HOW CONTRABAND WORKS (detailed discussion) IMPORTANT NOTE (October 2005) - this page is now more or less irrelevant, following changes intoduced in 2005. Contraband USED to vary in price from turn to turn, and this page described how to "play the market" to make cash. However, these days the price is almost constant; it takes many turns to change significantly (varying simply with ratios of different race populations) and is no longer a sensible way to invest your cash. I'm leaving this page here in case the rules ever change *again* and Contraband becomes important again... I don't want to throw these formulae away... but meanwhile, I advise you to ignore this page! Paul H, October 2005 --- The original page... --- BACKGROUND: Before Host Beta 108, Contraband had a number of problems. In some low population games it wasn't varying and stayed at 2.2mc / unit. In some high population games people were making 1 million mc a turn by playing the market. What Tim wanted was a contraband market with price spikes and dips which could be played, but he wanted it to be slightly unpredictable so there was a risk of losing money as well as gaining it. Successive incremental patches all led to complaints because no two games had the same mix of variables and in some, races which depend on contraband were stuffed whilst in others, they were unstoppable. What was needed was something which would be more consistent across different games with a wide variety of conditions. In April 2002 Tim wrote to the newsgroup with a more explicit formula: --------- Subject: [vgap4] A Bold Move. . . Contraband Totally redone. . . After sleeping on it I have these plans for contraband. . . it all came to me in a dream .. . 1. Toss out ALL the randomness 2. Toss out the exotic techs that change the price of contraband. 3. Toss out trying to model the stock market Here is the new math for contraband prices: It is so simple! A child could do it! Buying and holding contraband causes the price to go up Colonists near happiness 0 have a higher demand for contraband than happiness 300 colonists CMP is the Contraband Money Pool BCR(1 to 12) is the ground base contraband ratio demand factor ( for a single base ) This number is figured for every contraband on every base GBCR(1 to 12) is the sum of all the BCR for all bases TGBCR = The sum of all 12 GBCR() numbers CMP = 100 + (Total_colonists_in_the_universe / 10000000) BCR(x) = (Abs(300 - Colonist_Happiness) + 20) * (Race_Contraband_Want_Factor(x) / 100) * Colonists / 1000000 * ( (10000 + Contraband(x) ) / 10000) GBCR(1) = The sum of all BCR(1) from all bases of all races GBCR(2) = The sum of all BCR(2) from all bases of all races GBCR(3) = The sum of all BCR(3) from all bases of all races . . . TGBCR = GBCR(1) + GBCR(2) + GBCR(3) + GBCR(4) + GBCR(5) + GBCR(6) + GBCR(7) + GBCR(8) + GBCR(9) + GBCR(10) + GBCR(11) + GBCR(12) NewPrice(x) = ( GBCR(x) / TGBCR ) * CMP + 2.2 So simple. . . so evil. . . ----------- Typical question to Tim after this announcement: >> Is that the gist of it? Is that why it's evil? [Tim's reply] - Colonists with happiness near 0 cause the price to go up. . . Privateers have the special power of driving down happiness. . . causing the price of some types to rise. . . and others fall. . . That is evil. . . and perfect. . . ------------- Scytale commented: > NewPrice(x) = ( GBCR(x) / TGBCR ) * CMP + 2.2 > > So simple. . . so evil. . . I love the new idea. There are some issues that I thought of in the model that may or may not need to be addressed. 1) Any contraband type that no races in the game have an interest in will never change [it sticks at 2.2mc for the whole game]. GBCR(x) will always be 0 for x, as each BCR(x) will be 0 from the Race_Contraband_Want_Factor(x). 2) Kerrias will most likely still be bought on turn 1 for huge profits. Since they're needed to get Ghips, and since it's a pretty common race want, there's a very good chance a lot of people will buy and it'll spike up right away. In fact, buying Kerrias may become the standard turn 1 tactic. 3) It seems very easy to manipulate a single type if you're the only race who likes that type. In fact, the only other factor other than yourself is the total population in the universe and the total amount of owned contraband. These will affect how much of a gain you will get, but there is no potential for loss. You can freely buy at 2.2 and sell whenever, knowing you'll at least be able to sell at 2.2 again. 4) The biggest empires appear to have the advantage in manipulation. If Robots get a much larger population than anyone else, buy Kerrias. You will most likely be able to dominate the market and drive up the price. 5) A lot of these issues magnify in small games (<6 players). ------- Someone else commented: > 1) I don't think "likes" is the sole determinant for how contra > prices are distributed between the various sorts of contra. > Stockpiles count as well. > > BCR(x) = (stuff about race wants and happiness) + (Contraband(x)/10^4) > > that "Conttrand(x) is the amount of contra you have stockpiled on the > base. So if people store a lot of Emotion Chips I think the price of > chips will go up. Scytale replied: Look more closely at the formula: BCR(x) = (Abs(300 - Colonist_Happiness) + 20) * (Race_Contraband_Want_Factor(x) / 100) * Colonists / 1000000 * ( (10000 + Contraband(x) ) / 10000) There are 4 factors all multiplied together, not added. If any one factor is 0, BCR(x) is 0. The most important to this discussion is the (Race_Contraband_Want_Factor(x) / 100) factor. If no one likes Emotion Chips, BCR will be 0 for EVERY base. Thus Emotion Chips will remain at 2.2 forever. -------- Note that even Borg can drive up contraband prices. Lots of Borg mean the galactic population is high. Of course Borg themselves can't benefit (they can't deal in contaband), but everyone else benefits. -------- (With Host version 113...) It's fairly easy to play the market. The more contraband of one kind there is the higher the price and for some extra price peaks you can play with happiness. Once a trend is established (normally it starts with blood wine and kerria crystals rising and falling alternately) most players will join promising developments and boost the effect. If someone would try to stop an established pattern by buying when the rest is selling and vice versa he would loose lots of money while the effect on the others would be minimal. Playing with low contraband on planets only delays the time when contraband prices start to oscillate wildly. In a current game most of the prices rise for about 30-50% every other turn when everyone buys then drops again as everyone sells. Some of the prices rise on odd turn numbers and some on even turn numbers so we can invest evenly every turn. With an average yield of 40% you don't need high contraband settings to make a few millions every turn. Ciao, Kai ------- Everyone switches between the same two sets of contraband and the prizes of course pulse up and down. Playing the contraband market takes too much time, but I have to do it because everyone does and it represents over 90% of our income. - kai_steiof -------- joncnunn wrote [in response to Kai saying Contraband was generating Too Much Income for some players]: > There are ways to manipulate the market in the new model. > > The biggest way is to go assimilate or Super Laser an enemy's home > world. (Watch the prices of the contrabands they desire plummet.) > > Another is for a group of players to get together and desire what > turns to switch tax systems, so that on turn 1 everybody that likes > contraband A is on Enslavement with everybody that likes turn 2 is on > Ultra Conservative, and on the next turn it's reversed. > There is a similar way. This works best for races that have a rare contraband like (ie Rebels like e-chips). Basicly load most of yor colonis= t into ships or pods, the demand you race creates for the item will drop (colonist not in bases do not count). Buy up as much as you want, then unload your colonist again. However, do this more then twice, and your enemies will catch on, and buy low too; so in the long run this is only really effective if your primary enemy is the Borg or Enforcers. Chris Olin -------- Drew Sullivan commented on the Newsgroup: You can manipulate contra prices. The "popultation" that counts for determining the price of a unit of contra DOES NOT count population that is onboard ships. So you sell your favorite contra and load about 80% of your population on ships. Next turn you buy that contra and beam the population back down. Your mileage may vary depending on the number of players and the weighted pop X demand for that contra but you may be able to more than double your MC every other turn. Gabor Toto amplified: Look for a contraband where your race contraband want factor is much higher then the mean of your opponents. Make your population as happy as possible beam up all colonists exept one. Buy contranband en masse, i.e. 5000-10000 (that gives an extra increase of a factor from 1 to 2). Make your colonists as unhappy as possible. Beam down all colonists. Sell and have fun. Kai Steiof went into this a bit further, in reply to Gabor: If you do that too often it will severely cut into the growth of you population unless you are a CoMmie or have clone labs. An alternative way to effectively manipulate the prize of a contraband type your race likes is to set up a second set of bases in boost range of your population centers. Keep one of each of your twin bases very happy (300) and the other one unhappy (0 for max mc; 150 for max growth). Now you can boost your population from happy to unhappy bases to get the price up and back next turn to bring the price down again. The price will not drop quite as low this way as if you would load your colonists into ships or pods, but your growth will be MUCH higher, which will help manipulating the price, too. ---- Cody Kosinski comments: You might want to add into your final notes from Kai in your contraband.txt that you CAN disrupt a wildly fluctuating contraband market (ie. Kerrias and Blood Wine alternately rising and falling) by simply buying 10k of many types of contraband. I played in a game where a Robot had manipulated the market to create wild fluctuations, and in the hopes of trying to make more money than my robot enemy, I decided to try and cause fluctuations in more types of contraband - however, much to my chagrin, this caused the price fluctations to freeze at their current values. Try it out yourself, it works! Gabor Toro expands on this: If you buy large amounts of the other types the following should happen: Assume there are only to types in the universe for easy use. Assume A,B are the overall want factors for two sorts and you by much of B then its want factor increases. For example B-> q*B with q>1 The old price was for A was oldprice=A/(A+B)*cmp + 2.2 Now its newprice=A/(A+2B)*cmp + 2.2 = cmp/(1+qB/A) +2.2 -> as q increase newprice tends to 2.2 The old price was for B was oldprice=B/(A+B)*cmp + 2.2 Now it is qB/(A+qB)*cmp + 2.2 = 2.2 +cmp/(1+A/(qB)) -> as q increase newprice tends to 2.2 +cmp cmp=100+ toatalcols/1e7~100 Its a direct implication of the formulas. ---- Gabor Toro's interpretation of the contraband formulas. I include Gabor's formula because it's written slightly differently, which may help explain some details not clear above. - PH C: total number of colonists in the universe in units of 1.000.000 N: total number of player in the game k=1,2,3,...,N: player numbers l(k)={212,223,345,...