Idea for using town treasury money

Proposal

The town treasury is currently used for nothing except town construction and starting fort battles. I'd love to see the millions of town treasury $$$ that accumulate once a town is fully built be used in other areas. I believe that town treasury money could and should play a greater role in the game, as it is not only a reflection of a town's wealth and power but it also gives an opportunity to make other parts of the game even more interesting! I will propose a couple of ideas that could be implemented to offer alternate uses for the town treasury.

Current workaround

Dig a load of fort battles or construct the church to an insanely high level in order to make use of the town treasury.

Details

Implementation #1
-The town founders (black hats) can completely change the items sold in town shops (tailor, gunsmith, general store) once every month. This action costs $10,000 per shop (to randomly change all items that the shop is currently selling), sourced directly from the town treasury.
-Developers would have to make sure that two of the same items do not appear in the shop inventory after this change is made, ie. prevent any faults in the random item generator for this feature.

Implementation #2
-The town founders and councilors can place a 'bounty' on a fort, similar to the current bounty feature for dueling.
-The maximum bounty that can be placed on forts of different sizes:
·Small fort: $100,000
·Medium fort: $500,000
·Large fort: $1,000,000
-Should the attacking side win, the bounty on the attacked fort is distributed among the attacking players' town treasuries. For example, if a fort has a bounty of $100,000 and attackers take the fort (assume there were 50 attackers) each attacker is awarded $2000 that goes straight to their town treasury. This allows fort fighting towns to build up their treasury for other uses and encourages more players to attack. Should the defending side win; the bounty remains on the fort.
-Multiple towns can add to the bounty on a fort until it has reached the limit for the fort’s size.

Abuse Prevention

Implementation #1
-The shop inventory change can only be made once every month for each shop, so very rich towns cannot abuse the system by using it to dominate the market.
- The items that replace the previously sold items are completely random so the implementation is easier to code (it is simply the same random system of founding a town and building up its shops).

Implementation #2:
-Each town founder and councilor is limited to being able to place one bounty every week.

Visual Aids
I'm not too good with constructing visuals, but I think my explanation painted a pretty good picture of the idea.

Summary

This idea has great potential to make the game more exciting and attractive to players and encourages fort fighting. Town treasury money has very few uses and an expansion of its uses would be a 100% benefit to the game.

I hope we can get this idea to voting as soon as possible! Feedback is welcome and needed.
Cheers

Administration
Does this idea meet the Ideas Guidelines & Criteria? Yes
Does this idea appear on any of the Previously Suggested Ideas List? No

- One nice trick would be to be able for town founder to change items sold on gunsmith, tailor or general store - SHOP inventory change feature
For example - to change the first level items at any one store 100$ would have to be paid, 200$ for second, and so on. This could be done once in some period of time (month, let's say).

- 'hire a doctor' would not be good as you already can purchase or make healing remedies. I think this money should be uses for the sake of all town members, so no one person should be able to 'hire a doctor' if the other town members don't get anything from it. This feature, if implemented, would cost at least (3k$ x town member count) and when used every town member would get something like marzipan potato giving +10% to health and energy.

- i can not see how 'take out a loan' feature would function. However, PAWNSHOP feature would yield. You could borrow money by pawning items. Max borrowed sum would be 1/4 of the items price (125$ for a pony). The fee would be the same as bank % in a week. Example, if you borrow 125$ by pawning pony and the bank fee is 10%, you would have to return 125$ + 13$ for every week. This will stay open until the fee + borrowed money reaches 1/2 of the items price.

I like your thoughts. Let me give my '2cents' on them.

Zeds Head Baby said:

-Purchasing certain items/gear to be available at the town gunsmith/tailor/general store. This could also mean introducing new gear that only town treasury money can buy to place in the town shops then other players could try to source this new gear from the town members via the market
I don't see anything wrong with this as long as there are limits (no rare or unique items in the shops), but I think they plan to extend the building ability from the church to the rest of the town. That would make the town's shops larger, I guess.

-Putting bounties on forts to give other towns and alliances a cash incentive to attack the fort (also encourages mercenary fort fighting towns). I know the this idea has some obvious pitfalls, like friendly fort battles being carried out so the town treasury can be stolen
People already do friendly duels to collect bounties on each other, I don't think it's that big of a fuss. That'd be a definite thumbs up to the attackers.

