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I've been having fun playing the World scenario as North America and have noticed one really big problem. Since it has no World Market it has no Econ Police. In smaller scenarios, missions and campaigns that have the World Market to moderate prices for exports and imports human players can't jerk the poor little AI's around with crazy price markups for exports. Unfortunately in the World scenario there is no World Market to keep humans somewhat honest, except for consumer goods.

I do like the fact that the autobuy price markup is set to $46,500 as the max price to pay for consumer goods even though I have an excess of consumer goods prodcution and can't ripoff the Middle East who's buying lots and has lots of treasury to burn. I have lots of petroleum production though and have marked it up over 1,000 percent to $381.00 per barrel. The game before I was really mean with my oil set for over $1,000 per barrel. I've found that the other big oil producers are selling for around $200-$210 per barrel.

The case that's got me going is India/Pakistan, the game's greatest economic power according to the scoreboard. For a long time I could always sell all of my oil and then there were turns where I wasn't. At first I thought one of the other oil exporters was playing price wars with me so I lowered my price each time I had couldn't sell all of my overproduction plus some from my reserves. I was still having that problem until I finally pegged it to India/Pakistan and it's treasury. I could predict which turns it would buy lots and when it couldn't because it's once mighty treasury was all burned up and it was borrowing heavily.

Now I'm contemplating some real economic wizardry. Now that I've pegged the other oil exporters at around $200 per barrel I'm thinking I can buy up say 5 million barrels of oil so that I can hoist other oil importers onto my $381.00 per barrel oil. In fact I think I'll really jack up my prices to over $1,000 per barrel just to see how much I really can suck from the poor sucker AI's with their autobuys set to the max for oil. Since I have $1.4 trillion in my treasury I can really have some fun, maybe buy 10-20 million barrels of oil just to ensure I get other oil importers with money hoisted onto my overpriced oil petard.

As much as I enjoy reducing AI's to ruins through economic warfare I think that the World scenario needs to be fixed with autobuy price markups set to some reasonable levels the way consumer goods are set. It's just way too easy to burn the AI's with overpriced exports when the autobuy price is set to the max. While I'm only getting about a 90% markup on consumer goods as North America I still like that there is a price cap set to disallow price fixing to ruin other regions. Makes one play more honestly and keeps the game more real.

Please fix the World scenario with price caps on all products the way you did consumer goods. I'd set consumer goods at $50,000 rather than $46,500 and set oil somewhere between $200-$250 for oil, about where the AI's are selling now anyway. Price caps on autobuy will keep humans more honest on exports, especially for oil, and force them to be more realistic in their own economics. I can just imagine what humans would do to other humans knowing that the autobuy is set to the max though humans should be smart enough to turn it off and set their own buy prices and quantities.
Thanks,

Eric Larsen

If you had 1.4 trillion dollars and wanted to frig up any market you could.

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Missiles!! Nukes!

Baloogan,
Instead of trying to buy oil low to force more sales at my high prices I decided to have just a tad of fun playing the markets. I had reached a high-point of $28,000 GDP/c with 9.6% inflation and 3.5% unemployment. I needed to cool down my economy and get my pricing back to being more competitive with the small fries.

I ended up dropping my oil prices. I managed to catch the Middle East napping at $362 a barrel with Africa nearby and got them sitting on unsold oil. Got them to drop their prices right quick and then I went back to higher prices. Saw the Middle East's treasury start dropping each turn after that. I let India/Pakistan recover a little financially so it could buy oil every turn at about the same rate. I kept dropping prices but couldn't find South America's pricemark so I turned on all of my oil spigots and pulled out some oil from my reserves and I caught South America and Russia napping. Got them to drop their prices as well and then I went back up.

Yeah I'm getting a barrel of laughs out of playing the markets and pulling the rug out from under the AI's when they raise their prices. I just jack up production or pull out some reserves and flood the market for a product one day. After that the AI's immediately react and drop their export prices.

Another thing I love is waiting until the AI's have stuff at rock-bottom prices and then I buy up the whole lot of everything from everyone. I also decided to not produce military goods but rather buy them from the AI's to keep their stocks down. My price to produce is around $35,000 but I get them for about $13,000 from the AI's. I also do that with industrial goods so I can underproduce and save money by burning up inventory.

I'm goading South America into attacking me as North America and just before it goes ballistic I'll buy up all it's military goods so it starts a war with me with little to no reserves of military goods while I have millions of tons of war toys with no production. I'll also buy up everyone else's war toys so S.A. will be hard pressed to keep it's forces supplied after I apply my "tomahawk chop" to it's military/industrial complex.

Oh, by the way, after another month I now have $1.5 trillion in my treasury.
Thanks,

Eric Larsen

sadly it odesnt matter they ALL go in the reds sooner or later

Actually, with the last couple of Updates the world regions hold their economic situation much better, and can often prosper for a reasonably long time. There is still the issue that the AI rulers do not understand very long term games very well, though.

Regarding your comments Eric, there are some very good and interesting points.

1) AI regions don't take advantage of the 'no price controls' wild-market prices at the world level. Unfortunately the AI has trouble comprehending that you can make $1000 on a barrel of oil when the situation is tight.

2) Without the World Market, there is no 'price cop' on the world level. This is very true, but also has a base of realism - with all the world production represented "on-map", the true laws of supply and demand take effect. If people have to buy oil for $500 a barrel, then they will. Of course, they'll drive less, but that effect is factored in to elements like consumer demand reductions.

3) The AI doesn't mitigate shortages by building facilities or researching techs to reduce consumption... Unfortunately this is a game limitation.

One of the suggestions you have is to introduce an artificial cap on pricing, which is sort-of happening with consumer goods. This is possible to do, but it is also a bit arbitrary.

It would be nice to try to reduce this 'exploit' effect for the next update, but I'm not sure that artificial price caps are the best approach. I'm open for suggestions though

-- George.

Sorry i doubt that...
i think the best solution for this problem (within the gamelimitations) is first a decline in the diplo ratings and then..... war...

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NO MORE NOISY FISH [unless they are green & furiously]
I HAVE STILL A FISH IN MY EAR

?? which happens anyways. playing world scenario unless i just keep giving all the ai's little gifts of money every other day they will declare war on me eventually.

hmmm

btw, the AI's will play 95,000 dollars a barrel for oil! Cant go over 100,000 because it will reset to 100.00 dollars.

made something like 22 trillion dollars in the first month of the game, but in doing so, I bankrupted Europe, India-pakistan, and 1 other i think...

so i had to survive on that 22 trillion for the rest of the game since the AI's that didnt have OIL were so far in debt " they owed like 5 trillion in debt a piece"

George,
If you bit the bullet on providing an artificial price cap on consumer goods then why worry about replicating the same trick for other products? I just think it would help the AI's if there were some price caps on all products in the world scenario. It would keep humans from really taking advantage of the AI's propensity to autobuy products at ridiculous prices. Since the AI's don't increase their production capacity it is far too easy for them to create tight product situations.

It would be nice if the AI's upgraded their production facilities and researched economic research items that would help them with their export problems. It would be good to limit unit building early on to concentrate on getting their economic houses in order. I find that researching new unit items first and then building the new goodies is better than starting to build old tech stuff right away.
Thanks,

Eric Larsen