The Economist ~ Comments on the recent proposed game changes
Day 3,901, 04:01
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Published in Iran 
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by
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by Spite313
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Dear friends,
Following the recent proposed game changes a few people have asked me to comment on what this may mean for the economy, for politics and for the military (in the context of my last article). I have taken a few days to think about it, and admittedly have also been distracted by a few other things (thanks Alfagrem).
Before I dive into analysis, I would just like to thank the kind people of Iran for accepting my citizenship. Since I am no longer CP of the eUK, I am free to move around, and decided that the time had definitely come to do some travelling. Iran was one of the first countries to welcome me back to the game, and was at the top of my list for a place to go. Since we first fought together back in the days of PEACE Iranians have been some of the coolest - and I have to say craziest - people I’ve met in the game. It’s an honour to be back amongst you. I apologise for writing in English today, my intention is to reach as wide an audience as possible and my farsi is non-existent. I know a number of my articles have been previously translated by Bulletz4Breakfast and as always my words are free to be translated or reused by anyone however they see fit.
Persian translation
Changes to determination in resistance wars
Currently the determination is computed based of consecutive days under occupation since the last liberation no matter the occupant. Starting Day 3,929 determination will be computed for each occupant individually, based on the total number of days it held the region in the past 250 days.
The game will continue to use the same determination formula as it currently does. For those who need reminding, the graph looks like this:
However what has changed is that when you leave a region, the determination will not start to drop until 250 days after the day you first invaded the region. If, in the meantime, the region is invaded, the determination will start to rise again.
The game admins have not been clear on how determination drop will be calculated outside of the 250 days. However I assume that it is essentially a ticker, so if you’ve occupied a country for 100/250 days, and you go past that 250 day period, it reduces by one each day (99/250, 98/250 etc.) until 0, and the determination drops correspondingly. It would be good to have some clarity, as the admins state:
All mechanics regarding determination after liberation will remain unchanged.
However, this cannot be the case as currently the rate of determination drop following liberation is between 6-12 days depending on the length of the occupation.
MightandMagic has pointed out you can see the before/after determination for each region on the region page, e.g. Central Armenia
What impact will this have on the occupations?
The obvious impact will be that long term occupations of territory will be almost impossible (by a single country). It would still be possible for example to have a long term occupation provided you regularly swapped regions with other occupiers, however for this to work you would ideally need around 3-4 occupiers so you could do the swap every 60-80 days to avoid determination getting too high. This would ensure determination never gets beyond around 2.
It will make colonisation much more challenging, and occupying regions for bonuses almost impossible unless there are multiple examples of the same bonus within striking distance, and the country attacking can seize those easily. If the admins ever redistribute resources, this will be a major consideration. Until then, occupying for resources won’t be possible as after some time determination will edge high enough that targeting these regions or connecting regions with resistance wars will be an obvious strategy for rival countries and alliances.
What impact will this have on training wars - Edited
This section has been edited following input from vladb and the ever-present N0s3y.
Although determination won't have a negative effect on releasing regions, it will mean that attacking the same regions repeatedly will lead for a build up in determination. This means that it will become steadily more difficult for a TW to continue, especially where the balance of power between the sides is ordinarily close to equal. The example given by N0s3y was that if determination was at 3x, it would require 300m on the attacking side to overcome 100m on the defending side.
One solution to this is to have training wars with a short timeframe- for example 60 days- and to swap partners in and out. This is easier when partners border one another.
Another option would be to have a ping-pong war across the border, where losing would not cause any long term issues.
Countries with a lot of regions like the eUSA could rotate the regions used for the TW.
Generally this change will make TWs more difficult which is a good thing. Hurrah.
Proposed change: resource rental
The admins also proposed another change in partnership with this: resource rental. This change is somewhat broken in my opinion, but let’s look through what it actually entails first of all:
Once the Concession Contract is accepted by both countries, the resource will no longer count towards Country A’s productivity bonus and will be added to Country B’s resource pool as if connected to the Capital (full bonus)... Every day the Resource Rental is in effect the Concessioning Country will be charged for the concession directly from treasury and the fee will be added the the Conceding Country (Country A)’s treasury.
The rental fee can be seen below:
The numbers here are staggering. I am not sure if most of you can comprehend the gross domestic output of eRepublik in currency, but it’s colossal. The way the fee is calculated, the cost is related to the GDP of the industry the resource is related to. So for example, rubber takes from the GDP of the weapons industry, and Granite from the housing industry.
Let’s look at the GDP of three economies:
Now let’s see what the cost of getting all three industries to 100% would be, assuming you can find someone willing to rent you their resources:
Well… that’s bleak. I have to admit doing some of the maths I had my head in my hands, and things look very dark for Romania, formerly the world’s second largest economy, soon to be I’m not sure what. I’ll probably take some time and go through the top 20 largest economies in a separate article, but for now let’s think about this some more.
What are the implications of rentals on company placement?
So, rightly or wrongly, the rental fee is tied to GDP. GDP is determined by economic activity within the industry (I assume including raw materials and manufacturing). Ergo, the more companies you have active in your country, the higher your GDP, and the more expensive rentals are. This has two outcomes:
Selling countries: In a perfectly free market, countries will sell to the highest bidder. Since the prices are determined by the size of the buying country's GDP, this means that countries with larger economies will pay more than ones with smaller economies. So there will be a scramble for smaller countries to pair up with those buyers with the biggest GDP.
Buying countries: Countries with large GDP but low native bonuses (like Romania) will see a lot of companies move out of their regions. However, this will in turn lower their rental costs significantly, which would potentially allow them to reachieve bonuses in time.
Occupation by other means
There’s also something else to consider: the threat of violence/occupation. For example, a big country could bully a smaller one into returning some of the rental fee with the threat of constant attack/harassment, or removing congress meaning they couldn’t access their economy.
Another potential threat would be from military (and subsequently political) take over. Smaller countries essential to the economy of their larger neighbours will likely find themselves taken over so that currency can be diverted back from any rental deal.
Global economic shift
It is really hard to predict or model the impact this change will have on the global economy. The admins are giving everyone a free pass to move their holding companies (and companies) wherever they like. What this will probably mean is a lot of people making a lot of mistakes very quickly.
In the short term, occupations will probably continue to give some sort of gradual handover/continuity. However with time this will naturally end and rental agreements will be put in place.
Housing seems to be a particular problem due to the high cost nature of the products. With no country (I think?) having perfect housing bonuses, the countries that have near perfect bonuses (such as Russia) will have an influx of companies.
It’s my prediction that the confusion, combined with the relative shortage of countries with 90% bonuses, will result in a shortfall of all products, but especially of housing. This will drive up prices globally- I will discuss this in more detail below as it requires it's own section really.
Those countries who achieve full bonuses first or close to the time of the big switchover will likely see the biggest benefit from people relocating companies (and will simultaneously become super polluted super quickly).
Taxation
The admins need to divorce “work as manager tax” from “work as employee” tax and allow them to be set separately.
Relatively low WAM tax rates are essential for the economy to function: anything past 3-4% tends to make raw materials companies unprofitable. However tax rates of 6-10 currency on a 550 currency salary don’t make sense. The huge amount of money that goes through the housing industry (over 6 billion in Romania currently) is barely reflected in their tax figures.
This means that whilst the cost of renting house resources is very high, the benefit for the country hosting the industry is very low. There is therefore a negative incentive to having maximum housing bonuses (hence my prediction there will be a housing shortage).
Food and weapons are scalable because they rely on WAM. So as the amount of WAM increases, so does the size of GDP, the work tax income, and the rental costs. It is mostly scalable: to power one Q7 weapons company you need at least 88 Q5 raw companies. That means each Q7 has 89 WAM and 20 works. 82% of clicks are therefore contributing to work tax, which is scalable. Food is all WAM.
House companies on the other hand have no WAM. So for a Q1 house you have 2.5 employees building the house, and 2 producing the raw materials. That means for a house worth 2500cc, you only get a tiny amount of tax (in Russia it’s around 55cc). VAT doesn’t really count, since although houses are only produced in a few countries, they can be (and are) sold everywhere. The figures on how many people work in each industry aren't available, but even if all workers were employed by the housing industry, the taxes from housing would not even begin to cover the cost of rental.
