Cross Tier Trades

[ekarat]

I came back to this game about 5 months ago after a 1.5 year break. One of the notable changes in the meantime is the valuation of cross-tier trades. It changed from 4:1 to form a 2-star trade to 1.5:1.

Before, people avoided cross-tier trades and posting a cross-tier trade was looked down on as taking advantage of players who didn't know that 4:1 was a terrible deal. Now, even if you think 1.5:1 is still too much, it still has to be close to right (especially compared with 4:1). However, people still don't like cross-tier trades, and I'm not sure if this is just a holdover of the past resentment.

I would suggest that a healthy cross-tier trading market would be a good thing -- especially for players boosted in scrolls.

 

[SoggyShorts]

Even though they are much better than before, the new ratios are still very bad for many players.

One of the problems among many is that the very powerful event buildings that give goods do so based on your chapter so even though every single player needs T1 goods, the top producers make only T3 in those buildings.

I have zero T3 factories, just legacy sets with 8x T2 and 5xT1.
T1 is simply in much higher demand than T3, always has been.
That's why you see pages and pages of T3 for T1 but almost never find 100K planks up for dust.

As for the whole: "If you don't want it, don't take it" argument that is sure to pop up again soon,
Advanced players who have a big stash of goods like to help out and can clear the entire trader of requests around them in a huge area by simply taking all of the 2-star trades. If they become unbalanced they simply post a few huge reverse trades and another big player will take them.
This does not work with cross trades: trying to undo a few million in cross trades has a near-zero success rate.

The result is that when you get a trader that is peppered with a bunch of cross trades you must tiptoe through it in order to not get caught without a chair when the music stops.
I've tested this extensively in just my own fellowships where 1 allows cross trades and 2 do not. The one that allows it has several good little trades from newer players who need them hidden at the bottom or middle because the bigger players can't be bothered to click through the mine-field of undesirable trades.
On the 2 servers where it is disallowed the trader is cleared multiple times per day by several players. It's worth noting that many of my FS members play on both, and behave differently because of the rule.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

One problem is that the further away we get from the ratio change, the more players there will be who never experienced those horrible numbers. So all they are going to see is all this talk about how bad cross-tier is and have no clue why, and like sheep, they will follow along and start avoiding them.

 

[Gladiola]

I usually check in my fellowship if I want to post a cross-tier trade to make sure there is someone who wants to take it. Usually I am offering marble for scrolls, which is pretty popular.

 

[SoggyShorts]

I usually check in my fellowship if I want to post a cross-tier trade to make sure there is someone who wants to take it. Usually I am offering marble for scrolls, which is pretty popular.

Trading upstream like that is always welcome but if you asked for marble in large quantities while offering scrolls you would struggle to find a buyer.
That's a pretty good indication that the ratios don't work very well.

 

[ekarat]

Oh man, not this again.
While some would agree, there are others who do not.
Even though they are much better, the new ratios are still very bad for many players.
One of the problems among many is that the very powerful event buildings that give goods do so based on your chapter so even though every single player needs T1 goods, the top producers make only T3 in those buildings.
View attachment 9492
I have zero T3 factories, just legacy sets with 8 T2 and 5 T1.
T1 is simply in much higher demand than T3, always has been.
That's what you see pages and pages of T3 for T1 but almost never find 100K planks up for dust

That certainly used to be more true than it is now. (Based on what it was like before I took my break from the game.) In my local market, there are indeed 2 players who do this. I avoid their trades and take others. So, yes there is a small excess of such deals, but they're generally from the same two players.

But I do see a healthy set of trades going the other way. If I take all deals at 1.45:1 or better, then it balances out equally both ways. (That is what I mean by not off by much.) And I certainly have an excess of T1s. It's T2s that I'm short on, but I do need to point out that I'm boosted in scrolls.

To be more specific, I have a larger stockpile of T1s than I have of T3s, but not twice as large.

For sentients, that's an even stranger story. I find it easier to trade away my boosted bismuth for T4 or T5 and then trade those for soap or shrooms than it is to trade bismuth for soap or shrooms. Of course, charity from FS members can allow you to get those trades taken, but that is not indicative of a healthy market. Just today, a FS member asked me why I post mainly cross-tier trades for that, and that prompted this thread.

