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This is a compilation of five articles I wrote in the last few weeks, I hope this will be of some assistance to newer players.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Useful Sites

Chapter one
A new player gets bombarded with many things at the beginning of their eLife, but it's safe to say the first important number a newbie runs into is skill, whether they know it or not. It's Plato's insistent "Get a job, bum!" that causes most newbies to wade into the job market. There they get hit with the first real lesson of eRep. Many new players can only find minimum wage employment (one of the very few real-life analogies that translates cleanly into this game), but not to fear cause it takes very little time to get through the first few skill levels. A player is already past skill level 2 by the time they can fight, and level 3 is only 16 days into eLife. That's where a new-ish player tends to start finding better offers in the job market. Here's a full chart, assuming that the player concentrates on a single skill:

Skill, Days
1, 2
2, 6
3, 16
4, 36
5, 86
6, 136
7, 186

It takes a little over a half a year of play time to reach a skill level of 7 in a single field. And this is one of the things that you can't change through paying for bonuses. Players with extremely high skills often command hefty salaries, and despite that they are usually in demand and in control of their own employment destiny.

The next big number that new players run into is Strength. You start with one Strength and get a half Strength point the first time you train, and you are over 3 Strength by the time you can enter your first fight. Usually bare-handed, and doing a pretty good impersonation of a drunken boxer. But fear not, even the freshest newb can one day be a feared force on the battlefield. Here's a chart, and this assumes using the free training daily:

Strength, Days
1, 0
2, 2
3, 7
4, 17
5, 42
6, 67
7, 92
8, 117
9, 142
10, 167
11, 192
12, 217
13, 242
14, 267
15, 292
20, 417
25, 542
30, 667

Players with 20+ Strength can deal out a great deal of damage, and are highly regarded by Military and Para-Military groups across the eWorld. The players with the highest strength are commonly known as Tanks, and although I don't know exactly what STR level qualifies one as a Tank, you know one when you see one roll by on the Battle Screen 😃

Players are able to pay for training now, and many players take advantage of that at least occasionally. I'll admit to using the eRoids every single day since its been implemented. For a WW3 baby like myself, that's the only way to eventually catch up to the Tanks. I was 8.64 STR when I started using eRoids, and now I don't have a neck anymore. You could call me Head & Shoulders 😃

The third number the a new player will notice is Experience. In the beginning, this number restricts what a player can do in the game, but over time takes on less meaning as a player gets into higher levels. Here is a chart of how many Experience points you need to reach a given level, and what the unlockable or bonus is for that level:

Level, EXP, Unlocked/Bonus
1, 0, Job, Avatar. No Bonus
2, 7, Train. No Bonus
3, 10, Move. No Bonus
4, 15, Get Invites. No Bonus
5, 25, Fight. No Bonus
6, 35, Vote. 5 GOLD Bonus
7, 40, Enter a Party. No Bonus
8, 50, Create Newspaper. No Bonus
9, 65, Create Company. No Bonus
10, 80, Create Chatroom. No Bonus
11, 90, Create Organization. No Bonus
12, 100, Candidate for Congress. No Bonus
13, 125, Create Party, Run for Party President. No Bonus
14, 200, Run for Country President. No Bonus
15, 300, Buy Wellness Boxes. No Bonus
16, 500, 5 GOLD Bonus
17, 750, 5 GOLD Bonus
18, 1000, 5 GOLD Bonus
19, 1500, 5 GOLD Bonus
20, 2000, 5 GOLD Bonus
21, 3000, 5 GOLD Bonus
22, 5000, 5 GOLD Bonus
23, 7000, 5 GOLD Bonus
24, 10000, 5 GOLD Bonus
25, 15000, 10 GOLD Bonus
26, 20000, 10 GOLD Bonus
27, 25000, 15 GOLD Bonus
28, 30000, 15 GOLD Bonus
29, 40000, 15 GOLD Bonus
30, 50000, 20 GOLD Bonus

And here is a chart showing how to gain Experience:
First job, 5 EXP
First Avatar, 2 EXP
Work, 1 EXP
Train, 2 EXP
Fight, 2 EXP
Vote, 1 EXP
Propose a Law, 1 EXP
Win a Congress or Party President Election, 20 EXP
Win a Country President Election, 50 EXP

You cannot buy Experience directly, but there are several thing you can do in order to increase your rate of experience gain. First and foremost, it goes without saying that you should vote in every election no matter what. An average citizen gets three extra EXP per month from voting. Following that thought, getting elected to Congress not only nets you 20 EXP, but also many more in-game votes, each netting an EXP apiece. Long-time Congressmen and women gain massive EXP due to this. (A bit off-topic, but this is why I'm adamantly in favor of lulz proposals and also experience pumping by Country Presidents.)

