The plague is over

It is as if smoke were rising from the burned town...

This is one of the moments where the gamemaster integrity is tested. The Most Ancients remember how we had the Barbarian Invasion theme in the 1400s, and enormous effort was put for instance into the Citadel, about the size of the rest of the city combined. The die result table was prepared and announced in advance and included the barbarian looting of every worthy palace in the town, ransom etc.

That time, the die decided that no invasion at all came. This time we got the worst plague that was spexed - no advance warning, equivalent to each character being 250 years old and rolling a 20/20 four times in a row, with strong drinks providing nice relief but no "miracle cure" eventually was available, meaning that the only way to combat it was to drink, and drink hard.

Nobody died, and only 1 character is "ailing". Quite a few are "weak" though, which is not life-threatening but may pose some issues in the future.

When the evaluation started, the rich managed nicely due to their stashes, but then the problems started when the middle class (who wasn't prepared) started to buy the offerings on the market. It hit them hard and some received "brutal" decline in the health. In the end the purchasing power of the characters being evaluated declined at the same time that the prices of the drinks soared, so that it was no more prudent to purchase anything.

Many nobles came to rescue and donated large amounts of drinks without seeking compensation. Expert Cryptonic receives special mention: when the market ask for RME had risen to 2 mil per bottle, he donated every single bottle of his stash (at the time worth a billion, much more than the character's other worth) to the poor. This, in addition to HH of NF donation, Saddam's donation, Duke of OZ donation, Prince of Soul's decision to give away every bottle of wine, dark drink and small drink, and several waves of Royal donations, saved the life of the common people in the town, so that actually they suffered "only" "severe" damage, and may start their life often in "decent", even "good" health.

The migration is pressing, so commentary will be short. The drink hoards in the town were decimated:

W1600M - 7,308 - 2/3 of the stash emptied all of a sudden - this drink contributed the most to the battle; the history you know, the future is glorious
W1600 - 5,030 - 2/3 emptied
W1601 - 982 - 2/3
W1601B - 3,322 - 2/3 finished - was very nice considering that it's barley wine
W1602F - 68 - 10%
W1602 - 335 - 15% - many wines were consumed only in moderation, because they were not effective enough in battling the challenge
W1603 - 500 - 15%
W1603A - 2,714 - 25% - this was not bad, and it is also at peak and should be drank, but more cost-effective options were available for most
W1604 - 4,332 - 1/3

CLXII - 42 - 5% - thanks belongs to Soul who donated also his cache of 37*CLXII to the poor for their important benefit
CVS - 328 - 40% - proved to be a potent spirit
RME - 1,675 - 60% - much of the market activity happened around this, because the bulk of it was in few hands in the beginning
RUM - 585 - 70% - this is becoming rare
VOH - 920 - 10% - transparent spirits proved to be suboptimal cures, so only relatively little were consumed
VOD - 20 - 5%
SW1 - 3 - 5%
SW2 - 46 - 15% - a bonus was provided for class variety, which made this reasonable to be consumed by some

BEER - 36,058 - 90% - Thanks to the Church and the free market, the beer was practically fully spent in the challenge. Despite not being very potent, it was very cost-effective.

Expert Cryptonic is Knighted for his valor in battling the plague (L8). As for others, we are too weary to arrange any ceremony now. Everyone is alive, and that is what matters. No health challenges will come in 4 years. All can be with their kids and see them grow. The Prince Royal has cancelled his party (for which a post had been written beforehand).

We will now proceed to year change and migration!

Just back from a dinner with the Prince of Soul, with 1975 Saint-Emilion wine and pork feet, sauna and cognac included. (Sorry for 2 hour break instead of 1)

He says: "I have been blessed with wealth and advanced age. I cannot in good conscience drink the wine from my cellar any more unless I donate every bottle to the relief effort now, (to continue collecting later). Only vodka-based drinks will be spared because they will be more effective another day. Alles anders muss weg!"

All except the newest characters who don't have means to buy the drinks at market price (which is exorbitant right now) have been evaluated.