To address this, the admins need to make a separate employee tax rate, which can be set at a higher rate. This will allow the government to collect taxes from employees, and use that money to rent house resources if necessary.
Regions being conquered
There is one more vague point to address. In their statement the admins say:
A country holding a concession on a resource will benefit from the extra productivity bonus as long as the original country owns the region for which the concession is valid. Losing the region by the original owner will not break the concession (as they might be able to recover it by the end of the duration of the concession) and the Concessioning Country (Country B ) will still be charged every day.
This implies that if a region is conquered which contains a bonus, the country renting it loses access to the bonus but has to continue paying the rental. So for example if Romania is renting rubber in Abkhazia, and it is conquered by Russia, they have to continue paying Georgia even though they are not getting the benefits.
To me this sounds a bit...crazy. But if true, it will mean that rental countries will effectively be protectorates of their larger partners. It also means that to disrupt an economy an invader does not have to directly attack, but can instead take regions from a much weaker country with a rental agreement. This could be especially difficult when you consider the resource may be located on the other side of the world from the renting country.
Conclusions
I am aware this article is a bit of a jumble, and I’m still trying to get my own thoughts straight. There may also be some mistakes- please post any corrections in the comments and I’ll make the changes. I am aware more info may have leaked I haven’t read or had access to.
My conclusion is that this change will cause an enormous amount of chaos, and will undermine some of the strongest economies in the game. Those that have secured good native bonuses will have a huge advantage in this new system. Rental will be prohibitively expensive, especially for housing, without tax changes.
The admins did say they were willing to consider feedback and changes: consider this my feedback.
Iain
Dear friends,
Following the recent proposed game changes a few people have asked me to comment on what this may mean for the economy, for politics and for the military (in the context of my last article). I have taken a few days to think about it, and admittedly have also been distracted by a few other things (thanks Alfagrem).
Before I dive into analysis, I would just like to thank the kind people of Iran for accepting my citizenship. Since I am no longer CP of the eUK, I am free to move around, and decided that the time had definitely come to do some travelling. Iran was one of the first countries to welcome me back to the game, and was at the top of my list for a place to go. Since we first fought together back in the days of PEACE Iranians have been some of the coolest - and I have to say craziest - people I’ve met in the game. It’s an honour to be back amongst you. I apologise for writing in English today, my intention is to reach as wide an audience as possible and my farsi is non-existent. I know a number of my articles have been previously translated by Bulletz4Breakfast and as always my words are free to be translated or reused by anyone however they see fit.
Persian translation
Changes to determination in resistance wars
Currently the determination is computed based of consecutive days under occupation since the last liberation no matter the occupant. Starting Day 3,929 determination will be computed for each occupant individually, based on the total number of days it held the region in the past 250 days.
The game will continue to use the same determination formula as it currently does. For those who need reminding, the graph looks like this:
However what has changed is that when you leave a region, the determination will not start to drop until 250 days after the day you first invaded the region. If, in the meantime, the region is invaded, the determination will start to rise again.
The game admins have not been clear on how determination drop will be calculated outside of the 250 days. However I assume that it is essentially a ticker, so if you’ve occupied a country for 100/250 days, and you go past that 250 day period, it reduces by one each day (99/250, 98/250 etc.) until 0, and the determination drops correspondingly. It would be good to have some clarity, as the admins state:
All mechanics regarding determination after liberation will remain unchanged.
However, this cannot be the case as currently the rate of determination drop following liberation is between 6-12 days depending on the length of the occupation.
MightandMagic has pointed out you can see the before/after determination for each region on the region page, e.g. Central Armenia
What impact will this have on the occupations?
The obvious impact will be that long term occupations of territory will be almost impossible (by a single country). It would still be possible for example to have a long term occupation provided you regularly swapped regions with other occupiers, however for this to work you would ideally need around 3-4 occupiers so you could do the swap every 60-80 days to avoid determination getting too high. This would ensure determination never gets beyond around 2.