Also, fighting gets you a great deal of EXP. A person who only works and trains gets three EXP per day. But a player who works, trains, and fights five times gets 13 EXP per day. Big difference, especially at the beginning. One way to get more EXP is to simply fight more. It's usually not feasible for new players, but older players who frequently "Tank" in battles have inflated EXP totals. (A bit off-topic, but this is why I will always and forever be in the Q5-hospital-or-bust crowd, and why I encourage everyone to move to a Q5 hospital region.)

BattalGazi is in the lead with over 12000 Experience points. It will be interesting to see who makes it to 20K first, you can see a full list of the Experience leaders here.

Chapter two
A new player starts at 50 wellness, and is likely just barely over 40 wellness by the time they can attack at Experience Level 5. How do you gain wellness? By eating food, owning a house, and using a hospital. You have to have a piece of food in your inventory each day in order to feed yourself at server reset. Houses are luxury items, but become important to experienced players who move around a lot, or who work in high-quality jobs.

By far the easiest and least expensive way to increase and maintain your wellness is to live in a region with a hospital. In order to use a hospital, you have to fight at least once that day. You can find out what regions have a hospital two ways, either by checking this page or by going to "My Places" and then to "Profile", on that screen where you live is right below and to the right of your profile picture, or the picture of the silhouette if you don't have one uploaded yet. You can gain 10 wellness points for each star of the Hospital in your region.

Employers will ask you to keep your wellness high. Often times you'll see 80+ or 90+ wellness in the name of the company. It's because your Wellness and your skill help determine your Productivity.

Here is a Productivity calculator to play around with. Remember all new players are encouraged to only take one-star jobs (known as Quality one, or Q1), and at the time of this writing I recommend taking a Land or Manufacturing job.

Both of those sectors of the economy have many positions for new players. In these two sectors, the optimal number of workers is 10 per company. So let's take the average new player just before he can use a hospital, and stick him in as the 10th employee of a Q1 Manufacturing company. Skill 2.1, wellness around 42... he generates about 5.8 units of Productivity for his boss. Now, let's say this player takes good advice and moves to a region with a Quality five hospital, and then fights ONCE to use it the first time and heals up, his wellness is around 80. The next time he works he'll gain another .1 skill so let's plug in the new numbers, skill 2.2, wellness 80... his productivity jumps to 8.58, and believe me that is a huge jump for a company that employs new players.

I would highly recommend only working at a one-star job until you can afford higher quality food every day.

Wellness also helps determine how much Damage you can do in battles. Remember, as was shown in the first part of this series, you gain a lot of Experience Points by fighting everyday. In the game, each player has a Military Rank that is determined by the total amount of damage that player has inflicted. Every player starts as a Private, and it takes 250 total damage to reach the rank of Corporal.

So let's take our new guy above and paste him into the calculator. The first day he can fight, he'll have about 3 strength, and also about 42 wellness, and no weapons... that first attack will only be five damage. But after that first attack he's able to go use the Hospital.

It's real important to never fight after using a hospital. Get all your fighting in for the day before using the hospital.

So the next day our new player is around 80 Wellness, and has used the training for the day to get another .1 Strength. He could now hit for six damage. Hypothetically if this player had a one-star weapon for this fight his damage total would be 14. Weapons make a huge difference in battle. Weapons can only be used once, so the picture of the gun is misleading... they are more like ammunition that is used up and discarded.

The highest Military Rank as of right now is Field Marshall, and to get that rank a player has to rack up 75000 total damage. Many countries pride themselves on the number of Field Marshalls they have, as these players add quite a lot of damage to a battle. Check out this calculator, plug in your information in the blanks and it will not only show you how long it will take you to reach Field Marshall, but it also shows you the day by day damage totals. As you fiddle around with the settings, it will become apparent that using weapons is the most effective way to increase your battle damage. Here is a chart describing the type of weapon, and the damage bonus:

Quality, Bonus
None (Q0), -50% damage
Q1, +20% damage
Q2, +40% damage
Q3, +60% damage
Q4, +80% damage
Q5, +100% damage

As you can see from this, the net gain by using a Q1 weapon is 70%. That's huge, and that is also why Q1 guns are the weapon of choice for the average player, and also standard issue by many Military and Militia groups in the game.

Chapter three
With all the talk about numbers, and the fact that we are dominated by them, does not mean we become them. One of the great things about this game is there is so much user-created content outside the game to help new players, to form groups, and to establish policies.

But despite the fact that there are many ways to express your individuality both inside and outside the game, according to the war module we are just numbers on a wall. No need to despair though, we only need to be able to use these numbers to our advantage.

So first off, what is the wall, and why is it so important? Each region in the eWorld has a defensive wall, and that wall is determined by two things: Population and Defense System.

