Crypto Kingdom - 1991 Retro Virtual World(City)

[djjacket]

Starting price is only 1,300 million 1,250 million 1,200 million

The The Marquess of North Face would like to offer 1,200 for the 3-N.

[1714553619]

1714553619

[1714553619]

1714553619

[1714553619]

1714553619

[smooth]

Starting price is only 1,300 million 1,250 million 1,200 million 1,150 million

First one to inform about a purchase of a certain chapelry in the thread is the winner. I'll tell when/if the prices go down.

Smooth QC will buy 3-E for 1150.

[rpietila]

Dutch Auction on the quarry sites in the 3rd Borough!

See /QUARRY-2 tab for detailed geology of these sites.

Three excellent quarry chapelries, unburdened by taxes, are now up for grabs! Pick yours quickly and transfer your seasoned staff from an old site to a new one. All the sites contain 17.7-19.5 million stone. While you dig it out, the land is increasing in value as the quarrying is bringing commerce to the borough, and when you are ready, you can sell the land! A similar land sale in a corner chapelry of 2-SW (the former NLQI area) fetched 2,000 million!

The reserve price is 1,000 million because the town council has decided that below it, no land will be sold in any case.

Starting price is only 1,300 million 1,250 million 1,200 million 1,150 million

First one to inform about a purchase of a certain chapelry in the thread is the winner. I'll tell when/if the prices go down.

(The other 3 will also be auctioned soon, but they have much less, only 9.0-14.4 million, stone)

Price is now 1,100 for the one remaining site.

[rpietila]

Version 3: Pocket Economy launches


Well, almost...
Some linkings + house & hotel subgame formulas are not yet there. But here is the list about what is already accomplished:

- /LOT (previous Land Registry) moved to Character DB (which from now on is the only google DB of the game as the others are moved);
- Amount of land owned shown in Char basic data;
- Nearly all the NPC's in SERV (was also /1SERV for a time) are allocated to businesses, the rest will be returned to Households for future use;
- Cleaning lady will suffer the fate of Guard - be reduced to a fixed payment per year: 116 fired;
- In the Hotel game, you need lots of room servants and quite some managers. The quality of staff is not as important as in the restaurant, though;
- All subgames will start to experience random bonus events once the basics get in order;
- It is rumored that the most expensive transfer price of talented people was 150 million. It is not known for certain who were involved and what was the contents of the deal;
- We have 11 active, publicly traded corporations, of which the most - 4 - are managed by the Prince of New Liberty or his sockpuppets;
- The Bank has money and the prime lending rate is now reduced to 0.60% APR (per day);


What you could do now is to ask the admins who know how to add restaurants to the /3RESTA tab, to do it. The game is quite a nice one with the rules limiting the size of restaurants and possibility to make money with several approaches (because the relative pricing of restaurants is dependent on player choices).

There is no good enough way to make the COMMERCIAL subgame:
- interesting
- fair
- adminable.

It too much resembles Apartment renting, Hotel game, and restaurant game. Therefore we scrap it altogether in favor of a modified sqm-based income. The Science & Culture will absorb the lone private industries for now. Such icons as the Old Department Store, Lucky Lion, etc. continue to exist, but with a very simplistic inmplementation.

The Marquess of Forte Spagnolo should be updating soon about the developments in the foreign lands. It is rumored that wonderful things are just about to happen, but also that the Jubilee was celebrated with a 20-year holiday there.

[smooth]

Secondary offering - Smooth Investment Fund

Smooth Investment Fund is making a secondary offering of 300 units at 97% of NAV. This is a 3% discount off of the value of the underlying assets (which are in general priced at their midprice).

Discount is increased to 15% below NAV (85% of NAV). For the rest of the details see above.

Take note! Smooth QC (one of the portfolio holdings of Smooth IF) has acquired a new premium quarry site, and has experienced management that can efficiently operate the new quarry site.