It will make colonisation much more challenging, and occupying regions for bonuses almost impossible unless there are multiple examples of the same bonus within striking distance, and the country attacking can seize those easily. If the admins ever redistribute resources, this will be a major consideration. Until then, occupying for resources won’t be possible as after some time determination will edge high enough that targeting these regions or connecting regions with resistance wars will be an obvious strategy for rival countries and alliances.
What impact will this have on training wars - Edited
This section has been edited following input from vladb and the ever-present N0s3y.
Although determination won't have a negative effect on releasing regions, it will mean that attacking the same regions repeatedly will lead for a build up in determination. This means that it will become steadily more difficult for a TW to continue, especially where the balance of power between the sides is ordinarily close to equal. The example given by N0s3y was that if determination was at 3x, it would require 300m on the attacking side to overcome 100m on the defending side.
One solution to this is to have training wars with a short timeframe- for example 60 days- and to swap partners in and out. This is easier when partners border one another.
Another option would be to have a ping-pong war across the border, where losing would not cause any long term issues.
Countries with a lot of regions like the eUSA could rotate the regions used for the TW.
Generally this change will make TWs more difficult which is a good thing. Hurrah.
Proposed change: resource rental
The admins also proposed another change in partnership with this: resource rental. This change is somewhat broken in my opinion, but let’s look through what it actually entails first of all:
Once the Concession Contract is accepted by both countries, the resource will no longer count towards Country A’s productivity bonus and will be added to Country B’s resource pool as if connected to the Capital (full bonus)... Every day the Resource Rental is in effect the Concessioning Country will be charged for the concession directly from treasury and the fee will be added the the Conceding Country (Country A)’s treasury.
The rental fee can be seen below:
The numbers here are staggering. I am not sure if most of you can comprehend the gross domestic output of eRepublik in currency, but it’s colossal. The way the fee is calculated, the cost is related to the GDP of the industry the resource is related to. So for example, rubber takes from the GDP of the weapons industry, and Granite from the housing industry.
Let’s look at the GDP of three economies:
Now let’s see what the cost of getting all three industries to 100% would be, assuming you can find someone willing to rent you their resources:
Well… that’s bleak. I have to admit doing some of the maths I had my head in my hands, and things look very dark for Romania, formerly the world’s second largest economy, soon to be I’m not sure what. I’ll probably take some time and go through the top 20 largest economies in a separate article, but for now let’s think about this some more.
What are the implications of rentals on company placement?
So, rightly or wrongly, the rental fee is tied to GDP. GDP is determined by economic activity within the industry (I assume including raw materials and manufacturing). Ergo, the more companies you have active in your country, the higher your GDP, and the more expensive rentals are. This has two outcomes:
Selling countries: In a perfectly free market, countries will sell to the highest bidder. Since the prices are determined by the size of the buying country's GDP, this means that countries with larger economies will pay more than ones with smaller economies. So there will be a scramble for smaller countries to pair up with those buyers with the biggest GDP.
Buying countries: Countries with large GDP but low native bonuses (like Romania) will see a lot of companies move out of their regions. However, this will in turn lower their rental costs significantly, which would potentially allow them to reachieve bonuses in time.
Occupation by other means
There’s also something else to consider: the threat of violence/occupation. For example, a big country could bully a smaller one into returning some of the rental fee with the threat of constant attack/harassment, or removing congress meaning they couldn’t access their economy.
Another potential threat would be from military (and subsequently political) take over. Smaller countries essential to the economy of their larger neighbours will likely find themselves taken over so that currency can be diverted back from any rental deal.
Global economic shift
It is really hard to predict or model the impact this change will have on the global economy. The admins are giving everyone a free pass to move their holding companies (and companies) wherever they like. What this will probably mean is a lot of people making a lot of mistakes very quickly.
In the short term, occupations will probably continue to give some sort of gradual handover/continuity. However with time this will naturally end and rental agreements will be put in place.
Housing seems to be a particular problem due to the high cost nature of the products. With no country (I think?) having perfect housing bonuses, the countries that have near perfect bonuses (such as Russia) will have an influx of companies.
It’s my prediction that the confusion, combined with the relative shortage of countries with 90% bonuses, will result in a shortfall of all products, but especially of housing. This will drive up prices globally- I will discuss this in more detail below as it requires it's own section really.