Here is how the Wall is determined. For a region without a Defense System, it's 100 x Population. For a region with a Q5 Defense System, it's 150 x Population. Here is a chart that shows how many points the wall would have for each combination. Note that a million point wall can be brought to it's knees by a well-funded enemy on a rampage these days.

And before an enemy can hit that wall, they have to have an active war, and pay the battle costs. Here is a wiki page with the formulas for those costs. Here is a chart of the cost to start a battle in regions with high population.

This is the primary reason that we want players of all ages and mindsets to move to a population center. Not only does it add more points to the defensive wall, it also adds .25g to the cost of attacking the region. That can be a one-two punch for many enemies, as they pause to count how much they have in the bank before attacking.

As of writing, the largest wall in the game is put up by the 17823 players in Great Poland, with a calculated wall of 2,673,450. A hypothetical attack on this region would cost 4505.75g just to start! Great Poland is Great!

Put in your name or ID # here and you can see what your personal damage is for all the battles you've participated in. Notice it shows regular battles and Resistance Wars. What's the difference?

A Resistance War is one that is started by an individual in an occupied region. It costs the same as a regular war, but is paid out of pocket by that individual. Those RW trophies don't come cheap, heh.

In a RW you can fight for the defenders, which is the conquering country, by pressing green. You can fight for the resistance, which is the original country, by pressing red. In many contested Resistance Wars, the media is flooded with false information and false orders. Don't be fooled!

The final subject of this article is something many don't think about, but it's important to know. How long does it take an inactive account to reach zero wellness and die? Note that any "dead" character can be revived. Here are the rules of inactive wellness loss. Here is a chart of what a players' wellness would be if he starts at 100 wellness and stops eating food daily. Notice it's about 46 days at 100 wellness, and 30 days from 50 wellness. A dying citizen still adds to the total population when counting battle costs and the defensive wall.

Chapter four
Another constant activity in a players life is his employment. On the very first day of eLife Plato will insist that you get a job. You'll search for better pay and always remember to log on at least once to work, half of the daily maintenance we affectionately call two-clicking. Although this article won't be full of charts and formulas, it is vital information that you will need to be successful in this numbers game.

Many new players see owning their own business as one of the short-term goals they want to accomplish. The vast majority of new business owners lose at least a little money, and a significant amount of new businesses fail. Why mention this in an article about working? It matters.

In order to make good money, you either need to find a competent employer or learn how to work the job market. Both are acceptable ways to make a buck. The pros of finding a competent employer is the fact that you won't have to search for new jobs all the time, and a competent employer will usually take care of good employees. The pros of hitting the job market are the chance at higher wages, and the ability to get into the game a bit more than an average two-clicker.

The cons of working for a competent employer is having to sometimes haggle for raises, and rarely getting the top wages for your skill level. The cons of hitting the job market is running into a lot of bad offers, the occasional trap company, and sometimes even needing to travel to get better wages (when expressed in gold).

My personal recommendation is to work the market, for a multitude of reasons. Even a new player should do this. You'll make more in the short term, and by playing like this you are in control of your own destiny. You'll always find a new business owner that is overpaying for workers, and every three days you're free to get on the move. You can (and should) learn how to find the highest wages in all allied countries, and have fun moving around. If for nothing else, this introduces a player to the idea that a home region is merely a few digital bits on a virtual map, and the most money can be made in countries that control high resource regions.

Your best bet is to stick with one skill and get it to a very high level. You'll have the opportunity to make the most money at that type of skill in the long term. In this version of the economic module, it is not advisable or beneficial to train in multiple skills. I hedged my bets.

Also, keep your wellness as high as possible. Try to work every day when your wellness is as close to 100 as you can. Many responsible eBusiness owners use productivity calculators like this (free to try), and will fire people that aren't making them any money.

I want to at least mention trap companies, they aren't as bad as they used to be, but they're still out there. In the past, a trap company would make hundreds of job offers and 'trap' new players in a job with no money to pay. Most new players don't know that they can quit a business that has no money or no resources. A few months back the admins made a rule that if an employee tries to work and can't due to lack of money or resources, all of that companies' job offers are pulled from the market. This killed the vast majority of trap companies.

The main types of trap companies these days are ones that try to trap mobile troops overseas, and the ones who hire a bunch of brand new players and immediately upgrade to a higher quality level. This second type of trap company is nearly impossible to avoid without knowing a bit of history about the game, and knowing how to scour donation histories for clues to company ownership. They try to kill babies by making sure that their employees lose too much wellness to be able to fight upon reaching level 5. Your best bet if you find yourself working for one of these is to quit as soon as you can, and ask for help in the community to get your wellness back up. Trap companies are fairly rare these days.

