Pros and cons of common markets?

What are some of the pros and cons of common markets? How much and in what way does it effect your profits? (I'm assuming it hurts profits).

Trading in a common market increases your country score and helps keep the occasional huge shortage from affecting you. The quality, and therefore the cost of supplies, tends to be higher.

pretty much like c1108 said but has the added benefit of controlling your own ecomony. You defintly get the supplies you need and can sell excess on open market

Actually, trading in a common market does none of those things. I have several countries in a common market. I trade daily. My 2 best scoring countries are not in the common market. It's just a game gimmick. I've been playing for years and have never seen any good effect from being in common markets. it neither helps or hurts you. If the amount of countries allowed in a commom market is made unlimited AND all common market members are active traders, then it would be beneficial. Of course, the GM will never allow that.

Actually, I can say without doubt that common markets do provide a buffer against shortages. I've used them for that and it was very effective. Idk if you were here when the gm was playing with production numbers, but some products wouldn't get delivered for real days. CMs were the only way to get stuff timely without having to plan. To say that they don't do that means you don't know how to use it.

You can set up contracts with your cm on the common market page.

The reason common markets are ineffective is that their members rarely accept contracts. Contracts need to be accepted manually, and hardly anyone does that.

Some people join common markets with the intention of exporting but not importing. Then they find that nobody buys anything. That's mercantilism at its worst.

Common markets are very effective for military trading nothing more

@cl108. You said "To say that they don't do that means you don't know how to use it." I know exactly how to use a common market and sometimes it works well If I my countries are the only members of my own common market. I was careful to add the following: 'If the amount of countries allowed in a commom market is made unlimited AND all common market members are active traders, then it would be beneficial.'
Madoff's experience in which he found not enough members participate is the same problem I have encountered. I also offered evidence by pointing out my 2 highest scoring countries are not members of a common market. Obviously we all have different experiences with CM's. You state that a CM helps you avoid shortages from time to time. But does it help you in any real sense as far as expanding your economy? It doesn't. As I said before, being a member of a Common Market'neither helps or hurts you'.

Isn't the unlimited common market called the world market?

Corporations, trading on a CM, do not need the high quality of supplies they usually get. @ 220 supply they hit a 'wall'. Meaning the qual. of prod. they produce will not increase. Ergo why buy supplies @ 280Q+ when 220Q does the same job? CM points are helpful for score, but if you want profits buy 220Q on the open mkt. It's nice to be self-sufficient, but without shortages or boycotts why spend extra? If you need score for GC then CM everything. If not, be particular.

No Aires, because in SC their a tons of countries not owned by members called "C3's " and the production on those countries affect the world market far more than any one CM could. You see Aires, C3's produce, buy and sell and are used by the GM to manipulate the market whenever the GM feels like it. Your question also presupposes that there would be only one common market, when in fact their are dozens already out there. I am sayng that the individual CM's shouldn't be limited to 25 countries, but an unlimited number so that more commerce is created within the CM a player belongs to and hopefully the members will all be active traders. Under that scenario, maybe a CM will work. The world market as you call it doesn't set rules. CM's do. Theoretically, one can argue, the biggest CM in this game is in fact the the c3's which are wholly owned and operated by the GM.

CrackerJack has it right.

The reason common markets are ineffective is that their members rarely accept contracts. Contracts need to be accepted manually, and hardly anyone does that.

Some people join common markets with the intention of exporting but not importing. Then they find that nobody buys anything. That's mercantilism at its worst.

From Madoff above.

Wouldn't the solution to that be, not increasing the membership of common markets, but institutions similar to OPEC?

I use the Common Market as a way to organize your local countries and allies into a trade centre. You trade goods you really need, even when they are hard to get, then the rest go into the world market. It means the local and common market corps get first pick at goods being produced, then the rest is sold elsewhere. I've always found it useful that way, the score is a bonus.
Am I seeing it wrong that way?

@ samael

That is what common markets are for. It's always a trade of, lesser profit vs more stability and some points.

you can use it to make your corps more profitable, than they would be otherwise, but the last time i tried to explain it, the game master over-hauled the rules, so i'll just say, you can use it to increase profits

Orbiter I am not sure it increase profits directly

It does help cask flow of those in the common market but at the risk of the GM seeing this and changing it I'll stop there as well

shrug, their are allot of features in this game that are more robust, and intricate than first glance.

some times you have to lose game cash, from experimentation to gain a better understanding of how something works, its a game, and always being concerned about the bottom line, ends up locking you out of higher gains.


play with it, learn how to use it different ways, and you might find a way to get more out of it than you realize.

what i'll give you about CMs, is you don't have to be happy with every contract you accept, you can use the CM to contract resources, and then use check boxes, from the corporation page, in the tab "Accept/cancel corporation contracts" to cancel the non-key ones. so rather than buying a bunch of high quality stuff you don't need, you can buy a few things. and cancel the things you don't want

last time i tried to the explain this, the gm turned it upside down, their reasoning was that it was to complicated for new players, and unfair for that reason. but it still works, just backwards of what it did before.

Read in another thread about the common market "wall" on supply quality. Wouldn't a cm be a good place for beginning corporations then? Removing each individual corp from participation at the wall?

give it a try, that doesn't really sound like it'd be beneficial, but hey, its your game, your experiment, maybe you'll learn something useful, even if it doesn't really help

It also means you're buying goods in monthly chunks, rather than large gobs. For a new corporation or young country, that can be huge.

Smoothing out the cash flow. I get that. Avoiding shortages I get also. Was trying to micromanage, and pull contracts accepted at the "wall". It's rough going, as I still have a lot going on with IPO's etc.