Continuing the discussion from AI civilizations(towns) being upgraded:
Okay understood i have one easy suggestion could you lower some of the prices for selling materiel or raise the price of buying item because i do this because it works I just spam a bunch of Vegetable soup and sell it and then i can buy all iron ore or comfy beds till it runs out. I just think that its stuff sells for a little much but thats probably just me i like to make the game harder and more complected.
THANK YOU
Yeah, buying things is really too cheap. I just always buy pojo feathers for arrows for example, no use in having pojos if you can get their stuff for a few coins at every market 
Yeah the prices are really bad
Remember that this is an alpha testing version of the game - prices are usually balanced near the end of beta to add challenge and an appropriate difficulty curve. Right now we’re just testing things out - prices are easy to make testing easier for now. There’s a whole lot more to come from the game and adjusting prices for endgame at this point when they are still adding content doesn’t make much sense.
As you say, the right balance must be found. I don’t think it’s too far off, but to find the best balance, changes must be made and tested. That’s what alpha is for. So I don’t agree with your point on waiting until release. Looking at the roadmap, i don’t expect huge changes to the trading system 
As a senior game development engineer, I disagree. Alpha is for banging on the engine and getting the majority of content and bugs shaken out. Beta is the real place you hammer on playability and polishing the game and getting it ready for final release. That’s where you tweak the numbers and add the challenge. Alpha is too early for that since you’re still exploring limitations in the game engine and building framework and workarounds for those issues. That being said, any impediments to testing need to be knocked down in Alpha or your testers can’t test adequately. You want things to be easy and cheap at this point so testers can explore and push the limits and find issues. That’s why issues in the combat scaling need to be handled now (it impedes testing) and market prices don’t (that’s about balance and final polish).
I don’t think this game will even have a beta… mos indie ea titles go from alpha to launch. Therefore, there won’t be the perfect time to test. Furthermore, I ferl like you’re hiding behind this time argument because you don’t want the game to become harder^^
Game difficulty has never really bothered me thanks to Cheat Engine. 
Besides that, I never really found any use in trading in Stonehearth - anything you can buy from traders could be made just as easily by my crafters. They’d have to seriously overhaul the game in order for trading to become viable in my mind. Prices are the least of the concerns there.
What’s your issue with the suggestion then?
My issue is that this game is riddled with pretty major bugs that have severe impacts on the playability of the game in general - broken building system, broken task management system, broken combat system, crash issues for a lot of testers, tons of missing (yet essential) features - and this guy’s whinging about trade prices. Which have no impact on playability at all. My only issue is not wasting the valuable time of the people trying to make the game playable right now with trivial issues like “ohnoes I make way too much money from selling crap to traders!” - there’s a time and place for game balance AFTER the devs address the real serious issues. If you think that time is now, I have to seriously wonder if you understand what sinks games when they’re released. Hint: it’s not trade prices.
some items could use a bit of a tweak but once you hit the requirement for 30+ Hearthlings selling items for gold value is needed
for the 40 Hearthling your needing nearly 80,000 gold in value and the need for better food somewhat push you into needing shepherds. more for the food then wool or feathers
I haven’t gotten the game to be stable enough beyond around 28 hearthlings yet to see how it plays that far in. At 28 it gets too chunky to keep playing even on a fresh load. But I’ve always found the best and fastest way to make huge boosts in value it just to mine the crap out of the mountains. Even when you’re not mining veins you still get plenty of gold and silver chunks dropping, and when you do cross a vein you strip it out for massive value. Take the gold and silver back to refine it for another huge boost in your estimated value. You don’t have to sell it for it to count as value, in fact I suspect that selling items reduces value (since traders buy for less than items are worth).
I didn’t say i want a reduction in money earnt, but an increase in cost for goods to buy 
I could be wrong but it seems like the princes of items are all connected in a way. the sale price/buy price and the net value … so if a buying prince were to increase the net value and the selling price would also be affected…
So? then all the devs have to do is increse the buy-price multiplier.