What other perfect-information stock market mechanisms are out there?

There is a contradiction between your initial condition "perfect information" and the first characteristic of *fluctuation* you want to emerge as a result of the mechanism. Your second characteristic of buying and selling during the game is a matter of game length.

The second edition of Acquire with the options to buy more etc. reduces the perfect information situation of the game. Cartel had "information asymmetry" simulated by restricting what was available by having players draw to replenish opportunity. Cartel had no selling mechanism but it did have a borrowing against share equity mechanism.

Fluctuations can be introduced by outside events such as found in Stock Ticker or Stock Market. I think a possible test you might consider is whether in the mechanism you adopt a short selling or hedging strategy is possible. The second 18xx strategy you discussed is a form of hedging by way of insider trading.

Thanks for the correction. I was a little hasty in posting it :-z

I'm sticking with my original point. If you want genuine fluctuation you cannot have perfect information.

The OED tells us that to fluctuate is to df: "Move up & down like waves (rare), vary irregularly, rise & fall, be unstable; vacilate, waver." Unless you are using that rare usagewhere fluctuation is merely wave like motion, the essence of fluctuation is not mere wave movement but irregular wave movement - hence the tension between perfect information and fluctuation. Your original criteria were:

- Share values fluctuate up and down (unlike Acquire; share values only rise)
- Shares can be bought *and* sold anytime (unlike Acquire and Dutch InterCity)

Your 3 companies and 10 shares do not meet the criteria of fluctuation, other than that rare usage - the only thing which will meet the common understanding and what your initial criteria implied is a mechanism which moves the market randomly independently of the players. Or if you have an orderly market, the order can be disrupted by the players invoking outside events. Without an independent randomization mechanism information stays perfect and there are no fluctuations only wave like changes which can be predicted. If every time a player bought or sold a share there was a random reaction by the market - could be up, could be down, could be neutral , your condition of perfect information would be violated. The price would move in ways which players could not calculate in advance.

In real life there have been several attempts to reduce the random factor in market behavior - hedge funds use some of these methods. Good methods have been discovered but not perfect ones - as the case of Long Term Capital Management proved.

Your question: A related question would be: Why are train games and stock markets so closely associated with each other in board games?

Tradition mostly - rail has always been fairly capital intensive so market manipulation goes with the territory. Games which feature the construction of rail would naturally have that aspect to them as well.

Agreed. The central issue is one of the "perfectness of information" requirement. Perfect information can live with a certain level of "change" while still staying perfect. Most non-chance games are like that. Change is what you get through making a play, say a Chess move, which alters the game situation within the rules. Change as fluctuation is an unpredictable or more or less random (Brownian type) move which, to be relevant, has to exist with the parameters of the game. There is plenty of irrelevant change which makes no difference to a game.

At their extremes both perfect information and fluctuations result in boring experiences.

Without fluctuations and the stochastic processes that underlie fluctuations an AI can determine an optimal strategy such as the ones for Tic-Tac-Toe, Checkers, and now Chess resulting in more draws than not when played at the highest level. When the optimal strategy emerges depends on the complexity of the game. I currently interested in the claims of the designer of Arimaa that his game is immune to such optimization by an AI program. The designer of Arimaa wants to argue that in his game draws are impossible and that his game cannot be beaten by AI currently or in the foreseeable future.

Too many stochastic processes or fluctuations and it becomes just the luck of the draw leaving no room for player manipulation or input. This makes the game a spectator sport rather than an interaction. So the ideal game from our player and game designer perspective has a certain level of perfect information even through change with just enough fluctuations to prevent AI optimization.

Wabash Cannonball does not allow reselling of shares, but does support wildly varying and yet controllable share values through dividend dilution and a player-determined game length. Games are (usually) won and lost by succeeding or failing to ensure the game length required by one's investments.

Pampas Railroads is akin to Wabash Cannonball's stock model with the exception that sold shares to not dilute dividends and players may auction the shares they've previously purchased. Share value is somewhat more predictable than Wabash Cannonball's due to a fixed game length.

The Riding Series uses share dividend dilution combined with several meta-patterns:

1) Explosive early dividend growth -- but only if more shares are sold (thus also also diluting dividends)
2) Rapid dividend implosion in the mid- and late game.
3) The ability to trade basic shares for grouping shares whose dividends grow proportionally to the fall of the basic share dividends
4) Variable player-controlled game-length

Like Pampas Railroads, plurality share holders in the Riding Series have special powers.

At a broad stretch the factory and capacity model of Lokomotive Werks could be viewed as a share model, albeit one that doesn't allow sales, only translations.

The 1825 linear stock market is rather startingly different from the standard 1830-esque 2D market, supporting both purchases and sales in a very dynamic market game along with special powers for the plurality shareholder -- and in a 150 minute game that concentrates on portfolio management much more than stock market manipulation. (1860 has a rather curious take on this area, abeit in a 2.5D version which is rather more 1830-esque)

So Long Sucker and Intrige can both be amusingly viewed as share games, but do not (directly) support either sales or purchases.

As happens I have a spare copy of Wabash Cannonball left over from the last foreign order reprinting. It is yours for $45 +S&H. Additionally there is a P100-style reprint process for the various Winsome games back-titles:

Winsome Games -- P100 review requests

With a small exception the weaknesses your players identified in Dutch Intercity are all things I consider strengths of the game. Yes, if you screw up you're toast. The answer is to not screw up. Happily the game only takes 30-45 minutes so the risks are not large. Yes, the value of shares is increasingly determinable and can (won't necessarily) decline in the late-game. This makes the share auctions as the game proceeds increasingly delicate dances of opportunity and incentive. The split value of shares and the degree to which early investors proportionally profit is in many ways the heart of the game. Monopolies are good, but so is poaching and exploiting a fine revenue source that another player has built. While not in the same manner or degree as Wabash Cannonball or Pampas Railroads, Dutch Intercity is too a game of emergent temporary alliances.

The exceptions is small. I've no sympathy for the arithmetic complaint other than to note that most (good) games require continual arithmetic/logic problem solving, and to say Never play Lokomotive Werks! (Of course my definition of good may be self-serving)

In broad sum I suggest that your players were a typical mix of incompetence and opacity. Possibly Dutch Intercity just isn't their sort of game and thus just not the sort of game which should be put in front of them. We all have such preferences: For instance I won't play Power Grid and other like economic engine games without significant coercion. That doesn't make their experience invalid, just (mostly) irrelevant to the game in question.

Dutch Intercity approached well and on its own grounds as an incredibly small watch-like spinning mechanism of an emergent alliances and leverage game works very well indeed. If that's your thing it is a great little game. If it isn't, then well, it isn't.

I strongly suggest you play at least one each of Wabash Cannonball, Pampas Railroads and a member of the Riding Series (West Riding is likely the ideal starting game). While they all bear strong similarities they also have sufficiently systemic variation to be very interesting.

Bookkeeping can be a problem with the Riding Series. The system is inherently fiddly and requires considerable (oppressive levels of) bookkeeping (by German game standards). I accept that overhead as a simple cost of enjoying the system. but others may not be as forgiving. Both Wabash Cannonball and Pampas Railroads are much simpler on that score. Pleasingly, in all the games all values are determinable by simple board examination.