Author: marcelbuter
Ibisha is off to a flying start in the 81st trading period, which made me wonder how it’s possible that, even with the brick issue, alone it had double the MVs than all the other countries combined. The answer might be quite simple, the number of traders in the city.
Ibisha has 30 traders Sunday afternoon, and all of them are somewhat trading actively. In Zwollar on the other hand there are 5 people “actively” trading. I have only seen the bricks shop once on all times logging in, and only the products iron, wood, shovels, saws, plastic, oil, and bricks are available. Zwollar however does have 18 citizens, so that means that 12 people aren’t trading at all. My idea is that this number is quite similar in the other cities. Now I know a bunch of you are thinking that it is quite obvious that this is the case, but I would also like to look into how to solve it.
Research has shown that you need around 12 or 13 active players to be able to serve all products. This is the bare minimum for a healthy city where all products are present as for which the game is designed. Any extra traders are not necessarily a problem since not all of these traders are online 24 hours a day. Before tourists we had 3 or 4 traders in iron for example and it was never a problem. Traders still invested in marketing to take advantage of being in the front of the street, traders on side streets lowered their prices to make it worth it to look a little further for your products. It was a nice balance played by very active players, casual players, and new players so that everyone got a piece of the action. You even had people like gelaarsdekat1 who for rounds did nothing but resell other people’s products at the front of the street. He did this with a lot of success.
What does this have to do with the solution you might think? We are very attached to our cities. A small trip through the city sometimes looks like driving through the South of the USA. Most people have never even left their city and threaten to leave the game if their city disappears. Some people have threatened to leave the game a few times now when their cities (Bahthoevedorp and Yenville for example) would be removed. Small fact check, most of these people are still playing, just take a look at how many former Yenville players are still working together in Roebelarendsveen. The problem is that this way of thinking might be holding the game back. Miniconomy, very plainly said, does not have the amount of players needed to sustain adequate trade in 10 different cities across the Federation, especially not if the only reason is people hanging on to childish city based reasons.
The proposal therefore is quite simple, join up the cities into countries. A Cyberia with 40 active traders would bring all parts of the game back that made it so interesting. Competition, frequent sales, pricing wars, and in some occasions total dominance. Mayor would become a position that actually took some effort again since you only have 4 per round. Politics will be about nation versus nation instead of city versus city and how to make sure that national goals are met, not petty fighting about which city deserves 5000 I-Shell more or which member of the cabinet is doing a crap job this time. Digitalia basically has this already, just like Ibisha and it works better in those countries while they have a significantly smaller population base.
I know there would be a lot of negative points to mention as well, and I am more than willing to hear this feedback on the chat, on MSN, or via e-mail. Next week is part 2 and I will go a little bit more into detail about the benefits, losses, risks, and possible gains that this plan would bring for Miniconomy as a whole.