I would tend to agree.

Back in the day, I would wonder if it was 'cause someone initialized the variable as an integer but that kind of stuff is not typically a problem to today's programmers.

I wonder if it is an attempt to limit egregious abuse of the market to transfer goods between players. With the TOS rule versus "wolf packing", I would not be surprised to learn that the market limits are another symptom of that.

Personally I find it annoying that it is so easy to strip the market of a given resource. It seems unreasonable that days can go by where there is no commodities of any kind available for purchase. I have seen a few games where the market goes dry somewhere around day 10 and never really recovers.

I noticed the market dry ups as well. Creates an interesting opportunity to play a sub game of a commodities dealer in games. If your positioned in one of the resource rich areas selection is strait forward (22 player -SE corner and Africa on oil, Central Europe for Metal). Time frame of the game also plays a role, early on Goods and metal are hot commodities, rare is tight for a brief period after day 8, while the oil market does not seem to pick up until mid game.

I suspect the opportunity for "economic war" is not utilized much in this game.

The availability of resources and the relevance of the commodities market also varies from map to map. For a variety of reasons, I have mostly played the 22-player European map and, lately, the 50-player Pacific map, but the two occasions when I have played the 10-player European map I have found that it is much better for resource production and I had less-frequent need for market transactions.

That said, I am a vacuum cleaner for metals and oil, and I can never get enough because of my constant improvement of resource production and my heavy reliance on fast-moving motorized units. So, I am always on the look-out for the opportunity to buy additional oil on the cheap.