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Economy Rework & Fixes

28/07/23: F588415A

This mod is my personal endeavour at improving the simulated economy in this game, while also attempting to improve game balance by introducing buffs and nerfs to certain aspects where necessary.

Currently it changes the following aspects of the game:

• The prices and market stock of all default items
  
• The value of selling from the front store
  
• The value of selling on the market
  
• The market restocking mechanic
  
• The entire market layout
  
• The default storage rules for both players and AI
  
• The purchasing power of NPC's
  
• Several other minor adjustments and tweaks

More detailed explanations below.

Currently this mod only supports the English, French and German versions of the game.

This mod makes changes to the following files:

• G3ItemsDefault.oc
  
• GameplayDefault.oc
  
• DefaultStorageRulesConfig.oc
  
• ResultObjectsDefault.oc
  
• AIConstValues.oc
  
• Market.oc
  
• locdirect_english.loo
  
• locdirect_french.loo
  
• locdirect_german.loo

It also disables the following files:

• GatheredItems.inc
  
• ResourceProducerItems.inc
  
• Tier1Products.inc
  
• Tier2Products.inc
  
• Tier3Products.inc
  
• Tier4Products.inc
  
• Tier5Products.inc
  
• Tier6Products.inc
  
• Tier7Products.inc

This mod uses its own file ERFItems.inc to load the vanilla items into the game. Hence the above files will never be loaded, so any changes made to them will have no effect.

Here I will address any important changes this mod makes in more detail, including the reasoning behind them.

This mod changes the price of every default item in the game, with event and far trade items currently being the only notable exceptions. This change was necessary since the value of items was solely decided by the amount of time spent gathering or crafting them. For higher tier items especially, this meant that the only net profit that could ever be made on them was the amount of time spent on combining their components.

In practice this meant that a blacksmith crafting plate armour was just as profitable as a simple fisherman fishing up some fish. Their value for time spent was exactly the same. The entire logistical network you set up to sustain your blacksmithing industry could be replaced by a handful of fishermen and you'd make just as much money. If not more so, since you'd have less logistic strain and more concentrated productivity.

In order to combat this issue, the price of all items is now manually set following a custom formula. Items that need to be crafted now gain more value based on the amount of ingredients required and the tier of the item now contributes to its value. In short, the harder an item is to craft, the more profitable it is to do so, as one would normally expect.

The numbers have been tailored such to allow for a slower, calmer, early to midgame that slowly ramps back up to the vanilla endgame values at the highest tiers. My hope is that this change will now properly encourage and reward you for expanding your industry into these higher tiers.

To put it bluntly, this mod severely nerfs the front store. This change was necessary since the front store sidesteps the process of supply and demand. Selling items via the front store does not affect the market price in any way, so overselling an item never causes prices to drop. Meaning, if prices were high, selling via the front store meant you could endlessly capitalise on heightened prices.

On top of that, selling your goods directly on the market made significantly less money than selling via the front store. With 50%-125% higher profit, no impact on the market price, and guaranteed sales (sometimes even magical sales, thanks developers), there was no reason to ever not use the front store. It felt like selling on the market could only hurt you.

In order to combat this issue, selling on the market is now as profitable as selling from the front store. In combination with the changes to item prices (see above) and the changes to market restocking (see below), setting up a proper logistic network is now the fastest way to make money. In my opinion, this feels more in line with the vision of setting up a growing and expanding industry.

That said, the front store still has the potential to sell goods at a higher price. However, doing so is now far more difficult. NPC's are now far less likely to stray from the comfort of their markets, so investing in the attractiveness of your store is now an actual must for competing. On top of that, hiking up your prices will quickly cause your reputation to plummet if you're not careful.

In order to support the changes to the front store and market selling (see above), small changes had to be made to market restocking as well. Market restocking is the mechanic the game uses to both refill and reduce items on the market. Unfortunately it was far too aggressive when it came to refilling, and extremely inadequate when it came to reducing.

In order to combat this issue, the relevant values were adjusted to allow for a calm but constant fill and drain of items on the market. Refilling now happens gradually over time, while reducing kicks in sooner and stays active much longer. My hope is that this will give markets the ability needed to naturally recover over time, especially if you allow them the chance to breathe.

This mod severely lowers the purchasing power of NPC's. Simply put, NPC's can now spend much less money on a single purchase. This change was necessary because high class NPC's were capable of buying stacks of more than 20 of the most expensive items in the game in a single purchase. Even poor NPC's didn't shy away from buying out entire stacks of goods sometimes.

This often led to multiple NPC's wandering around with small fortunes worth of goods in their pockets, whilst also dramatically upsetting the economy in the process. Supplies in both the market and front stores would rapidly drop by huge amounts, even from a small number of purchases.

In order to combat this issue, the purchasing power of NPC's was lowered to far more reasonable values. These new values are based on the new item prices (see above) and should end up feeling more natural.