Trading Concepts in CXL

[soldyne 111]

After playing the Demo for a few days I have seen some pretty wild trading in the game and on line and I thought it might be a good idea to offer a little primer for anyone who might be interested in trading.

At the time of this first edition I am playing the Demo and I am on planet Caliban right now so the market may be different from planet to planet.

First some basic concepts:

1 cash token = 10 extra cash flow in your city.  thus if your city has 12,345 surplus cash every month, then your city should be generating 1234 cash tokens available for trading.  although, I am certain this is a little bugged at the moment, but, that is the basic idea.

Omnicorps is supposed to be the bottom of the barrel as far as deals go for either buying or selling.  so when you place a deal on the market your deal should be sorted above omnicorp in the list.  if omnicorp is above you then no one in their right mind will ever deal with you because you are either too expensive or too cheap (depending on if you are buying or selling).

one issue that MC needs to fix at the moment (besides the in game lag) is the wording on the trade window between the online version and the in game version.  the wording may be different, but, the concepts are the same.  so instead of trying to explain the wording (which will just make things more confusing) I will explain using the numbers.  Also, please read over the trading FAQ provided by MC on their main web page as it will give screen shots and provide basic coverage of how all the buttons work in the UI.

if you are able to make a trade (for better or worse) then a green check box will be next the deal offer.  no green check means you either lack the tokens or you lack the cash.

when you make a deal, the deal will last for 5 real days.  the deal may be broken if the token supplier runs out of tokens or one of the cities is deleted.  I do not think that anyone can cancel a contract before the time limit is up under any other circumstanses so shop wisely.  this will require more balancing on the part of MC I think.

Trading fundamentals:

in one box you will see omnicorp with a token in one column and 166 cash tokens in the other column.  this is the window where the city in question is offering to buy a token from your city and they will give you that many cash tokens in return every month.  the key here is cash TOKENS, not cash flow.  So, if you have an extra farm token and want to sell it to omnicorps they will give you 1660 extra cash every month in exchange.

this also means that anyone else that wants to buy farm tokens must offer to buy the tokens at a greater rate than 166 per unit or else everyone will just deal with omnicorp and no one will be trading with each other.

in the other box you will see omnicorp with 1 token and 1500 cash tokens.  this is omnicorp saying that they will sell to your city a token and you must give them 15,000 extra cash every month in return!!!  I know omnicorp is supposed to have bad deals but this is rediculous and pretty much prevents any trading at all.  I think this needs rebalancing to make it playable.

What this also means is that when you offer to sell your tokens on the market for say 700 tokens that translates to 7000 excess cash flow each month for the other city which can be quite a large burden especially on small citys.

Trading Strategies:

When placing your bid on the market it is best if you do not place bids for more than 1 unit at a time.  if you place a bid to sell 5 units of industry to another city and something happens to your industrial sector and you now only have 4 units then your contract for 5 becomes threatened (because now you are in violation of the contract).  however, if you made 5 individual trades for 1 industry token each, if you lose one contract you still have 4 other valid contracts that are still active and the impact is much less to both cities.

If you have a token to sell then first look over the market and see if anyone wants to purchase your token and decide if it is worth it for you to do so.  if you don't like the deals being shown then place your bid on the market.  when setting your price keep in mind the 1token for 10 cash concept.  asking for 500 tokens means that you would be putting the other city at a loss of 5000 per month for a single token.  if you think it is worth it (perhaps your token is rare and in high need, then go for it, but, if there are others selling the same token, then lower asking price and get sorted to the top of the list.  when you are at the top of the list, it means you deal is the best.

if you need a token for your city first make sure you have plenty of excess cash.  then ask yourself why you can't produce that token in your own city.  for example if you need power, why not just build a power plant?  remember a small power plant costs about 3000 per month plus pollution.  if the best deal on the market is 700 tokens then you need to ask your self if it would be cheaper to just build the plant yourself.

if you can't produce the token yourself (like water in the desert) then you may have no choice but to trade.  always go for the trade at the top of the list as it will be the best deal.

when you are creating a deal for the open market make sure that you offer as much cash as you can afford and get sorted to the top of the list as this will ensure that you deal is made before anyone else.  if you can't afford to get to the top of the list then post your deal anyway and hope that the other deals will be made eventually and your deal will rise to the top after a time.

in either case, if after a while, your deal has not been taken and you are no longer at the top, then cancel your deal and make a new one.  also, if the market improves and your deal is too good, then cancel it and make your terms better.

once the deal is made you must keep it for 5 real days, so make darn sure you are ready for it.

Demo Caveats and limitations

being this is for the demo there are somethings you cant do yet.

you cannot negotiate time limits with the other player.  there is a flat 5 day limit for all trade deals.

you cannot trade one token type for another other than cash.  if you want to trade farm for power, then you must first trade farm for cash, the trade cash for power.

you can only trade a total number of tokens equal to the number of neighbor connections you have multiplied by 20.  basically each connection gives you 20 frieght space to trade with.  each token you trade (either buy or sell) will take up 1 freight space.  for the demo this is not a big dea, but, will become important for larger cities later on.  this number may also be dependant on the type of road making the connection (I have only used small avenues so far).

I hope this primer helps people make better trading decisions and also sparks some debat and ideas about trading in Cities XL.  Discuss.