Now is your chance to donate: if you have rights, go directly and give your drinks to the ones not having "X" yet in the black column. If you don't, ask some of the admins to do it. We have not yet lost any lives, but it is more than possible now if nobody follows Cryptonic's and HH of NF's example. You can also tell your intent in the thread, but - do it now!

All spirits are much appreciated, though VOH is not at its best right here so if you have others, give them and spare the VOH. They don't make more springwater... As for wines, remember that we will have many years of no health challenges, and wines get old and then too old. (see /WINE)

These guys don't have money. They cannot buy, so don't even think about selling any more. (Some earlier sales are not yet recorded, don't worry about that either.)

After about 1 hour, the fate will be decided. Would it not be a bit lame to lose characters the same day the migration to Ultima starts??!  

No problem, since you are authenticated by email, I will send the temp password to you directly without this preliminary step of "waking you up".

The BCT PM round now is for the reason that many accounts have not been actively played for months.

You can still help!

The poorer half of us, characters #81-> has not yet suffered Plague. This will happen starting in about 1 hour from now, and in a few hours, everything is consummated, we move on to year change script, (perhaps the Zech party unless it is cancelled due to mourning), and then migration.

Characters #1-#80 can freely list everything they have for sale or just dump it to the /F_OWN rows of people who have not yet been evaluated and are sure to drink it. Especially we urge to directly dump beer since it is not a big sacrifice for you, but a nice benefit for the receiver.

Stronger alcohol can be listed for sale so that the pricing mechanism takes care whether it will be consumed and by whom, or stay for the future.

Please be mindful that now we are entering the evaluation of characters who simply cannot afford high prices (unlike the earlier ones, who could have, but did not even need due to many having stocked up beforehand). The script that I will tailor during this 1 hour break takes character wealth into account so that drinking is happening only if a certain wealth-dependent cost/benefit threshold is met.

The evaluation of plague has been done for char_id's 1-80. Nobody has died yet, but the challenge has been brutal. Hundreds of bottles of spirits have been consumed because nothing else seems to help.

The figures of consumption are available in /F_OWN and the resulting healths in /CHAR. The die surprised us all by raising W1600M, previously of no known nutritional value, to become the most consumed drink (second only to BEER). Until this day, the King has only gifted, not sold, this drink. Therefore it is relatively abundant among the characters and widely distributed.

Previously we had much ado about the allocation of beer, even mead. Unfortunately it seems that this kind of plague is little affected by either. It is of course better to drink them than not, but if a severe health decline is to be avoided, only spirits or the choicest of wines are of use.

The markets are open all the time, and I exhort everyone who is already evaluated (which means what they have drunk is deducted from the /F_OWN) to list their remaining drinks for sale. You can save lives!

The script is expected to be finalized by evening as scheduled.

The Die has spoken

When I rolled about the severity of the plague, the result came as the fateful 10/10, the worst possible. While this was not in my hopes, the gamemaster is bound to obey. As long as your character is not marked with "X" in the column "JC" in /F_OWN in the Game DB, you can still buy drinks on the market. All other living conditions have already been evaluated and cannot affect the health challenge results any more.

Similarly, as the evaluation proceeds, you are free to list the drinks for sale in /DRINKPRICE. Upon "X", I have deducted your own consumption so the rest is ready to be sold to the needy, unless you want to keep it. Please do it so that there is a specific admin to record it; I will not have the opportunity to update the asks based on thread requests, because I am tied with the evaluation script myself.

If any character dies, it is most unfortunate. There is no estate tax in this situation, so the gold and land holdings are unaffected and you can start a new character to continue play, and the history of your (most) ancient character is enshrined in the Hall of Fame.

I am sorry for the die roll, but ready to start the evaluation.

Exactly. I am not among the keenest computer wizards here (by a margin) but even I understand that there is no issue, it is smart design.

It's the same that Firefox uses all the free memory, but if something else needs it, it frees what is needed. Automagically. It works better with more memory so it's stupid to leave it idle. Some other applications (Excel for instance) don't benefit from excess memory so don't reserve it either.