[smooth]

Smooth QC update

We have successfully completed quarrying of the first quarry site, and have acquired a new site at 3-E. The new site contains approximately 19m stone.

Our existing quarry workers will be transferred to the new site along with our valuable (and now unavailable) quarry equipment.

In addition, we have acquired the buildings and prime land of the previous quarry site at 2-NW for further development.

A bridge loan of 1500m was provided by smooth to facilitate the acquisition of the new quarry site and development area.

[rpietila]

Dutch Auction on the quarry sites in the 3rd Borough!

See /QUARRY-2 tab for detailed geology of these sites.

Three excellent quarry chapelries, unburdened by taxes, are now up for grabs! Pick yours quickly and transfer your seasoned staff from an old site to a new one. All the sites contain 17.7-19.5 million stone. While you dig it out, the land is increasing in value as the quarrying is bringing commerce to the borough, and when you are ready, you can sell the land! A similar land sale in a corner chapelry of 2-SW (the former NLQI area) fetched 2,000 million!

The reserve price is 1,000 million because the town council has decided that below it, no land will be sold in any case.

Starting price is only 1,300 million 1,250 million 1,200 million 1,150 million

First one to inform about a purchase of a certain chapelry in the thread is the winner. I'll tell when/if the prices go down.

(The other 3 will also be auctioned soon, but they have much less, only 9.0-14.4 million, stone)

Price is now 1,100 for the one remaining site.

All the 4 remaining chapelries in the 3. borough have now gone down to 1,000 XMR apiece. New land will come into existence only if the town purchases a new borough from HM, and then it will cost minimum 1,000 per chapelry. Only 2 boroughs that are as close to the Old Town remain, the 4 and 5 boroughs to the north and the south from it. This land is therefore a potent investment without regard to the quarrying value (which admittedly is low on some of them).



Important regarding land and rules
The basic understanding in the land creation is that there are 8 boroughs that can be created in the near vicinity of the Old Town. They are located to all the map directions. In between, there is always land enough to fit 1 borough in. Therefore the total urban area is 9/25 of the total area.

The #-shaped supporting area that is not part of any boroughs and is not "implemented", houses the NPC's that cannot find lodging in our expensive city, and has the supporting functions of the city, animal management, waste disposal, artesans, carpenters, etc. It cannot be taken to urban development probably in centuries, for the reason that these support functions need to be implemented in the gameplay, and there is no pressing need to do it. The game is economically interesting already for those inclined, the important development needs are elsewhere.

The countryside outside the 5x5 borough-sized area is more densely built near the town and sparsely outside. It has the farms that provide low-price/weight ratio goods (such as potatoes) near the town, and high p/w-goods (such as foie gras) in the distant parts of the Kingdom. These distant parts are the ones that will be given as fiefs to Earls or higher, and they will get to develop them for their glory, and also significant income in resources. The development will require building an effective administration and road network in the Kingdom.

The recent Council negotiation with the NPCs, requires us to give them the control of the small industry and small commerce of the town, in response of them giving all the restaurants and taverns under the PC management. The large commercial/science/culture institutions will be in the 80XX rows in /SERV (former /1SERV).

[rpietila]

Version 3.0: Pocket Economy released

(For real.)

Our game has progressed to the point where the advances of the googleDB gameplay (or delays in browser-interactive version, or both) have necessitated the implementation of the economic calculation engine planned to be released in Version X: Economy in 2015-1-17 originally. The engine is now functional and strengthens the administration and conceptual play in the current googleDB format. We are able to take as many new players now as who care to join us and learn the gameplay - in other words, our capability of administrating newbies is not the limiting factor, their capability of learning the game, is

The latest advance is the transposing of the T_MON tab to allow such things as the year change, or distributing dividends from a random company to all its shareholders in proportion (eg. gold dividends), to happen in 2 minutes, instead of 30 minutes (and considerable mental load) before. The admin load of Quarry is also reduced to about 10 minutes per day from the original 2-3 hours. Resta updates automatically in real-time and does not need more care than checking of the level payout ratios once per week. From the players, in turn, it requires constant micromanagement, which on the other hand is easy to do in the powerful control sheets. This is the way it should be, the players who like to play, get interesting and rewarding stuff to do, while the admins may concentrate on larger issues.

