No Fridays without updates

Day 717, 07:09 • Published in • by Plato

Dear citizens,

We have several announcements to do, but first of all: congratulations to all the winners of Presidential elections. A complete list of the new Presidents of the New World can be found here. We wish all of them good luck and tons of wisdom while leading their nations.

Now, about the alliances, which has been one of the main subjects lately: as some of you know, the alliances cost increased. In order to smooth the war mechanism we need to adjust one more rule, about the activated alliances. On the other hand, we know that for many of our citizens, in particular new ones, all these things about alliances, activated alliances, price and implications, are a bit confusing. For them we will try to explain things in a not to technical manner.

By signing an alliance countries are installing with each other an alarm system, just like a real life bank has. Of course, this alarm system costs some money monthly. By paying the tax every month, the buyer is making sure that in case somebody would try to smash the door in the middle of the night, its properties would be protected. Not by the alarm system itself, but by a bunch of strong security guards that would rush within a minute or two to the bank. We say that the alarm (alliance) got activated, and the blood thirsty guards are the activated alliance. After they've done their job, normally the muscle boys should return to their headquarters, and if they were be paid furthermore, they'd keep watching the monitors for the alarm system, ready to rush in again.

This is in real-life (or perhaps a movie we saw yesterday). But in eRepublik, once activated the alliance remains this way. And the muscle boys, instead of returning home, bring some beds and sleep in front of the bank. Moreover, they are willing to travel all over the world in order to solve any kind of disputes. Moreover, even if they weren't paid anymore, they would keep doing so forever, until the bank would disappear.

We think all of you agree that this second scenario it's not OK. If an alliance is activated today, there is no reason for it to remain activated indefinitely, no matter what. The logical solution is that an activated alliance, (which offers you the defensive and offensive manpower of your ally, in any battle which implies you as the main actor, anywhere in the world) should remain active only as long as that alliance is renewed. That is, if in an enemy attacks you and activates ten alliances, you will have the support of all your allies, just like before. But if the next day six alliances expire and are not renewed, you will be left with just the other four active allies. The rest of your six allies disappear from all your active wars. To go further in time, if several months later you decide to sign again an alliance with one of your former active ally, that alliance would not turn active by default (because it used to be so sometime in the past). It would be just an alarm system, waiting to get activated. If an alliance expires right in the middle of a battle, it will disappear from the alliances war list, but not from the battle. It will remain active until the battle ends.The new rule will be implemented next week.

Another topic is about something which was misinterpreted by some of your citizens, due to an incomplete information provided by us: several months ago the “six hours retreat” rule was implemented. This rule stated that Presidents are able to retreat from the battlefields only in the first six hours from the battle beginning. The incomplete information is that only the attacking Presidents are constrained by this rule. The defender is allowed to retreat from the battlefield anytime he wants, after all it is his regions which he leaves in the hands of attackers. We won't go again into the details of why the attacker should not be allowed to retreat (and attack again) anytime he wants. But this rule has no reason to be applied to defenders as well.

The last topic is about the new incentivized offers (beta), available in the “Gold and Extras” section. Essentially, for the "free offers" (that are clearly labeled as such) this is all about earning some GOLD, by spending some time, sharing your opinions, personal info or joining a website you may like. There are also paying offers from advertisers such as Netflix for example (online DVD rentals service in the USA) that promote a service that you might be interested in. In this case you will get eRepublik gold (sponsored by the advertiser) in return for becoming a subscriber to their service either on a payment basis or on a trial basis.

We have asked our offer providers to only promote the best offers on eRepublik but you should still check each offer conditions carefully as these are provided by a third party service (the offer provider), not by eRepublik. Based upon your real-life location, you may receive offers from advertisers interested only in targetting people who live in your country. Also, some countries may not have any offers available at all or no free offers, this is something that we do not control since the offer providers and advertisers decide in wich countries they want to make offers available. Still we will try to add more offer providers in the future to expand the coverage.

Also each offer is limited in number, for example, a specific offer might be limited to 100 people- which means that only 100 of you might have the chance to take it. As soon as that number is reached, the offer disappears from the eRepublik site. So, sometimes you may see some offers listed and at others they might not be available anymore. It's a “first come, first served” situation, so make sure you check that section often. Please remember that these offers are provided by a third party service, not by eRepublik. Good luck to everybody in earning GOLD, we hope that some of those offers will be of interest to you and don't forget to read carefully the FAQ.

Regards,
The eRepublik Team