Third Places and Cultural Growth

As First Place is often used to refer to one's home, and Second Place to one's workplace (and school?), Third Place refers to community places where we have a larger social life, where we can more fully ourselves and our relations, and where new ideas can develop. Examples of third places in Ludopolis include parks, plazas, cafés, orchestras, theatres, and public houses. Needless to say, third places are very important to a city's cultural life, which is why they play an important role in Ludopolis. Public space will keep your city happier and let your city reach a higher cultural level.

What third places do you and your family use in your life?

Growing your portfolio of cities

To hone your Ludopolis strategy, consider how you have managed your portfolio of cities during the game:

• Did you have a broad portfolio of cities? 4-10 cities is a good number of cities. Spend the early game placing your cities, and the middle and end game tending them.
• Did you broaden your portfolio early? Cities take a while to grow culture and score.
• How much are you getting from your investment? Look at the country overview to see how much time ("gems") you are investing in each city, and what the city's score-to-gems ratio is.
• Did you adopt your portfolio strategy as the game progressed? It's good to periodically review your portfolio to see which cities to work more on and which cities to ignore.

Generally, it is a better idea to have a wider arrange of cities, for the following reasons:

• if citizens are unhappy in one of your cities, they have better choices to move to
• cities that are overpopulated or underhoused or underfed can move to other cities with extra room
• some cities just seem to take off better -- so by having a couple cities, you'll have a better chance to getting some great cities
• your traders will have more markets to trade in
• you will hold more land that other players might otherwise claim

A common mistake is to think that fewer cities are easier. On the contrary, too few cities can make the game extremely difficult. Cities flourish for many reasons, including their placement and their neighbours. If you have fewer than four cities, you won't have enough options to work with.

Marslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Very similar to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, Marslow's Hierarchy of Needs shows which needs are most important -- at the bottom -- and which needs are only important after those fundamental needs are met.

Citizens in Ludopolis use this hierarchy when they decide if they want to move. When you are building your country, focus on fundamental needs first in order to build a stable society and attract citizens.

The most fundamental need (as identified by Marslow) is food. If people cannot stock their larders, they will look for more bountiful cities.

The second most important need is safety. If a city is under attack and it does not have sufficient defenses, people will start to flee the city for safer places to live.

The third most important need is housing. People don't like to live on the street. Not only do they want their own house, but they prefer to have a little bit too much room (120% or more housing is perfect).

Next is employment. People prefer living in cities where unemployment is low.

The availability and affordability of durable goods, such as clothing and pottery, also make a city more desirable.

If all these needs are well-met, people will prefer living in a happier city, a city with a lower workday (and thus more time to spend with their family), and a city that has more luxuries available (such as jewelry or books).

Arbitrage within a single market

"Arbitrage" usually refers buying low in one market and then selling it in another market where it fetches a higher price. However, you can still use the principle of arbitrage within one market. EBay's consumer-to-consumer market is a good example of single-market arbitrage.

EBay sellers sometimes list their items with non-standard or misspelt keywords, which means that they may receive few bids or no bids for their items. In effect, this creates two submarkets for such items: — the "easy to find" submarket and the "hard to find" submarket. Prices are lower on the "hard to find" submarket.

You could practise eBay arbitrage by searching out these hard-to-find products, winning the bid at a very low price, and then putting the item up for auction with a standard keyword and sell it at the standard price.

Arbitrage often helps sellers in the lower-price market. As more arbitrageurs take advantage of the price differential between these two submarkets, the prices in the hard-to-find submarket will rise, bringing more profit to sellers who listed their items poorly.

There is no equivalent to single-market arbitrage in Ludopolis.

(Note that this article is using the term "arbitrage" in a non-standard way — the term is usually applied to nearly instantaneous transactions in securities markets.)

Arbitrage: Buy Low, Sell High

Arbitrage is the practise of buying something where it is cheaper and selling it where it is more expensive.

The word is most often applied in trading financial instruments or money, but the concept itself is absolutely fundamental to economics.

Trade between cities and nations is a good example of arbitrage.

To try this for yourself:

• start an Experiment game in Ludopolis
• make two cities, and grow them (by claiming land with food, building enough housing, etc.)
• in the first city, build a leatherworker and let it build a supply of clothing
• you will see the price of clothing decrease in the first city
• tax the city, and then exchange the taxed goods for clothing
• move to the second city
• you will notice that you can trade the clothing for more goods in the second city, as the price of clothing is higher

If you build some trading capacity in the second city, trading companies may spring up to take advantage of the difference in clothing prices. If this happens, then the price difference between the cities will start to converge.

The "Playtest" game type

Every evening there is one "Playtest" game that features the Old Country. Unlike the pre-chosen starting cities in Tutorial and Experiment games, people start in the Old Country and they can then choose their first city site.

The game holds 18 players and closes when it is full. You do not need to pay or log in to play it. You can join the playtest game at this time:
Eastern time: 9pm-10pm
Central time: 8pm-9pm
Mountain time: 7pm-8pm
Pacific time: 6pm-7pm

You can play Ludopolis here:
http://ludopolis.marslow.com/

You will find playtest games more enjoyable if you first gain some proficiency with other game types. You can read more about learning Ludopolis here.

Welcome to Ludopolis Tradewinds

Welcome to Ludopolis Tradewinds! This blog will keep you posted with Ludopolis news and information.

One goal of this blog is to be easy to read. As they age, posts and discussions may be trimmed away so that material is either current or historically important.