The modular subgame structure allows now literally unlimited options for development of the game. Some of the ones that are promised for this version still lack the conversion formula, but the data structure is done already (/SERV tab in the DB). In the future, new subgames will be released according to people's wants and needs and good and playable ideas from other developers such as Paulson.

The Online version development schedule is altered to prioritize these "hardcore-functionality" developments first, and add the "visitor-functionality" Sandbox in the buildings only after. This was a nondecision in the sense that without doing it, it would have equalled to keeping the game in google DB because the control tools for doing about anything would have stayed there. To get the adoption going, and prevent us, the early adopters from becoming fabulously rich, is important and the Sandbox will come asap. We have just learned that the game development can for sure be kept in schedule only by doing it yourself. It has been quite demanding, and instead of granting MG-2 to myself (for the second time, because I already have it, and MG-1 requires 100,000 players which is not fulfilled yet), I will grant this medal to my wife for taking care of me and stuff.

Keeping the balance between old and new players so that as a rule, neither would enrich the other, is important. The latest servant grading round meant that some old-timers who had for 60 days paid a servant without receiving direct benefit, now got a servant that is worth 20x his yearly wage in staffing service. Of course it's great status and all, but the master is still monetarily behind, not even counting interest. Everyone who got nice MGR, SPE, even ASS (meaning ASSistant, somehow a neverending joke in the ##crypto-kingdom), CHEF, BUT, etc. is definitely worth receiving them all and if your businesses cannot be graded as high as a result, it's up to you to figure out. There are endless ways to remedy the situation, and it's always good to participate in the small new things eagerly. If they come from the administration, that is. It's heartwarming to see players wanting to go ahead of the development and implement food, drinks, animals, transport, countryside, healthcare, etc. which all are scheduled for later versions. Now we finally have a conceptualization for all these, the class 80XX in /SERV. Any kind of institution can be started and there it will produce specialists, culture and science, and consume money.

In general, everything has gone up in value in the game, even the Town Hall, built mostly for show and despite a good location, during its history producing abysmal revenue, is now being bid at 3.2 (IPO was 1 million). Most land has been a really good investment but market in the Old Town is oversaturated currently, nice spots for big developments cost a lot, small ones are uninteresting, and the building activity therefore is happening in other boroughs mostly. Gold is now paying about 1.5% dividend (on market price) per week, which is a lot, because of the town surplus, only 33% is paid as dividends while the rest is kept for paying for the development. Clothes are soon coming back, after Jacket, the Marquess of North Face is researching how to manufacture them in a way competitive with the showy foreign tailors. The said tailors are wavering in whether to come last year as the final time or not.

A word of warning on the game assets. Some of them depreciate, expire, or are burdened, in addition to their value as speculation and income generation. It is important to know the rules: The premier game asset is gold, which is only created according to rules, with a guaranteed slow inflation whose rate is dependent of the activity of the gameplay (currently: 0, because there is no online version). Land may have extra tax (in 1-SE currently), land tax (everywhere except haws, starts in 1600), and there can be unlimited amount of land. On the other hand, the Old Town is only one, etc. Both gold and land have their place, and are the easiest and most liquid (biggest marketcap) ways to invest. Buildings produce income, but start to require upkeep as well from 1600. NPC servants are very useful, but they start to die from 1600, as well as the PC's. (Some players cried that there should be a way to resurrect a dead NPC for continuity, while happily forgetting that a dead PC loses his skills and experiences as well, only the wealth is transferred to the heirs!  ) Items are not implemented yet because of prioritization and practical reasons, but everything you do, build, operate, say in thread, etc. will earn you items that can in the later versions be collected in museums and someone may pay for them as well. It is possible that some colorful stones in the quarry were the same kind that is in my old, sturdy, crown, inherited from my father, the Duke. So much research is needed...

