The Economist ~ Alliance income and a general update

Day 1,240, 13:29 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Spite313



Dear friends,

It’s been a long time since I wrote last. Like most of the older players in the game (in erep years I’m about 120) I am playing merely for the community now, and my interest in the game is half-hearted at best. I apologise for the delay, in any case.

Today I’m going to cover a few key areas. Firstly, I will do a little bit on comparative alliance incomes, now and then (with then being about a month ago). I’ll then move onto a little bit of country analysis on those countries who have changed a lot in that period (including those who got wiped). Finally I’m going to finish up by talking about the new admin economics changes and why they’re both good and absolutely awful at the same time. If any of that sounds boring, just skip it, I won’t cry.


Alliance Incomes ~ The never-ending story

It seems sometimes that the words aren’t out of my mouth before I’m proving them wrong. Last month, NWO was made up of just four countries in loose coalition. By now, most of you are aware that in addition to the core nations of Spain, Poland, Serbia and Hungary, NWO/ONE now has a rough alliance with Macedonia, Slovenia, Indonesia and Turkey. This alliance strengthens ONE immeasurably, as all four countries have a decent amount of troops and more importantly thriving economies, each of which brings something different to the alliance.

Since last month, the total alliance income of ONE has grown steadily. This isn’t all from the addition of new members/allies, but also from the internal growth of the respective economies. This is a trend reflected across the world’s great powers, and in my opinion would normally continue until a full adjustment to the V1.5 economic model is complete.


Alliance income as of one month ago, March 13th 2011


Alliance income today

Please note all graphs are taken from continuously measured data, averaged over a seven day period for accuracy.

EDEN’s economy, last month the strongest of the three, took a major hit with the ONE invasion of Italy, Croatia and Romania. Cromania (as they’re affectionately called) are the two largest economic and military powers in EDEN, trailed slightly by Greece and Bulgaria. Their loss was a disaster for the alliance in economic terms, and without overseas colonies (like Greece and Bulgaria) they struggled to maintain income during the occupation. With the various resistance wars, it looks likely they will regain full independence in the next couple of weeks, and if previous occupations are anything to go by, they will have a brief economic rebound following liberation.

Terra, the weakest of the three alliances, has had a fair month. The USA and Brazil have both benefited from the growth in great powers I mentioned above, and are roughly similar in income to their main antagonists in ONE- Poland and Spain. The alliance as a whole however has far more weak members than either ONE or EDEN, with Germany, UK and France all being geographically exposed and therefore a weak link in Terra’s chain. The alliance’s income is difficult to measure because of repeated occupations of its European members, but it’s not much better than last month.


Down and Out ~ National Performances

Bulgaria was driven out of Europe recently, losing all but its foreign regions. A look at the world map, set to population, will show you that the Bulgarians are mostly located in the middle east now. They are the first nation (to my knowledge) that has taken full advantage of the V1.5 company rules meaning that companies are tied to the capital rather than to the region. With their capital in Iran, Bulgaria managed to maintain a very strong economic performance despite losing all its original regions. Although it has now lost those regions in Iran, the lesson was one other countries could learn from.



Macedonia has shown very large military and economic growth in the past month. It has surpassed its neighbour to the East at last, and is currently the third greatest NWO country after Poland and Serbia. In any other alliance, it would be number one. This economic growth is purely linear to the growth in population, rather than a development of higher-level infrastructure. This means that the economy won’t necessarily slow with a slow in population growth as there is a lot of potential for internal development. I said to the Macedonian government 2 months ago that their economy was following very closely what I observed in Serbia during their initial introduction to the game, and that is playing true so far. With a social complexification on the horizon, Macedonia could be the next Serbia. With their close friendship and proximity, that is very significant.

Croatia saw total defeat, but since it’s re-emergence it’s economy has been roaring with growth. Huge local demand and high import tariffs mean high prices, high wages and a large government income. From zero income, Croatia has quickly grown to outstrip its pre-occupation income.



Romania has seen similar growth, though the regions freed thus far are less financially important, so it’s been more gradual. With total freedom, I expect to see similar growth in days to come.



