Plantations Expansion

[Captain Jack]

I am speaking for an added bonus to Cunning Accountants.

So the in game description would become:

Every level increases Credit Exchange Market Limit by 5M, Maximum Client account by 500k and Maximum Bank Treasury by 25M.

[Shadowood]

I am speaking for an added bonus to Cunning Accountants.

So the in game description would become:

Every level increases Credit Exchange Market Limit by 5M, Maximum Client account by 500k and Maximum Bank Treasury by 25M.

Awesome! Thanks

[Jessy's Dream]

I have noticed constant Governor changes at some ports. Some may not be aware of how things already work and how plantations will work, so I will attempt to list these details here, for future reference.


Governors Appointment
------------------------------

Governors are adjusted by priorities. Priority 1 goes first. If priority 1 does not exist, then we move to priority 2. If priority 2 does not exist, then we move to priority 3.


Priority 1
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Rightful King selects and appoints Governors. He can assign any Noble, which practically means that anyone from a Baron (!) rank is eligible.

Priority 2
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If the King has not selected a Governor for a port, then the remaining candidates are sorted by highest influence. Once they are sorted, the remaining Governors without a port, are then checked for their preferences list. If there are three open ports, the system will sort 3 Governors by highest influence and it will check their lists.

The Governor with the highest influence gets to choose first and received the top available port of his list. If none of his desired ports are available, then the system will not give him yet a port but will instead move to the second of the list where the same procedure will follow.

Priority 3
========
If for any reason there are Governors without ports, either because the available ports are not in their list or because they have not declared a list, then the system distributes the ports based on total population of each port. Remaining available ports are then distributed based on population to the highest influence Governor remaining.


Conclusion
===========

The conclusion is that aspiring Governors should list multiple ports on their list. This will result in more stable outcomes. For example, I keep noticing that during the past week, the Spanish port of Chalkos changes hands daily. This is going to create issues with plantations.

Here are the issues:
==================

1)Every contract offer sent is port, country and governor specific. Let's suppose Lodswe is the Governor of Chalkos and I send an offer to him. Let's suppose that he fails to reply on the same day and the update occurs. During the update though, Anomander Rake takes the Governor seat instead.

This will create the following issues:
1)The contract offer I sent to Lodswe is invalid. It will not be removed yet though, before 48 hours pass. I can either send a new contract to the new Governor or hope that Lodswe will return as Governor tomorrow and he will either reply or the time will expire.
2)Specifically for automatically resolved expired contracts, to avoid abuse, automatic settlement will be random and surely past 48hours. During this random window, the Governor will still be able to reply (Lodswe at our example). If however the port Governor is different, the automatic settlement will fail (once the expiration runs out).
3)Lodswe will also have trouble running his own plantation. We decided yesterday to change how this work to improve this part. So, we added a 3 days grace period for Governors who lose their seat. This means that Lodswe will have 3 days to get an operating permission from the new Governor to keep his own plantation running. Of course, if he returns to the place, his own permission will receive an automatic renewal of 3 more days but you get the idea in how troubling this can be. (Plantations will no operating permission will run normally but will produce 0. Which means that you will pay every cost but you will not get any production.)


Final Note
========

Of course all these can be part of the game. All these can be a avoided though if there are either decisions from the Rightful King or decisions from the Governors.

Most probably, Chalkos issue is that no eligible Governor has set it on priority at his list. This is why everyday it changes hands, mostly due to population changes. Officials of every nation will need to find a solution to this, if they want to increase the odds of getting players to invest in Plantations at their own ports.

It makes sense that ports who constantly change hands cannot be top priorities for any investor. Plantations are yet another type of investment. It will be only different than any other in the game in one key aspect:
-It's profitability will be dynamically relevant to current game status thanks to the Operating Licenses which will dictate the amount of profit one will be able to pull out of them as operating permissions cost can span from ineligible to considerable.

The initial cost of a license will span from 0 gold coins to 150M but our plan is to expand this limit in the future. One of the top reasons this cannot happen yet is that there are not enough banks out there to support such payments. Plus, it only makes sense to start with a small max cap, until we have a more solid overview of their profitability.


[Note: Post should be added to Plantations Manual later]

[Captain Jack]

We have ended up to the following system for payments:
Operating Permission payment

• Once the contract is finalized, this is when the payment will need to be sent. Once the full payment is sent, then the contract will be activated.
• The payment will be sent to the Governor through banks.
• A payment window will open, containing the full sum. The player will have 24hours to finish the payment. Failure to do so, will cancel the contract and any payments already sent will be returned to player's hand, after deducting a 5% corruption fee.
• Once the payment is finalized, the system will pay the total sum to the King, the Governor and the system using the accounts of banks, based on lists of priorities.
• The Governor and the King will be able to set a priority list of eligible banks. If listed banks do not have enough space to accept the sum in total, the system will automatically list new banks based on available capacity priority

Chartered Banks and Cunnin Accounts limits will soon be implemented in the game and will play a role to the concept.

This seemed to be the only viable solution for now and in the future if we want to be able to entertain really big payments (up to 1B as we want).
It solves a whole more issues that have been troubling us for a long time. Most were eliminated with Chartered Banks and CA but there are also a lot of gameplay issues that we could not solve.
For example, it solves the huge problem of receiving multiple payments in 1 day (just imagine, how would exactly work the first day?)
It also solves the issue of hiding the payment. The system will try to always split the amount to at least two banks (not in half but randomly).
Not to mention how simpler it will be for interface-wise for all involved users.

Listing your own bank will be viable, but I suggest you use this as a third option perhaps. You will have more control over this way. This way it won't get full overnight.

Also, payments will appear like as if they are an ordinary Send payment procedure.
Relative fees of Send Payments will be maintained.

In the future, we will add the following options:
-Ability to choose in how many banks to split the received payment (to hide better the real amount from bankers)
-Ability to choose the maximum amount you want to accept at your own bank (for those that want to list it as top priority but still want control).

As you realize,the above 2 options will help but they cannot be on priority.

We are already 1 day behind since my last post but we hope to cover this up in the weekend and in the expense of testing.

Later today, we hope to announce CA and Chartered Banks as well as the interface where you will be able to set your bank priorities.

This might solve a lot of issues but it comes with extra development time price tag. However, we are hoping to use this new "banking system" in more features in the future to make it worth.

It will also open banking opportunities for banks with available space. Perhaps it is a good time to revise Send Payments fees to something greater than 0%

[Shadowood]

CJ, can you clarify an "Inactive Player" a little bit more. It was breifly covered by a question by Feniks, but what about the Pool of Acres?

Just read and re-read this. I have a few questions.

2.) You stated once contract is signed it can not be revoked. "Operating permissions are final". What if a player goes inactive? Does the contract continue until renewal period? His workers will die off eventually. With a 3 month window, and limited acreage initially, this could pose some issues.

2)The contract will continue no matter the activity status. Workers, provided they have enough supplies and good working conditions, could survive.

Code: Select all

Acres Rental
Every port will be assigned a pool of available acres. Nations will be able to increase this amount later (With national port buildings)

My question is... What if a player goes inactive and is tying up Acres in your port. They run out of resources so there is no production. Can we "Boot" this player out to free up those unused Acres to lease to someone else?

[Captain Jack]

I will keep it short here, to save time:

The maximum acres per port, will be 50k. The first 20k will be open right away but the rest 30k will open with Port Buildings that the nation will construct. More details on these at the relative thread.

The available acres will be open for rental, starting from a minimum fee per acre. Let's assume that the golden minimum number for now is 10gc per acre. Nations will be able to raise this later through a Port Building which will unlock this ability. The Governor will then decide.

What you are currently asking, has not crossed our mind. It is not something that we have reviewed yet, due to the fact that we do not expect acres demand to be this high early on. Plantation owners will only rent as many acres as they want and need. However, you make a point, not because inactives but because acres may and can run out, as their number is finite.

The only viable solution I can see right now, one that can also be implemented relatively easy and fast, is the ability for plantation owners to set the maximum amount they are willing to pay for every acre. This will solve such issues.

Here is an example:
Let's assume that you rent 1,000 acres at the port of Goroum, which has 20,000 acres in total.
You set your maximum offer at 1,000 gc per acre.

However, Goroum has currently 4000 available acres. Therefore, you only pay 10 gc/acre.
Then, someday Lodswe comes up and decides that he wants to create a mega plantation of 5,000 acres. His maximum bid for such, is 100 gc per acre.

For the sake of the example, let's assume that Feniks already has a mega plantation of 5k acres there. He is currently paying 10gc/acre but his maximum is 500 gc/acre.
There is also Jim Hawkins who has another mega plantation of 10k acres. He is currently paying 10gc/acre but his maximum is 2000gc/acre.
Finally, there are other owners, paying the minimum with no setting for greater bid, that allocate the rest 500 acres.

What will happen is the following:
You will maintain your 1000 acres, but you will pay 101gc/acre
Feniks will maintain his 5000 acres, but he will pay 101gc/acre
Jim Hawkins will retain his 10k acres too, with a rental fee of 101gc/acres
The rest 4k acres will be allocated to Lodswe with 100gc/acre
The rest plantation owners will be left with no acres.

However, Lodswe still needs 5k and not 4k.
So he decides to rise his bid to 1k/acre.
At this case, here is what will happen:
You will maintain your 1000 acres, but you will pay 501gc/acre
Feniks will lose 1000 acres and for the rest 4000 acres, but he will pay 500gc/acre
Jim Hawkins will retain his 10k acres too, with a rental fee of 501gc/acre
Lodswe will get his desired 5k and his rental fee will be 501gc/acre


The only difference will be that already rented acres, will not be lost till update. Which means that Feniks will still keep his acres before losing them during update. Which means that he will be able to rise his own bid till then.

I only find it fair to list various offers, without names though. In the format of bid of 10k acres for a maximum of 1000gc. Bid of 1000 acres for a maximum of 500gc, etc. So you will know how much to bid every time.

In case acres are not already rented, you will receive them immediately and you will pay the rent right away for them. This will give players flexibility to enlarge their acres with immediate effects,when there are enough acres available.

You should also be aware that while acres will play an important role,production will still continue even with a few acres. It will bad effects of course which will however will not be immediate. So even if you end up with a few acres for a day or two, it will not have a huge impact unless your plantation is really really crowded.

Regarding activity, it will play no role as long as the inactive player will be able to pay. One good question though is how such payments will be done as players might be reluctant to put extra burden to their hands. Initially, this seems like the only way. Later we could explore more options.

[Jessy's Dream]

One more issue, presented to us by dear Plantation Hydra.

[sXs]

The only difference will be that already rented acres, will not be lost till update. Which means that Feniks will still keep his acres before losing them during update. Which means that he will be able to rise his own bid till then.

Is this a full 24 hour period? If bid placed before one update, shouldn't current plantation owners have at least a 24 hr period to raise?

Or maybe I am misunderstanding something?

[Captain Jack]

24 hours. This will not be tied to the daily update. After all production will be near real time. We don't want sneak bids either.

[sXs]

24 hours. This will not be tied to the daily update. After all production will be near real time. We don't want sneak bids either.

Thank you, that was my concern.