A note to admins:
Unlike before, the Char DB is now heavily interlinked with VLOOKUP-functions. They are otherwise nice, but destroy everything totally once you add or remove columns. This must never be done in any sheet.

Otherwise, by following the logic and formulas, getting to know things, asking from me and others in-the-know in the IRC, gets a long way. The totally temporary construction in the google DB was never meant to be seriously updated but here it is With foreknowledge, it could have been done 2 months ago to save massive admin energy from chores to development. But it would not have brought the online (now named V.4) to us any quicker still.

The BUTlers that I got many in the transition of "domestic servants" to "NPCs" are representative of the feelings. Determined, hard work, pays off even in the conditions when you can't see or quantify the short term result, only the cost. Crypto Kingdom is stronger than ever.

[rpietila]

The last line in my previous post was hanging in the air. Wanted to check, since long time, the financial health of Crypto Kingdom, if my feeling was correct or not.

The Villa Rotonda School of Economics publications

We had difficult times in the Kingdom around the point in time when the awaited online version did not materialize, and we learned that it is still weeks away. A low point in gameworld valuation around that time was 111,000,000,000 m. The version "Trust in Economy" was announced to gather our ranks, and now the version "Pocket Economy" is released, which fulfills the plea and promise of "Trust in Economy".

Without going deeper in the methodology (all game information is public, so you can receive a different but not much different figure if do-it-yourself), our estimation of the value of the gameworld is:

133 billion - gold
94 billion - land
35 billion - buildings and structures
5 billion - stone
3 billion - NPC
1 billion - clothes
1 billion - items
-------------------------------------
272 billion - Crypto Kingdom

Daily valuation growth rate since (the intentionally-selected low point in) 1523; 28 days ago:
3.25%.


The valuation does not include promises of haws or taxation rights (Earls and higher), or any character value in excess of the liquidation value of the possessions, income value of new PC characters "farms" or the value of XMR in the accounts, or the 11 corporations in the game, since that would be double-counting. Only stuff that has no value outside of the game is counted.

[ChrisPop]

When will we be able to play it?

[rpietila]

When will we be able to play it?

It has been playable since October. What's needed is contained in the OP of this thread.

In a short period of time, there will be a URL-playable version, which will ease the gameplay for low-level (L1-L8) characters. For L9 and higher, there is no much difference since they are practically all admins in the current DB version as well, so their experience of the game hardly changes.

IRC ##crypto-kingdom in freenode is a place to get started.

[rpietila]

While I am finalizing the last formulas for the subgames (Household, Hotel, Rental, Special), other developments have happened:

- A few quarries have closed and others opened, so there are interesting new chapelries in the New City. Land has been zoned for sale, and lots are drawn for all kinds of uses. Check the prices and reserve yours! (LDC and Cashback have expired and are disabled).

- 4 chapelries in the 3. borough are for sale for quarrying and/or development at the floor price of 1000 million.

- In total, land is listed for sale for 21,199 million and is in the new /LOT tab in Char DB

- Corporations' Stock registrys are now in a handy /STOCK tab that allows for scripts such as giving dividends automatically.

- Gold dividend was 2,395 m this week, giving a nice 1.4% weekly return on holdings, in addition to the stone staking.

- We have 49 restaurants in the city! This is revealed by the /RESTA tab


Writing a history
In the following week, everyone who writes a history of his doings in the first 150 years in the CryptoKingdom, and posts it here, receives nice rewards in the form of gold, gold items, land, money, badges, medals, Honors, promotions, NPC promotions, NPCs, stone, clothes, ancient culture and science, and if there is anything else that could be gifted/bestowed.

Anyone is encouraged to give from his own to the storytellers!


