{"items": [{"author": "GuySrinivasan", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9iev4F4d4eCNDZDbp#efP8yoYJGHFomZFTo", "anchor": "lw-efP8yoYJGHFomZFTo", "service": "lw", "text": "Open hands make trading almost irrelevant. Closed hands means trades could still happen but probably shouldn't often, so maybe it's not worth the complexity to allow trades. For me though almost all the fun of Settlers is in trading - trying to become one of the partners in as many of the inevitable trades as possible, even if the other player gets a little more than you every time, because you're still gaining on the non-trading players. The backdrop is the bits of tactics and strategy on the board, but other games are far richer in that department.
So how could we retain interesting trading dynamics? I'm thinking somehow add fake players, supply, demand to the mix. How about this (completely untested):
After the board is laid out, before determining first player, jointly agree on a ranking of resources from 5 to 1, most important to least, probably similar to "least pips available to most pips available". For example, maybe it's wheat > ore > brick > sheep > wood. I'll use that ranking for illustration.
Create a demand deck of 2x wheat, 2x ore, 1x brick, 1x sheep, facedown, shuffled, with a corresponding empty discard deck. Similarly create supply: 2x wood, 2x sheep, 1x brick, 1x ore. Deal 1 demand and 1 supply faceup. This is an available trade. Between turns anyone may discard cards matching the shown demand from their hand to gain cards matching the shown supply, once.
Details: Player who just took a turn has priority. If one of you is about to trade, the other may outbid them, repeat until a highest bid is reached, then that trade goes through; discard all the demand and supply cards to their respective discard piles. If no one makes a trade, deal an additional demand and two additional supply; the available trades are "the first N demand for the first 2N-1 supply", higher N wins. If a turn ends and there is no available trade, deal one. Whenever an available trade has wlog a sheep in demand and in supply, discard that match. If either the available supply or demand has no showing cards, discard all showing cards. Whenever resources (non-7) are rolled, add a resource of each type among the most distributed to the supply discard pile and a resource of each type among the least distributed to the demand discard pile. Whenever a supply or demand pile is empty and you need to draw, shuffle the discard, deal 6 facedown to form the new deck, and return the others to the bank. If there still are not enough cards, discard the available trade. When you play a Monopoly you also gain any matching cards in showing supply. You may not steal from the Shadow Trader.
Outbidding: only a superset of the showing demand is a valid bid. Higher N wins. Values are 4, 3, 3, 3, 2 in order of resource rank; highest sum of values wins. If an extra supply card exists, you may decline it and add its value to your total.
Example of play: there's hardly any wheat or ore, lots of sheep and wood, so above ranking is used. Showing trade is demand: wheat, supply: wood. Surprisingly, lots of wheat has been placed on and rolled. Alice offers a wheat. Bob offers a wheat and a sheep. Alice folds, Bob trades. Bob takes his turn; 2 wood and 1 brick are distributed, so 1 wood is added to supply discard and 1 wheat, ore, and sheep to demand discard. A trade is dealt, demand: sheep, supply: ore. Both players are chagrined to not have sheep, and do not trade. Alice takes her turn, rolling a 7. Additional trade cards are dealt, demand: sheep / wheat, supply: ore / sheep, wood. Discard the sheep. Demand: wheat, supply: ore / wood. Alice offers a wheat. Bob offers a wheat, declining the wood. Alice offers two wheat. Bob folds, Alice trades.", "timestamp": 1587098165}]}