The Economist 15 June ~ Something for all the family

Day 938, 10:48 Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom by Spite313
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Leaders ~ Editorial

Dear friends,

Welcome to the Economist. This week we will be covering a selection of news from the new world, in the style this newspaper used to produce prior to my other responsibilities becoming so great that I didn’t have time. With V2 just around the horizon, we’ll look at some of the first impressions of the new modules by beta testers. In foreign affairs news we’ll be taking a brief glimpse at the deadlock in Eastern Europe, the chaos in Russia and America finally realising that the media module is a big steaming pile of failure. In domestic affairs, I’ll do as unbiased a summary as I can of the recent battle for the House of Lords/Commons, a little bit on papers you should be subbing to, some general advice for new players and a little bit of analysis on the current PP elections. In addition there will be a special article on alliance history- which will be very brief. Apologies to international readers on the bias- I am a Brit and a Phoenix member, it’s going to be from that perspective. Thanks for reading, and it’s good to be back.


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Leaders ~ Papers for Players

When you join eRepublik, there isn’t a lot to do. I know when I joined I just f5’d for a few minutes wondering if anything new would happen before logging off for the day. That’s because erepublik is not, and never has been, about gameplay. It calls itself a social networking game, and that’s what it is. It’s kind of the opposite of facebook games. Whereas they’re a networking site with games attached, eRepublik is a gaming site with networking attached. Over the past 2 years, the networking has become bigger than the game.

To break into this secret world, you first of all have to find the forums, then the IRC channel. Once through that barrier, you will find a large and developed community. A community which organises itself in an adversarial fashion: party vs party; country vs country; alliance vs alliance. However, although this allows you to participate, it doesn’t give you the background knowledge to understand what is going on and why. To do this you can use two resources- the ingame media and the ingame wiki. The wiki has excellent articles which nevertheless tend to be more focused on the mechanics of the game than its content. If you need to know how productivity works check the wiki. If you want to know why wages are dropping and prices rising, you’re more likely to find an answer in the press.

Coming to the point then, here is a list of essential newspapers to read & sub. Some of them are just government papers, some of them are just ones which I am subbed to and like. Feel free to ignore my suggestions if you don’t like them.

Government Papers
Mr Woldy’s Paper- this is the President. He sometimes writes good articles 😛
UK Home Office Paper- This is the Home Office, which is designed to help new players.
National Newspaper Association- This is the NNA, which is half-spam half recap of the weeks news.
Ministry of Defence- This is the MoD paper. It usually has orders for citizens and a link to click to join the army. For new players, the army is not an ingame organisation, it’s organised by the military using various non-erepublik.com websites. So if you’re looking to join, look here.

Old Players who still write articles
Dishmcds- ex-President, PP of UKRP. Usually writes musing articles about stuff.
GLaDOS- Old player, ex-President. Generally trolls foreign media these days. Still worth a sub.
Jamesw- Not very old but still writes long articles which occasionally have a point. Worth subbing 😛
Kumnaa- “The Lion”, unofficial King of UK, creator of most of our tech stuff.
Horice G Fossil- resident funny guy famous for always finding the silver lining to everything.

Other good papers by newer players
Population Stats paper, written by Kevy Kev Kev Junior Shabado. Long name, long articles. Often get to international news. Worth a sub.

Party Papers
The eCommunist- PCP Paper which is supposed to be a witty reflection on this rag.
TUP- The Unity Party’s main newspaper.
UK Reform Paper- though most of the time they seem to use personal papers.
Spectrum News
SDP News

I hope that this list, whilst not exhaustive, has set you on the path to maybe learning a bit about your countries media. The next leap is into the International Media scene. The newspapers there are too many to list, and a lot aren’t in English. It can be a difficult world to break into, but it’s worth it. Understand a countries media and you’re 50% of the way to understanding the character of the country.



Britain ~ House of Lords swansong

This week congress has passed an amendment to the House of Lords. This amendment removed all Lords and changed the selection procedure so that instead of being self-selecting the Lords is instead selected by a unanimous vote of all Party Presidents. Shortly after passing, the Presidents of TUP and PCP rejected all the Lords and made it clear they would reject any other nominations.

