Mykans Guide - Trading

[Mykan]

This guide forms part of a larger guide Mykans Guide

General
Trading is a key aspect for Elvenar. Regardless of how you design your town you are bound to find yourself needing to acquire more of a certain type of good so sooner or later you are likely to need to trade or use the wholesaler. There are a lot of aspects to trading in elvenar:

• Goods production
• Fair trades
• Cross-tier trades
• Trading strategy
• Fellowships and Neighbours
  • Trading fees
  • Fellowship only trades
• Wholesaler
  • How it works
  • First round offers
  • Strategy

Goods production
While this section is specifically about trading the quantity and type of goods you produce are a key part of your success with trading. This will also influence your approach and ability to have the necessary goods at the time you need them. For example a person who produces 3,000 goods a day verse a person who produces 500 goods a day will have more goods available to trade and swap for other goods. A strong production level will also ensure you level of goods increases over time and provide you with a some protection should trades become more difficult for a certain good for some reason. Another benefit of a strong production is so you can have several goods on offer in the trader for longer times (if needed). Please refer to the section on town design for more information in relation to space to allocate for factories.

Fair Trades
When you go to the trader there is a star rating provided by the game to help people quickly assess if a trade is favourable or not. Star rating

• 0 - Very expensive
• 1 - Somewhat expensive
• 2 - Fair, goods have the same value
• 3 - Bargain

Its is regularly considered by players and fellowships that a 2 or 3 star trade is fair. 0 and 1 star trades are usually considered greedy and not normally accepted, there is an exception that we will discuss later.

Cross-Tier Trades
There are three type s of goods: Basic, Crafted and Magical. Trading between these types is referred to as cross-tier trading. Views on this form of trading vary greatly, if you enjoy this type of trading be sure to know if your fellowship has rules regarding it.

The game values the ratio between these tiers at a 4:1 ratio. Therefore 1600 planks is considered equal to 400 Silk which is considered equal to 100 Elixir. This ratio is based on the cost to produce the goods and if you follow these ratings you will receive a 2 star trade rating by the game. Note that many players do not agree with these ratios and will have different ratios they consider fair. The reason players take a different view is due to the time to produce the goods and building footprints of the different types of factories.

Generally people are less concerned if a player is trading "up" through the tiers, offering basic goods and asking for crafted or magical. For human players approaching their superior residence they often have a need to use cross tier trades up for magical goods as their superior residence use these goods prior to them unlocking the magical factories.

You will need to make your own decision regarding your approach to cross-tier trades.

Trading strategy
There are 2 common ways to trade offer or accept. New players often rely more on accepting trades rather than offering them but this can be problematic:

• Higher level players trade in much larger quantities
• New players can see less neighbours. Usually more people have discovered them.
• Timezones/time of play

While you should try to accept and offer trades you will find the vast majority of your trading comes from offering trades. People are often willing to accept the small trades of newer players to help them out but don't always offer small trades due to practicalities and a trade limit of 60 offers.

Placing a lot of trade offers will also allow you to plan your goods to be available at the time you need them. Another thing to consider is what sort of trades will you offer? Most people offer fair trades although there are some who vary to different star ratings.

If you are struggling to find a certain type of good consider offering a 3 star trade to attract people to accept the offer. The value of your boost for a particular good can help you decide how generous your offer could be. For example if your boost is 100% and you place an offer at a 2:1 ratio this would be the same as not having a boost in that good and be cost neutral to you. Depending on your urgency you may choose to be more generous. The wholesaler trades goods at a 5:1 ratio so if you are planning to trade your goods there try a 4:1 ratio in the trader first (max ratio). While this is costly for you it is still better then the wholesaler.

Consider the qty of goods that your offer. Do you offer one large trade or lots of smaller ones? Are there people trading similar quantities?

City combinations
There are only 9 combinations of cities possible. Noted by @SoggyShorts and @Katwijk here

Trading tip from @Draconomicon
Understand your market's/area's/neighborhood's needs. I noticed early on that Marble producers are either Silk or Crystals and Elixirs or Gems producers so, if I want Crystals, I offer Silk or Scrolls to increase my chances of someone taking the trade. I noticed a marked improvement in takers once I implemented this strategy. My area is hungry for marble, crystals, and elixirs but has a surplus of planks, silk, and gems so I offer crystals for scrolls because scrolls are what my FS needs. Those trades usually get snapped up quickly, even by cities that are not scroll producers. This will tie in with the 9 city combinations

Fellowships and Neighbours
When using the trader a fee of 50% is applied to offers you accept from neighbours you have not yet discovered. As such it is very common to see 1-star trades as these are usually fair trades from people you have not found yet with the trader fee applied. When you discover a person there is no fee, fellowship members count as discovered. This is why for trading it is very important to be in a fellowship. You gain access to up to 24 other active players and will not have a trading fee with them.

Many fellowships require members to only post 2 and 3 star trades. Ensure you know the fellowships trading rules in regards to star rating and cross-tier trades.

Fellowship only trades
Sadly there is no feature for such trades. Some people like to offer generous trades to their fellowship yet neighbours can take these trades. One way to get a specific generous trade to someone is to have them post the trade which would appear as a 0 or 1 star trade. Most people will not take this trade so you can then accept it at your convenience and know your intended recipient got the help you were offering.

