The Economist ~ Updates on the new Housing Module

Day 2,435, 12:38 • Published in Poland United Kingdom • by Spite313



Dear friends,


A few days ago I wrote an article on the introduction of a new housing module to the game. This article is a follow on from that one, so please read it first- I hate repeating myself. When I wrote that article, it was basically a piece of speculation. We only knew that the admins would make player owned companies and add new resources. I speculated that they would limit the number of quality companies available, and prevent you from using WaM in those companies. Today the admins released an update with new information.


So let’s first of all examine the most important new facts the admins have given us:

1. As predicted there will be no Work as Manager, so you will need workers to produce both raw materials and tanks.
2. Houses can be turned on and off, and they work on an hourly basis.

Now the first sentence of the update reads: “The new Houses will act both as Energy Centers and Energy Recovery boosters.” Although there is no further reference to “energy recovery boosters”, the fact houses work on an hourly basis and can be disabled suggests to me that this means they will add a +10 (for example) health every 6 minutes, much like the competition reward does. This would make sense, as the other function of the house is simply to passively increase the energy “tank” and it wouldn’t make much sense to turn that on or off.

This speculation is essential to the viability of the product, because some simple maths gives us the next part:



Well you can see here that we have Q5 raw materials producing RM at 0.08- thanks to admins being totally stupid none of the other 4 companies are even viable as all require workers. They might as well have just added one company.

If we look at the house prices to construct (this is basically based on the base cost of workers now) we can see that:

Q1 gives +50 for 7 days at a cost of 40cc a day.
Q2 gives +50 for 15 days at a cost of 37cc a day.
Q3 gives +100 for 7 days at a cost of 160cc a day.

Well you can see that Q3 is insanely expensive for what it is- 0.8 gold a day just to have a +100 energy tank. This says to me that it is essential there also be an energy recovery. I would guess that Q1 and Q2 will give +10 and Q3 will give +20.

Note: An admin has said here that only Q6 and Q7 will have energy recovery, however if that is the case Q1-5 houses will be pointless and nobody should buy them. Admins have said stuff in forum threads that has turned out to be bull manure before however.




So a few speculations now. Assuming they add an energy restore function, this will be game changing. First of all players will be able to turn these on and off, which means that a 7 day centre could last you much longer than 7 days. For example I would not need +20 during the night when I am sleeping- my tank already fills quicker than I can use it overnight. I wouldn’t need it at work either. So my tank would only be used perhaps 8 hours per day, meaning a house could last me 21 days. At 21 days this is much cheaper.

In addition, because this industry forces you to use workers, you will have a much bigger demand. Also these companies use relatively small amounts of raw materials, with each Q3 factory only needing two Q5 raw material companies to run with 8 workers total. This means that it will be relatively cheap to set up a housing company, but the big competition will be over workers. At least until things stabilise, this could mean a huge increase in wages.

Speculating again, a surge in wages and a shift to housing could mean a shortage of labour in the Q7 weapon markets. This would see a decline in Q7 production, and with demand steady this could mean a slight rise in profits. Right now a Q7 company requires 88 “works” in a rubber factory to produce rubber. Most people do this by working as manager, however this new change could make using workers in rubber factories viable again. In any case, 10 workers per 88 companies is the standard now, which means the threshold for employing 10 people is about 3800 gold. In other words, for every 10 people employed there is a 3800 gold investment in the game. However this new system, if Q3 is the same price as other Q3 companies, will mean that a full supply chain of 2 Q5 raw materials and one Q3 house company is only 150g. That is a big difference.

Presumably in future the admins will add higher Q housing companies, but for now the easy and cheap entrance to the market will draw many, and I do believe that regardless of the actual financial viability or market for houses, we will see a lot of houses built.



Map outline stolen from eGov


I also took the time to mark all the little resources on the European map. To readers elsewhere, sorry but I only have so much time. No doubt someone with tech wizardry will be working on an interactive map right now. But until then, this will do to show which countries are going to be perma-occupied for resources in future.

As we can see, granite is the rarest resource, only existing in top 10 countries (Romania, Spain and Poland). Wood is also rare, especially in the balkan region. Limestone in Bulgaria will potentially be a target for both Greece and Serbia. There’s also quite a lot of resources clumped together which means bonus corridors. Occupying lots of small countries causes problems, especially in a balanced alliance system like ours, so I guess countries will have to prioritise.


In any case, it’ll be interesting!


Iain