Originally posted by Soren Johnson on the Mohawk Games blog.
We’ve never been super happy with the original stock system – in which after all of a player’s stock is purchased, another player can buyout that player by paying double for all stock owned by other players. Although the initial period of stock buying is exciting, there is also a long period of time while players are just stockpiling cash for the final buyout, which can be a little boring and also has gameplay issues as players with hundreds of thousands of liquid cash can cause massive swings in the market by buying up huge quantities of resources.
Thus, we are trying out a new stock system in Beta 8, which is termed the No Buyout game option and is on by default. Here are the rules:
- Rival players can buyout shares, one at a time, that a player owns in her own company for double the price.
- Once a player owns zero shares in his own company, that player is eliminated from the game, and the company becomes a subsidiary of the other companies which own its stock.
- Subsidiaries are managed by the AI and only try to make money with the claims they already have – these companies will never buy stock, use the black market, bid on auctions, claim new tiles, and so on. (They will, however, turn their buildings on and off if they are unprofitable.)
- Three times a day, subsidiaries will distribute 25% of their money to their shareholder, divided according to percent ownership.
- When a company becomes a subsidiary, all of the stock it owns is distributed to its shareholders, again divided according to percent ownership. (If shares cannot be split perfectly, then the remaining shares will be made available for purchase again.)
We tried out this new mode during our weekly stream (with Gameslayer, Blues, and #Slind):
http://www.twitch.tv/mohawkgames/v/26741023
This new mode is now available on the next_version branch, which can be accessed by right-clicking on the game in Steam, selecting Properties, selecting Betas, typing in the code “MohicanSun2015”, and then selecting “next_version” from the pull-down menu. Please try out this mode and let us know what you think in the forums.