The Economist ~ Economic updates and more alliance figures

Day 1,284, 13:17 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Spite313
Please remember to shout!



Dear friends,

It’s that time of the month again where I get to bore you with a bit of economic analysis and some fancy graphs made with MS Word (I’m so skilled). Before I start however, I would like to make some disclaimers.

Firstly, the nature of the game has changed drastically. A single tank can outspend the income of entire countries quite easily. The likes of Romper, ScymeX, Alfagrem and so on are basically countries in themselves, not just with their damage but with the amount of gold they consume every day.

Secondly, although income is still a useful measuring tool (as it shows the total active population consumption of a country, along with the tax income each nation can use on weapons, food and so on) it is not the measure it once was. As I said, a more powerful country can be laid low by a smaller one, with the right tanks.


Unbalanced

I would like to address briefly the changes made in the past few days by the admin. Firstly, the changes which have introduced new types of companies in raw materials, and the changes in formulas which accompanied them. On the whole, these changes are in my opinion good ones. They have once again tiered the raw materials sector, so that there is a “ladder” for new players to climb. Lowering the bottom rung of company ownership so people can Work As Manager (WAM) makes sense. However the major flaw in this change is that there is no opportunity to “upgrade” companies, only to dissolve them. It should be possible to upgrade existing companies, rather than losing half your investment or ending up with useless companies when upgrading. I recently upgraded 9 companies from aluminium to rubber, and one from fish to deer. This cost 300g, because I got 50g back from dissolving companies. However, I lost 50g investment because of the cost of dissolution. A 25g upgrade cost would make much more sense.

Next, admins changed the food consumption limit to 500 wellness per day. That was a brilliant move, and one I can’t praise them enough for. The main issue ingame with inflation is the obvious one- lack of gold, bots, WAM. However, lack of consumption plays its part too. As it stands, the potential for increased production is limitless- anyone can buy gold and start companies, or use GBP to do so. However the limit on consumption each day is 300 wellness worth of food and weapons. This means at some point soon, the supply will outstrip demand and we’ll be facing the same situation we did in V2. The solution to this is to continuously raise the bar for food consumption. Personally, I would have raised it to 1000 wellness. The majority of the admins income from tanking is from people who fight more than 100 times per day anyway, and the huge demand from this increase would have done wonders for the food industry.

Finally, admin decided to give everyone free companies. This is a terrible move, and effectively negates the benefits of the above change completely. A skill 8 worker can comfortably make 80+ food per day from this, effectively giving most of the world population 20 free fights per day. This negates the effect of the above change on consumption of food, and also lands anyone with companies already with 4 useless companies. In addition, WAM in these companies uses 40 wellness, reducing the available wellness-for-consumption further. When looking at economic growth models, our goal is always to maximise aggregate demand. WAM is a double blow to that, as it not only reduces consumption, it increases production at the same time. With unlimited wellness-from-food it would have been a good move- helping player retention. As it is, it is poisonous to the economy.


OMNOMNOMNOM

OK, moving on, let’s look at some of the national and alliance incomes over this period. Firstly, let me give you the big one- alliance comparisons.


LAST MONTH


THIS MONTH

We see here a slight gain by the Terra/EDEN bloc on ONE. However it must also be taken into account the wars both this month and last. Last month, when this was taken, both Romania and Croatia were in the process of being wiped. This month, Italy and Germany were both wiped during the taking of these figures, and in addition Greece has been under persistent attack by ONE led by Macedonia.

Perhaps more interesting has been a small dance at the top of the league tables between allies Serbia and Poland. These figures tend to reflect the active, market using citizens. This the graphs are a good way of showing how the domestic situation has changed as well as the economic situation.


Current top 5 countries by income, this month vs last month

Well as we can see, Poland has grown to be the world #1 country by income. This is largely due to three factors. Firstly, the development of Polish babies into more mature adults who contribute more tax income through VAT on food/weapons sales. Secondly, Serbia’s near occupation limited their income through a lot of this period by denying them access to their 2-click population and their resources. Finally, Poland’s huge land-holdings mean that it has a much better set of resources, which means cheaper goods and more efficient production. Anyway, well done Poland for the leap in income, I imagine your friends in ONE will be congratulating you in the comments.


Finally I’m going to wrap up by doing a bit of analysis of the few major players this month.

