Trade of commodities.

    I am a relatively new player (5 days old). I am slowly understanding how these complex interrelationships. I have one question and maybe someone on this forum can shed some light on it.


    If you look at the commodities ("Resources") you will find that many of them trade for a value that is slightly higher than the cost of extraction. Right now, if you want to buy Quartz Sand or Iron Ore, the price you get in the market is comparable to the cost of building a mine (with some reasonable depreciation) plus the extraction cost. Something like 400 money units.


    But with Logs there is a problem. Logging logs costs around 400 money units, but buying Logs in the market is quite expensive, more like 1700-2000 money units.


    Is this because players are endowed with too little Timber resources when they are given a map? Is it because everyone is massively investing in furniture and paper industries? Is this just an anomaly that will revert with time? Or is it an intrinsic characteristic of the game: many industries available that require Wood products and too little Timber to "mine" from?


    Any ideas or speculations are welcome.


    Game is great!

    "The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet." (W. Gibson)

    Good observation for a 5 day old player :)


    Yes there are quite a lot of dynamic movements to the raw material markets. This is mostly due to the fact that players are researching new products (new research levels). The low levels have a lot of lucrative products made of wood, so wood prices have been rising over the first 4 weeks of the round while other markets like iron ore/steel have been oversupported. This trend will most likely revert itself in the next 4 weeks (automotive industry is highly profitable and very steel hungry)


    Plausible reasons for selling raw goods below production cost is often that throwing away the goods is more expensive than selling them with a loss. If your mines are upgraded already you will be hesitant to demolish them or put them on halt, because maybe tomorrow the prices will be better:)

    Wow! It does mimic a real economy pretty closely!


    The bad thing of being 5 days old is that I still cannot afford any research (I am getting there, but not yet). So by the time all the players start building cars and demanding all the steel I will be paying through the nose for the iron ore to make my coffee cans :(


    Oh, but then the price of coffee will go up as well.


    Thanks for the reply.

    "The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet." (W. Gibson)