Land Auctions: Possible exploit?

[Litho]

I noticed a problem with land auctions: If one player scrolls the price up as high as he can, it won't go back down, even if he stops bidding. This basically leads to players bidding as high as they can every land auction to drive the price up a stupendous amount, then backing off, to prevent others from buying land.

So, every land auction, half the players will run to the top and drive the price up to $3000, and then back off to the bottom, leaving the price high and making it impossible for the people who actually want the land to buy it. This has to be an exploit, right?

[arghman]

True, but that's the way it worked in the original I think, and it's consistent w/ the auctions for smithore/crystite/food/energy.

[Sharper]

Yeah, thats a mean exploit that the original had, but it can also be a fun and useful tactic for evening out the odds.

[hwparty]

I don't recall this in the original but even if it is there it doesn't make sense. There is no reason that the richest person won't run up higher than anyone else can afford then back off and bear zero consequences.

There is no auction in the universe that would decline to sell something at all just because the person with the most money isn't buying it.

I consider the game broken as a result, and it actually penalizes people who are already low on cash.

[GabrielPope]

It did work that way in the original, but the price wasn't as fluid. In the NES port, for example, I don't think you could even get to $1000 more than the original price before you ran out of time.

I don't really see what's broken about it, though. Land is potentially worth many thousands of dollars in the early to mid-game. If someone actually manages to buy land for less than $1000, it can be an enormous coup, and should be justifiably difficult to pull off.

[Big Head Zach]

This might an example of one of those parts of the game that needs to be corrected rather than remain faithful.

If this is a serious auction, then once you move the price up, you shouldn't be able to back down off it.

(To be honest, IMHO, the "Auction" phase for goods should be renamed the "Trading" phase, since it's not an auction in the traditional sense. People are arbitarily setting prices and hooking up with buyers, like modern-day commodity trading pits do.)

[hwparty]

I guess I need to clarify:

The problem is that once the price goes up it doesn't go down, but the player in the lead can still decline to buy it. I don't remember that being possible in the original. I am fine with a set minimum price that it won't go below, but I don't think the lead bidder should be able to back out of the auction without the price reducing back to next highest bidder or the original set-minimum-price.

If you want to deprive other people of land in an auction, that's part of the game, but you have to actually buy it away from them, not just raise the price and pay nothing so it goes unsold.

[GabrielPope]

I guess I need to clarify:

The problem is that once the price goes up it doesn't go down, but the player in the lead can still decline to buy it. I don't remember that being possible in the original. I am fine with a set minimum price that it won't go below, but I don't think the lead bidder should be able to back out of the auction without the price reducing back to next highest bidder or the original set-minimum-price.

If you want to deprive other people of land in an auction, that's part of the game, but you have to actually buy it away from them, not just raise the price and pay nothing so it goes unsold.

It was possible in the NES version, which was a very faithful port AFAIK. The difference is that the price moves a lot quicker--in the old version, if you were bidding way up at the top it would take you around a quarter to a third of the time bar to back all the way out. The price also rose more slowly relative to the time bar, so you'd have a hard time jacking the price up more than $600 if you wanted to leave yourself time to back out.

I'm still not sure that the practice is such a terrible thing like people are making it out to be. The actual value of land is ridiculously high, to the point that the auction price almost never reaches the actual worth of the land in a "fair" auction. I mean, best case scenario, an extra plot of land could potentially net you $7000-8000 over the course of the game (realistically such a scenario is unlikely to develop, but you can still get many thousands from it.) You're going to complain that it's "unfair" you can't get a piece of land for $500 or $600 or $800? When I see someone jack up the price of land to $1200 on turn 3 when no one else can afford it, and then refuse to buy it, I just laugh at them for deliberately turning down such a bargain. Even if there's a money glut in the early-mid game and you see people running the price up to $3000 or $4000, I can't really blame them. Letting it go to a rival for "only" a thousand or two is a serious gamble.

[Robbie]

Thinking, some things (like this issue) need to desinged different as in original game.

Because in orginal game I sit with other players in same room at one computer.
And if one of them play like this with the land auctions, he will get a hit... 
But over the internet I cannot hit...    only if i am the game hoster i could kick from game.

[Litho]

The later in the game you get the land, the less time you have to recoup your investment on it (though you'll get a high production bonus on it if you're a smithore whore), it's a tricky decision. Still, it isn't right that if I'm in the lead cash-wise (even by a relatively small amount), I can stop anyone else from buying land just by raising the price as high as I can and then backing out. Even if you think paying any price for land is a good decision, it doesn't mean that someone who has no intention of buying the land should be able to irreversibly jack up the price for everybody. I believe you could do the same thing with goods, too, if you were quick to back off. Honestly, if this version is to have any kind of longevity, exploits like this need to be fixed, regardless of whether or not they were in the original game.