[BOK] Fasten your seatbelts, new economic crash pending.

Day 1,037, 01:28 • Published in United Kingdom Belgium • by Boklevski

Dear citizens of the eWorld,

For a change, I’m publishing in the United Kingdom. This article concerns an analysis of the changes today. However, I’m not really sure about the impact and how to act on it, and to be informative for all, I’d like to have some comments/thoughts of experienced players. Therefore, I'm publishing in UK, as I thought UK residents, and my eDutch and eBelgian subscribers, would make for a nice audience to debate. Leave a comment!

New day, new changes.
If you looked for the Uptown section or if you worked already, you’ll have noticed that (suddenly) the time management, library and residential district have been gone. The only thing needed now is to work and train. (I’m hereby welcoming back the term “two-clicker”.)

Now this is great news for your health, as it limits chances on RSI, but also for your character’s health and happiness.

Usually, you lost 3 health due to working in a Q1 company, training and library usage. Now, it will be only 2 health for working and training. Happiness is even better: 2 for working and 1 for training leads to a loss of 3! It used to be around 23 happiness (f.e. working 12 hours, training 9 hours, studying 2 hours), and you’d gain – I guess – 2 or 3 (1+2 bonus?) due to resting one hour (and gaining the rest through food).

Happiness food companies: close your doors.
Most people filling up their lost happiness did so using food (instead of their precious hours). Many entrepreneurs anticipated on this and opened up companies producing food with high happiness attributes and limited (or none) health. A huge overproduction will be the result now that the game mechanics have changed (again). Lowering prices won’t even help, as there simply is an incredibly small demand.

However, don’t sell your company yet. More changes are imminent.

Health companies: fear the worst.
Happiness will disappear completely, according to the latest Erepublik Insider article. Good news for the overproducing happiness companies, as they will probably be converted to health. Also, if you have divided the customization points about 50-50, everything will be moved to health. Therefore, one food will have way more impact on a citizen’s health!

In short: people use less health per day (as concluded above), and (more) companies produces a load of (higher) health food. Result… you guessed it… way more supply and less demand. Business owners, your investment is about to turn into (quoting Muse) a “supermassive black hole” of losses.

Oh sh-… you didn’t own a house company, did you?
If you’re the owner of a house company, you probably weren’t too happy already. Durability (even 100 days is not much!) and unreasonably high costs made it very hard to sell a house. A bit help came from the admins with the rule that houses gave 50 health instead of 5, but the market was still very slow.

If you have a house company with houses providing a good happiness increase, you’re done. It will be way cheaper to refill the tiny bit of happiness lost per day with food, so the amount of costumers will be… well… zero. Health houses can be a bit more profitable, but expect competition to increase after happiness is removed (same reasoning as with the food companies above).

Expect the next global economic crisis
Many citizens have used the increased food consumption to set up food companies to profit from the changes that V2 brought us. However, I expect prices will plummet very soon, leaving players with a 20 gold investment gone and with a big amount of food companies closed. Also, happiness house companies will be closed until the happiness is removed completely, and after that, the competition on the house market will be larger, leading to smaller profits (thus probably managers paying lower wages).

Looking in my owned companies, quite some people used to work more than 8, and often 12, hours. The current wage – without time management – is comparable to 8 hours of work. That means many people will get less money per day. If you get less money per day, you can spend less money per day.

People will lose their jobs due to closed companies, wages will go down in those that want to compete in the low-prices market, and people will earn less per day. I think there will simply be less money available, and in worst case, people will start to have troubles to buy a house or good weapon. The situation can thus spread out to other sectors, also putting them under pressure. Raw companies will also see their revenue decline as manufacturing companies close down.

All in all, I’m afraid “we” (both citizens and business owners) and our governments (expect fewer taxes!) have to prepare for a new economic crisis.

Recommendations
Needless to say, I’d try to conclude my article with some recommendations about how to profit from current events, or at least how to survive it as good as possible. However, in this case, I’m a bit lost on what to recommend. As long as admins keep changing, you just don’t know what to do.

The only advice I can give, is that you should read the latest Erepublik Insider again to anticipate the future changes, and – obviously – that you shouldn’t open up a food company (yet) if you were planning to: they might be for sale very cheaply in the near future.

At least think about it, and you’ll be better prepared.

What are your thoughts? What will be the exact impact? What will be the best strategy to survive? I’m looking forward to your comments.

Regards,

Boklevski,
Addicted to analyzing financial situations