-'Cash' fort battles - the town that attacks the fort can 'invest' a certain amount of the town's treasury into the attack which yields greater rewards/experience for the attackers (should they win the fight, of course if they lose, all the money is lost)
This is the one I like the least. I prefer the bounty one, they are similar but this one implies only one town's treasury.

-A 'hire a doctor' option that the town hats can initiate when the members of the town need a quick (3x quicker than lv5 hotel, perhaps) health recharge before/after a fort battle or before/after a dueling raid
There's a lot of competition for this one out there. Doctor's bags, tonic peddler's buffs, shop's buffs. I don't dislike it but I can't see it being introduced.

-Town members can take out a 'loan' from the treasury to help them pay for skill respecs, gear, etc. This loan would need to be repaid in, say, a month, and the many loopholes in this idea would have to be strewn out.
This is maybe one of the most suggested ones, the problem is to garantee the payment. I think maybe charge a specific percentage of the loaner's bank account everyday after the loan? Maybe 10%? I also like the 'pawnshop' suggestion by angedelamort.

Click to expand...

I like the idea, although it needs to be put into proper format.

hey tigermite, I'm happy to summarise the ideas discussed, but do you mind informing me on how I can put the idea into proper format and where to post it?

Here: Guidelines for Posting [READ FIRST]

Just leave it here and edit your first post.

OK I've updated the post to proper form. Please give it a read, people!

I like the idea of the fort bounties, and being able to change the gear you have in your shops for a certain amount of your treasury. The loan system seems like it would be really difficult to implement and control

You know, not a bad idea........Every town I know of has an abundance of cash.
As for the items in shops....treat as the trader...as in, set amount of money and change everything. Luck of the draw.
The forts? I am not too sure of at the moment, need to give it some thought. But, all in all a decent idea.

I like your ideas!

Implementation #1
- Perhaps some kind of limit to the number of changes e.g. 'x' changes/month and about a week for the traders to order and receive the new wares.
- something to prevent item duplication (might already be part of the current system thought).
- I'm pretty sure that the current system has some kind of restrictions e.g. as far as I know all level 10 General stores have six slots for horses. This means that Switches will be restricted to items of the same type and item level.

Implementation #2
- When the $100,000 limit has been reached, would it stop towns from contributing or could the cost be more spread out?
E.g. 1: Towns 1-5 contributes with $20,000 each (reaching the limit), town 6 tries to contribute with $50,000 but is Stopped.
E.g. 2: Towns 1-5 contributes with $20,000 each (reaching the limit), town 6 contributes with $50,000 and instead of stopping town 6 the system calculates the percentage each contribution and sends back the abundance to all the towns.
- Why not convert into extra items/experience/cash rewards for the defenders too? That'd be more fair. Or perhaps giving the paying towns the option to decide where the money should go.

angedelamort said:

- One nice trick would be to be able for town founder to change items sold on gunsmith, tailor or general store - SHOP inventory change feature
For example - to change the first level items at any one store 100$ would have to be paid, 200$ for second, and so on. This could be done once in some period of time (month, let's say).

- i can not see how 'take out a loan' feature would function. However, PAWNSHOP feature would yield. You could borrow money by pawning items. Max borrowed sum would be 1/4 of the items price (125$ for a pony). The fee would be the same as bank % in a week. Example, if you borrow 125$ by pawning pony and the bank fee is 10%, you would have to return 125$ + 13$ for every week. This will stay open until the fee + borrowed money reaches 1/2 of the items price.

Click to expand...

- Do you mean $100 to make a random change in the shops all level 1 items or to change one item? Either way that sounds like a good idea, thought perhaps $10,000 to change one level 1 item and perhaps $45,000 to randomly change all level 1 items (of one kind e.g. hats) in a shop.

- I kind of like the 'loan' option. One way to take care of people whom aren't paying their debts is for the bank to clean out their bank accounts (and/or send duellers for the cash on hand) and perhaps taking some kind of tax on their income. Taking items from the inventory is another way to make people pay their debts (the question here would be should they take the most expensive items or should it start with the inexpensive ones? The bank could give the town people a chance to buy the items (giving the owner a week or so to buy back their more important items).

Kidd Kalypso said:

You know, not a bad idea........Every town I know of has an abundance of cash.
As for the items in shops....treat as the trader...as in, set amount of money and change everything. Luck of the draw.
The forts? I am not too sure of at the moment, need to give it some thought. But, all in all a decent idea.

Click to expand...

