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Last updated on If you've read Part I then you should a basic idea about the what is happening in the metagame. Here in Part II, I'm going to get more into the details. We'll discuss guilds, hanse towns and more about the financial aspects of the meta-game.
Talers are the currency of BSW. In Part I, we explained that when you play a game you get experiece points(to help you reach the next level). Actually, you get talers. Thats right you get money. The town that the game was played in also gets some talers. Thes town also get resources, which can be sold for talers, or traded with other towns, or used to pay taxes or build new buildings.
What can I do with my talers?
Other than let them pile up and help you reach a new level, not much. There are currently three ways to spend your talers. Keep in mind taler = experience points, so if you spend a lot of them, you won't reach that new level as quickly.
The first way to spend them requires you to be a town offical. If you are a town official, you can donate any amount of your talers to the town, by using the /donate command. (Can towns donate talers to people? Nice try, but the answer is NO! If they could, we would have a lot of W15s running around town.)
The second method requires you to be a W12 or K12 or higher. You'll remember from part I, that at this level, you get a house in town. You also get an estate. It's small 6x6, but it all yours and you can landscape it as you wish. The lansdscaping costs talers, and they come out of your pocket. Some landscaping is fairly inexpensive . A nice patch of grass for your yard will only set you back 2 talers. Need one those nice looking foot bridges to connect to that island next to your property? That'll set you back a cool 500 talers.
The third way to spend your money, requires you to make it all the way up to Level 16. At that level you can use the /yell command. Thats the command that send a global message to everyone. The cost is one taler for every 100 people online, so it can be expensive. However, there isnt much else to use the taler for when you reach that level.
How do the town finances work?
Each month the town must pay 50 food and 5-20 cloth per person. The cloth amount is based upon your level. W1 thru W7 is 5 cloth, W8 thru W11 is 10 cloth, W12 thru W14 is 15 cloth, W15 or higher is 20 cloth. Also, note the K ranks require the same amount of cloth. This is why towns require some level of game play. They need to cover these costs. Food is one of the basic resources earned when you play a MU(Multi User) game. The town either generates it that way, or purchases the food on the open market. Cloth is another story. It must be created from wool. If the town has built a weaving mill, then the citizens can produce the cloth themselves. 3 wool are used to make 1 cloth.
If the town doesn't have a weaving mill the cloth must be purchased for cash, or traded for with other resources. The town also must pay salaries to the Mayor and Town council. Since these are talers, they do increase the experience points for those people. The salaries are fairly low, 200 for the Mayor and 100 for each of the other officers. The town also pays for any landscaping done on town property.
What are the production buildings? (the Mill and the Forge?)
Each town can build 2 production buildings, a weaving mill and tool forge. They allow the town to make cloth and tools. This is a large savings over buying and selling on the open market. Remember, it takes 3 wool to make 1 cloth. As I'm writing this the sell price for wool is 149 and the buy price for cloth is 492. So, if a town sold 3 wool they would only get 447 talers. Since a cloth costs 492, the town saves 45 talers for each cloth it produces.
So, when you produce 10 cloth by running the mill you just saved the town 450 talers. The forge works the same way, except it uses 3 wood and 2 ore to produce 1 tool. Interestly, at the time I'm writing this, the sell price for 3 wood and 2 ore is 1 taler higher than the buy price, but prices can change quickly on the BSW market. This is why your town's ambassador or treasurer will ask people to run the mill or forge.
How do I use the mill?
The mill and forge are very easy to use, it basically like the old game Simon. You need to match the pattern of' lights that the computer generates.
The catch is that the town's ambassador must first set the production before it can be used. The mill or forge be can set for any amount great than equal to 10 units. Also, they can only be set once every hour. However, more than one person can run the mill at the same time. If they other people begin before the first person finishes they can all produce the finished goods. This is provided that the town has enough raw material for all of them. If you make a mistake, just start again. You are allowed to restart your attempt as long as no one has yet finished their sequence. There is no cost to the town if you don't complete the production run. Some people even find it handy to write down the sequence on paper so that they don't miss out.
To operate the mill or forge, just click on the start button to begin. The computer will light up one of the 5 colored buttons. You then click on that button. The computer will then light up 2 buttons in succession, and you need to click on them in the same order. Then the computer does a set of 3, you match that. When you reach the production amount (shown in the top left) you are done.
Since the mill can only be run once an hour, and it must be started by the ambassador, there are often "weaving parties". If you ever see town chat talking about a weaving party - you should go to the mill if you're free to help out with the production of the cloth the town needs for the month.
So what are the building costs?
<building cost chart from bsw website>
As you can see from the chart, building costs can be very high for certain buildings. There is a range of building choices for a town. However, the inexpensive buildings are limited and a town needs to manage its building plans. This is why every town doesn't have every game. Since buildings require significant resources, it is important that towns build gamerooms they people will play. Once a game room is built, the game in it cannot be changed.
