lauantai 30. huhtikuuta 2016

December 1637 - Day 110

Martti delights of his new home-offices in the first floor of the plaster-not-yet-dry house in 4-NW. Funnily enough, the house is located on the exact same spot as Martti's previous house, which was declared unhealthy by the town authorities, and promptly bulldozed.

Looking at the books reveals a challenge, though. Minus is at -25 mil, after finishing yesterday with 10 mil in the positive.

There are large stocks of products, though. Unsold suits number in 30+, then the house is for sale, and something remains for sale from the original load of wines and spirits. Since winning that and the copper token, Martti has not had luck in the "best bid" raffle. In fact, SyksyII has got it twice in a row, and Martti cannot raise his bids due to being negative.

The health challenge is umm... challenging to complete without the license to buy anything. After eating all food that remains and consuming ample amounts of CAN and even some cigars (which have become cheaper in the IC conversion), the report says:
COMMAND RESULTS
The eating/drinking felt Effective. I feel the remaining health challenge to be Severe. I could still eat 87, drink 110 and use 0 units of wisdom this year.

The challenge ends in Moderate after an unheard-of consumption of 50+ bottles of wines from the trading stock. A useful hack was also the IC conversion to wine (to be consumed immediately). This works even if buying from the market is disabled due to overdraft. Wine is cheap and Martti is not a youngster any more.

November 1637 - Day 109

RAF-2 tickets have been spoiled 3x, that is, only 1 ticket out of 1,000 remains. From now on, all tickets actually win gemstones. Martti had bought 2,000 tickets (for almost 20 mil) in hopes of gaining some stones to be traded for the Sapphire that is "needed" for the coronet. Unfortunately, the balance of RAF-2 is now zero. This is most unlucky and unfortunate :(

The balance has shrunk to near 10 mil, mostly due to the building of the house of course. Getting it sold would make the face happy again, but the margins are very tight. At the current prices of BLD especially, the house just cannot be sold for much cheaper than the price listed. Keeping it is always an option, it is a decent residence for a Knight and pays a bonus 0.6 mil in cash each year as the shopfront rent. Furthermore, it is new and low-rise, making it easy to maintain for decades to come.

The price for the house stays at 44 mil. Martti wonders: who purchases CON for a 0.5% profit as the brand new worry free house is 3.2%... Would it not be worth it to sell 2*CON and flip for a 6x better yield ??


Ever since Martti was stripped of his production shares (due to being knighted), he has had a hard time getting used to the fact that 10% guaranteed yields exist no more, so the choices are to seek 3-4% from buildings and NPC (both what he is doing) or more from market trading in different timeframes (which needs to be started again, especially after the die roll disaster with RAF-2).

September 1637 - Day 108

The beautiful noise of construction, the moment waited for so many years - Martti's first custom-built house! Although it is perfect for Martti's own use (4 times larger than the one on the same lot that was demolished after the mold), the main intention is to sell the house and build another one with the money.

For 90 sqm, the sell price including land, is set to 44 mil, less than half a mil per sqm. There is not too much room for haggling - costs to Martti were 27 mil at ask, and land should be valued at about 8.5 mil, half of the price of the B.22 lot sold earlier.

The nice feature in the new house is Shopfront, possibility to assign some part of the building to produce rental income from shops, and the rest is designated in normal use. Even in B.4, shopfronts make sense lining major streets, such as this one that is basically at the gate of the whole 4-NW chapelry with already 20% macrolocation.


Martti has about 1% of the gemstone raffle tickets. That should statistically yield him 2 stones, which, he believes, will be valued higher than the ticket prices. Also, he needs the sapphire for the coronet...

A new feature is now in the game - automatic IC->item conversion. That is very handy, and will soon enlarge itself to include many item types that have been neglected ever since the ancient times.

tiistai 26. huhtikuuta 2016

March 1637 - Day 106

Business is taking the time. A few of the building material bids were filled already, and now we are not talking about pennies - the reasonable lot size is 10 mil, so the balance is swinging greatly.

Despite the larger size of transactions (Martti started with 0.1-0.5 mil size), the work is perfectly similar. Buying and selling, and making a buck.

The RAF-2 "beauty-contest allocation" yielded about 300 tickets, so a value of roughly 2.5 mil. Half of this was because of the carriage bought at 3 mil, so it is comparable to getting 40% off. This is of course not bad.


After an exhaustive list of options, Martti decided to put the 2 small lots for sale at 10 mil each. If they don't sell when advertised, Martti will build a residence-suitable house to one, settle in, and then list it for sale. If it sells, do the same to the other. And finally move in to the largest lot, or buy a new one in the high-land price market.

The rumors of military actions in the far north and south have been circulating. Martti feels very fit for field service and will certainly join in, not only to a quest but even in a battle. He promises to retire earliest when he is promoted Baron (or die trying). If the latter, his big brother Ville is ready to claim the estate. 

maanantai 25. huhtikuuta 2016

January 1637 - Day 105b

The COT1413 (6 exist) was sold for 22 mil. This is an indication of the COT prices, since both less and more desirable (old, rare) tokens exist. Getting the money has boosted Martti to schemes unimaginable, and he is busy redeeming the time lost by writing up to twice per day to the blog as well.

Martti started playing with the Building Editor and was happy to find out that the Residence in his lot is feasible and even somewhat profitable. In a 100 sqm size (between the smallest allowed on the lot, 60 sqm, and the largest possible, almost 1000 sqm) he would get 17 CUL+IC (worth 2.2 mil/year) at a 24 mil investment.

Since the land is free and does not count (Martti sold an equal size land for 39 mil last year so if it was not free, it certainly would count!), 9% APR is possible. Adding more floors would be an easy way to get a marginal benefit nearing 9% as well, but 100 sqm fulfills the historical norm for Knights handsomely, and when Martti is promoted Baron (which he calculates to happen in 10-15 years), living in B.4 is not an option anyway. Also the one floor construction does not burden the wet soil too much, and the building will take longer before repairs are needed.

The actual building may happen as soon as by the close of the year, so bids for materials are placed already.

An unfortunate realisation was that the house where Martti used to live, as well as its neighbor (bought for 12 mil total, on 100% loan), were demolished due to mold. This business did not end up well, because the land is probably not worth the money, and building (tested and tried!) cannot bring in more than 5% return as Apartment, which Martti is already starting to sneer at.


One option would be to just keep the land, another is to sell it as Apartments or Residences. Prompt action is needed, because when Wood opens, all commoners can get their lands and buildings very cheaply and this does not sell. More advanced players, even Martti himself, find the location too dirty. And keeping them as rentals is not lucrative due to Martti's need to make 11% per year to end up owning 1 billion, which is his goal.

The Prince of Soul - remembered for offering a new player bonus of 2 mil when Martti started - has inaugurated his new palace in Versailles. This 1,800 mil / 2,000 sqm project is one of the finest in town. The Royal Château cost 4,900 mil and is 5,000 sqm.

sunnuntai 24. huhtikuuta 2016

January 1637 - Day 105

Martti wakes up early in the morning (6 am == January 6th) to check whether his copper token is sold! Well, it hasn't, yet. So, eager to find the right price, Martti lowers the ask to 22 mil and plans to patiently wait there with his offer.

How did he acquire such a treasure? Well, it's this King's raffle to reward players who have placed many asks and bids in the Lot market. To level the playing field, the source data that Martti used in generating his bids is published. Martti's bids are a function of lot area, chapelry-specific "max bid per sqm", a randomiser, upper cap, and rounding to 3 decimals. It took him about 20 minutes to generate the BUY lot_id 1 amount commands, which have now gained him a diamond most ancient copper token already! In addition to fake bids (Martti does not have a real intention to get those fulfilled, just wishes to win prizes), the data can be used to make blanket bids in a certain chapelry for instance, with real intentions.

King had granted a break to his own characters from health management for the duration of his sick leave (1632-1635). If large GIVE consumable_id amount 5 appear in the Changelog, they are to make up for the skipped challenges. The Wisdom normally generated during this time is forfeit (yet the average consumption of substances will be "give-consumed").

