Trader only lists 3-4 offers

[DeletedUser627]

My Trader consistently shows 3-4 offers. I'm at the stage where I'm building Tier 2 manufactures, and ranked around 2750. At what point will I have viable offers? So far, I'm running 4-6 Tier 1 manufactures trying to keep up, and also buying from the wholesaler often. Given the costs I'm seeing now for negotiating encounters, I'm assuming I should have much greater access to my non-boosted goods....and my level 7 Hall should have some cash in it, but it's all going to the wholesaler.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

 

[DeletedUser61]

If you have a lot of holes in your World Map, then you're in a bind. We're in the early stages of world development, so we're seeing a lot of touch and go players.

We already have Fellowships in the Beta world, so it's likely that they'll be released to the production worlds within a few weeks.

Fellowships can each have 25 members, located anywhere on the map, and within a Fellowship trades don't have an additional fee. Consequently you'll soon have 25 reliable trading partners if you join a Fellowship when they become available.

 

[DeletedUser627]

Thanks, Katwijk. No, I don't have any holes, just a wilderness of non-players. The few trader I'm offered aren't from discovered players, they're from undiscovered players. I still don't understand why there are so few.

I've enjoyed the game during my two weeks playing. I spent about $50 for expansions and 2 builders...but the Trader is an integral part of the game from this point forward. Without active partners, my culture will drop and everything slows too much. And I'll never amass enough money for the next higher expansions while I'm buying goods wholesale.

Fellowships would solve the problem, but as of tonight I'm stymied.

I'd recommend that Inno be a bit pro-active and reach out to active players, since there aren't that many of us. Give a free culture boost to tide everyone over, or something to indicate that they realize this problem makes the game become tedious. Challenging is good, frustrating is not.

 

[DeletedUser]

I've said it before: accounts with a score of 0 should be deleted after no more than 3 days inactivity, and accounts that have not completed the tutorial phase should only get a week. As it is, all those abandoned accounts get the same 30 days as everyone else in the first two research phases.

 

[DeletedUser61]

If you search for Climbing the Penrose Stairs, or google it to pick up the threads in the Beta forum as well, you'll recognize that I'm very interested in vibrant neighborhoods. I like Fellowships, mind you, but the World Map representation of our neighborhoods provides us with an excellent opportunity to develop vibrant neighborhoods.

I'm not very interested in sidelining "inactive" accounts piecemeal, by whatever criteria, rather I favor a comprehensive approach that will shift active players toward the center of the map, as their cities grow, while the low activity players will be shuffled off toward the fringes of the map.

The tradeoff, of course, is that clustering the active players creates a wasteland for the new players. The advanced players don't really need trading partners anymore, while the beginning players don't have anything to trade in the first place, so I'm fundamentally interested in neighborhoods that are optimized for the mid-level players who are desperately dependent on trades. Those are the folks that I don't want to lose.

 

[DeletedUser]

I'm not very interested in sidelining "inactive" accounts piecemeal, by whatever criteria, rather I favor a comprehensive approach that will shift active players toward the center of the map, as their cities grow, while the low activity players will be shuffled off toward the fringes of the map.

I think a combination approach would be best, myself. ONE major problem is the %-age of accounts have been a) never played or b) briefly played and then abandoned. It has been suggested elsewhere that many potential players create their account, log in, realize there is no PvP mechanic, and leave without a second look back. I don't know if that's a primary factor, but an inordinate number of accounts seem to reflect that sort of pattern. I think if they could simultaneously clean out inactive accounts and condense those of us who elect the option into a less distributed map area that would be ideal. That way, if you are active in the midst of a sea of inactivity, you could set something in your options marking you as available to be moved at purge time.

Unfortunately, that does nothing for the OP unless/until such methods are coded. Right now, the best I can offer is: be patient and start networking with other players on the map while you wait for Fellowships. Message people reasonably near you in score (maybe 1/3 to 3x) and try to establish a message list of people with a good spread of resource boosts. That way when Fellowships hit the server you have one ready-made. Good luck!

 

[DeletedUser627]

Thanks for the advice, Phoequndt. I'll begin messaging....not much else to do without goods!

 

[DeletedUser61]

We now have a second world available, so you'll obviously want to play the other race, but the main advantage is that you'll CERTAINLY have active neighbors, if only for a few weeks.

Judging by my experience from FoE, folks who have a city in several Worlds are a pain, so don't over do it. They never help pull the wagon, but they're more than willing to declare, loudly, that you're "doing it all wrong" because they think something works better in one of their other worlds where they sit on the right hand of God himself.