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Dear friends.

Welcome to another edition of The Economist, the final report on the Swedish Economy. Let me express my thanks to Valnad who stuck his neck out and commissioned this series of reports. It’s been very interesting writing about an economy I called home for a good portion of last year and this. I always thought Sweden and Britain had similar temperaments, so it was with a certain amount of satisfaction that I saw my compatriots settle there in increasing numbers in recent months.

This article will be a special report and will cover the entire month-long period.

All data mining for this report was completed by Invalidation - Newspaper

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For now until I can work out what the hell the admins are doing, I am not taking any new projects on. Existing projects will be completed as normal

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So here is the map of income across the whole of Valnad’s month as CP. As you can see, I have added on a few markers to show when the major admin interventions occurred. In some cases the effect is immediately noticeable, but most of the time the effects aren’t felt for days or even weeks afterwards. For example, the introduction of the companies offer, followed by Q2 training, wrecked the money market for everyone. Even formerly strong currencies like PLN and RSD were really dying- it becomes apparent now why. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the admins had activated a bot to strip gold from the markets, so people were less upset by this change. A jump from 800-900 to 1000 isn’t as bad as a jump from 500.



What this change has effectively done is severely limit your ability to both trade currencies and observe markets. It is removing yet another layer from the game. Long ago (post v2) when all currencies were rapidly losing value, by a factor of over 1000%, I argued that we needed a fixed exchange rate. I envisaged this as being a kind of admin shop, where currency or gold could both be bought directly from the admin at a fixed price. This change has simply taken the pressure of a non-used sector (the buy currency side) and put huge pressure on the opposite side by forcing the value of certain currencies down. Make no mistake- if your currency was already over 1100 or so = 1g, you probably won’t notice a difference. This is a punishment for stronger economies and nothing else.

Anyway, back to the Economy. The average daily income of Sweden was 196,754.21 SEK! That’s pretty much what I expected after the first two weeks. Averaging the value of SEK on the money market, we can calculate the value of that at 136.2 gold income per day, which puts it in one of the top earning governments in the world in raw terms.

I guess people might be curious what I think will happen to the income of Sweden after these changes. In truth I don’t expect huge changes unless the admin changes bot prices. The truth of it is, what the admins have effectively done is regulate all other currency values to the approximate value of SEK (in theory). The biggest changes I can see are a lack of gold on the MM, and an end of “saltpetre tourism”. Now all currencies are relatively cheap it is far more practical than it was for Poles and Serbs to buy at home.

If the bot remains active, selling to that will remain the main source of income in Sweden. However we will increasingly see changing patterns in the way people buy goods. It is now possible to have a job in any country, and be paid in the “one” currency. It is possible to then buy goods in a second country with this currency. With this in mind, the implications are obvious. People will have jobs in countries with higher wages, will hire people in countries with low wages and high bonuses, and will buy products in countries with low taxes and low budgets. With the hassle of exchanging gold and messing around with differing rates of exchange gone, the boundaries between markets will also begin to come apart.

Bonuses will be the deciding factor in keeping prices low, and therefore will also decide which markets are most popular. You can see where I am going here- the human factor on the markets of large countries without bonuses will drop sharply. Countries with low prices will become king. The comparative advantage Serbia had with low wages will disappear as people go to where the wages are highest- in all likelihood this will be a country with full bonuses. All in all it means bonuses are more important than ever before in maintaining domestic sales and therefore tax income.



Donations versus income for the month shows that Sweden made an absolute tonne of cash in real terms- with their treasury increasing by over 2 and a half million SEK. They managed to donate 2.5m currency out of their treasury, which is about 85% of the theoretical maximum possible over the recording period, and thus is pretty commendable.

Here is a shocking statistic for you: This month the Swedish government made 11,912 SEK per player. That’s a heck of a lot! The treasury grew by 2,958,959.3 SEK overall, to a total of 11,748,315.90 SEK at the end of the period.



I think this will be more of historic value than anything- the last days of SEK as an independent currency. As it stands now (for those who haven’t read the articles) there is only one currency in the game. All purchases, on the market or money market, are using this currency. Although confusingly the “tag” on your currency will be your home country, the money market is now global and you will be buying and selling against people of all nations. This makes things very boring indeed. But here you can see the value of SEK over the month.



If you refer back to the first graph I posted, you can see the huge spike in value at the beginning corresponds to the “cheap upgrades” offer (people buying gold to upgrade). The market was juddery midway through the month, still bereft of gold from that offer. The energy bars offer on the 23rd drove the cost of gold up again, and then the introduction of Q2 training made it go crazy as everyone cashed in their SEK. Now of course it makes no difference, but that was a scary looking climb at the end.

People who sold gold at 1800 can now buy their gold back at a fair old profit. But be warned- this will not last in my opinion.