This has caused Martti the need to marketbuy things and give them away. Balance is therefore a few mil down from its high point. Martti also saw some papers in the trashbin and upon quick glance, realised that they are the unmasked Wisdom values for all characters! (Presumably used in the King's coming RAF-2 allocation due next month) The values revealed that during his years 1-15, Martti has acquired 1*A points (where A is a scaling constant), then in the years 15-20, an additional 1*A points. The years 20-30 were 2*A points, so the progress seems linear. In fact, due to the loss of wisdom during the 4 years Martti was sick, means that the accumulation in the other years was about 1.66x that of in the previous years.

CAN alone is good, cheap and even somewhat healthy. What Martti saw next in the paper gave him the goosebumps - the table of the item:healthiness values !!! While the values do change, the changes are very gradual (or if not, they will be announced). Martti now knows there are substance/s where a single dose gives more wisdom than a year's quota of CAN, and spirit/s where a bottle beats a year's load of BEER. The foods' effects are known. If I am kidding, it is by a very slim margin compared to the truth revealed.

Martti was approached by Dame Erin of Pada regarding teaming up for the Coronation carriage ride. His duty is to acquire the 2 horses needed and hers is to procure a K7 carriage. In a sort of a spending spree, Martti seeks to buy a K5 himself just to make use of his (soon, at least) 2 horses and get some additional RAF-2 that are allocated to the owners of carriages, among other allocations.

Also, since we are at it - Martti browses through the Ming China catalogue. It's now 15 years since that was introduced. During that time, 1*IC was approx 0.3 million. Now the IC is 0.09/0.07 mil. In the meantime, some have sold their wares for prices near the IC-value of the items. Martti's belief is that once the weak hands are shaken out, the owners of these wares will keep theirs rather religiously and not sell them.

The market with ancient suits had the same phenomenon in the late 1500s: There were plenty on suits existing, but nobody wanted to sell, suits were needed and wanted by new players, and no new production existed. All the conditions that made suit prices to reach quite some heights are planned for Ming China. We only need to wait for the influx of players, and hopefully get some item bids filled in the meantime, so that there is something to sell ! :)

December 1636 - Day 104

A Patient bird catches the worm, Martti thinks as after 10 years of scheming, he finally (or let's say - the second day it was even possible) cashes out his land speculation in B.22. Nine-and-thirty million is added to Martti's balance, making it double as high as it ever was before - and those were drafting of loans ...

Martti's marginal cost in getting the 9 shares was about 3 mil per share (27 total), but he already sold the "company shares" for about 8 mil, so the net was a cool 20 mil!

So, while last month Martti was in sad and poor moods, lamenting that the lot needs to be sold, and sold cheaply, and maybe it does not even sell, etc, now the money in the bank has instantly cleared all those thoughts and Martti is feeling a shrewd businessman.

Foremost checking how the funds can be put to use comes from the new Building module of course! Martti has a 250 sqm lot in 4-SW with the regulation that a Residence must be built. Wood building is not enabled yet (and Martti is ineligible anyway due to being a Knight), and selling the lot unbuilt is against the rules. So perhaps the best usage is to build there: there is no alternative use for the land, and only the building cost can thus be accounted for.

After playing with the building editor, it seems that the best percentage gains can be had with very modest buildings, and the marginal benefit of adding lux, etc is declining (well, if this were not the case, the designer of the module should consider a new career...) The best marginal benefit is about 7% APR, and gainable with a 25 mil investment. Much more can be invested and if the land price was a concern, an optimal size might be much larger. Now, the total finances permit only about a 25 mil spend - if even that.

At present it might make sense to keep as much of this fund intact, to be able to make the bids for the Lot Market. This is a huge leverage risk (place hundreds of bids for items that one neither wants to buy nor has the money to, except 1-2 at a time max) but with careful design, a formula can be made that minimises the possibility to become the buyer, and if it should happen, ensures that the place is worth at least the amount paid. The reason why this is done is the King's challenge with items prizes. Every 10 mil cartload of items is a major bonus to a poor Knight Martti, and several will be raffled in a quick succession.

Martti's dreams about the coronet and participation to the coronation are becoming true. The coronet style of his own devision is "Silver band 200 CKS, 8 pearls raised, sapphire honor point". This will cost about 150*IC plus the gem, so in total perhaps 15 mil. One might question if investing half a middle class home to a single-use item is sensible. Martti places his trust on the faithfulness of the King, who promised that it pays off to show up.


Many other thinkings and calculations were made as the day abruptly started to shine on Martti.

lauantai 23. huhtikuuta 2016

November 1636 - Day 103

After a long time of, permit me to say, "feeling such that the best days of the life are either behind or in a distant and uncertain future", Martti feels better when he is informed to have won 370 bottles of a selection of wines in the King's raffle where the tickets were given to the holders of asks and highest bids in the Lot market, one for each such position.

Martti's hack was lame but powerful in its simplicity. When the contest was announced (full text below)

To quickly populate the Lots Ask/Bid market, during the following days starting from now, King will give item prizes to the highest bidder or the (lowest) ask of a random lot. Listing everything you can for sale, and especially placing the highest bid promptly, you have the best chance to help the liquidity of the game and earn your share of the prizes  worth 100+ mil. Also legitimate lot trades are eligible to win prizes!


, Martti figured that King is in haste with getting this done, and placing bids and asks should be done quickly. The prizes to be gifted each round can amount to ~20 mil, so winning even once is to win in a lottery. (Prize was worth about 10 mil only, hinting that the rounds may come quite often to let the King dispose of his promised 100 mil).

So every lot was furnished with a 1.0 mil bid, except those in 1-SE that have a backlog in taxes, not a showstopper for a serious buyer, but too much to pay for Martti, who does not have money and is not interested in buying land, just to gain the prizes promised.

The balance was negative, which was surprising, but the reason was that NPC salaries were paid already. It was only slightly negative, because a few of the suits had sold. Now is a chance to sell a few more before the NPCC annual evaluation. And of course list the wines and why not start drinking them as well! In 2 months, Martti will be 30, so not a spring chicken anymore. In the game design plans, wines would belong to the daily menu of characters over 35, and spirits to those over 65.


Quite a number of items were listed for sale but the market did not bear any selling to the bids. Therefore, the negative balance once again prevented the placing of bids. Martti would have checked the pricing of tailors (yes, masochistic but perhaps the sun will rise to the business at a later day) and started to acquire IC for the coronet, and possibly to buy (or at least place bids) for Ming China, and order a carriage (! - but it is needed in the Coronation) and another horse, possibly a H2 to make the carriage look about even with the existing H3. And RAF-2 to gain at least one gemstone out of the total stock of 380, consisting of 13 different types.

All these plans require money, and despite the advertisement and the honestly good price of the lot, it has not gone yet. Heart bleeding, Martti lowers the price to 39 mil. For a 225 sqm south/east facing beauty, talking distance from the OT wall in the People's Borough (22), it is not much.

perjantai 22. huhtikuuta 2016

September 1636 - Day 102

Tailor business is ruthless - the price of WOS-G has sank to 290k, and it costs 500k to make it. The situation is not any better in WOS-F and only a little better in WOS-E1. The only consumer of clothes, by and large, are the NPCC accounts, and they invariably seem to leave the Moth to be the tailor's problem. The result is not only loss of production but also that payday is only every 3rd year!!

Luckily, the Buildings module is in its final fixes, and the Lot trading is already enabled (after being locked for 8 years). It is boosted by the new lot listing, which allows searching lots by chapelry and sorting them in the order of ascending price per square meter, for instance. If only there was anyone who sorely needed land... For our meager number of PC, the town is vast (literally consisting of more chapelries than PCs) and land is plentiful.

Martti listed his heirloom, the lot in B.22 for sale for 44 mil, and bought adspace to advertise it. The price, 19 mil/q (0.19 per sqm) is really affordable, just that the buyer needs to be found.


Money is needed for instance for the coronet, which is required in order to attend the Coronation in 1640.

keskiviikko 20. huhtikuuta 2016

May 1636 - Day 100

The hundreth day, definitely a great milestone in the life of one who is aiming to live about 3 times that in total. Martti's youth was in the beginning characterised by rapid economic growth and shrewd trades, the latest years shadowed by health difficulties that luckily are of temporary nature.

