Olympia PBEM

7.1: Market report

The location report for each city includes a market report listing pending trades.

trade    who    price    qty   item
-----    ---    -----    ---   ----
  buy   2019      100      1   peasant [10]
  buy   4274       74      3   iron [79]
 sell   3682       12     11   sailor [19]
 sell   2019       50      1   elite guard [15]

A trade will not be listed unless it could be executed. For instance, a unit might issue an order to sell iron [79], even though the unit doesn't possess any. (Perhaps the character plans to get some iron later in the month, and wants the buy order to be in place when the iron arrives). This order will not be shown in the market report, because the seller doesn't have any iron to sell.

Similarly, the buyer must have enough gold to buy at least one of the item. No buy order would be listed for a penniless unit that wanted to buy five iron at 10 gold each. If the unit later obtained 10 gold, enough to buy one of the five desired units of iron, the order would be listed in the market report for one iron, not five.

Some traders may work through middlemen to hide their identity. In such cases, the who field of the market report will not show their unit number, and their identity will not be revealed when the trade is executed.

Even sneakier traders may have their pending trades omitted from the market report entirely.