Those countries who achieve full bonuses first or close to the time of the big switchover will likely see the biggest benefit from people relocating companies (and will simultaneously become super polluted super quickly).
Taxation
The admins need to divorce “work as manager tax” from “work as employee” tax and allow them to be set separately.
Relatively low WAM tax rates are essential for the economy to function: anything past 3-4% tends to make raw materials companies unprofitable. However tax rates of 6-10 currency on a 550 currency salary don’t make sense. The huge amount of money that goes through the housing industry (over 6 billion in Romania currently) is barely reflected in their tax figures.
This means that whilst the cost of renting house resources is very high, the benefit for the country hosting the industry is very low. There is therefore a negative incentive to having maximum housing bonuses (hence my prediction there will be a housing shortage).
Food and weapons are scalable because they rely on WAM. So as the amount of WAM increases, so does the size of GDP, the work tax income, and the rental costs. It is mostly scalable: to power one Q7 weapons company you need at least 88 Q5 raw companies. That means each Q7 has 89 WAM and 20 works. 82% of clicks are therefore contributing to work tax, which is scalable. Food is all WAM.
House companies on the other hand have no WAM. So for a Q1 house you have 2.5 employees building the house, and 2 producing the raw materials. That means for a house worth 2500cc, you only get a tiny amount of tax (in Russia it’s around 55cc). VAT doesn’t really count, since although houses are only produced in a few countries, they can be (and are) sold everywhere. The figures on how many people work in each industry aren't available, but even if all workers were employed by the housing industry, the taxes from housing would not even begin to cover the cost of rental.
To address this, the admins need to make a separate employee tax rate, which can be set at a higher rate. This will allow the government to collect taxes from employees, and use that money to rent house resources if necessary.
Regions being conquered
There is one more vague point to address. In their statement the admins say:
A country holding a concession on a resource will benefit from the extra productivity bonus as long as the original country owns the region for which the concession is valid. Losing the region by the original owner will not break the concession (as they might be able to recover it by the end of the duration of the concession) and the Concessioning Country (Country B ) will still be charged every day.
This implies that if a region is conquered which contains a bonus, the country renting it loses access to the bonus but has to continue paying the rental. So for example if Romania is renting rubber in Abkhazia, and it is conquered by Russia, they have to continue paying Georgia even though they are not getting the benefits.
To me this sounds a bit...crazy. But if true, it will mean that rental countries will effectively be protectorates of their larger partners. It also means that to disrupt an economy an invader does not have to directly attack, but can instead take regions from a much weaker country with a rental agreement. This could be especially difficult when you consider the resource may be located on the other side of the world from the renting country.
Conclusions
I am aware this article is a bit of a jumble, and I’m still trying to get my own thoughts straight. There may also be some mistakes- please post any corrections in the comments and I’ll make the changes. I am aware more info may have leaked I haven’t read or had access to.
My conclusion is that this change will cause an enormous amount of chaos, and will undermine some of the strongest economies in the game. Those that have secured good native bonuses will have a huge advantage in this new system. Rental will be prohibitively expensive, especially for housing, without tax changes.
The admins did say they were willing to consider feedback and changes: consider this my feedback.
Iain
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Comments
Poimaxxxxx
Thank you Iain. Good analysis as always!
Not sure about your analysis in tw impact
“Currently the determination is computed based of consecutive days under occupation since the last liberation no matter the occupant. Starting Day 3,929 determination will be computed for each occupant individually, based on the total number of days it held the region in the past 250 days. “
Note the missing consecutive 🙂
I don't get it? Determination will shoot up but in TWs that won't matter since the goal is to free regions ASAP after conquest.
If you have a tw for 250 is it safe to assume a “foreign” country will hold the region for 125 days, that would lead to quite a big determination.
@vlad Doesn't determination only apply to RWs, and not to MPP battles?
Really cool Analysis
I like the article o7
A lot to digest for sure.
A tentative overlap and common theme is that the physical control of Country B by Country A by means of occupation. This includes farming resources that way, but as you said even the renting has some interesting gimmicks and is rather expensive.
