Every realm makes one material each tick. Its states share the output, each state splits its part between its houses and its treasury, and anyone can buy or sell on the market.
Shares
A realm's output is divided among its 7 states by share. Shares start equal, about 14.3% each, and never fall below 7%. Winning an intra-realm war moves 3 percentage points of share from the loser to the winner, never taking the loser below the floor.
Houses and treasury
Of each state's part, 50% is shared equally among its houses. The rest goes to the state's treasury, which only the state leader can use. The split is set per age.
Worked example. A bauxite realm makes 1,000 units a tick. A state with a 14.3% share gets about 142 a tick. 50% of that, 71, is shared among the state's houses, and 71 goes to the treasury. With 15 houses, each gets about 4.7 a tick; leftovers carry over, so no unit is ever lost.
A treasury that fills past its allowance passes the excess on to the state's houses in ages with treasury overflow.
Seasons
Output isn't steady. Each material runs through seasons: over 420 ticks its output goes 60% → 80% → 100% → 120% → 140% → 120% → 100% → 80% of its base, and then round again. On average it makes its base output.
The materials are out of step: each runs some ticks ahead of the start (bauxite 0, limestone 70, amber 140, sulfur 210, pine 280, paper 350). So while one material is scarce, another is plentiful. Buying in a glut and selling in a shortage pays, if you can store the goods.
The market page shows each material's output this tick and its season.
Spoilage
Goods don't keep forever. Each tick, a house may hold 50 units of each material, plus 1 per acre of land, without loss. A treasury may hold 1,000 of each.
Beyond that, the excess spoils. You lose 1% of it for every free allowance's worth you're over, up to 5% a tick. A little over costs almost nothing; a big hoard melts fast.
Worked example. A house of 400 acres may keep 450 of each material. With 900 bauxite it's 450 over, one allowance's worth, so it loses 1% of that: 4 units. With 4,950 it's 4,500 over, ten allowances' worth, so the 5% cap applies: 225 units a tick.
Goods in your sell orders count, so an order at a price nobody pays won't protect them. They spoil after your stock, starting with your highest-priced order. Your house page shows what would spoil next tick.
Treasury overflow
Some ages switch treasury overflow on (this age: on). Then, each tick before anything spoils, a treasury's stock beyond its 1,000 free units of a material is shared equally among the state's houses instead of spoiling. Units that don't divide evenly go to one house after another, a different one each tick, so nothing is made or lost and it all evens out. Once a day, each house's news says what it got that day.
The houses' own spoilage then applies as usual, so a house already over its allowance loses some of its share. Goods in the treasury's sell orders count toward its allowance, but they are never handed out. A state with no houses has no one to share with: its treasury's excess still spoils.
Worked example. A treasury holds 302 limestone more than its allowance, and its state has 4 houses. Each house gets 75, and the 2 left over go to two of them (two others the next time). The treasury keeps exactly its allowance.
Depletion
Some ages switch depletion on (this age: off). Then each realm's deposit holds 2,520 ticks of its base output. As the deposit is worked, output falls with the square of the share used up: hardly at first, steeply near the end. It never falls below 25% of the base. Materials are plentiful early in such an age and scarce late.
The market
- Each material has one order book. You post a buy (the most you'll pay per unit) or a sell (the least you'll take).
- Orders fill as soon as they're placed. A new order trades at once with waiting orders that meet its price: the best price first, then the oldest. Each trade is at the waiting order's price, so a buy at 8 that meets a sell at 6 pays 6.
- Whatever doesn't fill at once waits in the book at your price, until someone's order meets it or you cancel it.
- Placing an order sets its goods or gold aside at once. A buy sets aside its price for every unit plus room for the market fee and the cross-realm fee; what it doesn't spend comes back straight away. A buy left waiting keeps room for the cross-realm fee, and gets it back for any units it buys from its own realm.
- A house, or a treasury, can have at most 20 open orders at once.