 

[samidodamage]

However, people still don't like cross-tier trades, and I'm not sure if this is just a holdover of the past resentment.

Part of it may be holdover. It's also that most of the cross tier trades offer the higher tier goods for lower tiers; the reverse of that is rare. I've got a Scroll boosted city. I don't need T3 goods for those scrolls. I don't want to accept the crystal and silk I do need at a reduced ratio for my T3 goods. 2 star cross trades offering T1 for crystal or silk would be acceptable to me, but none are posted. If I were to post them, I'm asking players to accept T1 goods at a reduced ratio for their crystal/silk, when they can get those T1 goods at a better ratio posting same tier trades, so they won't take my cross trades. Even in my non-scroll boosted city, scrolls are so plentiful that I'll take any 2* trades posted asking for scrolls no matter what tier goods they're giving!

One reason for an FS to continue to keep the 'no cross trades' rules even if they understand the changes and agree with the new ratios: Balancing boosted goods among members.
Simplified* example:
An FS is looking for a member boosted in marble: they are looking at the number of marble, steel, and planks players they have and see a need for more marble there. They are not in need of marble to take trades from their members who are boosted in elixir, dust and gems. If members post cross trades consistently, it throws off the balance of available goods within the same tier for the entire FS.
I 'think' (definitely could be wrong) most FS's who have such a rule also allow for cross trades if prearranged between members who are online at the same time and ask that those trades be limited to 'emergency' situations.

*assumes all members have cities close to the same chapter/production level

 

[SoggyShorts]

So all they are going to see is all this talk about how bad cross-tier is and have no clue why, and like sheep, they will follow along and start avoiding them.

That's a good thing IMO. Sure, it's better to understand why something is bad, but as long as it is avoided that is a secondary concern..
The thing with new, small players is that their trades are almost irrelevant.
You could give a game-changing 100,000 marble to a new player and not even notice the loss, so grabbing a cross trade from them doesn't hurt you either.
In the long run though they should eventually grow and will become frustrated that players who used to take their 10K cross trades won't take their 100K cross trades

 

[Gladiola]

@SoggyShorts this is why I am upgrading the heck out of my marble manufactories while having only half as many crystal manufactories, at least for the moment. With buildings that produce t2 and t3 goods magically, it makes sense economically for players to compensate by building more and bigger t1 factories even if that is not the way the game was "supposed" to work.

Speaking as a new player, I don't want anyone to give me 100k marble. That would take a lot of fun out of building and growing.

 

[SoggyShorts]

For sentients, that's an even stranger story.

IMO due to decay sentients are an exception.
When your next tech needs 300,000 soap and you are making 20,000 Soap, Gum and Platinum per day it's kinda stupid to just let all 3 decay each day while building up the one you want. It makes much more sense to trade everything you have for soap and then for the next tech trade everything for gum or whatever that one wants.
The alternative of teleporting in and out a half dozen factories is barely sustainable.
For chapter 15 I had a 1:1:6 factory ratio and traded my soap down at 1:1 for the others.
I also set up trades with fellows a lot for sentients like when I'm between chapters and they are useless to me so I give them away at cross trade 8:1 or whatever.

 

[SoggyShorts]

@SoggyShorts this is why I am upgrading the heck out of my marble manufactories while having only half as many crystal manufactories, at least for the moment. With buildings that produce t2 and t3 goods magically, it makes sense economically for players to compensate by building more and bigger t1 factories even if that is not the way the game was "supposed" to work.

Brilliant. Too often newer players think that "balance" means an equal production, so they'll have 4 of each factory as soon as T3 is unlocked. Naturally, the chapter/tournament/spire demands are nowhere near equal and so they cross-trade the excess away. As I said, this works for awhile because their FS wants to "help out" and can easily absorb those trades but it's a harsh lesson later.