Macedonia and Bulgaria have both suffered somewhat of a loss in income this month. Macedonia undoubtedly because of the lost connection to her mother regions, as well as the conquest of those regions at one point. Bulgaria perhaps because of a lack of interest in the game, or because if the seemingly overwhelming power of ONE being directed at them so frequently. Whatever the case, both countries have huge potential in the game. My fellow a-team colleagues pretty much all agree that Macedonia is destined to be the next Serbia/Poland in the game, and their close relations with those countries is certainly a help. In much the same way Hungary was like a father to Serbia, Serbia can be a father to Macedonia. It certainly helps to have a core of experienced older players that a country can rely on for support and advice.



I want to specifically mention Sweden in this article. UK’s old nemesis and older friend is in my opinion one of the most impressive economies in the game. Their income certainly doesn’t rank them amongst the giants, but the efficiency in which they turn population numbers into income is second to none globally. In many ways I am more impressed by efficiency than I am by overall numbers. After all, numbers doesn’t require a great deal of economic ability, but using them does. In addition, with a lot of the macroeconomic tools removed, Sweden’s success isn’t derived from government intervention but an overall knowledge of the module by all citizens. Bra gjort Sverige!


In my last article, I made a joke graph about a conflict between ABC and Russia. It turns out it wasn’t so funny, since ABC has been stomping all over every country in the area, backed by the ONE alliance indirectly. They’ve been quite successful, and I’ve decided to do another graph showing the same thing one month on 🙂



I couldn’t write an article without mentioning the current war between Poland and Romania. Romania, like Hungary, is one of our oldest countries and has a lot of strong soldiers. However, Poland is of course the world #1 economy, and this is naturally going to reflect in a somewhat one-sided battle.



Well that is all for the main article! However as you know I do a bunch of bonus graphs for different landmarks in the number of votes 😛 Just a little bit of encouragement to vote and shout. Hope you enjoyed the article, and shout it so others around the world can see 🙂

Iain



Bonus Graph 1 for 20 votes - Breakdown of ABC member incomes




Bonus Graph 2 for 40 votes - UK vs Ireland




Bonus Graph 3 for 60 votes - Spain vs Brazil




Bonus Graph 4 for 80 votes - EDEN vs Poland & Serbia




Bonus Graph 5 for 100 votes - Serbia vs Croatia




Bonus Graph 6 for 130 votes - China vs Indonesia




Bonus Graph 7 for 160 votes - Income breakdown for ONE Alliance members




Bonus Graph 8 for 200 votes - Income breakdown for Terra Alliance members




Bonus Graph 9 for 240 votes - Income breakdown for EDEN Alliance members




Bonus Graph 10 for 280 votes - Per Capita income of countries over 4g per capita




Bonus Graph 11 for 320 votes - Macedonia vs Greece!




Bonus Graph 12 for 350 votes - Spain vs France




Bonus Graph 13 for 400 votes - Turkiye vs Russia!




Bonus Graph 14 for 450 votes - Balkan Melee - comparison of all Balkan countries




Bonus Graph 15 for 500 votes - House of the Rising Sun- Macedonian income growth projections



I will give you a bit of text to explain this one. Firstly, the data itself was taken in 6 sections over a month long period after MKD regained all its regions. Secondly, the extrapolation is based partially on my experience of previous countries, and partially on the way the economy module works (with productivity increasing over time as well as new citizens joining).

Any graph like this is by nature a partial guess, and that is why I don't like doing them. However there was so many PMs asking me about MKD's future, I had to make one I guess 😛 In the past there have been many "potential" countries I have picked out as being future powers. Serbia was one when I first joined PHX. In those days it made 180g a day- less than Russia or Indonesia, but had a strong army and was equal to Hungary on the battlefield. I was reminded very strongly of this when Poland came along with a huge BB. It had a massive pop, but for a long time a low income- sometimes even negative during the baby boom itself 😃

Later on came Turkiye, and they had a huge boom too. When I first knew Turkiye, they were lucky to make 8-9g a day, and had a massive inactive population. When the boom came, they quickly grew in income to 700g a day, then slumped again when they lost players and territory. But the seeds of economic success were planted, and the Turks didn't give up. Their hard-core player base kept going, and today they are a big economic power- one of the top 10 in the world. A long way to climb from one of the smallest countries- and just as the BB was the seeds of their growth, today what they have is a strong plant that could easily grow to match other powers in the future.

The same can be said of MKD, Bulgaria- even Greece. Countries which have a lot of potential, a lot of strength. Whether they lose regions- doesn't matter. Whether they lose heart, matters a lot. If MKD sticks to its goals, stays united, I see them becoming world #1 one day, just as Poland did 1 year after their big boom. GL 🙂





For Bojan Trajkovski