Surprising number of Tech Sellers

[jerdge]

Recently I resumed buying tech and the first thing I did was to send out about 140 PMs to nation Rulers, that I had selected based on the downloadable Foreign Aid data (it wasn't big work and I got it done relatively quickly - spreadsheet etc, easy stuff).

What surprised me a bit, and the reason I start this thread for, is that in about 48 hours I heard back from more than 30 people that are available, sometimes eager, to sell tech. Not a few of them sell at 9/200 or 18/300 (one even at 9/300!) I was a bit taken aback as, considering the NS and tech distribution in the game, I expected to find much less people available and with multiple aid slots ready to service new partners.

I guess that a lot of old players with big nations are too inactive to actively look for deals, and maybe others don't see the point in accumulating tech that will then be easily and quickly wiped away by much superior aggressors. I don't conceal that I don't anymore really give much importance to my tech level, either, but I started again to buy tech also to help smaller nations to build up their infrastructure. If new players found it more easy to sell tech they'd grow their nation faster and they'd remain more interested into the game.

 

What is your opinion about this situation? Isn't it bad for the game? How it is that this many tech sellers are available?

[Monster]

There aren't enough for it to be sustainable and a lot of sellers won't be reliable. It's practically pointless at this stage especially with the rates they want. 30 isn't much, tbh. 

Edited July 10, 2018 by Monster

[Tevron]

I would say that since we're currently seeing large exoduses from the upper and mid tiers over CN, that it is to be expected. The thing with buyers is that most of them who are motivated enough to fill their slots have done so already though, sellers have to be proactive these days to find the deals, because of so many stagnant upper/mid tier nations outside of alliances who run their own tech programs internally.

[Blackatron]

There has never been a true shortage of sellers IMO, simply buyers too lazy to look.

 

I am perhaps a culprit in this, in that I am a developed nation that isn't buying tech because I see no benefit in it.

[Monster]

5 minutes ago, Blackatron said:

There has never been a true shortage of sellers IMO, simply buyers too lazy to look.

 

I am perhaps a culprit in this, in that I am a developed nation that isn't buying tech because I see no benefit in it.

The people being lazy reduces demand yes, but if everyone tried and even if only half of potential tech buyers tried to find sellers, it'd be a supply issue. People have been lazy a long time and falling behind means they're just happy to have the nation around as a keepsake so it reduces the potential demand by a lot.   There was more supply earlier on when there were still a lot of people swarming in and the game was novel,  but often times alliances had issues finding sellers since the demand much greater and many buyers didn't like that they didn't always get their tech so they would start to put up resistance to trusting brand new players. There is fundamentally no individual incentive to sell tech and stick around especially when a seller is unlikely to reach a competitive level from them outside of a collective goal(e.g. an internal seller selling to boost overall tech or get a certain quantity of people above x tech).  I was always grateful sellers would sell at decent rates even though a lot of people had the mindset that both sides benefited equally. Eventually enough people gave up since not only were sellers spotty/demanding higher rates,  the tech was also easily lost in EMP warfare,   leading to today's situation.

 

There isn't any real point in the current climate to buying tech because the rates are bad in practical terms for people not in a mass alliance with recruits/tech distributors. They wouldn't  be importing fast enough for it to to do them much good when others can get much better rates. 

[Blackatron]

2 minutes ago, Monster said:

The people being lazy reduces demand yes, but if everyone tried and even if only half of potential tech buyers tried to find sellers, it'd be a supply issue. People have been lazy a long time and falling behind means they're just happy to have the nation around as a keepsake so it reduces the potential demand by a lot.   There was more supply earlier on when there were still a lot of people swarming in and the game was novel,  but often times alliances had issues finding sellers since the demand much greater and many buyers didn't like that they didn't always get their tech so they would start to put up resistance to trusting brand new players. There is fundamentally no individual incentive to sell tech and stick around especially when a seller is unlikely to reach a competitive level from them outside of a collective goal(e.g. an internal seller selling to boost overall tech or get a certain quantity of people above x tech).  I was always grateful sellers would sell at decent rates even though a lot of people had the mindset that both sides benefited equally. Eventually enough people gave up since not only were sellers spotty/demanding higher rates,  the tech was also easily lost in EMP warfare,   leading to today's situation.

  

 There isn't any real point in the current climate to buying tech because the rates are bad in practical terms for people not in a mass alliance with recruits/tech distributors. They wouldn't  be importing fast enough for it to to do them much good when others can get much better rates. 

Well that's what I mean, obviously if every person in a position to buy tried to do so there would not be enough sellers, but since that is not going to happen there is no shortage of sellers for those buyers that are active. Obviously the rates issue is a problem for some, but it only adds to the problem that lower level buyers will never get up there with the top tier, which reduces the incentive to grow (for many).