The stated reason for the amendment, of which the consequences were clear, was to force the House of Lords debate onto more fertile ground. The House of Lords was originally proposed in late 2008. In those early days it had the power to reject legislation outright. Longer debating times meant that laws could be debated for as long as a month before being finally rejected by the Lords. Since then the Lords’ powers have been slowly whittled down. However three objections remained. Firstly, the Lords selected themselves. This made them a ‘club’ in many ways, and meant that members were judged based on characteristics which perhaps had little relevance to the job they were intended to do. Secondly the Lords had the right to vote on issues in the same way as a congressmen. Because they were much fewer in number, in many cases three Lords could block legislation voted for by over twenty elected congressmen. They could also sponsor laws, which is the process by which forum debates advance to ingame propositions. Finally they were, and always had been, a retirement home. Of the Lords currently in place, only four turned up to vote on the amendment. Those in favour of overhauling the whole system voted in favour to essentially block all the Lords and thus force a real debate on the table.

Those who opposed the amendment argued that the Lords worked as an oversight body to the commons. In many cases their main argument was consistent for over a year- congressmen were too stupid or ignorant to make decisions. To back up this claim they pointed to the (admittedly numerous) cases of congressman proposing minimum wage changes, increases in citizen fees, and so on without discussion. The argument, whilst simple, was a powerful one. Many Lords were amongst the older and more influential citizens and their support was strong for over a year. In the final vote however, congress’ pro-Lords members only numbered about half of the anti-Lords members. Many of the pro-HoL Act lobby tried to block the amendment by further amending legislative procedure rules. They also tried to find flaws in the legislation which would block it. However this failed and the act was passed. The final vote was 19-9 in favour of amendment.

The debate has since moved on, and now members are discussing a compromise Act proposed by former Lord Dishmcds which would compromise between the two positions. The House of Lords Act would be fully repealed, and the Lords would be replaced by a senior advisory committee. This committee would be selected and removed by the House of Commons, would have no voting rights and no special privileges. It would strictly define the difference between an advisor and an elected legislator. Thus advisors can comment, but they can in no way effect the legislative process except perhaps by swaying votes. To me, this seems like a good compromise. It ensures the sovereignty of the Commons whilst providing the chamber with advice when it decides to listen. The lack of powers in the committee is a boon not a flaw in the measure, as it means that the Advisors must try and engage with the Commons rather than opposing it. The House of Commons Act (as it is known) is likely to pass with the required supermajority, with it now standing at 16-0 in favour.



Britain ~ Advice for New Players
Don’t fight. Before I write anything else, I have to write that. Nearly every new player who needs government help needs it because they have fought without understanding how the war module currently works. Once V2 has arrived, this will be meaningless- but until then, learn how to fight before you actually do it.

Some simple rules to remember
*You can gain 50 wellness a day from the hospital, provided you have fought
*You can only use the hospital if you live in London
*You can only use the hospital once each erep day
*Erep days start at 8am in the UK, and finish at 7.59am. Don’t fight at say 11pm and then again before daychange at 7.30am in the morning, because you’ll not be able to use it.
*You can’t fight one day and heal the next

With fighting out of the way, the next important thing is wellness. If you have just started, you will begin on 100 wellness. You can’t afford to maintain this, but you can afford to keep it high enough so that it’ll be easy to get back to 100 later. Buy Q3 food if you can. If you can’t afford it (most can’t at a young age) then this exists to help out. Read it carefully, it could save your life. Once you get to level 6, you get a treasure map with some gold in it. You can use this to get a Q1 house. Q1 house + Q3 food means you won’t lose any more wellness, and you can begin to get back to 100.

Why 100 wellness? Well wellness effects both your productivity and your fighting power in V1. Since this means you produce more, your employer is less likely to fire you and more likely to give you a raise if you ask. If you have 40 wellness you’re useless and will be fired. My suggestion to someone less than a week old on very low wellness is to delete your account and start again. It sounds harsh, but I’ve been playing over 1.5 years, and with some luck you will be to. So 1 week makes little difference. Spending the next 2 months trying to get back up to 100 will suck the life out of the game for you though.

