BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

What does “the trade is carried out” really mean?

If I offer to trade 5 cream pies but only have 4 when you ACCEPT, what happens?

Clucky, good point. I’m not sure what is or is not assumed here. I’ll look into more specific phrasology, let me know if you have any suggestions.

I mean, you could require them to spend the resources, but that could also cause them to get locked / used to get around the portal pie (“trade, portal, cancel trade”) so probably just best to word what it means to trade, and point out if either guy doesn’t have the resources the trade doesn’t happen.

Though I agree with Clucky, we can always fix that afterwards.

Agreed Cpt_Koen - I’m working on a patch.

Slightly-longer-and-way-less-attractive, but more formal-and-closed-to-scams version:

At any time, a Baker (“the trader”) may request to trade their pies with one other Baker (“the tradee”) by making a post with TRADE, in all caps, in the title. The post must specify:
- the name of the tradee,
- the list R of pies they want to give,
- the list E of pies they want to get.
The trade is considered Pending until either the trader cancels the trade by making a comment to the post containing the text “CANCEL”, in all caps, or the tradee accepts the trade by making a comment to the post containing the text “ACCEPT” (or “CARRY OUT”, whichever you like better), in all caps. Either way, it ceases to be pending. A non-Pending trade cannot be canceled nor accepted.
If the tradee accepts the trade, and if at that time the trader possesses all the pies in the list R and the tradee possesses all the pies in the list E, then the pies in the list R are transferred from the trader to the tradee, and the pies in the list E are transferred from the tradee to the trader.

What do you mean the word tradee doesn’t exist??

This seems to open the door to a lot of kingmaking, which could be a real letdown once we have victory conditions.  (It’s tough to have any trading rules that don’t allow for kingmaking, though.)

Thoughts:

1) Put a cap on the number of pies that can be traded at once (although I don’t really like that)
2) Force it to expend the daily action of both traders (I do like this; you could use the framework laid out in the Keeping Up Appearances proposal to write the rule for the non-upgrade daily action)
3) Require that both traders be in the same Location, as it’s likely that Location Location Location will pass.

I think a cap would be very annoying, and just make things more difficult all around, not prevent a particular strategy.

Your other ideas seem OK, if perhaps unnecessary. I would say those could be added in by proposal afterwards - compartmentalization seems to be the style for the dynasty.

Do scams not usually come from neglecting to pass those “unnecessary” stopgaps?  (I sincerely don’t know.)

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. For any possible scam, there is a set of rules that can prevent it. However, their are an infinite number of possible scams, so to prevent all scams would require an infinite number of rules.

I wouldn’t say that requiring location sharing or a daily action would necessary be defined a scam prevention. Personally, I don’t think either is necessary (I would vote for the daily action, probably abstain on location. But that’s the trick - you can’t know for sure beforehand whether a rule is a necessity, luxury, or cancer. Currently, I see them as luxury.

“For any possible scam, there is a set of rules that can prevent it. However, their are an infinite number of possible scams, so to prevent all scams would require an infinite number of rules.”
And thus, cheap horses are very expensive.

1) In order to effectively cap the number of pies that can be traded at once, you’d first need to make trades non-free - that is, make them have a cost, or be a daily action, or something.
2) I don’t understand what you mean by “force it to expend the daily action of both traders”. But as I hate daily actions, I suppose I don’t like that.
3) Yes, if Location Location Location passes, it would be way more consistent to have all two-player actions require both players to be in the same location.

Really not sure this is the kind of thing that can be “fixed afterwards”. I think if this passes it’ll probably get abused and then we’ll get stuck in CfJ hell for a few days. So i’m totally FOR the idea, but gonna have to vote

I’ll go with our fearless Simon on this, as it seems like my fears of abuse or overcomplication have at least some precedent.

By “expending the daily action,” I mean that when two players choose to trade, that replaces their upgrade action for the day (and they also wouldn’t be able to trade a second time until the following day).  That means if two players really want to go crazy with trading and they do so each day, they’ll get no net gain from it because they wouldn’t be able to upgrade at the same time.  It also generally puts a brake on how quickly this can happen, so any potential exploits would have a few days to get noticed and/or stopped.  If that were stipulated in the next version of this rule, I think it would be a yes vote from me.

Update/patch/replacement posted.