 

[Sprite1313]

Speaking as a new player, I don't want anyone to give me 100k marble. That would take a lot of fun out of building and growing

I think this is a great sentiment, but I would caution you that your take might change when you open spire. I was churning along just fine in early chapters, and then started doing more in tournament and spire. If I weren't in a good FS, who gave me some big lopsided trades (10K for 80K or so, same tiers) to get me started, I would have struggled. I have since been able to repay that by accepting lopsided trades from my fellows. This helps the whole FS, because we are able to get gold. The players with 4 million goods didn't even bat an eye at the trade, but I initially felt terrible. They convinced me that it was okay to accept that help early in game; just don't make a habit of it. To them it was a capital investment in the FS as a whole.

 

[Gladiola]

I was churning along just fine in early chapters, and then started doing more in tournament and spire. If I weren't in a good FS, who gave me some big lopsided trades (10K for 80K or so, same tiers) to get me started, I would have struggled. I have since been able to repay that by accepting lopsided trades from my fellows. This helps the whole FS, because we are able to get gold. The players with 4 million goods didn't even bat an eye at the trade, but I initially felt terrible. They convinced me that it was okay to accept that help early in game; just don't make a habit of it. To them it was a capital investment in the FS as a whole.

I wouldn't object to taking unbalanced trades to compete in tournament or spire; it's more the idea of using trade goods to complete research or buildings that would take the fun out of it for me. That said, my fellowship is bronze medal for spire, so I probably should be able to keep up with that on my own.

My tournament progress currently is more limited by the number of provinces I have unlocked than by goods or troops. I'm completing 3 provinces to 6 stars each, and I think I could do 4 pretty easily once I unlock them -- especially after we finally get to the marble tournament and I juice my marble boost. (I started during a scrolls tournament and I'm boosted in marble, crystal, and elixir. I have a nice stash of elixir relics for when I unlock that boost, but am really looking forward to feeling the effects of my first marble tournament in three weeks.)

 

[SoggyShorts]

This helps the whole FS, because we are able to get gold.

yup. In the past feeding a small player to grant the 10th chest was totally worth it, and now feeding someone 80k goods so I can get free diamonds is a no-brainer.
Still, like you implied, it's better to teach em how to fish, so I'd rather that they put ~half of those goods into upgrading factories so that they can stand on their own a little sooner.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Part of it may be holdover. It's also that most of the cross tier trades offer the higher tier goods for lower tiers; the reverse of that is rare. I've got a Scroll boosted city. I don't need T3 goods for those scrolls. I don't want to accept the crystal and silk I do need at a reduced ratio for my T3 goods. 2 star cross trades offering T1 for crystal or silk would be acceptable to me, but none are posted. If I were to post them, I'm asking players to accept T1 goods at a reduced ratio for their crystal/silk, when they can get those T1 goods at a better ratio posting same tier trades, so they won't take my cross trades. Even in my non-scroll boosted city, scrolls are so plentiful that I'll take any 2* trades posted asking for scrolls no matter what tier goods they're giving!

It is looking like tier 2 goods are turning into a problem in general, not just specifically the scrolls. My silk and crystal are my lowest goods in both my cities, when compared to tier 1 and 3, and that seems to be true for a lot of other players too.

 

[ekarat]

IMO due to decay sentients are an exception.
When your next tech needs 300,000 soap and you are making 20,000 Soap, Gum and Platinum per day it's kinda stupid to just let all 3 decay each day while building up the one you want. It makes much more sense to trade everything you have for soap and then for the next tech trade everything for gum or whatever that one wants.
The alternative of teleporting in and out a half dozen factories is barely sustainable.
For chapter 15 I had a 1:1:6 factory ratio and traded my soap down at 1:1 for the others.
I also set up trades with fellows a lot for sentients like when I'm between chapters and they are useless to me so I give them away at cross trade 8:1 or whatever.
View attachment 9493

This. When my FS asked me about my cross-tier trades, they were talking about sentients. I don't post cross-tier trades for T1-3. I do take them -- especially anything offering silk or crystal, including trades asking for T1 in return. I have tons of stockpiled T1 and not much T2 other than scrolls, and another scrolls manufactory won't help. But my point is that they were talking about my cross-tier sentient trades.

