How to Succeed in eUSA Part 4 - Econ Game Mechanics

Day 2,248, 09:17 Published in USA USA by Gnilraps

Til the Money Runs Out (Mandatory listening)
Day 2248 of the New World
15 January, 2014


by Gnilraps




This is Part 4 of a 10-Part series called How to Succeed in eUSA

Truthfully there is not much of an economy in eRepublik. So while it is possible to speak at great length about the minutiae, it is more reasonable to discuss the Economic Game Mechanics with a fairly broad brush. The little stuff just doesn’t matter much.

There are two forms of currency in eRepublik: Gold and Country Currency (CC). In this article I will be referring to CC as United States Dollars (USD) because I am writing primarily for the eUSA Citizenry.

The first and most important lesson of eRepublik Economics is that nothing gains interest in eRepublik. So sitting on stockpiles of USD or Gold is ONLY wise if you are building your stash for a purchase goal. Maybe you are saving Gold for Training Grounds upgrades, for instance. Because some Gold purchases can carry price tags in the hundreds, stashing Gold is always wise.

But sitting on a massive pile of USD is only wise if you can afford to and if you are positioning yourself to buy up goods on the market during a down tick. But I am getting ahead of myself. First let’s talk about the relationship between the three monetary types.


Real Life Money (RLM)

Not trying to be funny here, but it bears mentioning. RLM can be spent to buy Gold (and if spent on Assault or Combat Packs, other Inventory Items come with the purchase). Spending RLM on an online computer game should be a serious matter. You ought to know going into it that your “investment” is really just buying you some form of advantage ingame. Eventually it will become meaningless to you. Don’t spend so much RLM that you some day regret it.

In fact, it is part of the business model of most successful browser games to keep creating items of ever-new value that profer ingame advantages to those who spend RLM on them. The introduction of these new items has the effect of devaluing previously purchased items. Understand this is not a criticism of eRepublik for its business model, I just want you to know what you are buying. Your RLM will purchase temporary advantages.

The only permanent advantage your RLM can purchase in this game is Strength in the form of upgraded TG. I could make an argument that a player who lays out a few hundred RL$ in the first week of playing eRepublik will have set himself up well enough for an extremely successful gaming experience. This assumes that the Gold purchased is spent on TG upgrades.

eRepublik offers Gold for RLM. They also occasionally offer bonus amounts of Gold - essentially increasing the amount you get per RL$1. The wise citizen will save his RLM until the bonus promotions are running.

There are also micro-purchases available in the form of Combat Packs and Assault Packs. These proffer Gold plus items for a relatively small amount of RLM (~$13). If you chose to play eRepublik on a budget of $20 per month, I think you could do quite well just buying these Packs. If any additional RLM accumulates in your budgeted account, let it accumulate until you’ve got enough for a large pack of Gold, usually sold for around $135.

Or you can just hold onto your RLM and play the game for free. Nobody ingame will judge you either way.

If you have no access to a credit card but want to spend RLM on this game, there are two decent ways to do it.

The first is through the purchase of the “Ultimate Game Card”. These usually sell for around $20 each at 7-11, Game Stop, some Drug Stores, and probably elsewhere. There is no penalty for your purchase this way. $20 RLM = $20 worth of ingame purchase. However, you will constantly be carrying a balance of Ultimate Game Card “credits”, because it is nearly impossible to match up your $20 with an ingame offer. In other words, if you want to buy a combat pack which costs around $13, you will spend $20 for the Ultimate Game Card, and you will be left with $7 of credits in your Ultimate account.

The second is through paypal. If you can make a paypal account, it is easy to load it with RL Cash. You will need to buy a “GreenDot MoneyPak” card. These can be purchased almost anywhere gift cards are sold. Be sure what you are buying specifically indicates that it can be used to load paypal. You want GreenDot MoneyPak. The only way to purchase these cards is with cash, and they can be purchased at almost any denomination. However, no matter how much you load onto your MoneyPak card, you will pay a $4.95 fee. So for this reason it is wise to save your cash until you can load a MoneyPak card with a big load of cash. Then go to the associated web page for MoneyPak, load up your paypal account, and buy your eRepublik purchase using paypal.

Either of these two methods works without ever having access to a credit card.


Gold (G)

Gold can be accumulated via RLM purchase, XP level ups, Medal awards, donations, gifts, from invited friends’ Gold awards, or via the Monetary Market (MM). We’ll talk most about the MM.

Medals award 5G. XP level ups pay 1G. (If you have an active Combat Pack, there is a 10% bonus for Gold awarded from Medals). End of story.

If you have a friend who joined the game from your referral link, you will receive 10% