Food is useful even if you don't intend on doing anything: it improves your chances of making more/max money in the Pub if run straight in.

Otherwise, don't make Food if you don't intend to use it for your turn.

This is purely from an "original gameplay" standpoint, so not sure how changing this would affect mechanics.

Beacuse of spoilage food and energy are never good to stock pile therefore to keep store price high collude amoungst members to obtain enough to max your turn but never sell to the store - keeping price high

Not selling to the store doesn't keep price high. Relative availability of goods and high trading prices do. All collusion does is let you violate the normal order of priority at the auction, so you can ensure your goods come from / go to the person you want them to, and not whoever is in last place.

The collony need only produce enough food/energyfor each turn plus an extra plot for every 4 food/energy  plots should a random reduce food or energy production.

If you meet needs each turn, there is never a reason for the price of Food and Energy to go up - unless players decide amongst themselves that Food / Energy should be more valuable and decide to trade at those prices, thereby updating the market value (and the Store will respond by raising its prices as well).

Smithore - NEVER sell to the store unless mules run out then only sell enough to replenish the number of mules needed for each turn  again Collusioin keeps the store price high so the collony becomes rich!
     STOCKPILE smithore for the game no spoilage

Without Smithore, MULEs don't get produced. The price of Smithore depends on the number of MULEs and the number of owned, uninstalled plots. You're correct in this; once you have Smithore spiked, the way to keep it there is to have MULE demand/supply be as close to 1.0 as possible, and then just hoard like crazy...

...but you're incorrect that Smithore doesn't spoil...it does after 50 units, which means this strategy will eventually fail, when either everyone has 50 Smithore (and therefore the last round's production breaks this tie, a rather wonky means of winning), or someone will get tired of having no MULEs and liquidates.

Crystite - each turn everyone should assay a property then build four plots in a square around the rich deposits so you make increased production bonuses.  sell all crystite when price goes up over 120 because you can have 2 pirate raids per game I have never seen 3

Also correct.

This feature currently doesn't exist in Planet MULE, but as the goal of the developers is to get Planet MULE as close to the original's gameplay as possible (barring obvious interface upgrades and acknowledged limitations in the code due to hardware/software constraints), it's on their list of things to add.

Bear in mind that you're dealing with internet multiplayer, which can complicate the collusion interface. This includes selling land to other players, which functions on a similar mechanic.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is this information not in the How-To-Play section or in the stickied posts in this forum? I'd like to think I didn't miss anything, but I'm ADHD so errors are expected...

[below]

Assets are the combined total of your land holdings, the MULEs installed, the outfitting costs associated, and the current market value of all your goods at the end of the last round's auction:


$35 per MULE
$500 per empty plot
$525 per Food installation
$550 per Energy installation
$575 per Smithore installation
$600 per Crystite installation
$X per unit of goods, where X is that good's current market price

For purposes of valuation, treat Smithore and Crystite as if you sold them at the Round 12 auction. Food and Energy, like Keybounce said, are bought by the Store below their market value, so add $15 to the Store's buying price for each, to get their final value (as the market price isn't updated post-auction in the last round; Planet MULE emulates the C=64 version in this regard. Atari version does update the final price after the last round, which is a bit of a long-standing controversy between "versionists").

So as it stands, there's no reason to sell anything in the last round, as the game values it correctly as if you had sold it.

Understanding the mechanics of how prices are affected by surplus and shortage will help you decide when it's time to invest in commodities, and when to recover your "liquidity".

I approve of this priority - price adjustment during the auction turns out to be a key part of the balance in that it restricts how absurd pricing can be (in lieu of land auctions which actually function like an auction, but that's just me grousing a bit).

And no, I haven't died. I've just been unemployed, which can suck.

Well, it's like the saying goes: As even the most immature encrustling knows, there must always be one Spathi that picks the short Ta Puun stick.

How deliciously obscure! +10 cocktails to you, good sir.

If one of you is hosting, and the other person connects from "inside" your network, the game will probably see you with a different IP, the internal IP addresses used in your network. I do not think you will be able to both play an externally hosted game with this setup unless one of you uses a VPN/proxy to achieve a different IP.

And honestly, everyone should at least cultivate such a thing. It seems increasingly the case that your natural IP address can become politically inconvenient, and land you smack in the middle of some pesky Internet censorship. Like any true Internetizen, you should treat such an occurrence as damage and reroute around it!

I, for one, never post or do anything from my actual IP anymore. It's so inconvenient.

How's the weather down there in the South Pacific?

Almost overlooked that, thanks!

Also, just been informed that player land auctions do not let the selling player set the minimum bid as in the original. I figure this would be one of the last things to add considering I've never seen it used that often, and its interface is slightly different than that of the other auctions.

Nope. If you sell your own land, you're just a bidder like everyone else. I seem to remember in the C64 version, the seller of the land stood at the top of the screen and people walked towards him. If the price being offered becomes unpalatably paltry, there is nothing you can do and the land may effectively be taken from you if you cannot outbid your bidder for your own land due to time or lack of funds.

By all means, this needs to get added to the game with utmost priority - alongside the prototype project being developed.

Agreed. I do not want my rank outside of the game I'm about to play, have anything to do with my chances of winning that game.

Often on my 11th & 12th turn I usually run right to the pub as it is. Once the plots are all developed and everything is as balanced as you can get there is no reason to change things. I often eliminate all my food production during those rounds just because I'd go straight to the pub anyways and the time I get from food doesn't earn me enough in the pub to be worth not using it for something else.

You'll make more off that food being in the Pub than trying to produce Energy in the river valley. If Food is expensive in the later rounds, then I understand, but then, Food is expensive, so you should be making it and selling it.

what if you really need money, and you sell your own land for next round auction, and start price is higher than everyone's money? then you won't be able to sell in the end even if you would be willing to price it lower.

If you sell your own land, you technically should be able to set the minimum bid. Is this not happening?

If Planet MULE behaves like the original:

Plots for sale   
0   31.126%
1   37.748%
2   24.303%
3    6.248%
4    0.562%
5    0.013%

One thing that does need to be addressed, though, is that in the original, if a plot doesn't get bought, that ends the auction - you don't go on to the next plot up for bids.

What's still missing:
- double check the probabilities of the events compared to the original

Based on Kroah's pseudocode, it's a "deck" of 22 events, from which 11 are drawn. The makeup of this is deck is completely known.

Yeah, maybe it was unnecessary. I just wanted to emphasize the fact that the probabilities change if certain events are not possible to happen on round 1.

In agreement with you. Irata is not a friendly place.