And you've described part of the reason why I post cross-tier trades for sentients. The other part is that bismuth -> T4/5 -> soap/shrooms is easier than bismuth -> soap/shrooms.

It is looking like tier 2 goods are turning into a problem in general, not just specifically the scrolls. My silk and crystal are my lowest goods in both my cities, when compared to tier 1 and 3, and that seems to be true for a lot of other players too.

And I just saw this -- this is exactly what I'm seeing. If I weren't boosted in scrolls, I could build another T2 manufactory, but producing more scrolls will not give me more silk/crystal, really, so the issues are related. This is also why I take cross-tier trades.

That said, I spent ~5 million scrolls on KP last chapter, so I do use them.

My final point is that if I take all cross-tier trades (except for scrolls) that are 1.45:1 or better, I will trade equally up or down the tiers. So, I don't think the direction of the trading is as lopsided as it used to be two years ago. And that observation is part of why I started this thread.

 

[SoggyShorts]

And you've described part of the reason why I post cross-tier trades for sentients. The other part is that bismuth -> T4/5 -> soap/shrooms is easier than bismuth -> soap/shrooms.

Bizmuth suuuuuuuucks.

My final point is that if I take all cross-tier trades (except for scrolls) that are 1.45:1 or better, I will trade equally up or down the tiers. So, I don't think the direction of the trading is as lopsided as it used to be two years ago. And that observation is part of why I started this thread.

If I took all cross trades in about a month all I would have left is 95% T3 and no one to dump it on.

 

[ekarat]

If I took all cross trades in about a month all I would have left is 95% T3 and no one to dump it on.

I hear you, and it used to be that way, but now it seems to be mostly trades offering scrolls, not T3. Then again, I can't see the entire server's market. Which is part of the reason I ask here, to ask what other people see.

I would like to suggest a thought experiment -- for a month (less, if you'd like), make a mental note of how many trades are offering T3 to get T1 and how many are T2. I am seeing most cross-tier trades for T2 (trading away scrolls or trading T1/3->silk/crystal) and not T3->T1.

 

[samidodamage]

producing more scrolls will not give me more silk/crystal

This is the heart of the matter, imo. Here's my current T2 inventory in my Crystal boosted city:

I'm not taking Scroll trades for my crystal other than in my FS from Scroll boosted players who can't get their scroll trades taken by neighbors. I'm placing crystal for silk trades or taking silk for crystal and that's it. Players that are not scroll boosted are getting scrolls from Spire bldgs (even if we don't want them, we just want the CC's!) and have no need to use our boosted goods to trade for scrolls. I *think* Inno thinks they've solved this problem with removing the Moonstone Library set from Spire, placing it in crafting and limiting future players to one set. I disagree; I'm not giving up the sets I already have and I doubt many other players will either. I wouldn't have cared if they'd changed productions on my existing bldgs to boosted goods or even boost+1 (I'd have personally still produced scrolls with the +1, but I think it would have helped the game overall).
I'll try to do some tracking of the types of cross tier trades I see posted for a month until I get burned out on tracking it .

 

[Gladiola]

We don't have to track it for a month. We can crowdsource the data. To be effective, people with a variety of viewpoints should participate. I'm relatively agnostic on this subject, although I suspect t1 are more in demand than t2 or t3 based on my fellowship, but then my fellowship is made up mostly of players a lot bigger than I am. (I mean, like a LOT bigger than I am, like their score is 20 times my in-game ranking -- not my score, my ranking).

Excluding my fellowship members, I see the following cross-tier trades in my miniscule trading radius:

Offer/Demand

Player A Steel/scrolls (poor fellow)
Player B Crystal/elixir
Player BCrystal/magic dust
Player B Silk/Elixir

The first trade is from a player with a score of about 4600 in a fellowship where the highest score is 8000, offering trades at about 1.5:1. The player has steel and scrolls boost and a traveling merchant I and III but no II. The last 3 trades were all posted by the same player, who doesn't have a fellowship and is offering 1:1 trades. Player has 23k points, all three traveling merchants and is boosted in planks, silk and gems.

Anyone want to start a spreadsheet?