} list of all base id numbers of player k at given turn s=1,2,3,...,12: numbers of the contraband types f(k,s): race contraband want factor for player k and contraband type s. p(j): population of colonists in unit of 1.000.000 on base j at given turn h(j): happyness of colonists on base j c(j,s): amount of contraband type s on base j in units of 10.000 at given turn P(s): price of contraband type s at given turn Cmp=100+C/10: "Contraband market pool" h(j)=ABS(300-h(j))+20: "happyness factor" of base j W(s)=SUM of all f(k,s)*p(j)*[1+c(j,s)]*h(j) for k=1 to N and all j of l(k) "Want factor for contraband type s" W=SUM of all W(s) for s=1 to 12: "Total contraband want factor" Then the price for contraband type s at a given turn is P(s) = 2.2 + Cmp*W(s)/W -------- Mail from Tim to Mailing List, April 2003, following Host change: Happiness is no longer linked to population numbers. So moving colonists from very happy base to a very unhappy base does not effect the price at all. -------- Host 139 changed the Contraband system slightly. Stock piles of contraband no longer effect the price. -------- Host 140 introduced more changes. Tim says only, cryptically: >>>New: Contraband market math changed again >>Er... how? >The happiness of colonists no longer matters and some really oddball trading math was added. Following this, Lord Owl posted on the newsgroup: After a first evaluation of the new contraband model, it seems that stockholding is again a major factor. Only for the contras you have a liking for, and all contras you like go up at the same time. Say you are a Crystal and buy Kerrias, the price for Alphas will rise also. So you can't alternate between two favorites every other turn. At least you need a turn longer to buy and sell now - we'll see how this turns out. People asked Tim to explain the latest twists. But he has decided that if he does that, experienced players will abuse it as a "no risk" way of making money, thus the following exchange on the newsgroup: >Tim, could you please publish contraband code here to break, err, analyse it? >Because now is great uncertainty and experimentation. >Also Diplomat tool could be updated with this new info. It is almost like the old code, but with a few really odd twists. The general idea behind the new math is the price of contraband goes up when a race that likes a certain contraband does well and goes down when that race dies off. The amount you are holding does not matter, happiness does not matter. Price history matters a little. I have not told anyone what the new math is. I have no plans of passing out the code. Tim ----- GFM GToeroe posted some generic results he found shortly thereafter, if you're interested: It seems that one still can take big profits with manipulating the market. In a test game it looks so. Any time when I beam up or down a greater number of colonists there are changes in prices as I expect from the earlier formulas. For example: I have four races in a test game. There are two races that don't like keria at all but other contrabands. One other likes it pretty much and the fourth likes it normally. If I beam up colonists of a non keria wanter the price grows and vice versa. That is a bahavior of the old formulas. If the case of a contraband where a race wants it pretty much the behavior is the other way arround. For this cases old formula had the price building ratio (A+B)/(A+C) where A=WantFactor_of_Race1_for_Kerria B=Sum_of_all_WantFactor_of_OtherRaces_for_Kerria C=Sum_of_all_WantFactors_of_OtherRaces_for_AllContrabands If Race1 don't want Kerria at all A is always zero. (A+B)/(A+C)=B/C. So a beam up makes C smaller and the ratio grows. If race1 wants Kerria very much more than other then A has a bigger influence in the nominator than in the denominator. So if a strong kerria wanter beams colonists up the percetage decrease of nominator is grater than for the denomnator and the price falls. So I guess part of the old formula survived in the new one. Of course there are some random movements too, but in the mentioned game I have a return of 200%-300% for the invested money every turn. ========== BIG CHANGE - HOST 160: Contraband income was getting excessive, far outstripping other types. People who knew how to use it were dominating games. Tim never intended it to be the main income source, just a useful auxiliary. So he added these rules: > New: Contraband sells are limited to 1kt per 1000 colonists on the base Now you have to carry the contra (and not the money you have earned by selling the contra directly) to a big population world which is much more difficult if the contra planet is not in your own space. > New: Contraband dust off is blocked by any base on the planet under the ship (except your own) This should slow down the economy of the Privateers. > New: Contraband gather rate slowed down, maximum rate now happens when you have 1000000 colonists This gives races with low growth (like EE) a very big disadvantage because they don't have enough colos to earn lots of contra. However, most games start with 5 million population these days, and in the next Host (161) Tim gave the EE a unique power - the following is true for everyone EXCEPT the EE: > Contraband, natives, minerals on a planet can not be seen unless you have a ship over the planet or a base on the planet. But Empire probes are able to view what is on a planet's surface. ========= CONTRABAND STATUS AS OF HOST 178: I hadn't played for a year and when I returned to the game, it seemed that population happiness seemed to have little effect these days. Lord Owl explained to me: For some time now contra prices are mainly determined by colonist numbers and a (not too) small random variation. Population fluctuations are usually low, but responsible for the general price niveau. If, say, Stim Pills got cheap last turn, either some Stim Pill-lovers lost lots of population, or more likely, they are in a random low. If so, they will be high up again next turn. So buy them. Works, hm, about 90% of the time. - Lord Owl.