One way to bypass this is to gain control of Country B itself, by taking it over politically for instance. That doesn't combine the bonuses but reduces the friction in "rental" agreements.
Just some food for thought.
Interesting times!
Welcome to Iran o7
"So for example if Romania is renting rubber in Abkhazia, and it is conquered by Russia, they have to continue paying Georgia even though they are not getting the benefits."
I understand the contrary, Romania continue to pay Georgia and still has bonus, although Abkhazia is under Russian occupation.
Changing taxation of employees is not a solution in my opinion, in fact this tax go to the country treasury of the employer's nation, not the one which owns the region.
It is certainly unclear.
With regard to taxes- I agree this is something which needs to change. You should pay taxes in the country where the company you work in is based.
except you have no idea where where you're actually gonna work. your work gets converted into a work ticket that can be used anywhere. flawed mechanic is flawed
Some money from the employer could go to the country where works tickets are used, but in general I like the taxation concept of employee work.
The big question is, "Are people willing to give up on the TP income?"
first welcome to iran
and i think this update will help balancing the game as they are plan to do
[removed]
but i think explanations about updates are not clear enough so we have to wait until they execute them and see the results
Please if you found out what will be with the Balochistan region publish it in article to inform company owners.
for now there is no plan to leave it.
Better explanation than the admins.. o7
>I have also been distracted by a few other things"
I freed you from your bonds \o/
Well one work around would be say if Serbia required a UK resource.
1. We would agree the concession
2. They would automatically be charged a weekly total of 'x' which would end up in our accounts.
3. We'd agree to return 'y' every week and keep 'z'
In the event of the region being overun then obviously we'd return the 'x' divided by number of days it would unavavilable to them.
first welcome to iran
and
persian version please
where does it say its the country's gdp. for example ireland holds the deer resource but have almost no gdp of food. so other countries will get it for a few bob or are it based on the whole global industry? for example the entire world's production of q1 food for example.
On the economy page. It's based on the renting countries gdp not the world one.
perhaps you are right but from experience, if one interprets anything by plato usually the implemented update is the bipolar opposite.
ok nevermind see the GDP that was introduced. strange how they set target dates for the update 😛.
Excellent article. Voted and subscribed! 🙂
Nice article.
Good job in explaining such a complex issue.
o7
v+e
welcome to Iran
Iran will be happy. 🙂
o7
so no more TW ? real war are coming and little countries will have better opportunities that's good for them !
Great article as always.
I think the main changes will work towards balancing the game (sorry e-Romania). Both determination changes and the rentals agreements give a better chance to the smaller countries to fight back. That is provided that determination doesn't drop within 12 days.
Now in terms of bonuses and stuff it should be hard for a country to have various bonuses close to 100%. for some periods is understandable that can be achieved through combination of rentals, invasion etc but it should be hard to keep those bonuses active at all times.
lets see how this will work before the admins vanish for another 150 days.
so even less real wars, huh? since it's absurd to burn insane amounts of resources to be surely expelled soon after
I am so happy to have you with us man welcome to iran .and your article was great as always i will translate it like the rest of your amazing articles good job m8
o7
"steadily more difficult for a TW to continue"
I'd disagree, if anything it makes TW's easier. The guest nation (generally the stronger partner) continues to move through regions, winning directs. The host nation (normally weaker) now has greater determination to win their RW and keep the cycle flowing. For smaller countries hosting, they often rely on the larger nation to give them a dig out in the RW's however with higher determination - they require little to no assistance and it is smoother with the guest nations citizens able to focus on their countries side more freely thus gathering more TP damage.
It also makes it very easy to disrupt a TW, and it means that the direct war is something that has to be watched rather than taken for granted as now.
Glad to see you in Iran, you are always Welcome here ( i'm RL Iranian )
and about your article, it's amazing as always, I'm waiting for your next articles
thank you o/
right, does determination makes it harder to win a direct battle too? cause in that case it will be a problem, hadn't thought about that. But usually the country that needs to win the direct is stronger so. 😛
Voted
Voted. Congrats!
Voted for Great Justice.
I will thoroughly enjoy seeing the shithole countries that are occupying eUSA and taxing raw companies to death lose all their tax income.
Good read.