Kalypso, I think the 'luck of the draw' nature is part of the original town shopping problem. However, the market of items available in town shops would die out on the world market due to this implementation. Then the world market would be prominently be used for product and special/rare items purchase. Nothing wrong with that, though, just a comment.

Get back to me as soon as you have any feedback about the fort bounties!

@Rannon
If you reread the abuse prevention section, I already proposed a limit to the number of changes per week with regards to implementation #1. I'm not sure what you mean about item duplication. Yes these changes would have to sync up to the item 'tier' and amount of these items per tier in each shop.

For your Implementation #2 feedback, yes the $100,000 would be an absolute limit so no other towns could place any more bounty on the fort. Eg1. is the correct one. I should also mention that towns cannot withdraw their bounties once they are placed. The defenders wouldn't receive the items/cash/rewards that the attackers would because looking back at what I say in my proposal: 'At the moment, defending a fort yields the most damage, most dodges, most wins and thus most rewards/glory (shout-out to all the duelers that only join fort battles in defense). By implementing this bounty feature, players would have a greater incentive to attack, fort battles would be more intense, battle participants would be less selfish (since there is much, much more reward for the winning side) and a whole lot more would be at stake upon the result of the battle.' Also with reference to my abuse prevention section, '-By distributing the bounty evenly among the town treasuries of the towns that own the fort (if the fort is successfully defended) reduces the attractiveness of 'friendly' fort battles (undertaken to get rid of the bounty). Since the towns owning the fort cannot attack their own fort, loopholes in placing bounties on forts are minimized since no other towns really want to purposely attack and lose the battle (because attacking a fort costs treasury money in the first place).'

Basically, part of implementation #2's appeal is that players would have more incentive to attack.

I will consider heavily the 'random change' option for the town shops, since it would probably be easier to develop and it is all-round easier. I'm tending to lean away from the 'loan' option. I think it would be easier to pass this idea without trying t involve the loan feature which has countless pitfalls. What do you think?

I'll make some little edits to my first posts on Wednesday afternoon (Australia time) when I am free to do so

Keep the feedback coming guys!

My two cents -

For implementation 1, I think a town of sufficient size to be able to afford this probably has a large population with differing needs. I have trouble imagining that everyone would agree on the types of clothing or weapons needed as there are 4 classes, 4 crafts and a melee/firearms split in dueling weapons. I think this angle needs more discussion. No use having the devs work on a new process that everyone argues over and hates.

For implementation 2, I totally like the idea. I don't even think there is any need for a limit on the amount of money put on the fort as no fort is so invincible to need infinite reward. I would point out that there is a danger in distributing the bounty among the defenders if the attack failed. If a large bounty were put on a fort, the fort itself would likely get a friendly town to announce an attack, hoping that they would set up an attack too early for its enemies to get organized. I imagine the best defense would always be the same; get a freindly town to attack prematurely and hopefully not enough attackers show up. I recommend letting the bounty remain, to be added to if necessary, until the fort is sacked.

@Crosseyed

I totally agree with what you said about the 1st implementation. I'll have to think that one through (possibly scrap it altogether, depending on how things work out) as I'd hate for the 1st implementation to inhibit the 2nd implementation's chances of being submitted at the voting stage.

About imp 2, putting a limit on the bounty on a fort makes it easier for the developers to prevent any bugs that could come up. It would be easier for them to code a limited bounty, however it doesn't have to be $100,000, we could always bump it up before voting. The system could work like this for bounty limits:
-Small fort: $100,000 (since they are easier to take)
-Medium fort: $500,000
-Large fort: $1,000,000 (since they are difficult to take)

I like your idea about letting the bounty remain should the attack fail. I will most likely add it to be major edit of the idea that I will be doing once I have a good bit of free time tomorrow afternoon.

Thanks for the feedback mate!

I really like your idea, and hope it will be used in the game some time soon

Thanks huan

OK guys I'm starting my 2nd draft of the idea now after getting a good amount of feedback. My original post should be updated within 4-5 hours (I'm not going to do it all in one go). I might get rid of the 1st implementation, but I'll see how I go.

Righto, the 2nd draft has replaced my original post. Please give it a read and post some comments with your feedback. I think we're getting closer to getting it to the voting stage, people!

Zeds Head Baby said:

@Rannon

Click to expand...

Then all is well and I'll vote on it when the time is ripe.

i like that idea, as now money is pretty much useless

OK does anyone have any final feedback on the idea? I think it's pretty much ready to move on to the voting stage