Market Analysis - Supply & Demand

Hello Everyone!

Hope you are all doing well. This is my first article. I am happy to learn from others. I invite constructive criticism and meaningful discussions.

I would like to state that I have started playing the game on 25th July 2026. I am absolutely loving the persistent nature and the politics in this game. I would like to appreciate the post made by the Malaysian President - Perseus because I absolutely loved reading his post. There are quite some meaningful posts made by others in this community. All in-game and real life alignments aside, let us (Gamers) keep the game alive through action and diplomacy!

My discussion will be around the Supply & Demand of the 20 different products (processed materials & raw materials) in the game. This excludes weapons & armor. I have not done a market analysis for those types of products yet.

Everyone would know or discuss often about profit per production, profit per day, and return on investment.

We pay lesser attention to a core market concept called - Supply & Demand. Newer players should consider making companies that fund the game's economy by paying attention towards the Supply & Demand of any product in our economy.

Quick context: Current Demand is a cumulative quantity posted in the 10 buy orders. Current Supply is the cumulative quantity posted in the top 10 sell orders. There will be other orders below the top 10. We currently take the top 10 to perceive Supply & Demand based on current market price which is more relevant than considering whatever hidden market orders exist beyond the top 10. Also, Higher Demand will be marked with Green and Higher Supply will be marked as Red. Conditional Formatting has been applied at the column level.

If you look at the Demand / Supply Ratio (this value changes based on product movement in the market) - the Mysterious plant has more Demand that needs to be met. The reasoning behind that is because more players are likely buying more Mysterious plant than they could produce by themselves to make Pills.

This is a two part statement, more players making Pills and more players making more Pills than they could supply with their own production of Mysterious Plants. Is this a justified demand? Before I could finish typing this piece of text the Demand / Supply Ratio has already moved down. Please observe closely, demand has increased but the supply has also increased.

I have pasted the text since Imgur is a pain in the neck:
ITEM | Product Type | Lowest sell | Highest buy | Total sell Quantity | Total Sell quantity | Demand / Supply Ratio:
Pill | Medical (Refined) | 37.2240 | 36.9400 | 79 | 57 | 1.386

If you notice, the lowest sell price has moved from 37.0000 to 37.2240 and at the same time the highest buy price has risen from 36.9230 to 36.9400. This will look pretty enticing if you take specific portions of the market.

We have to remember that the total demand has only risen from 59 to 79. The total supply has risen from 30 to 57. Considering the number of active players we have right now - 818 players, the more lucrative product for casual players would be products that have Higher supply than Demand and use the procured raw material to make a processed materials. Newer players who are trying to fit themselves into a highly competitive Pill market would be harder than they could perceive!

Here the product that has higher Supply than Demand would be Petroleum. You should buy Petroleum either using buy orders if you are patient, or buy it from the sell orders. I would highly recommend players to procure Petroleum using Buy orders because a lot of players will be impatient looking at the existing sell orders and sell it to you.

Newer players should try to compete in markets where you can penetrate the market easier than attempt to penetrate volatile products with lesser Demand / Supply Ratio! Why Petroleum is better? Cheaper raw materials than Fish. Lesser capital tied up at the beginning of the game. You should plan on utilizing the daily profits to expand your companies. Your profit per day from selling Oil, even if you purchased Petroleum would be 17 coins lesser than selling Cooked Fish. The catch is the number of units you could make vs number of units you could sell at maximum profit without your profit varying by a lot.

Even when market traders, who could manipulate the market during wars, they will find it harder to control Petroleum.

Lets look at a convoluted product - Wood. Market calculations would incline Wood producers to sell Wood in the market to make more profit than processing it into Paper and sell it. Selling Wood would be harder considering the Demand is way lesser than supply even if there is twice the demand for Wood compared to Petroleum. Here buying the wood through buy Orders and processing it to Paper, guarantees an easier Paper market to sell your product. Paper has 2.560 - Demand / Supply Ratio.

This is why when newer players more than experienced players should look into the Supply & Demand because they would find it harder to switch company production types and settle down. This does not stop from casual experienced players to watch out and plan production.

Thus newer players should focus more on Supply & Demand of products and handle companies efficiently with less effort. 80/20 rule - 80% of results (in our case profits) should come from 20% effort. Switching production based on Demand every few weeks after identifying Supply & Demand is better than hoping your product sells quicker in a saturated market.

Edit 1: Lessons learnt add .jpg to end of the link!

Edit 2: Based @Lortito 's request - I will make a Supply & Demand public Google Sheet for everyone to use and post it in here and in a future article!