Land Market

Land Market

Cities can trade land for money instead of fighting over it. A plot is offered at a fixed price or put up for timed bidding, and the winner gets the plot together with the ground it stands on. The same system sells off a bankrupt city.

Both features are off by default.

The land market needs a real economy (Economy, C&N Economy). Without one it is off. Auctions in particular make no sense with the built-in no-op money provider: every city has an infinite balance, escrow means nothing and any bid would win.

Selling a plot

Stand on a plot your city owns and offer it:

/plot citysell <price> [audience] [cityName]     fixed price
/plot auction <startPrice> <hours> [increment] [buyout] [audience] [cityName]

• Audience: everyone, nonhostile (nobody you are in a conflict with), allies, or city followed by a city name. If you leave it out, it is allies, so a forgotten argument never widens the offer. A city with no alliance that leaves it at allies gets a warning, because nobody would see the lot.
• Buyout: whoever pays the buyout price of an auction lot takes it at once.
• Increment: the smallest step between two bids (AUCTION_MIN_INCREMENT if not given).

Withdraw a lot with /plot citynfs or /plot auctioncancel. Once someone has bid, the lot cannot be withdrawn. While the auction runs, the plot also cannot be sold to a citizen, put into a plots group, unclaimed or given another type.

A plot with a prison, a summon point or a temple can still be sold, but the seller is warned first: those go with the plot.

A plot that a sub-plot reaches into cannot be put on the land market. If a plot with a sub-plot is sold to another city anyway, the part of the sub-plot over that plot is cut off. See Sub‐Plots.

Buying

/plot citybuy [plotX plotZ] [expectedPrice]
/plot bid <amount> [plotX plotZ]

By default the buyer's mayor has to stand on the plot, so nobody buys distant land sight unseen. CITY_PLOT_TRADE_REMOTE_BUY allows buying and bidding from the market tab. expectedPrice is a safety net: the deal is refused if the seller changed the price in the meantime.

Bids are held in escrow on a separate account for each lot. They are not taken from the treasury on trust. An outbid city gets its money back at once. When the lot closes, the seller gets exactly the winning bid, and anything left over is set aside rather than destroyed.

A bid in the last AUCTION_EXTEND_WINDOW_SECONDS (5 minutes by default) moves the end of the auction back by the same amount. So nobody can win a lot with a single bid in the final second.

In the GUI

The City page has a price-tag button that opens Land market: the fixed-price offers your city may take. From there you reach Bids (running auctions) and Past deals (closed ones). The Plot page shows the lot that the plot you stand on belongs to, with buttons to put it up, withdraw it, buy it or bid. CITY_PLOT_TRADE_GUI hides the market for hosts who want deals made in chat; the commands keep working. See GUI.

Bankruptcy

When a city's debt goes over CITY_MAX_DEBT, CITY_BANKRUPTCY_MODE decides what happens:

Mode	What happens
off	The city is demolished at once, as before
plots	Its land is auctioned plot by plot so neighbours can take it, and the money pays the debt
whole_city	The whole settlement is one lot and the winner absorbs it

The sale runs for CITY_BANKRUPTCY_GRACE_DAYS. A city that still has not paid is demolished after all. Lots start at CITY_BANKRUPTCY_START_PRICE_FACTOR × the plot claim price, and the bidding decides the rest. Whatever is left after the debt is paid is divided among the citizens of the bankrupt city. A city at war is not sold off while the war lasts, because its land could not change hands anyway. The demolition just waits.

Any mode other than off needs auctions turned on.

Server settings

All of these can be changed live with /cadmin setcfg <key> <value>:

Key	Default	Meaning
city_plot_trade_enabled	false	Cities may sell plots to each other at all
city_plot_trade_gui	true	Show the market tab in the player window
city_plot_trade_remote_buy	false	Buy without standing on the plot
city_plot_trade_require_adjacency	false	Bought plot must touch the buyer's territory
city_plot_trade_history_shown	50	Past deals kept on screen
city_plot_auction_enabled	false	Timed bidding on top of fixed prices
auction_min_hours	1	Shortest lot
auction_max_hours	168	Longest lot
auction_default_hours	24	Duration the GUI opens a lot with
auction_min_increment	1	Smallest step between bids
auction_extend_window_seconds	300	Anti-sniping window
city_bankruptcy_mode	off	off, plots or whole_city
city_bankruptcy_grace_days	3	How long the sale runs
city_bankruptcy_start_price_factor	1.0	Starting price of a forced lot, × plot claim price

Permissions

Permission	Meaning
CITY_SELL_PLOT_TO_CITY	Put the city's land up for sale or auction, and withdraw it
CITY_BUY_PLOT_FROM_CITY	Buy land from another city and place bids

Both are mayor-level by default. On a server that existed before this feature, they are not added to an existing MAYOR group automatically. See Permissions and Ranks.

See also

• Economy
• Plots
• Sub‐Plots
• War and Conflicts