 

The situation is now so extreme that even if you returned to your former efficiency, Umbrella/Cowboys could not catch up to IRON/NPO.

[Monster]

10 hours ago, Blackatron said:

Well that's what I mean, obviously if every person in a position to buy tried to do so there would not be enough sellers, but since that is not going to happen there is no shortage of sellers for those buyers that are active. Obviously the rates issue is a problem for some, but it only adds to the problem that lower level buyers will never get up there with the top tier, which reduces the incentive to grow (for many).

 

The situation is now so extreme that even if you returned to your former efficiency, Umbrella/Cowboys could not catch up to IRON/NPO.

That's fair then.  The rates issue was one of the main disincentives for me to put the effort into finding the sellers, knocking on doors to get people to send to them, and then dealing with unreliability/tracking them to get them to send. A lot of people didn't like the idea of paying more than 3m/100 rate that was prominent before the tech change.

 

Well, once they structured their alliances towards funneling tech to bigger nations, which was basically  DBDC's econ on a bigger scale it wasn't going to be feasible to have the same rates of importation and it was visible for the past 3 years or more that it would end up happening.  Even with 90% slot usage if you're paying it out or having to move to new sellers, it's going to be a lot slower than free tech in all slots.  Even if a group of people got free tech in all slots, it'd be a far lower quantity. There isn't really a competition between an alliance that has to renew/track down their sellers/etc or.  as opposed to one getting slots full with nothing going out from them or one with enough internal sellers where they can pay out what is owed on the same day to a third party knowing some other seller will send to tech the person who paid them.   This was facilitated  by the increase in importation caps. It showed a fatal error in being an  alliance that doesn't recruit and never had the collective culture where a lot of  nations can be expected to give up their tech indefinitely to boost others. The people who typically did it had rerolled like myself and knew they were never going to get high up or were people who were no longer as active doing it as a favor. I mean this is all 10 years in, so the game's economic situation(rates/unreliability) along with the increasing disinterest/not logging in made it a futile task to continue importing. I'm not really sure of the reasons the others who are in similar situations have for keeping on.

 

I don't think there was a way to have avoided the outcome involved for anyone short of having a lot more players so there would be more of a spread of mass recruitment alliances that would sell tech. The game can't support too many as is. Maybe the elitism hurt the retention of the game as many of the players in elite alliances didn't want to mentor new players which is what recruitment would have taken, but the slow down in people joining/decay seems to have been inevitable.

Edited July 15, 2018 by Monster

[Tevron]

Quote

  This was facilitated  by the increase in importation caps. It showed a fatal error in being an  alliance that doesn't recruit and never had the collective culture where a lot of  nations can be expected to give up their tech indefinitely to boost others. The people who typically did it had rerolled like myself and knew they were never going to get high up or were people who were no longer as active doing it as a favor. I mean this is all 10 years in, so the game's economic situation(rates/unreliability) along with the increasing disinterest/not logging in made it a futile task to continue importing. I'm not really sure of the reasons the others who are in similar situations have for keeping on.

Yeah, and it's definitely an on-going scenario where a lot of alliances are unable to establish a collective culture of tech giving, even when they have years to do it, simply because one must give and give and give to the collective, and the gain is one that you yourself can never utilize on the battlefield. It is truly questionable whether alliance-growth in an active tier range is superior to growth in the upper tier. We had two hyperactive near Umbrella (and sometimes above via aid slot usage) alliances in MI6 and DK, both disbanded before any real answer to that question could be determined. I think it would be wise for alliances to curb their tiering as much as possible, but at this point, we're nearly out the door.

[Monster]

On 7/15/2018 at 12:43 AM, Tevron said:

Yeah, and it's definitely an on-going scenario where a lot of alliances are unable to establish a collective culture of tech giving, even when they have years to do it, simply because one must give and give and give to the collective, and the gain is one that you yourself can never utilize on the battlefield. It is truly questionable whether alliance-growth in an active tier range is superior to growth in the upper tier. We had two hyperactive near Umbrella (and sometimes above via aid slot usage) alliances in MI6 and DK, both disbanded before any real answer to that question could be determined. I think it would be wise for alliances to curb their tiering as much as possible, but at this point, we're nearly out the door.

 

Well the thing with both of them had a lot of people internally dealing, once they started growing out of that, it became a lot harder to continue high percentages and they stopped having them as high since it's really easy to do internal deals but not when you grow most out of seller range. Internal deals mean when one person sends two slots are filled in an alliance rather just one. Most people didn't want to stay sellers.  It's a lot of effort to find external sellers especially when often times they'll quit or be late.  DK was more successful at external buying than others with their Doommerce or whatever the name was  but it took a lot of effort and they were also paying  a higher rate and that rate ended up being eclipsed.

Edited July 16, 2018 by Monster

[Lucius Optimus]

A 3mil for 100 rate sounds terrible as a seller. And that amount of cash really gets you no where. It may be good for internal tech generation but I would never take a deal like that. And certainly not from an overseas buyer who isn't necessarily an ally. 

Edited July 16, 2018 by Lucius Optimus

[Monster]

1 hour ago, Lucius Optimus said:

A 3mil for 100 rate sounds terrible as a seller. And that amount of cash really gets you no where. It may be good for internal tech generation but I would never take a deal like that. And certainly not from an overseas buyer who isn't necessarily an ally. 

In current it'd be 6m/200. I was just saying no one wanted to pay more than its equivalent. Even at 3m/100 sellers grew out of it when only 3 mil and 50 tech could be sent at a time. It was never expected for so many to be  tech sellers forever before. The goal for most players was to get to 5k infra and become a buyer before. Hell some people had started buying at 4k infra before.  Anyway, this mentality is why mass alliances will have a definitive advantage forever and won out in the end. In the past, smaller membercount alliances could use their greater activity to fill their slots efficiently and gain tech faster.

 

So then when sellers want 9m/100 or 6m/100

Only a few options are left for active buyers not in mass alliances:

1. Join mass alliances, which then puts strain on their supply

2. Get tech at crappy rates or not at all and be dwarfed in tech acquisition by mass alliances(what most people did)

3. Quit due to it not being worth the effort and a 12 year old game

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It's just the foreign aid system isn't suitable for a declining population where there are no longer influxes of noobs wanting to sell and barely any activity. TE without foreign aid is more balanced and can adapt to having less people than before, which standard isn't built to do due to it being persistent. 

Edited July 16, 2018 by Monster

[Galerion]

51 minutes ago, Monster said:

 

Well the thing with both of them had a lot of people internally dealing, once they started growing out of that, it became a lot harder to continue high percentages and they stopped having them as high since it's really easy to do internal deals but not when you grow most out of seller range. Internal deals mean when one person sends two slots are filled in an alliance rather just one. Most people didn't want to stay sellers.  It's a lot of effort to find external sellers especially when often times they'll quit or be late.  DK was more successful at external buying than others with their Doommerce or whatever the name was  but it took a lot of effort and they were also paying  a higher rate and that rate ended up being eclipsed.

 

Doommerce had the same rate as interstellar, 12/300 15/300 18/300 depending on wonders. It can be a lot of effort but the pressure of running it can be lessened if some sellers voluntarily give out 400 instead 300 and/or there are tech banks giving out 600 while the official rate to buyers stays the same.

[Monster]

17 minutes ago, Galerion said:

 

Doommerce had the same rate as interstellar, 12/300 15/300 18/300 depending on wonders. It can be a lot of effort but the pressure of running it can be lessened if some sellers voluntarily give out 400 instead 300 and/or there are tech banks giving out 600 while the official rate to buyers stays the same.

Yeah, but how many sellers will actually integrate into a centralized scheme like that and get on on the right dates? SNX is a permanent selling alliance that is fairly tight knit. This is also when most sellers now can get the 18/300 rate without being in the program if they have FAC. This type of scheme works better within an alliance rather than coordinating a bunch of outside actors.

 

Don't get me wrong. A lot of buyers would mess it up too by being too lazy to log in when they're supposed to send. That's an equal issue in the current tech situation in the game.

 

Edited July 16, 2018 by Monster

[Galerion]

Really the system needs changing to cash on delivery, I suggested it here and others have suggested it in the past but there hasn't been enough of the community show support for it to get admins attention. It would take a push like when he removed multi's and the tech they had sent.

[Lucius Optimus]

1 hour ago, Monster said:

 

 

So then when sellers want 9m/100 or 6m/100

Only a few options are left for active buyers not in mass alliances:

1. Join mass alliances, which then puts strain on their supply

2. Get tech at crappy rates or not at all and be dwarfed in tech acquisition by mass alliances(what most people did)

3. Quit due to it not being worth the effort and a 12 year old game

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You can argue that for a nation maybe under 400k NS or 10k tech a 9mil for 100 rate maybe unfair. 

But over that I think its BS.

 

All I hear from these arguments is huge nations crying over a tiny extra 2-4million profit for a seller nation and would rather generate exorbitant amounts of tech at the expense of the seller nations. 

 

If that causes you to quit the world maybe you shouldn't be here. This wasn't ment to be played amassing tech over years only to quit. 

Edited July 16, 2018 by Lucius Optimus

[Galerion]

1 hour ago, Lucius Optimus said:

All I hear from these arguments is huge nations crying over a tiny extra 2-4million profit for a seller nation and would rather generate exorbitant amounts of tech at the expense of the seller nations.

 

They're not really complaining about the price of tech, it's the speed of accumulation. A cash on delivery system would put this argument to bed.