With all the devs' emphasis on trading with players rather than using the wholesaler, and interacting with players, I have to wonder if they even play the game.
My main city is always short on supplies, not coins (well, "short" is overstating things. I regularly reach the coin cap, don't regularly reach the supply cap, because I don't have more workshops than I need). The residences I need to provide population to all my buildings which require population produce enough coins per day that I hit the coin cap several times, even after dumping coins into the wholesaler. Do the devs want me to scout with the coins, since they've implemented such high diminishing returns on dumping coins into the wholesaler? I mean, I can do that.... but I thought they didn't want me to, as I'm still so far out on the map that tournament costs are punitive now that the wholesaler's out and everyone in my fellowship needs the same goods every week. Scouting more will simply increase that problem.
And yet, visiting my neighbors gives me... coins. Coins, coins, coins, since most are inactive, and therefore don't give me supplies. Sometimes I have enough trades going in a day that I can't even figure out which of my neighbors helped me so I can go back and return the favor. This just makes me more confused as to what I'm "supposed" to use to get rid of excess coins. KP? I don't really want to build my diminishing returns on KP any higher. Scouting? I thought I wasn't supposed to do that. Wholesaler? Diminishing returns are undesirable.
Also on my main city, I have 227 provinces conquered, and more unlocked. On that main city, I have eight pages of trade offers. The first trade is all people offering planks for marble and steel. My boosts are planks. The second page is one person offering 300 scrolls for 1200 marble (again, I'm boosted in planks, and scrolls), and the rest of the page is various people trading 1k silk for 1k crystals (my boosts are scrolls....). Moving on, on page three, there's finally a few trades with people who want my boosted goods (silk for scrolls, in various quantities) and one opportunist who is trying to trade 100 elixirs for 400 scrolls (yeah right. that trade can rot). Page four is.... a lot more of those elixirs for scrolls trades, and then a magic dust for elixirs trade. I am boosted in magic dust. Page five is more of the same, but it also includes a bunch of 100 magic dust for 1600 marble trades (lol). Page six is magic dust for scrolls trades, moving into page seven which has a bunch of gems for scrolls and dust trades.
Most of those trades are not my fellowship members, because it's early in the morning and most trades by fellowship members have been taken and new ones haven't been posted yet, so I'd say this reflects a fairly accurate view of my trading block which isn't fellowship members, which is something I will have to rely on with tournaments forcing my costs up higher than other fellowship members, to the point that I can't get enough tier 1 goods in trade from them. Almost none of these trades are trades that will help me in tournaments, because the other players have the same boosts as me. I can want to trade goods all I want. Wanting and willingness to trade does nothing when there isn't anyone to trade with. Out of 227 conquered provinces worth of possible trading partners, so many are inactive that the only trading partners I have are mostly boosted with my goods.
It would have made so much more sense for the devs to do whatever they're planning to do to fix trades FIRST, then implement changes to the wholesaler SECOND. As it is, we've pointed out that there are problems with this, ways that certain players can't get the goods they need at certain points, therefore stalling out, after the update went through. The devs then pushed it to live. Now everyone on live is also experiencing the wholesaler, without any kind of fixes meant to make up for not having the old wholesaler.
Marindor has said that the devs want people to get the goods they need while they're researching something rather than waiting to buy them at the end. Funny thing, this is what I do. However, sometimes I still end up ready to unlock the research and not having the goods, because people didn't accept my trades. You don't know that you're going to be forced to buy goods from teh wholesaler because you didn't get enough trades from your trading partners until it happens. What Marindor said implies that all players possess the powers of foresight, and the ability to know whether they will have trades accepted or not before they even post them, and therefore can start buying from teh wholesaler several days prior to needing the goods.
I, personally, am not a seer. If I was, I can assure you, I wouldn't have started playing this game because I would have foreseen the changes made to it after I invested enough time in it that it was not worth quitting. Maybe the devs are true seers and expect us to be too?