The reason why someone would use it is to play it against his own bids to camouflage his market buys and other upwards pressure during accumulation.

If it bothers you too much, just set up your own 

Character claims and wealth manager situation

Why hide this info as it is public in the /CHAR anyway. Column "F" reveals:
"C" a claimed account who is responsible for his stocking of drinks now and will get the account Sunday.
"iC" likewise.
"WMx/y" tells the type of WM deal and the manager's initial. If your character is WM'ed against your wish, you can just PM me and get it

I am extremely busy currently with the plague, the year end and the migration. Sorry if I don't have time to chat about random subjects that I usually do I have scheduled the weekend for these matters and everything is going as planned.

As for the plague preparation, we got a lot new information in the last info round, which was also the last, so that only SCI can help us any more!

I checked that there are plenty of stocks for voluntary purchase, including all spirits, most wines and BEER and MEAD. Hopefully Roopatra comes online soon, since she is rumored to have authority to list the wines from OZ to the market to provide relief.

Guidance to Character Management
(intended for the wealth managers and long-absent accountholders alike)

Introduction
This concerns the current state of game engine. In the long term, many features are planned, which make the gameplay more interesting and add a lot of depth to the decisions in the character management as well. Now we can classify the game goals as follows:

- Health. The negative variable. Making bad decisions eats your health and having bad health affects many things in the future, in addition to leading to death and (hopefully) starting over with a new character that inherits the assets of the previous one.
- Wealth. Making wise decisions financially increases your wealth, allowing easier play in health, status and fun sectors, or potential cashout in the future.
- Status. This means increasing your ranking in all the measurable ways in the game - promotions, titles, badges, luxurious items, etc. Often but not always requires money, but of course may be slightly at odds with maximizing wealth sometimes.
- Fun. Everybody perceives this in a different way. Playing the style you prefer is your choice.

Game choices
There is some gameplay happening, especially among the active players (who are designated "active" because of this). The core people spend time daily, up to several hours, managing and organizing stuff, making deals, etc. We encourage others to try out. Meanwhile, for the ones who don't or don't yet prefer to immerse themselves, the following decisions need to be made nevertheless:

- Residence
Owning a house (floor-sqms in a separate lot) is currently the only allowed type of residence. Not owning one, or if it is grossly inadequate for the needs, burdens health, and hinders promotion. Because a residence (at least) holds its value, and gives CUL + IC income, it is not really a sacrifice financially either. It is possible to have several residences.

- Clothes
Clothes are extremely important for health and status. They tend to be expensive but they are durable. This is a cost item in the balance sheet (unlike residence, which is an asset), but (unlike in the past in this game) it is not possible to do without. There are many types of clothes available distinguished by their colors, and it is possible to add precious metals to the more fancy ones. There are treatises written on clothes and they are fully current.

- Transportation
Horse is the way to do this, and that comes in many grades (H1-H9). A minimum level for the horses is specified for 2, 4 and 6-horse drawn carriages. It is also possible to ride a horse, and some prefer to do this if they are fond of their ancient horse. We instruct the ones without horses to go directly to 2 or 4 horse carriages, because the market for good horses is tight, there is no domestic saddle manufacturing and IC-conversion import costs honey, and the town just looks more civilized with carriages. In addition, many of the ones to whom this text is intended, are more than 100 years old, so it's about time to quit walking, yet not to learn riding with bad horses - that is a needless danger.

Since transportation is not mandatory unlike residence and clothes, and despite the long life of both horses and carriages, is on the cost side of the equation, the instruction is to consider it if it fits the playstyle, or a good opportunity presents itself, or there is an aspiration to gain levels and status, since nothing is more visible than a nice carriage.

- Silver/CKS
Ardent research is going on, with conflicting results, about the role of silver items in boosting immunity and health. In addition to health, it increases status (silver can exist in any form) and its conversion price is tied to gold price so it is not a real cost to have it (it does not pay dividends though). Zenon has theoretized that up to 100-200 CKS would be beneficial for health, and therefore it's advisable to acquire some.

- Other items
There are many items, most of which do not yet have ingame benefits, some of them are collectibles for fun and profit, others not. Owning items is a sign of active gameplay and will be rewarded in promotions. When the systems emerge, things like furniture will become as practically mandatory as clothes are now, and it always tends to happen that the first adopters of things receive their reward later if not sooner.

Investments
When wealth exceeds the playstyle, the excess is invested in things that are hoped to increase value or bring cash flow:

- CKG
Receives the Town dividends and has increased in value a lot in the past. The most liquid, if not only way to make large investments.

- Land
Raw chapelry-size land is bought cheaply from the town and trades in these big increments. In the future it might be nice to own a large land area in the very heart of the town (all land now existing fits in 1-mile radius from the golden obelisk).

Zoned land containing buildings produces a nice cash flow but requires management attention.

- Financial instruments
CON is a bond that Town pays fixed 0.1 XMR per week forever, so might be cool if XMR takes off. Many companies also have stock, which have not historically been very liquid though. It is possible to deposit money to Bank or lend it to other characters. All these have issuer risk.


For wealth managers
WM1 deals are made between you and the client and none of my concern. WM2 is "town-appointed" deal to a character that owns ~1,000 CKG or more (in the past, this was the buy-in to the game). WM3 is any poorer character, typically younger as well.

The most important thing is to prepare for the plague according to the means. Here WM2 allows much better preparation and no expense should be spared. (Only the bottles that are needed are consumed anyway). WM3 try to do what you can.

WM2: Buy a fitting house if the character does not have any, or it is too small. Why skimp, since it is good diversification and provides dividends, benefits and diversification. WM3: get a house from the giveaways or cheap offerings.

Buy clothes if ever that is possible. The color coding is the same as always.

If the character is old (or Baron, or aspiring Master), go for a carriage, nice color. It's not too much to have. The new ones don't need it, and cannot afford it anyway.

At this point don't too much care to manage the items or list them for sale if something is in excess. That can be done in Ultima much better.

Exercise judgement when making the purchases, since you are yourself involved in the seller side. This does not mean "don't buy from yourself" but act honestly.

It is good to read the last pages in the thread, they contain the schedule of the future events, repeated about once/day to be easier to find:

- Wealth managers take possession of the unclaimed characters today in google version
- Tomorrow is the year change script in google version, and the start of migration
- On Sunday, I start sending out the account temp passwords to the ones who claimed theirs (and to wm's of those who did not)
- After this, you have until December 17th to claim your account any time, and if you want to put it back to wealth management, you are free to make a private deal.

I make the beer buy for you!

Town MEAD sales are opened. The long-awaited distribution plan is simple: the price of MEAD is tripled, it still being only 0.003. We have calculated that the active characters don't want to buy it anyway because aftermarket does not exist and they don't drink it themselves. So the only limitation is 600 bottles per pc for now.

This should leave plenty of MEAD for the evaluation phase, where it will be allocated to be purchased by the willing nobles and needy commoners alike. Since I have promised to use an optimising drinking method instead of game-realistic, the evaluation-allocation to nobles will be capped, otherwise the script would consume the mead for them because it is cheap, leaving the poor without.

Why I ended up not distributing it to all the needy in this phase:
- Church already took care of the poor, and once you have 400 beer, having 400 mead in addition is not a big deal
- Tried to install some realism - the stocks what people have are not visible, and since the deserving recipients are anyone up to Baron, and aftermarket is very clumsy with deals <1 mil in size, dividing all the Town stock equally would not bring the fair result. If the game was actively going, the bulk of the mead would have been given to L1-L4 characters who usually drink it, and they could have engineered the exact distribution in the free market. We don't have the incentive to take care of such small things. Also even at the risk of being unfair, I don't want people to die when the migration is on the corner!

No more voluntary drinking plans!!

Plague Oracle Answers:


Is this plague an energetic/mystical/spiritual in its core essence (as opposed to physical): Probably not.

How many times more potent are spirits on average vs. wines: About 5 times.


