I am excited to see more economic subgames being proposed. Thoughts are
inline.
On 10/14/25 9:01 PM, EarlyRetirement via agora-discussion wrote:
*1. An Agoran uses Spendies to purchase an Oil Block, or for a lower price,
the rights to explore an Oil Block with the option to purchase it later
(the Agoran may also sell the Oil Block after exploration). Then, the
Agoran uses a fixed asset, Exploration Equipment, to explore the plot.
Exploration Equipment would be relatively expensive, so it would be
possible to hire another Agoran to explore your land, for a fee of course.
The chance of oil and/or quantity would be randomly determined when the Oil
Block is created*
To be honest, Spendies seem like an imperfect fit to implement directly
into this game. Even if they didn't reset every month, they're so
coarse. For instance, 20 is considered to be a lot of spendies. This
would likely lead to a fairly anaemic auctioning game, among other
issues. I might recommend taking inspiration from the Agoraculture rules
which make players convert in a lossy fashion between spendies and the
more granular and persistent currency pyrite, which Agoraculture uses
for its main gameplay.
*2. If oil is found on the land, the Agoran would then need to extract that
oil. There would be multiple tiers of Oil Derricks, which are priced
accordingly, and allow faster/more complete extraction.*
*3. The oil that is extracted is Crude Agoroleum (CA) and must be stored.
Upon purchase of an Agoran's first Oil Block, they would be awarded 50
Barrels worth of storage capacity. Additional storage can be purchased
based on a linear formula that causes storage to become more expensive
the more is purchased.*
*4. Finally, in order to convert CA into usable currency, it must be
converted at a Refinery into Refined Agoroleum (RA). A Refinery refines a
fixed amount of CA per Agoran day that it is operated. There would only be
a fixed amount of Refineries. If an Agoran does not own a refinery, they
may either sell their CA to an Agoran who does or pay for it to be refined
at another player's Refinery. Refineries would be auctioned off gradually
after implementation of Agoroleum to prevent hoarding.*
In point 3 you proved that you are mindful of including catchup
mechanics for new players, but this mechanic seems less than ideal in
that regard. We can't have a group of people who happened to be here at
the start of the subgame control all the refineries forever. I have two
suggestions if you want to keep a fixed amount of refineries: (1) you
could have all refineries owned by Agora with a system allowing players
to loan them out; or (2) maybe refineries have upkeep costs that need to
be continuously paid and which perhaps increase over time.
I will of course have more to say once this is written up in the style
of Agoran rules text.
--
Trigon
Popular Polygon and Treasuror Extraordinaire