So at this point you may be thinking, "when should I start my own business?"

My advice is, "If you're asking when to start a business, don't start a business."

But if you're determined to start one, I'll offer some basic tips. First, buy one off the market, you'll probably find a deal if you know what you're looking for and are willing to wait for the right opportunity. Don't buy a Raw Material Company that is in any region other than a high-resource one. Make sure you have a ton of money on-hand. I would recommend having double the purchase price of the company on-hand before you buy, to cover wages and Raw Materials (if applicable). And do not expect immediate success. You might have to stockpile finished product for a while and wait for favorable market conditions to sell. You might not be able to find good employees at the beginning, this takes time.

Chapter five
If you've read the last four chapters, you've got a decent idea of how to get started in this game. You know the importance of keeping your wellness up, and fighting regularly. In this numbers game, wellness is IMO the most important number a player has as an individual, but its the Experience that is the most important to the country. Experience determines your national rank, it is the tiebreaker in elections, and also contributes to our nations' rank. At the time of this writing, this was the rank of nations, by total exp:

Rank Name Total Average
1 Hungary 18805615 790
2 Poland 14779356 229
3 Russia 14554883 793
4 Spain 12840421 427
5 USA 12552305 517
6 Serbia 10457215 329
7 Romania 8867155 557
8 Croatia 5145735 356
9 Indonesia 4970646 579
10 Greece 4776840 605

When I checked this a couple weeks ago, near the first peak of the Poland babyboom, Poland was in third or fourth, and their average was under 200 EXP. In addition, Hungary was solidly in the lead, and also an average of over 800 EXP. The eUS was in fourth or fifth, and had an average of under 500. I have drawn some conclusions from this spot check of totals and averages.

First, Poland is scary big. They've gained a ton of EXP since I last checked, and they will soon beat Hungary in total EXP even though their average will be about half (if not under). These babies are growing up 😃 We can also see all of the countries that we say are 'booming' have an average exp under 450. The ones with averages under that are still growing, and will still have a bulk of EXP to add to their totals. Those over that mark are generally not booming, but are still growing. I'm trying to get a general idea of when the average points to signs that the country is slowing down. Hungary's 800+ average EXP a few weeks ago is as high as I've seen.

Next chart is the rank of nations, by total population:

Rank Name Population
1 Poland 66029
2 Serbia 32325
3 Spain 30440
4 USA 25090
5 Hungary 24203
6 Russia 19117
7 Romania 16210
8 Croatia 14990
9 Brazil 12668
10 Bulgaria 12566

Again, Poland jumps right off the charts, as does Serbia and Spain. Some of Spain's recent gains have been French, though you can make the same case for Poland into Germany. Here is a chart of the top GDP's:

Rank Name GDP
1 Poland 9506.81
2 Spain 5434.07
3 USA 4871.67
4 Russia 4434.00
5 Hungary 3307.88
6 Serbia 3153.58
7 Greece 2964.98
8 Brazil 2620.37
9 Iran 2531.88
10 Ukraine 2362.84

Once again, Polandball outstrips everyone, and the top ten overall is a who's who of High Iron region holders. Once mighty Indonesia is at the time of this writing 17th in GDP. Here is a chart of who has the most companies:

Rank Name Companies
1 USA 4625
2 Poland 3600
3 Russia 3482
4 Spain 2989
5 Hungary 2438
6 Romania 2072
7 Serbia 1982
8 Brazil 1554
9 Indonesia 1329
10 Canada 1259

The eUS has more companies by far. This is why we give most new eAmericans the advice to buy a company from the market instead of paying for a brand new one. This surplus of companies is also IMO one of the biggest reasons why so many first-time business owners are doomed to failure here in eAmerica.

You can also see countries' rankings in Newspapers, and Chatrooms. It will be great when they implement the Imports, Exports, and Unemployment Rate screens.

Now, what does any of this have to do with you, the common player? Simply put, knowledge is power. Read the eRepublik wiki. It's very important to get in Internet Relay Chat and talk with players from the eWorld. It's important to get involved in political debates on the game forums, national forums, and IRC. But nothing will arm you better for success in this game than a good understanding of how the game works. It helps each player maximize their potential and experience, and in turn that maximizes the countries' potential.

Here is a few useful sites and pages I haven't yet liste😛

eGobba Maps and Tools at egobba.de

Here's a Wellness and Fighting calculators, and a list of the Field Marshalls in the game, sorted by strength at cccp-group.org

Here's a nation-by-nation breakdown of price and type of companies and the total worldwide stock in eRepublik, along with market prices for all products in the game, and charts for currency info and battle damage for each nation at ereptools.net

(RIP egovstats.info and their breakdown of wellness and rank by country.)