I actually disagree with the majority here. I could'nt care less about the new wholesaler. I just dump excess gold in it for materials I actually don't need (I'm playing this from pretty much the start). With the player movement, I now have a "decent" spot, with plenty of trading partners, so I can EASILY get fair trades for pretty much any goods I need, and I can easily produce the boosted goods I need for thoses trades. I really wonder how a city has been built, so that it actually need the wholesaler to progress...
what I wish to reply to here is your last sentence,
@galoyal
I do not need the wholesaler at all, really
but I can use it to get more goods than needed for my city, in order to ease the market for my smaller fellows (and to balance my account, because I like balanced accounts);
I produce enough goods to negociate 2 encounters a day on the map + a few harder ones during tournaments, and fund my researches when needed;
one of my (big) fellows could reach more than 1M coins for a wholesaler trade already today, and this means that it will happen to him everyday from now on, and this is just plain stupid;
both him and I are somehow the "bankers" for the fellowship, we both maintain a hefty amount of goods in storage in order to absorb bumps in the market for our fellows : we take their offers and recoup on the market later on;
I understand the idea that developers may have about this change, but seeing the result from my city (or this guy's one) looks just plain ridiculous;
once again, I think we could all gain form some explanations from the designers about their original intent with this wholesaler thing, and not just the nice talk we get on Innogames TV, we need real stuff here, real life explanations, and directions on how we should play from now on;
most of us took advantage of what was available, without even "abusing" it - of course, it all depends on what people might encapsulate within this word, but from my point of view, I have just been dumping excess coins into something more useful until now.
the modification of the wholesaler might be logical, it might even make sense, but for now it is just very frustrating, and a frustrating game is not a good game.
the thing you are pointing out is exactly why they are doing the change...
we are too far ahead, we scouted too far and are still scouting. So they made fighting harder. This leads to everyone negotiating, so they want us to stop on that aswell so they had to take actions so its a bit harder to buy it all off.
In my opinion this is a very logical step and one i expected allready a bit sooner to be honest.
well
@Heymrdiedier I know that we have "been too far", but we did it because it was
feasible !
we did not even have to try hard on this one, we just went on with the motions, and scouted and conqured and so on;
had we' known earlier that it was a bad move, we probably could have slowed down;
realising this way to late is where the error lies, and it is on the devs side; they made a game that could alllow for players to go too far, it is their fault, we are not guilty of anything, and we should not be punished;
another thing : depending on player activity and some conditions related to the tech tree or to the way goods are used, there are days (and this can be almost weeks at times) when the market is just dead for one resource;
this is when the wholesaler came handy, allowing us to fill the gaps;
at the moment, most advanced players are in the wooldelves chapter, producing refined stuff, and it is very hard to get basic goods;
on top of that, the notification list is so ridiculously short that if I place 5 trade offers and they get taken, I may just as well miss 5 players who gave help recently and I cannot return the favor;
and now we have to choose : get less goods for more coins and retun help, or place trade offers and not return help
glorious !
I can see now that the most useful AW is the blooming trader guild, and I am gonna up mine like crazy