Finally, working. Make sure you get yourself into a 1 star company. As soon as you’re hired, PM the GM. If they don’t reply for days they’re probably either lazy or can’t be bothered to log in every day and you should quit. Getting a good boss is basically the goal of every worker. In my opinion a good boss:
*Updates your wage when your skill rises
*Makes sure your wellness is ok
*Answers questions about the game if you ask
If your boss isn’t any of the above just quit. If your wellness is near to 100 you’re a valuable commodity and you have the right to just walk if they’re useless. Working is a mutual arrangement, the employer has responsibilities too. Unlike RL it’s easy to find a job, so why hang around supporting a poor manager?

A skill 2 worker makes much more than skill 1, and so on. Skill 7 makes more than skill 6.5. If you think that you’re not getting a fair wage, message your boss. Come onto the eUK forums (forums.erepublik.co.uk) and post a topic offering yourself. I have spoken to players who are skill 3 and still working for £1 because they haven’t quit. Capitalists love ignorant workers because for them its free money, they’re stealing your labour. With a market economy, you pretty much have to get a job for a capitalist, but you deserve a fair deal. Saying that, if you’re feeling red today you can always PM the People’s Commune which is a commune. This means you get minimum wage, free food and free gifting and so on. Basically in exchange for your work you get looked after. The flip side is that when you’re older you’re expected to work for cheap to help out other young’uns. The People’s Commune remains the best deal for young players in terms of employment.

Once you’ve sorted out fighting, wellness and working you’ve managed the basics. Well done! The next step is to develop your understanding of the game, and the community. But with decent wellness management and a decent wage you’re halfway there.



Special Report ~ V2

I’m not going to go into too much detail on this. Why? Because firstly everything now is uncertain and up for review. That’s what a beta is. Secondly because since I’m not in beta myself I don’t want to look like a fool. Well- not anymore of a fool anyway. Saying that, there are some conclusions I can draw. Firstly, the admins are making eRep more like a real game. Secondly, they’re making us pay for the privilege. A lot of players, despite what I have previously said about the community, do care about rank, experience points, strength and skill. When the admins allowed citizens to pay for more strength there was an upcry. 2 gold a day, every day, is the price some people pay. Even at the cheapest rate of exchange that amounts to about £0.9 a day, just for 0.12 strength instead of 0.04.

As you might imagine, the admins have expanded this to reap as much gold from you as possible in V2. Firstly they’ve added boosters to skills as well as the military aspect. They’ve added boosters to practically everything in fact, in the hope that everyone will be so driven by the desire to kill some other player on the battlefield that they’ll pay real life money for the privilege. Much as I’d like to kill a few people, I’d rather be repeatedly beaten by everyone than give up my money to win. Maybe that’s just me, but I get the feeling that this is the general feeling amongst players without huge RL bank balances like Max McFarland.

Fighting won’t be a case of wildly clicking five times then pressing heal either. Considering the amount of new players the current system murders I expect a massacre in V2 unless new players are forced to read tutorials every time the fight. I can see new players fighting to death with no hospital and lying in heaps somewhere in China, all killed by a single lunatic with piles of gold. From the looks of it, Fighting consists of map control. What does this mean for strategists? Well it means for a start that war will become a lot more complex. For example if you have a defensive line, and it’s breached, you could risk a charge through the gap for the capital. On the other hand if you have a reserve to protect against breaches you could end up weakening your defence enough for multiple breaches. It’ll be a complex dance. Will armies seek to attack in tight formation, punching holes, or move as a spread-out horde, seeking to occupy a lot of territory quickly? Sounds like in the future, wars will be lost by confused generals rather than won by armies. More like real life then!

The economy module (such as it is) is basically flexible now. So you can choose how long you spend working and how long you spend training your brain and muscles, as well as how long you spend...making...yourself...happy. To me this also spells disaster. New players won’t have a clue. They’ll be working all the hours they can to make money for happiness and guns and getting no work skill. They’ll be training 12 hours a day and have muscles like Hercules but no brain. I think the admins need to really sort out proper tutorial if they’re going to complexify* this much, but odds on they won’t. So we’ll have a game which will be good for old rich players and will murder all the new players- a governments worst nightmare.