France and Germany were both partially occupied by ONE this month. The nature of those countries (highly centralised population, old well developed economies) means that the invasion has had little to no direct effect on national income, though loss of regions has obviously affected GDP.

Some bonus comparisons- request more in the comments


Very close!




Playing Jenga ~ New eRepublik changes

The new changes are both fantastic and a disaster. The opening of new regions to exploitation creates another layer of financial strategy in the game. Although more secondary and tertiary development is needed in the economy (ingame banks, stock markets and other services) this is a step in the right direction.

However, open migration is a terrible idea and one which the admins should have learned from in V2. At the end of V1 (for those of you too young to remember) we had three work skills: Manufacturing (finished goods), Land (raw materials) and Construction (Housing, Hospitals and Defence Systems). The admins opened this for a migration, where you could transfer your skill to one (or more) of a load of different jobs. People chose based on hearsay and rumour, and a glut of unneeded workers crowded the job market for the brief remainder of V2.

Now we have the same problem. For people like me, who have many raw materials companies, the choice is simple. I have (for example) 22 iron companies when the migration comes. UK has three high resources in weapons. So I have 4 each of those resources, and five of the two UK doesn’t have. That should balance out to equal amounts to supply my Q5 weapons company. However, if you (like hundreds of players) don’t self-supply, but sell your products, what do you choose to migrate to?



We can see that all weapons companies need iron, Q2+ need Rubber too, and so on. So Iron will be the most demanded resource, then Rubber, and so on. Aluminium and Saltpetre will be barely in demand at all, since any Q5 company owner with at least one RM company will choose to self-supply the rarest element in his construction. The question is therefore what to migrate to? I predict that in smaller economies like the UK, a few duff choices could see (for example) an overstocked aluminium market, or an under stocked rubber market. It is almost impossible to guess.



The same problem of course repeats with the grain migrations. Out of the five available resources, grain will remain the “main” resource, and we will probably need more grain than everything else together. Considering we have only 2 pages of grain offers in the UK at present, dividing into five will almost certainly result in a brief surge in prices in at least one of the five areas. Considering our resource boosters, I expect a lot of people will choose Cattle or Fish, and there will probably be a lack of fruit. But that’s just a guess based on psychological profiling- and the fact that this is all guesswork is a major part of the problem.

Thoughts on the back of a postcard please!

Iain



More bonus graphs to come below 🙂


Bonus 1! ONE income broken down. More bonuses every 20 votes.


Bonus 2! Terra income breakdown for reaching 40 votes 🙂


Bonus 3! EDEN income breakdown for reaching 60 votes \o/


Bonus 4! Turkiye vs Greece for reaching 80 votes


Bonus 5! Poland vs USA for reaching 100 votes


Bonus 6 already?! Croatian income recovery. Note the "bounce" when a country regains independence. That will flatten out later.


Bonus 7 for reaching 140 votes. Notice the bounce again? Boing.


Bonus 8 for reaching 160 votes. USA historical tax income since March 2010. Can anyone spot V2?


Bonus 9 for reaching 180 votes. Per Capita income of the ONE countries. This shows how much tax per head the country collects. In a world where all tax levels were equal, this would show which countries had more developed companies/more people working as manager.


Bonus 10...you'll run out of votes before I run out of bonuses... 😛


Bonus 11, per capita income of EDEN, minus Romania and Croatia who didn't exist when I took the data 🙁


Bonus 12 for reaching 240 votes 🙂 What if Phoenix was alive today?


Breakdown of the Alliance of Baltic Countries for getting 260 votes


Finland vs Estonia, those old enemies, for 280 votes


ABC vs Russia...could it ever happen? 300 votes! 🙂


Poland vs Russia as requested...sorry for the delay, I was at work!


Now and then...the big 4 countries which formed the core of the newly born Phoenix. 340 votes, bonus 17.


Bonus 18, China vs Indo, new vs old


Bonus 19, battle on the Western Front, 380 votes


Bonus 20, Change in Macedonian Income over time.


Countries bordering the UK for comparison.


REMEMBER TO MAKE REQUESTS IN THE COMMENTS FOR BONUSES 🙂