I was the first master of the market and I tutored everyoneon basic strategiesfor it. I played it like a fiddle and while I cannot now with my current job... mastering it is easy.

This is the final level of market play. There is no higher.

Infil everyone three times (everyonethat has a level of income that is, new joiners mid game with no infra dont count). Identify their playing times.Do this by seeing when they aid, when their infra/fleet comes in... Get a weekday and weekend splash for everyone. Determine their resource types(or ifbanker what type). Use Spy on Target or Vision to get a feel for this.

Use this information to map out what is made and when it is sold/used. Plan this out and use the data for fixingmarket prices. There is a trend... US players tend to be bankers and Europeans tend to attack. These patterns can be exploited.

Market Aid: Market aiding is something I created to help my allies back in the day. The rule is simple.. work in off hours to prevent detection. Spread the market out a bit. Transfer small groups and quick.

How it works. The aidee makes a low buy bid. This is filled. So now he has say 100k iron bought low. He sells it high. The aider buys it. If there was a 10gc gap, say 10 buy and 20 sell, the aidee just got 960k gc aided to him (there is a 2% loss on market aiding per cycle). Food is a favorite to aid via because you can often make it really wide. Sometimes octo is good as well.

Sometimes it can be useful to aid a player in family via the market. If done right the aidee will not have news reports but the aider will. This can be helpful to hide who is jumping fleet for a major war. Infils usually give an idea of how big of fleet someone may jump after all.