- The book shows prices and quantities, never who placed them.
The market fee
The fee is paid by the order that fills against a waiting order: 5% of the gold that trade is worth. A buyer pays it on top of the price; a seller has it taken from the gold received. The order that was waiting pays nothing. So posting an order and waiting is free, and taking what's already in the book costs the fee. Fees round up, on the order's total rather than on each fill, so tiny trades can't dodge them and an order filled by many sellers pays no more than one trade. Treasury orders pay it too.
The fee is destroyed; it goes to no one. (The 5% fee to the seller's state is a separate one, for selling characters in the Hall of Deeds.)
Trading houses cut your fee, down to nothing with enough of them. The fee never goes below zero, so trading back and forth with a friend can only lose gold.
The cross-realm fee
A buyer from another realm than the seller's pays 3% of the trade's gold on top of the price. It's paid whether the buy filled at once or was waiting, and on top of any market fee. Like the market fee it's destroyed, but trading houses don't cut it. A treasury trades from its state's realm. The seller never pays it.
You can't tell from the book which realm a waiting order comes from, so a buy always sets aside room for this fee, and gets it back for whatever it buys from its own realm. Your news shows the cross-realm fee you paid on each fill, never who sold.
Worked example. The book has sells of 40 bauxite at 6 and 60 at 8. You place a buy of 120 at 8. At once you get 40 at 6 (240 gold) and 60 at 8 (480 gold): 720 gold, plus a 5% fee on it if you have no trading houses. The other 20 wait in the book at 8. If a seller later fills them, you pay 160 gold and no fee. If the sellers are from another realm than yours, you also pay the 3% cross-realm fee on each of those trades. Your news shows each fill and its fees.
Cancelling
An order stands for 10 minutes (16.67% of a tick, so it scales with the tick's length) after it's placed; only then can you cancel it. This keeps the book honest: a price you post is one others can actually trade against. Cancelling gives back the goods or gold the order still holds.
Trading with yourself
You can buy and sell the same material at once, as a market maker does: for example, buy bauxite at 9 and sell it at 11. You just can't trade with yourself, so your buy must be priced below your own sell. A buy at or above it is refused, because it would fill against your own sell. For a state's leader, their own house and the treasury count as one trader.
The reference price
Each material also has a reference price, shown on the market. Robot traders price from it, not from the last trade, so one small trade can't steer them. Once a tick it moves towards that tick's average price, where every trade counts by its size. When 20 units or more traded, it moves 25% of the way, never more than 10% of itself. When fewer traded, both shrink in proportion: a single unit moves it 1/20 as far. So many small trades count as much as one big one, and one small trade at a strange price hardly counts. It starts at a material's aid value.
The stewards
A state with no houses still makes its realm's material. The stewards sell part of that unclaimed output, so every material can be bought even in a thinly settled world, at a price.
- They collect 30% of the output of every state with no houses. Their share starts at nothing when the age begins and reaches that over the first 168 ticks. The rest stays locked in the empty states' treasuries.
- Each tick they offer their whole stock of each material at 300% of its reference price. Anyone can buy from them, with the usual market fee and no cross-realm fee. Any player selling for less sells first.
- They hold at most 48 ticks of one realm's output of each material.
- The gold they're paid is destroyed, and their sales never move the reference price.
States that make the same material may agree on prices between themselves. The game doesn't enforce such agreements; keeping them is up to the players.
What materials are for
- bauxite: upgrading units.
- sulfur: medics.
- amber: generals.
- pine: refined into timber (chariots) or resin (incense for hexes and vigils, and the Torch attack).
- limestone: forts, castles, watchstones and the Ancestral Hall (see Buildings).
- paper: extra books in science, and academics.
- sulfur also pays for the Set Fires operation, and amber for the Ancestral Hall.
Giving and granting
Any house can give gold or materials to its state's treasury. The leader can grant treasury gold or materials to any house in the state, and the house's news says so.