The project of getting rid of pigs is completed. Some DIS still remain. Balance is now back in the positive, and Martti took advantage of it by placing bids for the RAF-2. It is still in the memory that he made a relative killing with RAF-1 when they were traded in 1622.

maanantai 18. huhtikuuta 2016

January 1636 - Day 98

Days - nay - years, have gone by with the mysterious and debilitating disease Martti was condemned to suffer. However, since only death and taxes are permanent (and even death not really so, since the character lives on in the offspring), Martti is finally getting his stuff in order.

He does not even dare to guess the situation of the health challenge, and will only learn that a little later.

Business with the suits needs to be checked and the suits put for sale.

Plans to get enough more money to pay back the previous loans is also important. This needs to be done before the earlier loans come due.

What Martti did not realise when he as ennobled is that he will lose the right to have DIS and PIG (in addition to losing the income he did realise he will lose), and also he cannot utilise the 250 sqm lot in B.4 for wood building (they are only for commoners).

The DIS/PIG need to be sold and care taken to own a blue suit, unless Martti turns to Military completely, which he may indicate by selling all suits except grays.

Which he cannot do if he is a tailor shop owner and a merchant.


And the new King, rpietila II, has urged every noble to get a pistol (PIS) or 2. This will cost 7.75 mil at present, not a small money (Martti's sword cost about half that, and was a multi-year effort to acquire).

...

The disposing of DIS and PIG started well with one of one and two of the other sold at a reasonable price. The rest are listed for sale. There has to be a certain degree of civil dis-instantly-obedience with getting rid of them, as otherwise it would be a prohibitively bad deal. On the other hand, being lazy to dispose of them entails fines :(


Money is still -4 mil so Martti finished the VEGs from previous year and wishes the suits to turn out cash flow soon.

lauantai 9. huhtikuuta 2016

November 1634 - Day 89

Martti has been plagued by the illness, on the verge of consciousness for the whole year.

Waking up, possibly for a short time only, he sees the balance at -19 million, which demands immediate attention lest it is not possible to buy food.

Unable to think clearly, Martti first consumes inefficiently 200*MEAD and VEG and MEAT, which he has produced himself, and only then realises that the suits whose production has been the cause for the deficit, can be sold. Selling mostly to bids (which are high as the NPCC need suits for their final scoring), Martti manages himself 4 mil positive.


The horse had been upgraded to H3 "Good Horse" in the recent promotion, which feels good. The shares of S-B22B are not moving in the markets so Martti dumps them to the bid, making his balance up to 7 mil.

In the last desperate attempt to combat the health challenge, 200*CAN is bought from the ask and consumed. Still, the result is that Significant challenge is left after all the quotas are fully used (the first time for Martti by the way).


As an effect of heavy CAN use, Martti's Wisdom was increased to 6. Wisdom is an important consideration in commoner promotions, which do not concern Martti anymore as he was recently Knighted and is therefore a minor noble already. It is an important consideration in noble promotions as well, though.

lauantai 2. huhtikuuta 2016

November 1633 - Day 82

Oh dear, oh dear.. what happened?? Martti was walking on a back alley and suddenly he wakes up so that a year has passed, still in bed and in pains..? :(
He feels quite massively hungry, types HEALTH and is shocked to see the response:
"Your remaining health challenge is Brutal."
Brutal is the worst health challenge, and especially bad it is because the full brutality is not knowable, so the planning how to combat it most (cost-)effectively needs to be done with insufficient information. It is only when the consume results have flipped the remaining challenge to the side of Severe, when you know that you have about that much left, which you used to get as the totality of your challenge.

Since the fever and bad feeling effectively hinder from updating market offers, it is good that at least eating and drinking feel very natural. The unfortunate thing is that the health challenge is indeed quite brutal - after 200*CAN and 100*MEAD (leaving only 200 foods and 100 drinks quota left), it is still Brutal.

Adding to the misery is the -5 mil balance that disables purchases unless property is liquidated speedily. Cold sweat is rising to Martti's brow as he contemplates the options. He finds 48*VEG and eats them, with the result of the remaining health challenge flipping to Severe.
In the midst of trying to make sense of his outstanding offers in the Agora Market, Martti collapses again.