JesterKing,

I think if you want each citizen to pay their fair share, simply set a tax. Then anything that you don't put in comes out of your level.

Setting a tax wouldn't be so useful, as you can only set it to less than 50 talers, and since the resources have been introduced, 50 talers are worth next to nothing compared to requirements. Every citizen "costs" 50 food and an average of 10 cloth, which is worth more than 5000 talers at market prices. Having this citizen a single MU game is likely to bring more than 50 talers to the town (considering the resources the game will give, on average).
Moreover, having citizens lose talers only slows them down unnecessarily (if only a little) on they way to Fürst (and a free game room to the town).
Basically, I don't think the tax system is useful any more (although it certainly was before resources were introduced).

As for minimum play requirements, I voted for them because I feel 20 MU games a month is not too harsh a requirement. However, as PhantomBantam pointed out, it IS a requirement, which could be nice to avoid to prevent the feeling you have to play.

But I cannot find a way to prevent EC to pay for inactive citizens, while not requiring some level of involvement from the citizens.

Esterio

Well, I will give my few ideas. Probably not too great, but maybe you will like them nevertheless, or they can inspire you for better suggestions:

• Il Quattrocento (somehow many Fuersten rooms are named in Italian instead of the more common German )
• Age of Renaissance (could be misleading, but I doubt we will ever see AoR on BSW)

Esterio

Hello,

Since we are about to build a Fuersten game room, we should worry about finding a name for it. I'm not too good at such things (guess why I still haven't built my house), but here is a very nice new thread where you can make your suggestions.

Esterio

Congratulations to both of you! That's one more PR medal for EC! And isn't it our first gold medal ever?

Esterio

Hello,

These new figures confirm what we thought in the previous month: we could use game rooms for TA and Fuersten. The new games Go, Sticheln and Emerald are doing quite well too (or even exceptionally well, for Emerald), but maybe the interest will fade a bit after novelty has gone.

I think we should set Fuersten and TA as our next purchases, which have proved quite solid in these rankings for a few months. Emerald is already covered by Alexfrog's house anyway, and Go or Sticheln should come next. By then, we may have another Fürst or two in our town, which would mean new houses too.

Ligretto is a special case, as I'm the main player in town, having played roughly 80% of the total this month (and 10 other % being Alexfrog trying to beat me ). I was thinking I could maybe have it in my house when I manage to get Fürst, depending on what other games we have managed to get by then.

Esterio

PS: We shouldn't forget that other games may be coming soon (Medina, possibly others). Maybe they will be worth considering too.

Hello all,

I'm glad we managed to meet the requirements, not only in time, but even ahead of time. Of course, paying taxes may seem a waste of resources to some, but isn't it the way it works in RL too? Tax evasion and voluntary freeze can be envisaged, but I feel much better if we actually manage to pay what we owe.

I may have reconsidered my point of view if paying for the monthly requirements actually meant we couldn't build some new gamerooms soon - but we will probably be able to have a few houses in the very next days anyway. We still have our little pile of stones, which has kept growing since the building of the town hall, and you know as well as I how quickly we accumulate wood. Buying some tools (which are quite unexpensive at the moment) and getting new rooms shouldn't take more than a few hours of play.

Esterio

PS: Guess who wrote that some weeks ago:

And having a building stop is kindof humiliating for the town... rather not see that

[daily]

If we don't concentrate all our effort right now on our December requirements, we won't be able to gather enough food and cloth on time. We should be able to get what we need in time, but we can probably spare enough to buy tools in addition of that.

Of course, we should keep our stone so that we are ready to build something as early as possible in January, and hopefully we won't have to sell them in order to secure our December requirements. That may depend on our activity around Christmas, though, as our daily needs till the end of the month are about 15 cloth and 60 wool. I am not sure we will produce that many on December 24th or 25th...

As for the need of a Fuersten room and the numerous resources it will generate for our town, we will also have to consider when the first of us will become Fürst and what games they will want to host in their houses. Avoiding duplicates would probably be a good thing. Let's talk about this again in January.

