(IF YOU HAVE BETTER DATA ON THIS ALGORITHM THAN I DO PLEASE EDUCATE ME)

CAERLEON CARTEL UNDER THE CONTROL OF EXE MAFIA (SEPTEMBER 2017 - FEBRUARY 2018)

SO WHAT NOW...

WHAT WOULD VOC DO...

CONCLUSIONS / QUESTIONS / LESSONS

Congratulations Money Guild on becoming the new lords of Caerleon. I understand you guys are passively making about 17 million silver a day as your reward. I am happy that this income stream was taken away from the EXE Mafia. I am happy that the current Caerleon Cartel system is being disrupted. I wanted to write you an open letter to describe some of the observations I made while the EXE Mafia controlled Caerleon uncontested for over four months. I am writing this letter as a continuation of an interesting community discussion I have been engaged in this month regarding the TRUE VALUE of plots in Caerleon, and the ECONOMICS of Plot Management and Plot Taxation.I want to open this letter with some basics regarding my understanding of the formula by which the reward for the control of Caerleon is determined.As I understand it, and in line with reverse engineering from the reward value, the daily reward for the control of Caerleon is based on the following formula;The Auction Cycle is 28 days ... 3x 7 day control periods and 1x 7 day auction cycle.Plot owners bids count double, and only plot owners can bid on the last day.Hostile bids which SUCCEED result in the plot owner receiving half the value of the successful bid in lieu of loosing control of the plot.The reward formula per day is [(1/28)*(actual collected silver by the system)*(0.5)]Again the actual collected silver is the TOTAL actual amount bid/collected for successful DEFENSIVE BIDS (which count double) OR Half the Value of successful HOSTILE bids.I have collected data on this for 5 months now and it has been consistent and unchanged for the 118 Caerleon plots.In my other post on TAXATION we have had great discussion on the FAIR TAX RATE for various structures / plots in Caerleon. Many great perspectives were presented and the discussion was very interesting.In this letter/post I want to focus on what factors DRIVE the value of plots in Caerleon in the auction cycle and in the buyout cycle.I want to relay my understanding about how Caerleon plots have been ACTIVELY INFLATED in value.I want to give you some ideas about how you might wield your Control Reward from Caerleon to influence plot values and continue to disrupt the current Dynamic / Cartel.I want to get feedback, insight, criticism, and spur discussion within the community on the incentives of this system and its current design state.....Under the control of EXE Mafia plot values in Caerleon consistently increased month to month.Because of the nature of the reward being 50% of actual silver collected in the auction cycle spread over the 28 day control period the Cartel could offer incentives/kickbacks for plot juicing.In the other posts we discuss the Caerleon Cartel Tax Collusion but in this port I am going to discuss the Cartel bid support.Since the EXE Mafia was able to control Caerleon UNCONTESTED for such a long period they gained the confidence to offer incentives/kickbacks to various cartel members to juice bids on non cartel owned plots.The Mafia leaders would pay 10% kickbacks on outer ring bids over 5 million , 12% kickbacks on middle ring bids over 10 million, and 15% kickbacks on inner ring bids over 25 million WIN OR LOSS.In this fashion Cartel Members could JUICE / INFLATE the 118 plot values (With no intention of winning the plot) and make millions of silverSo a cartel member with 150 million could go bid 15 million on ten different outer ring plots... they know they aren't going to win the plots... they are just going to pressure the 7.5 Million + defense bid forcing the plot defense at the maximum reasonable value. That cartel member would get an immediate 15 million silver kickback from the Mafia. But ultimately the mafia would get 50% of the 75 million in defense bids or 37.5 million silver in return over the course of 28 days of control.This was a strong backend incentive for the inflation of Caerleon Plot prices.The Cartel members who juiced the bids would use these kickbacks to service their own properties and influence the Taxation Collusion scheme.So the same guys getting the kickbacks for juicing were the guys who were managing the Caerleon Discord and arranging the Pricefixing/ Collusion on taxes.With higher taxes, the marks who owned the outer ring properties and middle ring properties who wern't part of the kickback