*complexify apparently isn’t a word. It is now



Europe ~ Deadlock in the East

What do you get when you have five baby booms in neighbouring countries and not a single shred of iron between them? This, sadly, isn’t a rhetorical question. In Eastern Europe, we have Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Croatia. Five powerful countries: Bulgaria, Hungary and Serbia on one side; Romania and Croatia on the other. A skip away from this fulcrum is Poland, Turkey, Greece and Russia, four more important countries. If there is a centre to the eWorld it is there. Sadly, none of the countries have the force to break the deadlock. Those countries are the definition of what happens when an unstoppable force meets an unmoveable object.

Long ago, Romania occupied Hungary (and pretty much everyone else too). Then Hungary broke free and went on a rampage through Europe, Canada, USA and China, occupying a high iron region. Fast forward a year and Serbia followed it’s brothers footsteps (metaphorically) by rampaging across the Balkans, Turkey, then Asia to arrive next door to Hungary in China. Now the precedent is set, it is the goal of most of the five nations to break out of their geopolitical deadlock and run for the orient, or South America. However, like all bad neighbours, they all wait with foot outstretched ready to trip any of the group who try to leave. No country can move without the threat of a block by another. Since they’re all major powers, MPPs don’t bother them. In the unlikely event the blocked country returns fire they’ll be stuck in a deadlock of 15 countries instead of 2.

Because of this, power for a long time has laid in the hands of armies. In the older times, professional mobile armies were a rarity. Countries tried to get a border with the country they disliked and then attacked it directly. The PEACE invasion of the USA began the change to mobile armies. Now the change is complete. The five countries- especially Hungary, Serbia and Romania- fight through surrogates. This has left only the USA, Poland and Spain amongst powerful countries employing the old methods of direct attack. But this deadlock is soon to be broken. Not by a baby boom, or a shift in alliances, but by V2. Imagine the V2 module, then the situation in the Balkans. Aside from the obvious- that mobile armies will be king in V2 and those who have been fighting with them for months will be at an advantage- there are other revelations in the changes to be found. If you haven’t seen them for yourselves, I’ll leave it for another day to explain properly.



Europe ~ Russia attacks USA
One of the main foreign affairs blips in the last month was the attack on the USA by the Russian President HankScorpio. I’ll keep this brief, because it’s not a particularly complex story. Basically, congress moved to impeach Hank a few days after he was elected. A lot of countries randomly impeach their CP just because the congress doesn’t like them. Fortunately, we’re not one of these countries. Seeing that he was being impeached, Hank attacked USA. Obviously this wasn’t planned, and all across both alliances people fell off their chairs. In EDEN, citizens were wondering what Russia was doing, was this a ploy, an invitation to war, an attempt on Canada’s resources. In Phoenix citizens just thought Russia had went crazy and decided to go on a mad killing spree.

In the aftermath of the attack, Hank threatened to attack Poland, but said he didn’t have enough gold. Rich real life millionaire Max McFarland 2 sent Hank over 700 gold to attack Poland with. However Hank decided to give the gold away instead, which is actually quite funny, considering Max had to buy that gold with real money (equivalent to about 300 Euros). Now we have yet another deadlock- an open war, but one which isn’t too inviting because of Russia’s MPPs.



USA ~ There’s nothing on TV

In the USA, the media is much more active than anywhere else in the world. With over seven thousand newspapers, the USA seems to be one of the most saturated media centres in the world. However, it has finally come to their notice that the top 5 news (the section most people see) is full of crap. Country President Chocolate McSkittles recently wrote an article decrying the fact that an article with two words and an insulting picture gets more votes than in depth analysis. I know from experience this is true. Writing huge articles with a lot of detail is good for new players, but somehow lolcats get all the votes.

What’s amazing is that it’s taken all this time for the USA to realise this. It started with two articles mentioning Max McFarland. The argument goes that any article mentioning him or written by him will get voted up massively due to the general population’s stupidity. An argument they proved right, twice. But to be honest, Americans need to look to their eCulture for answers. Way back in early V1 they introduced the Pony Express. This was basically a list of people who would, on command, vote up articles relevant to the US or its interests both domestic and abroad, essentially putting hundreds of votes in the hands of the Presidency. In the modern world, where people have tens of thousands of subs, this may seem like nothing. However it is not the numbers which matter, but the implications about American culture.