Implementation of the institutions that slipped staffing in v.1-2
Some have been sad because their institution was not implemented as "servants" in the old version, and they don't therefore have any "NPC" in the new one. I have been thinking which is fair for all and decided that the most sought-after NPCs is not fair to give to people who (because of their oversight or mine, does not matter) never paid for their training. SO, to staff your institution, please provide me a list of the NPCs you'd like to have there, and I will grant them. I will charge a fee that is about half of the market value for these new guys, with less on Specialists.
* Rhadamanthus' School
* Villa Rotonda
* The University (all)
* All Church functions
* Zenon's Castle
* Zech's School in Village
* if there is anything else, see note below:

NOTE: If in this grace round you do not indicate having had some kind of activity during 1400-1550 that has involved any staff, you are not entitled to claim that such has happened ever again, and all very ancient items, gold, gold items, land, money, badges, medals, Honors, promotions, NPC promotions, NPCs, stone, clothes, ancient culture and science, etc that you could have had, is forfeited forever.

I am very happy to help with all this, after all this IS the reason we play the game, to create history with so many things happening. My duty as designer is to keep it adminable, and as gamemaster to keep it fair. This is the reasoning behind the strict command. Anyone can tell stories about miraculous things to his friends and keep on doing it for months; CryptoKingdom is unique in that it has been able to monetize such stories to a value of 277,000 XMR, and to safeguard this, fairness continues to be upheld.

[smooth]

* The University (all)

The university is quite small of an operation, and has only operated as military science so far, with classes taught by and to military. Nevertheless, it should have an head administrator, assistant, and appropriately sized janitorial, groundskeeping, and maintenance staff (including supervisors). This is in addition to the cafeteria, which I think is recorded as a restuarant (and staffed).

Presumably since the military science building services the military, the army should be paying some sort of tuition that would largely cover these operating costs, although donations could cover some as well, and indeed there have been some generous donations over the decades.

Also, when the military science building was designed it was stated (and I believe paid for) that there was a collection of rare and valuable artifacts being stored in the attic (listed I believe simply as "luxury". I don't know if the game has reached the level of maturity where those are recoded as items or not.

[rpietila]

The university is quite small of an operation

The coming year 1554 marks the centennary anniversary of the Town Hall, the  __  monument (I'd like to use the word "legendary" but that is restricted to be used of stuff by popular vote only) of the crowdfunding in the game.

It is a good year to consider the building of our University, for the foreign lands have them, and many scholastic and practical things are researched there.

The land has been donated by our gracious and benevolent Majesty in the Old Town (almost 10% of the entire Old Town area) decades ago, and The Marquess of Soul, Dr. Paul Choo, Ph.D, has most magnanimously donated 1,500,000,000 moneretos towards the construction of the main building.

The scheme of the main building can be found in City Map /1-OV. It is the largest development in the game so far with its 24 q land area and probably about 4,000 sqm building area. The construction will also consume 4-5 million stone.

The Chancellor smooth is coordinating this great project, as well as the ramp-up of the University in general. One practical thing that remains is the about 1,000,000,000 deficit in the construction fund, due to the unprecedented size of this project.

Having activities going on in the University, makes it produce culture, which smooth said could be passed through to the donators. The science produced should instead become either public domain, or property of the University, which would help in the future (universities founded in these ages are stinking rich now). Some of the space now constructed can also be rented out to pay the personnel. Further, the new database format allows for continuous (yearly) donations, and a club of the Friends of the University might be set up with the top floor of the central tower.

These are all just options, smooth is the contact person!

The construction of the Palace of Culture and Science (in Warsaw), the sister building of the University (of Moscow) is currently on hold in the hopes that the University could be built first.

[smooth]

I'd like to deal this offering to my wealth management clients, but it could be stated in easier terms:

- list of assets, their quantity, price used, and total value
- number of shares
- price offered.

At present this is not easy to find. The Marquess of Soul has increased his bid of the TH shares to 4 million per share, so this should be considered.