scheme thought they were doing great.Taxes on Warrior/Mage/Hunter stations went from 5% in September to as much as 25% at the peak of collusion.At these rates there was decent profit for all involved in the collusion and there was strong frontend incentive for the inflation of Caerleon Plot prices.This also allowed the Taxation Collusion side of the cartel to Stomache increased defensive bids (which were often placed by alt accounts of the same people arranging for the collusion in the first place)Basically there were 4 levels-layers of the Mafia / Cartel / Pyramid scheme and the higher you were the more profit you stood to make each month.In the last two auction cycles Outer plots sold for as much as 25-55 million, middle ring plots sold for as much as 45-90 million, and inner ring plots sold for as much as 75 - 140 million silver.The previous cartel was smart... they had self reinforcing incentives... the collusion on tax increased the profits of everyone in the Plot/Property game.Where people didn't tow the line the cartel would buyout the property over cost and resell it to someone willing to participate in the collusion.The higher level mafia guys would consistently juice the bids for kickbacks each month.And at the top... Headstrong / Fraca / Gbunny ... who knows what they did with the silver ... it definitely didn't trickle down.So @Derrick whats your plan...Are you going to be paying kickbacks in 2 weeks to the heads of your alliance to JUICE the plot bids.How much more inflation do you think is possible.There are still remnants of the previous Cartel active in the Caerleon plot game and I think you have a strong opportunity to drive them out and take over their business.mmm... I honestly don't know ... i think the most self interested thing to do would be to continue some level of Kickback incentive within the alliance to spread the REWARD to those who put the silver in to Drive/Sustain the plot values.If the controlling alliance KNOWS 100% that it will have Caerleon for the month you can pay kickbacks to ensure a PRICE FLOOR on every plot.The question is how high can the PRICE FLOOR be such that the market will still sustain it.At this point I think every outer plot can easily sustain a 18 million floor (9 million defense). (roughly 75% of 118 plots)I think middle ring plots can easily sustain a 28 Million floor (14 million defense) (roughly 15% of 118 plots)I think inner ring plots can easily sustain a 45 million floor (22.5 million defense) (roughly 10% of 118 plots)Extrapolating this would yield about 1.4 billion silver in actual bids, half of that is 700 mil, spread over 28 days that 25 million a day in reward.The kickbacks/ incentives you would pay out to your core alliance members for systematically juicing the bids would be about 200 million silver up front..... In other words... you can Drive the current remnants of EXE Mafia out of town, and re-implement a cartel to continue the inflation of property values.There is some downside risk that the Juicers end up actually WINNING a plot sure... but if you win the plot at these PRICE FLOORS which are reasonable the plot is still profitable even without price collusion.All in all I am very interested to see the next auction cycle bidding process....We will very quickly determine if there is a Caerleon property bubble in the turnover of Caerleon from the EXE Mafia to Money Guild...I think the INFLATED values are sustainable if Money Guild uses similar tactics to the EXE Mafia for Juicing plot bids through alliance incentives....I think that Many of the plot owners will still try to STRONGLY defend their plots because they inherently believe that the plots DESERVE these inflated values because they profited during the 4-5 month period of successful price collusionHow long will the community allow Money Guild to have uncontested reign over Caerleon?We know that a group even as small as 30 members can have a substantial impact on the Caerleon tax structure... will lower taxes result in lower property PRICE FLOORS...Will another guild / group step in to try to combat the price collusion and tax collusion ?What do you guys think in general about the design of the property system and how it is playing out in the capital of Caerleon?Do you guys think the reward is Fair / Too little / Too much?Do you think that the controlling guilds should have such an easy pathway to juice / influence their reward through bid kickbacks ?I am interested at this juncture of the first major turnover of Caerleon what the community feels?VOC