Esterio

I am not sure whether I understood everything you wrote , but I agree with what I understood .

If the tournament takes place before the end of January, I would be glad to take part (but maybe it is a little too early to start registrations).

Esterio

Thanks nat! I will do my best as EC's ambassador.

As you said, our first priority is securing the food and cloth requirements for this month. We produce a fair amount of food and should be ok about that, but cloth might be more of a problem. Several cities have already suggested that we could trade our wool for their cloth, and I'm confident that we will be able to do such trades as soon as we manage to find enough wool.

Meanwhile, we should be able to accumulate some stone (it seems that we produce some in EC again), which hopefully we will not need to sell before the end of the month. That means we could have almost everything we need (except for the tools) to build a game house quite early next month.

But for now, the priority remains food and cloth (it would be nice to have smileys for these in the forum, wouldn't it?)

Esterio

Hello all,

After checking on the costs page, a SU building would cost 800 wood, 2,000 stone, 100 tools and 10,000 talers. That seems quite expensive to me, especially as it will probably take us forever again to gather stone (although trading with the hanse should make it shorter).

Using the estimated values of 20 for wood, 80 for stone, and 250 for tools, the total resource value is slightly above 200,000 talers. That means that we would need 200,000 SU games played there to make it even. Not very likely before long, I'm afraid...

In my opinion, building a chapel should be delayed, at least, till after a few more MU game rooms have been built. Having EC citizens play Mah-jong or Five dice out of town is not as bad, from a resource point of view, as having them play Fürsten or TA out of town.

Esterio

I haven't tried Go on BSW yet, but will probably some day soon. I am not too sure about whether we should build a Go room before the Fürsten room. So far, Fürsten would remain my first vote.

However, some of us are quite likely to reach Fürst level quite soon (yes, I mean you, Alexfrog), so maybe we will be able to have several new game rooms without having to pay for all of them

Esterio

Thanks for the information! I'm not so surprised by the results, with our main 4 games (Tichu, Doko, PR and LC) ahead. Good thing we have our own rooms for these, although sometimes they are not as full as they could. TA and Fürsten are no surprises either, considering that several of us like each of these games (I've played both, but only a few TA compared to lots of Fürsten).

Finding Halali where it stands is more surprising to me; I would have thought much less games of it would have been played. Still, I don't think it is a good resource-generator (at least compared to Fürsten or TA). Another point to notice is that our game rooms host games we play on average at least once a day (or even twice a day, except for Ra and CCE). Do we, however, always play these games in our rooms?

No Attribut, BohnDuell, Manitou or TurnIt at all. Not so surprising either. I should try these at least once so that they are both in my stats and December stats

Esterio

Félicitations de la part du représentant français d'Emerald.City ! Enfin un forum où on va pouvoir parler français.

Esterio

(How come we are increasing in size but decreasing in productivity?  It must mean that either some of the new players, some of the older players, or some of both, arent playing much right now...but I guess that happens sometimes.)

I could not connect to the BSW as much in the past few weeks as last month, and I have mainly played Fürsten (that is, out of town) recently (instead of PR last month).

I haven't checked precisely, but we should still be able to build the TH before the end of the year, shouldn't we?

On the other hand, since we already have the 4 other games I play a lot (PR/Doko/Tichu/LC), it would be nice to have a Fuersten room in my Castle when I do make Furst...but if we build one before then, I dont know what I'd want to put in.  (I'd rather have something fairly permanent, than have to pay 500 pts to change it...)

I had about the same thoughts. Too bad I feel you will win the race to Fürst over me

Esterio

Congratulations to... us  

I haven't really thought about where I should place my estate yet. Maybe on the south-eastern border? I guess it doesn't really matter as long as there is no game hosted there, and Fürst is still a long, long way ahead.
As for Fürsten von Florenz, we may be able to build a windmill for it before one of us becomes Fürst. Hopefully 3000 stone will not take forever to gather.

Esterio