Raw materials markets are a tale of two bot crashes: one at the beginning of the month, and one immediately after the elections. You can see them both clearly on the graphs below. What was surprising for me is the amount of sales above the bot price in Sweden. It means that the bot must be active enough to strip the market of goods at 0.33 a lot of the time, leaving it with only higher offers. It also suggests that a lot of company owners don’t own the WRM companies of their own to supply their Q6 companies.





This also taught me that the food raw material market is a lot more volatile and therefore a lot more profitable than the WRM market in Sweden. Low supply and reasonable demand mean it is more often above the bot price. The jerkiness stems from the fact that most citizens have some food raw material companies- even if it’s just the three grain companies. A surge in posting can send the whole market haywire. Often there were 2-3 pages of tiny offers at 0.3, then a jump to the more established players pricing at 0.33. However, on some days it jumped as high as 0.37, which if you have the storage is the kind of thing you can cash in on (speaking from personal experience).



This chart teaches me something else- weapons prices are not affected by the bot. In other words, the supply of weapons more or less matches demand. When the bot was deactivated on the 25th, we saw no corresponding fall in weapons prices to match the WRM drop. The downward spikes you see are caused by individuals dumping large offers well below the market average. Really these are like giveaways, and someone who was a bit unpleasant could easily buy all of them and repost at a higher price with the expectation of selling them. Not usually something older players do, but there are exceptions!



This taught me that Q5 still represents the bulk of the wellness available on the markets in Sweden, and has a fairly stable sell price which is (again) much less affected by the bot than it’s corresponding raw material. Q6 remains an overpriced novelty, and few humans appear to buy it. For the two day period 16-17 February there were no offers on the market below 9 SEK, which is basically just where some enterprising guys had left some waiting. Needless to say, nobody would buy at that price. Q6 food is basically a joke, and if the admins had a brain they’d offer to migrate companies to Q6 weapons and just delete the Q6 food option, since it adds absolutely nothing to the game.



Probably the most interesting change this month has been the wage gain in Sweden. After the bot was reactivated and workers were limited to 10 per company, wages began to rise steadily as competition for workers reasserted itself. Annoying as the changes were, it was an interesting example of how costs rise to squeeze a profit as competition increases. You can see the costs rose steadily until wages were around 230 SEK and then stalled. At this price, hiring employees in Q5 companies is unprofitable. So it is just a case of prices rising until Q6 owners control the entire workforce. With relatively static WRM and weapons prices, wage changes have proven the biggest contributor to changes in profitability this month.



This graph shows the profitability based on the cheapest goods and highest wages/RM prices on the market. The big spikes correspond to the spikes in weapons prices caused by dumping- likelihood is that most company owners didn’t have big spikes like this unless they hired new people on that particular day and sold at the cheapest price. But it does show a general trend.

One thing I was interested in was the effect of war on the markets. Obviously this month was marked by several major conflicts globally and I had expected the price and supply of weapons to be drained accordingly. However that didn’t occur and I struggled to find any real correlation between conflict and prices. In the past there was usually a very direct link. I can only assume this is based on the fact that the majority of players receive weapons from governments or military units during these periods, and the remainder isn’t enough to adversely affect the market. Either that or Swedes don’t fight, I’m not sure 😛



Well this is the end of the road for my Swedish analysis, and it’s been a lot of work but pretty good fun. I’d like to say here that over the past 3 and a bit years I’ve dedicated my game to the economy of eRepublik. Yes I have been SG of ONE and Phoenix, and will remember those times fondly. But my main interest was always with the money aspect. Not owning it, but just handling and understanding it. I spent more than fifty terms in governments of nine countries and three alliance HQs, watching the economy. As each change to the module came, I felt myself looking away from the screen in disgust. Unplanned changes destroyed whole concepts. Rushed ideas meant great plans died before they had a chance to breathe. The potential that eRepublik had as an economy sim died. Even the few attempts by players to bring life to the economy module with api tools have been brutally squashed by uncaring admins.

When I began writing, there was almost nobody in the world writing about the economy, about politics, or about society. Most articles were either spam, propaganda or government related. Now I see loads of great writers in the world, all wanting to make their voices heard. Sure there are still the trolls hiding under their bridges, throwing out toilet humour. But there are also a lot of earnest writers working hard. In countries like Sweden that’s especially true. They have a very mature, responsible community I find myself admiring, and they play this as a game not some mad vengeance trip, which is how it should be played. By way of final encouragement, let me say that perseverance is one key to success, and the other is to play for yourself. I spend several hours working on articles like this, and I maybe get 1-2 subs. But I feel like I am creating something I can be proud of- not just copying images from 9gag into an article and posting how ONE/EDEN sucks. I hope that anyone who has made it this far through the article will take heart and keep persevering through the lack of acclaim. We all start somewhere- don’t be tempted by the troll path 😛

The money markets are dead, all hail Platobot!

Iain


PS. A lot of the information I had regarding the changes is patchy. I haven’t had time to test everything since I got home- if you have better information or evidence, by all means send it my way. I will add it with full credit.