You have made 2 alternative suggestions to the new change.
1. Land auction ends if plot doesn't sell.
This indeed fixes the problem of wasting our time as people run up multiple auctions late in the game. However, It also erases some of the most enjoyable strategic gambling that takes place earlier. For instance, sometimes players pass up an auction in the hope that there are 2 more auctions right after that and they can win both. This is a fairly common situation.
No it doesn't erase that strategic gambling of acquiring 2 plots. It moves the decision from passing up a plot in hopes it will sell a 2nd or 3rd half off(which is rare) to deciding not to horde commodities for a higher price so you will have enough money to buy two or three plots at the price set by players demand for land in the preceding auction. Its wrong for one player to devalue land for personal gain that was set by all the players demand in the preceding auction. Its not like the original. It doesn't relate to how economics works in the real world.
Why do you and the other few want to devalue land so much in the game? So you can acquire it cheaper to be able to win more often? Because you cant stand to be denied your candy by mommy?
Lets change this back to the original or as close as we can get it.
Land is the most valuable commodity in the game yet you want changes that allows players to get it cheaper then the actual value.
This is play balance issue too. Usually its the Leader(player in 1st) that has the most money or commodities to sell and possible command of the land auction if there is one. Your way allows this player to get more land even cheaper maintaining his lead by passing up land to grab the next 2 at half off. In the original this player had to pay more for that land making it harder to keep or regain the lead from his opponents that gambled there would be no land auction.
I don't feel running up the price of a plot is waste of time unless its done twice in the same auction.
Once again there is absolutely no difference between a player running up the price of energy or food from running up the price of land. Yet its okay to do it to food and energy but not land.
Don't try the argument there is a seller, that doesn't change the mechanic(strategic option) one iota. All that means is two players just colluded to deny you food, energy or land so you should be more pissed then if it was only one player that denied you something.
I disagree with you on river plots, I have won games by buying river plots late in the game for 2k or more. They would be even more valuable if they would fix the food and energy pricing especially last round food.
2. Reduce the current bid increment.
Again not such a bad idea at face value. There are 2 problems i see with doing this.
1. Your defense to keeping the old system has been that there is strategic value in running up land and then backing out. lowering the increment would either prevent running it up high enough to do that. And most importantly would still end up wasting everyone's time as we continually wait for people to run it up all so that it goes unsold and nothing happens. Now lets say you adjust the increment so that running up and then backing of is no longer effective because the range of run up becomes too small then i think point #2 (below) comes into play.
Wrong it will reduce the frequency that this tactic is usable. But it will still be there as a choice when its needed. In games were the players have made a lot of money(usually early on ore) and a few more auctions then usual have occurred(raising the starting bid of land higher)
And it will be higher because we took care of that in point one by keeping the value of land higher by having the auction end when a plot doesnt sell!Players will have a shot at 12 plots. Land is very valuable to these 12 plots guys. Twice the value then it is to a player that cant get 12. We need to keep a strategic option to block a player from land when it becomes so much more valuable to one player then another thereby restoring game play balance.
2. Ok, we have adjusted the bid increment so that the amount you can raise bid is still realistic with what people want to pay for land. So once everyone has money (3k+) when a land comes up for auction everyone starts pressing up at start of auction. If we were all playing on the same computer at the same location this would be fine, and we could come up with a solution similar to how the original game worked. Maybe letting lower placed person win ties or even making it random. However we are playing over the internet. This means that if 4 people all press up at the same time relative to them. They will not be in the same place because it is dependent on what their ping is. Thus the person with the lowest ping will be the highest bid when the auction ends. This doesn't even take into account dropped packets and other latency issues that people have commented on being "glitches" with how we see the graphical representation in the bidding process. There are no "easy" fixes to these issues. And the people that suggest that there are without citing exactly how you would do such a thing is what is driving me crazy with this whole debate.
There is a fix to this. After the auction has ended there is code that calculates every ones last received bid when their timer ended. If bids are equal the game awards the plot to the lowest rank player. We loose the random selection of whoever reached the minimum bid line that was in the original. But we gain play balance by the land going to the player that possibly needed it the most or at least strategically put himself in that position. This doesnt solve the graphical misrepresentation of who is in the lead due to lag which is a major problem but it will correctly award the plot to the winner.
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