Important to market simulation is the concept of imperfect information. You may see the markets smooth out if you add some factor to reduce information availability based on distance or exposure. So for instance, a water trader would very quickly react to changes in market price at a location nearby that needs water, but a miner would more commonly react to changes in the price of ore, and never consider water if the location is distant. Add an element if random chance also, and it would lower chance of switching.
You could also mock some amount of the transition by causing distant actors to be aware of the number of switches by other actors that occurred before reaching them. For instance, each actor, when acting, triggers a check for the best action. It determines what the best action is and locks in its course, which immediately increases the future cost for other actors, making the opportunity cost of switching higher for each other actor evaluating that action. What you wind up with is two measures... market prices of goods, seen by the player, and the non players evaluation of yield, which is influenced by omniscience about what other actors are doing.
Its not a perfect simulation, but it would more accurately simulate a real economy, wherein task switching is heavily influenced by the area individuals concern themselves with, and the information they have available around those areas. Perfect information causes crazy trends, unless you spin it in your favor by effectively updating prices before goods are delivered based on the actions the AI will take. Hopefully that doesn't cause too much recursion... have to test it to see.
Oh also! Don't let actors deviate from their assigned task unless certain major events take place, such as being attack. So actors always see acts to completion unless X list of things occur, like a cost opportunity outside of a large range occurs nearby, or they are attack, or someone else the like is attack nearby, etc.
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Sat Apr 21, 2018 5:19 pm
#31
Re: [Josh] Friday, April 20, 2018
Last edited by MyNameWuzTaken on Sat Apr 21, 2018 5:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.