@UncleSim69 wrote:
More than a couple times, I've gone to a city to find the advertised item gone, but upon reloading the city's trade depot find it there. If I were a suspicious gamer with dev experience, I might suspect a glitch in the algorithm that prevents me from shopping successfully too often. 😉
It may be that the player is posting additional items for sale. When I try to buy things and find empty trade depots, I often refresh to see what else the player might be listing, and it is not uncommon for the player to list additional sales items within a few moments. Since they advertised the item that I came there for, these additional items will usually go unadvertised for at least 5 min, giving me an almost exclusive chance to purchase them. It's important to remember that rare items are selling almost instantly, but it takes time for players to put each item up for sale. In other posts around here someplace, I've told newer players to list all of their items, then use the free advertisement on only the best one, thus ensuring that everyone who responds to the ad will see all of their stuff, and increase their chance at a quick sale on those items they don't advertise.
I do that a lot too, reloading the city's depot to see what they're still adding. But it's been unusual numbers of rather common things, like 7 glass, not 10 common items or a small few rare items.
I also wait until I've listed all my items before advertising any, but usually advertise the least desirable items first, since the popular items will get picked up more easily by the opportunistic buyers, and that usually works well. If I list multiple sets of similar items, I usually don't advertise the first one, but the second or last one, hoping people will buy the similar but unadvertised items first. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.
