TaxIt/Contracts

Suppose the city of Birmingham currently has the following contracts being fulfilled:

  4 units of power, for 10 gold, by Peter
  2 units of power, for 1 gold, by Paul
  3 units of food, for 7 gold, by Paul
  5 units of materials, for 3 gold, by Mary

for a total of 6 power, 3 food and 5 materials, giving a city size of 3.

Mary notifies Paul, the owner of Birmingham, that from next year onwards she'll no longer supply materials

Paul wants to grow the city up to size 6 but, at minimum, he wants to make sure it doesn't get smaller, so he puts up the following contracts for auction:

3 units of materials, bidding to start at 10 gold
3 units of materials, bidding to start at 5 gold
3 units of food, bidding to start at 5 gold

...And going down? --AC

: Yes.--DR

The other players will now have to work out how cheaply they can deliver those goods to Birmingham, and if they can get a better price for them elsewhere.

: Can you supply your own contracts? I think we've said so. This raises the question, are you forced to accept the lowest bid? If auctions were just between the other players that's be quite interesting, but it might not work so well if you can just undercut anything the others bid. --AC

That's rather cutthroat - I don't like the idea of a city being able to shoot down to size 0 in a single year. Perhaps it just riots, and can't collect taxes until it is back happy again.

: But still scores points for the biggest size it had reached? So if supply to your size 5 drops to 3, you have the choice of 3 VP per turn plus some cash in tax, or 5 VP but no tax. That seems interesting. --AC