It was on the CORP page in the Smooth Investment Fund section. The pricing used is generally the quoted midprice, but in the case of town hall that doesn't work (since there is no real market maker sell price), so I am using the bid price (conservative). There was also an error on the balance sheet of Smooth QC related to the purchase of the old quarry site, which slightly reduced the book value, although Smooth QC is <15% of the assets of the fund, so this didn't make a huge difference.

Copied for reference here:

Code:

2000 CKG             348
45 town hall         180
100 NP               338.18
100 smooth QC        145
100 stoneton         152.5
104500 stone	       7.773
mon (x1m)              4.696

NAV=1176.11
shares=1181.75
NAV/share=1.00

[rpietila]

His Majesty Summer Palace

In a seemingly neverending spree of great projects, we have decided to build a villa to be used in the summertime. The site acquired is basically all of the 2-NW chapelry that the Town sold for 800 million after selling the smooth QC HQ area to him with buildings for 300 million.

The palace will be constructed as soon as we find time with the design, others want to build also and we are happy to prioritize them

Another thing is that the grounds have space for several haws, which the Barons or higher who don't yet have a haw can apply. There are not enough haws for all of the eligible, so the first ones eat the last.

A Haw is intended for building, and since this is a Royal vacation site, we hope to see nice palaces and developments there. The traditional requirement for a haw to be walled is waived here (the whole chapelry is walled), instead the owner must garden it (ask roopatra).

[rpietila]

I'd like to deal this offering to my wealth management clients, but it could be stated in easier terms:

- list of assets, their quantity, price used, and total value
- number of shares
- price offered.

At present this is not easy to find. The Marquess of Soul has increased his bid of the TH shares to 4 million per share, so this should be considered.

It was on the CORP page in the Smooth Investment Fund section. The pricing used is generally the quoted midprice, but in the case of town hall that doesn't work (since there is no real market maker sell price), so I am using the bid price (conservative). There was also an error on the balance sheet of Smooth QC related to the purchase of the old quarry site, which slightly reduced the book value, although Smooth QC is <15% of the assets of the fund, so this didn't make a huge difference.

Copied for reference here:

Code:

2000 CKG             348
45 town hall         180
100 NP               338.18
100 smooth QC        145
100 stoneton         152.5
104500 stone	       7.773
mon (x1m)              4.696

NAV=1176.11
shares=1181.75
NAV/share=1.00

Okay, it was real fun to PLAY the game for once Too much time used for development and admining... 

After making a thorough calculus on the various assets, we approve that 83%*NAV is a price that Lord HH (foreign investor 2) could use for purchasing new shares worth 100 million.

Assumption is that they are new shares and money goes to the company.

[smooth]

Assumption is that they are new shares and money goes to the company.

Yes that is correct.

[smooth]

Secondary offering - Smooth Investment Fund

Smooth Investment Fund is making a secondary offering of 300 units at 97% of NAV. This is a 3% discount off of the value of the underlying assets (which are in general priced at their midprice).

Discount is increased to 17% below NAV (83% of NAV). For the rest of the details see above.

This is the lowest discount that will be offered, and represents an unprecedented value on some of the premium assets in the game!

Any unsold shares by 2014-01-12 01:50:00 will be purchased by me.

Subscriptions (all will be sold at the same price):

Haridimous 12 shares
Lord HH 120 shares (stated purchase amount of 100 million)
--
Available 168 shares

[pa]

Secondary offering - Smooth Investment Fund

Smooth Investment Fund is making a secondary offering of 300 units at 97% of NAV. This is a 3% discount off of the value of the underlying assets (which are in general priced at their midprice).

Discount is increased to 17% below NAV (83% of NAV). For the rest of the details see above.

This is the lowest discount that will be offered, and represents an unprecedented value on some of the premium assets in the game!

Any unsold shares by 2014-01-12 01:50:00 will be purchased by me.

Subscriptions (all will be sold at the same price):

Haridimous 12 shares
Lord HH 120 shares (stated purchase amount of 100 million)
--
Available 168 shares

Rhadamanthus will purchase the remaining shares.