Not a beta tester... Yet! But I think the solution is to make AI more likely to build mines/oil/etc, rather than tweak pricing, as far as controlling it being too easy to make a profit. If there is a competitive market because there are 3/4/5 producers worldwide of a given resource you'll be limited in how much you can price gouge by what shipping cost is from the next city over. If you're the only one in a city and charge $100 for oil you'll do great... So long as oil isn't being made in a city next door for for $30 and $20 shipping, making it effectively $50 in your city. Then you'd be limited to maybe making yours $40 or $45 to undercut them. If they have their supply being ate up at $30, then they're not likely to cut their pricing and then price "equilibrium" has been met for the moment.

As I haven't seen what AI does with a mine in the Lab I can't say for sure, but in Cap2 they had a tendency to undercharge by a huge amount vs what they could have. If there were only 2 producers in the world, me and them, and both our mines had more demand than we could meet they would still price it at 1/10th of my price... Seems they should take advantage and price higher. It's like they should default to max price, and then only adjust down in relation to demand and what others are charging... This is more or less what they do with a regular product, but rarely ever with natural resources.

Just my 2 cents!

A few months ago, my supply of silica stopped.
I waited but nobody did anything. I decided to build a silica mine, which was quickly submerged by demand.


I decided to max the price, which allowed me to make 10M per month with it


It's quite a bug exploit but it is easy to do, and in Cap2 it was an easy way to win.

This will be fixed in the next patch.

Here is a savegame with this typical problem.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/a413w6qyj08nk ... silica.SAV


A few months ago, my supply of silica stopped.
I waited but nobody did anything. I decided to build a silica mine, which was quickly submerged by demand.


I decided to max the price, which allowed me to make 10M per month with it


It's quite a bug exploit but it is easy to do, and in Cap2 it was an easy way to win.

My last savegame had the problem, however it was in the last version. I will try to reproduce this "bug" in the new version.

Nevertheless, it is a problem which was already present in Cap2. I remember i was making huge amount of money with resources such as oil, timber, etc.

Small Iron (40 000t) et coal mines are a pain. You have to build new mines very often because the AI open very few mines.
I would prefer that all the mines and lodges uses 100 000t of reserve and are around 50-100 M to build.
Perhaps David, you should create AI oriented on natural resources ? Big investment, long-term profitability.

I think that's a real problem for now.

Iron and coal mines' reserve quantities will be doubled in the next version. You may test and see if it needs further increases.

I can make huge amount of money just because of this. I explain :

- There is 3 timber lodges. As there is a lot of demand, they are put in "internal sales". I build a lodge and max the price ( until -100 quality).
But everybody continue to buy my wood. I can make about 1B of $ with every lodge. Just because the AI is flawed and don't build lodges.

Please send me a saved game for investigation.

No !

Small Iron (40 000t) et coal mines are a pain. You have to build new mines very often because the AI open very few mines.
I would prefer that all the mines and lodges uses 100 000t of reserve and are around 50-100 M to build.
Perhaps David, you should create AI oriented on natural resources ? Big investment, long-term profitability.

I think that's a real problem for now.

I can make huge amount of money just because of this. I explain :

- There is 3 timber lodges. As there is a lot of demand, they are put in "internal sales". I build a lodge and max the price ( until -100 quality).
But everybody continue to buy my wood. I can make about 1B of $ with every lodge. Just because the AI is flawed and don't build lodges.

We will bring in more beta testers next week and will be able to collect more feedback (votes to the poll) which will shed light on whether the cost should be lowered.

Inarius wrote:I agree. After retesting it, it's true that it's hard to make profit with silica and CM mines.

On the other hand, these mines have generally a lot more reserves than Iron or coal. More than 100 000 tons. It's can be normal that the price is higher.

We should calculate the price per tons.

I believe there should be a cheaper alternative to this,
like a smaller silica/CM mining site (i.e. less reserves, and perhaps lower quality) which costs about the same as an iron/timber site,
so at least industries can start up without the reliance on seaports...

All to say, silica/CM sites being more expensive than oil sites is not so rational in my opinion...

mwyeoh wrote:

kazenorin wrote:Below are some prices for your reference:
Silica: $55M, $62M, 70M, $90M, $90M, $100M, $100M; Average: $81M
Chemicals: $84M, $100M, $110M, $125M, $125M, $140M, $172M; Average: $122M
Oil: $106M, $90M, $87M, $134M, $94M; Average: $102M
Coal: $14M, $10M, $11M, $15M, $12M, $13M, $11M; Average: $12M
Iron: $10M, $9M, $10M, $7M, $7M, $9M; Average: $9M

These are usually the sort of prices I see
They definitely are expensive to begin with, so at the beginning to get any of those resources, we have to rely either on seaports or an AI starting a mine on one of those

Ive never really gone into mining in a game so I dont know what sort of income streams they offer. Might have to play around with it and see how I go

Relying on seaports, that's what I figured.

Though with the setting "1 Seaport per city, 1 non-constantly supplied low-quality product per seaport",
seaports aren't that viable,
they rarely produce raw materials long enough to support long term manufacturing,
not to mention that they might not stock silica and chemical minerals at all...

In the setting of my game,
AIs struggle for existence like fish,
most fail to survive and a few does...
The few usually are those to rely on farmed products...
So none invests on mining raw materials like aluminum, silica, CM, gold, silver...
Making it impossible to enter the manufacturing of most industries.

I agree. After retesting it, it's true that it's hard to make profit with silica and CM mines.

On the other hand, these mines have generally a lot more reserves than Iron or coal. More than 100 000 tons. It's can be normal that the price is higher.

We should calculate the price per tons.