Specific feelings about the drinks consumed:

W1600M - Whoa! This has been awaited to mature for years, and now it has developed something quite new. The taste is different and the effect compares favorably to almost any wine.

W1600, W1603A - Solid wines, both taste and feeling. This is nothing new of course.

Since long time, perhaps forever, spirits were consumed in quantity in laboratory conditions, and the Medical Center was tasked to keep track of the feelings scientifically. The results had much variance (see how many of certain type was actually consumed to gauge how much) but we dare to give the approximate table of relative benefits composed with our proprietary formula and random-masked, and leave the variance out since we cannot calculate it in the 1600s:

10 - SW1, SW2, CLXII, RME
5 - VOH, CVS, RUM
1 - VOD

The use of this table is on everyone's own risk. Also it does not take into account the possibility of benefit curve being nonlinearly correlated to amount consumed (quite likely actually), or if there is the hinted secret ingredient that kills the disease with a long term effect. This + the oracle answer to the second question should nevertheless provide confidence in financial planning. Helpful is to know that upon evaluation, omniscience is exercised (but the challenge will be much tougher than the ones who started with voluntary drinking).

Finally: Beer sales are opened by the Church!

When the plague came to gamemaster attention, the normal price sales of BEER by the Church at 0.005 and MEAD by the Town at 0.001 were closed. This was to make an interesting learning experiment on how to act in an emergency when the thing you normally deal with and make commercial profit, suddenly becomes an instrument of life and death for the public, some of them aware of the danger and willing to pay, others either not aware or not having the means to pay even close what the others can.

This kind of challenge is very common in real world and the special trickiness lies in the signal effect on how the situation is handled. If preparation is rewarded, people prepare more in the future. If freeriding is, more of that will happen. But the actions of the different crisis managers are seldom coordinated and typically it is not possible to force a reward for preparation - different relief efforts usually help those in most plight, who sometimes even profit on the expense of those who by their own planning evaded the catastrophe.

So since BEER is cheap to produce, not miraculously healthy, but a very useful drink consumed en masse, and Church is not a commercial entity and does not need to care about gouging prices, I spent countless of hours explaining the challenge to them (yes there are many .

The result was to allocate about 1/3 of the Church beer stock as a gift to those in most need, characters who on their own means usually drink mead. Only 1/5 of all characters were in this category.

Every commoner is entitled to buy their allocation of max 400 bottles at a price of 0.010. For anyone practically considering this, the price should not be an issue so they exercised restraint and made the active players pay for the free distro to the poor (which they did not have authority to charge by GM decision).

Not all nobles are wealthy and many of them drink beer because of this, and others because they don't need an all-wine diet due to being young. Some of these are unhappy with the ban, as during an emergency, they are deprived of a product that they normally can buy, and are forced to buy 10-20 times more expensive product instead. Not all can be made happy. On the other hand, some masters are making small business by selling their excess beer to the market which normally is capped by church pricing but now opened due to the ban.

MEAD is not in my assessment even close to being as crucial as beer in the challenge, but the noble beer ban opens up some interesting ways how to tackle it. I will be making the allocation / opening the sales on behalf of the Town in a few hours.

Excellent logic! Has the oracle been fooling us?? Is this a spiritual disease after all?  

I am getting 2 "free" questions today, right after the voluntary drinking deadline (after ~2 hours).

Instead of me asking stupid questions, why don't we spend some effort in thinking as good as possible questions, whose answers (even if it is "yes", "no" or "idk") reveal much important info. Then I can ask them (and it'd be so good for you to ask more bonus questions as well).

My small contribution to the riddle is the following:

- The objective is to maximize health. It is implicit that it can be maximized individually with ultra-costly drinking, but the public health would be better off with drinking spearheaded to maximum effectiveness drinks.
- It has been told that "spirits", "some drinks among spirits" and "darker rather than lighter spirits" have this effectiveness.

When we think of the big picture, is there anything at all in TPTB agenda that did not aim for increased intrusion of people's life, and thus, control?

No.

