How about a server in which people's experiments are tried out in a real game?

every reset has different experimental rules

pick a player u know and respect

ask him to set the rules he would love to play by

and run a short set with his rules

ask the players to evaluate the changes

then either pick another player or keep the same player and have him tweak his ideas

the problem with most changes is they're hard to really judge the effect of until you have a vibrant market and a couple hundred players playing with it....

And every round is different. If u decide to give dictatorship less bushel consumption and less military upkeep cost, u can be damn sure alot more people are going to play it the first round and therefore u cant predict how it will be like in 2 rounds or 3+.

oh that is difficult

u would have to ask people to play the server
as a favor to the site and
in the interest of the evolution of the game

is there any way to artificially make the market more vibrant?
u could have a price trend multiplier
for example if oil is selling at $100
someone puts up oil for sale at $90
a difference of 10%
if our trend modifier is 2x
then his oil goes on sale for $80

then people will trade more stuff at 999 with each other to make tons of profit.