Another piece of the puzzle can be found in congress elections. The USA has over fifty regions because of its states IRL. This means it is constantly under thread of a political take over. Their solution to this has been endorsements. In many cases, it is possible to sit down, calculate each candidate’s support, and predict accurately every region. Candidates personalities don’t come into it of course- but that itself isn’t a huge problem. However, the issue is that parties are now becoming a bit of a blobby mess. Apart from SEES, which is a cult of personality really, there isn’t a lot of differentiation between parties. Indeed, people regularly bounce from one to another. The main differences are in the level of organisation each party commands.

What this all leads to is a media which is entirely focused on two main things: National success and personality politics. This means that we see nothing but ramblings of elderly players and national articles- which squeezes out all of the random musings, philosophical tracts, discussions and new players articles which make the whole thing so much fun! If the USA wants to fix its media, it needs to attack the root problem- apathy and a lack of sub-national culture.



Special Report ~ A Very brief history of Phoenix and EDEN

To begin with I will try and explain where the two main alliances have their roots. It’s important when studying any political situation to know how it came to be, and this is no different. Phoenix is the third incarnation of an alliance which contains roughly the same core membership. The first incarnation was FIST, the second and most well known was PEACE and the final incarnation is Phoenix. Similarly EDEN is the third incarnation of what was originally the Northern Alliance, then ATLANTIS.

Modern alliance history starts with the collapse of ATLANTIS in May 2009. This was caused primarily by the Swedish decision to attack and conquer Germany, which was a provisional member of ATLANTIS. This civil war divided the alliance cleanly between the USA, UK and Canada and the Eastern block of ATLANTIS. The English-speaking countries supported Germany as the victim and the others supported Sweden as the longest standing ally. This broke the alliance irretrievably. The Eastern countries formed a quasi alliance which eventually became codified as EDEN. The USA attempted to form “FORTIS”, which would comprise of the Anglo countries, plus Ireland and Spain. The USA however voted to pursue neutrality whilst the dust settled, and Spain eventually joined EDEN. An alliance with two members seemed silly, so the USA instead formed the Brolliance with Canada, basically a mutual support pact.

Shortly after this, PEACE attacked the USA, and the UK joined them. The main reason for joining PEACE was that EDEN clearly hated us, and we were fed up with our media being trolled by Americans. The invasion of the USA wiped out Canada and reduced the USA to one region. In the end, six countries participated in the invasion. Indonesia attacked through California, a vitally important region; Russia through Alaska; Hungary through Canada (via Scotland); Portugal through the South East and France through the North East. The UK of course participated in the invasion as a blocker, though no war was opened with the countries until later. The importance of this is that the USA was forced to work with EDEN to defend itself, and this eventually led to the two North American countries rejoining EDEN.

In the following months, EDEN grew in strength due to two successful babybooms, one in Poland and one in Spain. Both countries attacked their neighbours, France and Germany, eventually linking up. At the same time, the USA and Canada prepared for an invasion of the UK. Months earlier, an abortive invasion of Norway had opened Norways MPP with Romania in the North. This opened the path for a five way invasion of the UK by Sweden, Norway, USA, Canada and Spain/Poland. In the end the UK was reduced to a single region, London. After a single massive attack on London, EDEN ran out of gold and decided to focus on more important regions. This time also marked a coup d’etat in EDEN leadership, as many saw the invasion of the UK as a massive waste of money and evidence of the same stupidity which saw the USA invaded the first time.

Following that, Hungary faced several attacks on its high iron region in Asia by the growing power of China backed by the USA. The region was eventually lost, and though Liaoning, Serbia’s region, remains in Phoenix hands the power of the alliance is greatly weakened in Asia by the loss. In turn, Phoenix forced Poland out of France and Germany using a series of resistance wars coupled with the use of activated MPPs against Slovenia. At present only two regions of these countries remain occupied- Aquitaine and Rhone-Alps, both of which are top targets for Phoenix. EDEN’s main goal is to remove a Phoenix presence in Asia.

And that’s how it stands at the minute folks!


Endnote
Thank you for reading (whether you read it all or not). It required a lot of work, and if you could Vote and Sub that would be most helpful.

Now if you’ll excuse me, my fingers are bleeding.