Now that we covered the expense side of the town ledger, lets have a look at the revenue side.
The first source of revenue for the town is talers for any games played in town. If it is a single user game, the town gets 1 taler. For MU games the town earns 2-3 talers per player. If the game awards the player less than 10 points, the town gets 2 talers, if it awards 10 or more points then the town gets 3 talers per person. This amounts to a small part of the town's income, resources will make up the bulk of the town's income.
The way resources are earned is a little complicated. The formula looks something like this:
(number of players -1 ) * game multiplier.
The mulipliers vary from 1 to 4. Generally the higher the point value of the game the higher the muliplier. You can use as a basic guild that games that award less than 10 points have a multiplier of 1, games that award 10-14 points have a muliplier of 2 and games that award more than 15 points have a muliplier of 3 or 4. As an example Princes of Florence has a multiplier of 4, so if 4 people played a game, then 12 resouces would generated 3 (1 less than the number of players) times 4. The question then is, who gets the resources. Well if all the players are from the same town and they play in their town, the answer is easy, all 12 go to their town. There is a 50% chance the resources go to the town where the game was played, and a 50% chance that the resource go to the town of one of the players. So, lets take that same game of Princes of Florence. If 2 players are from Englishtown, 1 from Emerald City and 1 from ARMfeld. There is a 75% chance that Englishtown gets the resources, 12.5% chance that Emerald City gets the resources and a 12.5% chance that ARMfeld gets them. The type of resources generated are random, but they are based upon where in the world the town is location. Some towns generate lots of wool, others generate lots of food, and so forth.
So what is the Commodity market?
If towns have an excess of one type of resource or a shortage of another, they can buy and sell at the resource market. These are really ike trading with ARMfeld. It works on supply and demand, if you buy, prices go up and if you sell prices go down. It is the job of the town's Ambassador(or if they dont have one, the treasurer) to do the buying and selling.
What is the Hanse system?
A couple of times I've mentioned "if a town has an Ambassador". What this is really about is the town part of the Hanse system. The best way to think of the Hanse system is to picture a typical stock exchange such as the NYSE. Hanse towns are like member firms of the exchange, they get a seat at the market and can trade directly with each other, at any price they agree upon. They do not need to buy and sell at the ARMfeld commodity exchange. Since the Buy and Sell prices at ARMfeld always have a 10% margin, being part of the Hanse is a big advantage. Also, since hanse trades do not go through the Armfeld market, they don't cause a price change. This is important if you are trying buy or sell a large amount of one type of resource.
The requirements for Hanse membership are simple. A town must have at least 15 citizens and build a Townhall. If the town's population drops below 15, they lose the Townhall and are no longer part of the Hanse system. This has happened to a town and it is a serious financial blow.
From the Townhall, the Ambassador makes trade offers to other towns and accepts or rejects offers from other towns.
OK, but what are the Guilds?
Once a town becomes part of the Hanse system, it's citizens are eligible for membership in the guilds. In theory, the Guilds are there to support and promote their game. In that mission, they can spend their talers in 4 ways lottery, tournament, party and donation to towns.
A lottery is designed to draw attention to the game and get people to play. A lottery has a fixed duration of 3 to 7 days and all games played during that time generate a lottery ticket. After the lottery ends, a ticket is drawn and the players from that game split the talers. The prize will be at least 500 talers, i've seen them as high as 3000.
A party is a way for a guild to give taler to its members and the town that hosts the guildhall. The guild announces a party and all members of that guild that visit the guildhall during the party (it lasts an entire day) get some talers.
A tournament is just what it sounds like, a tournament for that game. I'm never been in one, so I can't really give many details.
Lastly a guild can donate talers to a town(and towns can donate to guilds). The idea is to have guilds encourage the building of game rooms for their game. Many guilds will offer cash to towns that build a room with their game. The amounts tend to be small compared to the cost of building, but most guilds don't have much money (one taler per game in hanse town doesn't add up to millions).
Last month, the Bluff guild used this feature to help a town. We made an loan of 5000 talers to a town on the last day of the month. At the time, the guild treasury was abotu 5200. The reason was this town was home to several very active Bluff players, and this town was a few cloth away from meeting its cloth requirement. The guild made a loan so they could buy the necessary cloth and about a week later the town made a donation of 5000 taler to guild to pay back the loan.
So what are the requirements for joining a guild?
First you must be a citizen of a Hanse town. If you arent sure if your town is a Hanse town, you could look to see if your town has a townhall, or ask your mayor, or on the BSW website, go to city, then citizens and see if your town is listed as a Hanse town. Of the 84 about 25 or so are Hanse towns. You also can only join one of the 5 games you play the most. The /possibleguilds command tells you what guilds you are allowed to join.
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