Market

[The Obliterator]

Yup that would work peace.

What im saying shadow is that while im running especially at the beginning you need to juggle troops and this does not work with the market.
For instance this run i made all rats so that i could break the top to get land. Then once i had the land and was running out of cash i sold the rats to mercs to get some more money. And then switched to stoats to make both net and so i could put some on the market to sell.

So i am using the market a good deal however for funding during my run i really need the mercs. Im not sure if other people run that way but it works well for me. I broke 100 mil net today :D.

[Shadow]

selling to mercs is a short term solution - you'll notice that merc sell prices are absolutely terrible in 3.0, on purpose. You're far better off selling to the public market and letting sales build up over time (the public market is very active now). Also note that you can sell anything on the public market directly to mercs after 48 hours, so you really aren't losing anything putting in there - you have the chance at a much better price, and you can still sell to mercs if needed.

Better to get a cycle of market sales going and spend the first few runs playing with markets and tax to get cash; it will pay off long term.

[Peace Alliance]

But selling to mercs is the only solution for a desperate indy.

[The Obliterator]

For example today i logged in and had around 10 bil cash from market sales. I attacked for land, built barracks, and put my attacking troops on the market. By that stage i was down to about 350 turns and running low on cash. So i sold the rest of my stoats and switched to skiffs. I made a bunch of them, put some on the market and by that stage i was out of cash but i still had 200 turns left. So i sold the rest of my skiffs which gave me enough money to complete my run.

There is no way that you are going to be able to pay for your whole run with only your sales from the market.

[Shadow]

Well no, you need some markets and/or to tax your workers. With a bit of economic management you can be in the green even with a fairly sizable army.

You aren't -supposed- to be able to pay for your run on sales alone, you need to spend some effort managing your economy as well, no matter what strategy you are using.

It is much more efficient to put some land on markets and jack up your cash settings then to sell stuff on mercs - selling to mercs should be a desperation move only.

[The Obliterator]

I tried it this time.
However it just wasn't really cost effective.
To have a positive net with:

Rats (?)   2,346,736
Weasels (?)   924,010
Stoats (?)   149,983
Skiffs (?)   3,683,568
Leaders (?)   215,178

I had to have 26k land in markets. If i want to have the largest possible army growth it just seems like way too much to pay.
I compromised and left 10k markets but i only had about a 11mil net income cash and that was at 30% tax.

[Shadow]

yea, cash seems to be problematic when there aren't as many cashers buying out the market.  We'll tweak things as we go.