That is their agenda, plain and simple. For this reason I suggest the "just say 'no' policy".

I wish to repost this. It is still possible to signup (PM me). The event as the first anniversary, in the Royal Palace, and right after the release of the long-awaited online version is certainly one of its kind!

Hi all,

The PMs to all accountholders have been sent, and about 50 accounts have been claimed in the first 4 hours. This does not even include all the daily active players. In my estimate, about 1-2% of the Crypto Kingdom assets remain unclaimed after a few days. The owners have until December 17th, to claim them, after which we thank you for support and spend the assets for marketing. Several attempts to reach the owner will be tried meanwhile, with "last active" being the guide. (If a BCT account has been active yet does not reply to PMs for months, he is judged to have donated the CK account to the game. If he is not even active in BCT for months, what can we do?)

The Town appointed wealth (or health) managers start their job to manage the unclaimed accounts tomorrow. Their mission statement is as follows:
- Arrange living conditions according to the level, status and means. Acquire houses, suits, carriages, later other items. Whatever is customary and also benefits wellbeing and promotions etc.
- Keep the character alive by drinking. In the advanced age this may be costly as well, but this is to mimic what people do when they have gold coin in their hand and the choice is to buy medicine or die.
- Make wise investment choices. Some events (such as maturing of existing bonds) give large cash flows, and these will be reinvested to liquid assets to produce more cash flows. Active investing is not possible due to limited time.

If you have a personally appointed wealth manager, the contract continues unchanged. It is a private deal between you and the manager and from the game point of view is not relevant. We have always had such arrangements, and in the future (especially with Countryside bringing more management challenges but no more time to the key players) will have even more.

It is worth emphasizing that every character has its own account, therefore players who also are CEOs in a corp, need to log out and in to play as the corp. If you are a wealth manager, you have the keys to multiple accounts and manually logout and in to each of them to perform actions.

The schedule is that plague health challenge will be solved Saturday afternoon. Then the year change script will be run (with as many as possible actions having happened in advance). Then Sir Zechariah, The Prince Royal is organizing a great party to celebrate his nomination to the Heir Apparent, party is overshadowed by the plague of course especially if people have died. This party doubles as the Ultima release celebration.

The migration itself has been practiced numerous times - we have imported the data at least weekly for a long time already. Now we aim to do it the final time concerning /CHAR, /ITEMS, /F_OWN and /LOT. Buildings will continue in google DB because it is currently the most handy editor to get them to the game, and the arrangement will continue for some time because of the player votes concerning what they truly feel is important.

In the very beginning, there is somewhat little to play in the game, since health challenges are done for a few years, and building is essentially unchanged from the google version. In just a few days we get the new player registration and login to work, and then the EXP, which allows scripted actions and nice bonuses for playtime. API is also not a distant thing because it has been carried in the design all the time and mainly lacks documentation. From here, the game gradually takes shape

Urgent information concerning the plague:

1. If you have claimed your account, you will not get a wealth manager, which means that there is nobody to buy you drinks in advance before the evaluation of the health challenge. We do our utmost to have enough drinks to buy during the evaluation, and I have the authority to spend your money on them. It is nevertheless very preferable if you take command of your character right here as you read this, the benefits include 1) save money 2) save health 3) learn the game 4) fun.

2. If you have not claimed your account, the wealth manager will take care of you.

3. I am extremely happy that so many of the active players have really taken the time to consider the distribution of drinks, so that they can benefit the most, in this time of impending health disaster. But the sales of the poor man's bread - BEER and MEAD - are still halted. The Church and Town need to step up and take the effort to think how they can save lives with the efficient distribution and how to organize it. I am not doing it for you. I hope this would have happened already since the deadline for voluntary drinking is in 15 hours!

4. The wealth managers will be taking command only after the voluntary drinking. The voluntary drinking is a post sent to this thread explaining what drinks from your inventory (max 400 bottles) you drink and why and what other measures you take to combat plague. Needless to say, typically it pays off to participate in these...

The evidence is much inconclusive but it seems that this time darker spirits give better results than light ones, per bottle.