # soldiers # cannon all veterans for money) and I won the game easily reaching 400 % success rate on the hardest difficulty (and also by exploiting the limited units allowed throughout the game). I also got rid of 2 of the 3 other nations (they always come back except after the DOI). That was my biggest win lol...

 

[Alex Encandar]

Well consider how this would happen in real life:

Silver is oversaturated in the market, because of this prices fall to record lows.

Someone buys up all the cheap silver, with little to suggest that said person has any intention of halting their buying of silver or SELLING it, prices quickly adjust to account for this new demand.

The buyer than sells all the silver before anyone realizes what is going on at the new high prices.


Seems pretty reasonable to me.

 

[petermcc]

Too bad the Bunker Hunt brothers didn't wait for C4C.

Would have saved me my retirement money.

 

[milvang]

Well consider how this would happen in real life:

Silver is oversaturated in the market, because of this prices fall to record lows.

Someone buys up all the cheap silver, with little to suggest that said person has any intention of halting their buying of silver or SELLING it, prices quickly adjust to account for this new demand.

The buyer than sells all the silver before anyone realizes what is going on at the new high prices.


Seems pretty reasonable to me.

I am guessing the in real life it might be hard to find anyone willing to buy that quantity of silver.

The bug lies in the fact that prices adjustments are not done between each load sold or bought (as it was in the old COL, except at the custom house), but rather at the end of the round.

 

[HermannLombard]

Take a look at the (Bunker) Hunt brothers story that we've mentioned. They gained and then lost $2-$4 billion dollars trying to do just that.

Meanwhile, I think Dale (in AoD II) recalculates prices between loads.