 

[Mykan]

Wholesaler
The wholesaler is a tab within the trader that you can use for trades to obtain goods that your are not boosted in. These trades are expensive but there are 2 reasons you might use it:

1. If you have an overproduction of resources, particularly coins and supplies which you can convert to additional goods.
2. You cannot find a trading partner

If you find you are regularly going to the wholesaler for the second reason you need to either look at joining a fellowship or consider if the fellowship you are in is the best match for you if you can;t find the goods you need. Another thing to consider is are you doing certain activities, like catering or negotiating, and over committing your resources.

How it works
The wholesaler has fixed ratios that it uses for the first offer:

• Goods trade at 5:1
• Coins
  • Basic goods 400:1
  • Crafted goods 1,600:1
  • Magical goods 6,400:1
• Supplies
  • Basic goods 40:1
  • Crafted goods 160:1
  • Magical goods 640:1

After you accept an offer the next offer will increase by 50% of the value of the first offer. So if you first offer was 60 then 50% is 30 so the offers will go 60, 90,120, etc. All offers reset to the first offer every 24 hrs and there is a timer in the wholesaler to tell you when the reset will occur. Offers are based on your main hall level as outlined below

It is designed so that you can spend approx, 50-60% of your coins/supplies max storage on first round offers. The amount for each type of goods is also a ratio of your max coin/supply storage.

First round offers

Main Hall	Qty T1	Qty T2	Qty T3	G-T1	G-T2	G-T3	C-T1	C-T2	C-T3	C-T1	C-T2	C-T3
1
2	5	5	5	25	25	25	2000	8000	32000	200	800	3200
3	10	5	5	50	25	25	4000	8000	32000	400	800	3200
4	20	5	5	100	25	25	8000	8000	32000	800	800	3200
5	30	5	5	150	25	25	12000	8000	32000	1200	800	3200
6	40	10	5	200	50	25	16000	16000	32000	1600	1600	3200
7
8
9	65	50	16	325	250	80	26000	80000	102000	2600	8000	10240
10	75
11	85
12	95
13	105	105	105	525	525	525	42000	168000	672000	4200	16800	67200
14	125	125	125	625	625	625	50000	200000	800000	5000	20000	80000
15	150	150	150	750	750	750	60000	240000	960000	6000	24000	96000
16	170	165	165	850	850	825	68000	264000	1026000	6800	26400	105000
17	205	180	180	1025	900	900	82000	288000	1152000	8200	28800	115000
18	240	215	200	1200	1075	1000	96000	344000	1280000	9600	34400	128000
19	280	250	215	1400	1250	1075	112000	400000	1376000	11200	40000	137000
20	305	290	250	1525	1450	1250	122000	464000	1600000	12200	46400	160000
21	325	340	290	1625	1700	1450	130000	544000	1856000	13000	54400	185000
22	375	360	335	1875	1800	1675	150000	576000	2144000	15000	57600	214000
23	430	380	385	2150	1900	1925	172000	608000	2464000	17200	60800	246000

Strategy
The wholesaler is very expensive and gets more expensive the more you use it in a 24hr time frame. Therefore you need to plan to minimize your usage of it. Ideally it should be a way to use excess coins/supplies.

Acquire rare goods
If you find you need the wholesaler to acquire rare goods you should will want to plan ahead as much ass possible so you can buy the first round offer over a number of days to avoid paying the inflated fee. If you have rare goods and need the wholesaler you would be trying (almost daily) to visit the wholesaler for those goods to stockpile them for when you need them.

Dump of excess goods
When you are reaching max coins/supplies visit the wholesaler a day or 2 ahead of reaching max so you can buy the first round offers of your preferred goods. If you do max out you can spend up to 50-60% of you coins/supplies on the first round offers so buying 1 of each offer will keep your costs down and let you drain the excess coins/supplies

Which offer is that?
It can be tough to work out if you are at the first offer or a more expensive option. A quick tip is that the supplies cost is roughly 10% of the coins cost. If when you look it is not 10% you have used either coins or supplies already. Be warned if you accept the first offer of coins and supplies it will be at a 10% ratio again.

Another way to keep track is only purchase one of the offers on each page, if possible, so the other one is at the original price as a reference point.

 

[DeletedUser4778]

Perhaps we could have a section on tips to improve production? Could tie in nicely with a section on Optimizing City Space. I've seen too many cities whose designs aren't efficient and those are often the ones who post cross-tier trades.

 

[GroomerWoman]

I have been seeing more and more trades that end in an off number. I remember seeing somewhere (can't find it now) what those numbers mean. Are most fellowships using the same meaning or are they all just making it up for themselves? For example some trades are ending in an 08, some 05, some 01....

 

[Ashrem]

There are probably a lot of groups that use them, but certainly not everybody. I pay no attention to differences in the last number of a trade.

 

[Mykan]

I have been seeing more and more trades that end in an off number. I remember seeing somewhere (can't find it now) what those numbers mean. Are most fellowships using the same meaning or are they all just making it up for themselves? For example some trades are ending in an 08, some 05, some 01....

There is no standard use of the numbers, it is fellowship specific. If your not in the fellowship just ignore them and grab what you need. I have been in a few fellowships with them and invariably I found trading occurred less, but others have positive experiences with them.

The common things people use them for are

• Urgent
• fishing from neighbours - often done when a fellowship is short of a certain type of good and people are trying to bring it in from neighbours to increase supply within the fellowship