Currently on Hardened China on first playthrough. Before buying and selling from markets, I equip my rare Alloy Values. I started buying and selling Uranium until buy price reached sell price. When I looked at top right corner I had much less money than I should have. Then I bought neodymium and in the sell bar it said "sell x bars for 301 billion". When I clicked on sell, however, I only received 260 billions of money. So I had been buying and selling at a loss. Now I'm in the regrettable situation of having exhausted all my market's potential without getting any significant amount of money, and I didn't start upgrading techs yet besides a basic few.

Has anyone experienced this?
I have not experienced this on previous levels. I'm 100% sure that I did in fact equip Alloy Values before buying and selling.
It is as if the game didn't register that my Alloy Values was equipped.

Check if you're not crafting something (like Magnets)

Not magnets, only basic things like screws and nails. I'm still early in the game, I used my 5 IM to get enough armies to conquer all markets and all hospitals. My plan with the market buy/sell was to get enough money to upgrade all hospitals to level 2, but I only got a fraction of the money needed due to the bug.

I had a similar situation when I had some auto stuff activated. Like auto-upgrade army camps. This could explain that some of your earnings are "lost", as they got spend on useless upgrades?

Thank you Otto, riddle solved!
When I finished the previous level I picked Auto Upgrade army camp and upgraded it to 20%.
Now I have de-activated it again.
Thanks again :)

Nice that we could solve that, but now the question what to do...

Are you really sure you can tackle Hard China with only a rare AV?

I have:
* Insane AV artifact
* 100% IASV advancement
* 50% MD advancement

and still dont have enough money to buy all mercs on HChina...


If you really want to beat that map, I really think you will only have a chance with a superpowered IM on the biggest merc camp...
(And even that can be tricky depending how bad you screwed up with AC upgrades and whether you were able to upgrade hosps before, etc.)

Edited 11/2/2023 12:57:13

It sure will be difficult! Now that I have spent all market money on unknowingly upgrading army camps (instead of upgrading hospitals and buying more mercs), I have nothing better to do than to let those army camps generate more armies. I have no prospects of any money income to buy Mercs or alloys/items for techs. I still have about unspent 180B armies from the IM's used on the five largest mercenary camps, and I plan using them on taking all mines, and then smelting/crafting alloys and items for techs organically. I have taken all territories smaller than 552 millions, which is my hospital save. I just have to admit that this level will take me some days of extra irl time to complete.
I have Epics: TW, SAC, ACampB, TS
Rares: AV, ACacheB, HB, SM
I have 97,5% additional mercs and 100% mercs discount
SM is sacrifice material, but it sure has helped me in previous levels getting those last erbiums and yttriums needed to complete the tech tree :)

HChina with a Legendary AV only needs ~3-4 MRs to scrape together enough money for all of the mercs and hospital upgrades. At Rare AV, you'll probably be better off doing a super-MR. This will be the first SA where I don't run HChina (because the dig speed won't be of benefit this time, and it's too slow for the AP bonus).

MR is a widely overlooked gem for filling money pits! Take it from someone who didn't dig an AV artifact until very very late in SA1...

Edit: I will note that with only 97.5% AM, you're still going to run out of mercs though and will need to resort to drafting (and then probably army camps after your drafts run out) - start TSing the biggest territories as you go.

Edited 11/3/2023 02:55:50

Hello. Im now on USA big on my first playthrough. Here is my time usage for the last levels completed:
HScand: 3d 14h
HRise&Fall: 2d 21h
HChina: 10d 7h !!!
AfrEurAsia: 3d 10h
Trisk: 8d 13h

So much time did it cost me in HChina when I forgot to deactivate the newly acquired auto-upgrade AC! After getting to all 7 markets I blindly bought and sold until it was unprofitable, and didnt check my money count until afterwards :o)
I was money starved for the rest of the level and hadnt even upgraded hospitals.
A stark example of how useless army camps are at this stage of the game. Gislic was at lvl 30.
I would have made it in less than half the time except for this mistake.

yeah when you make mistakes like that, its usually faster to abort and retry...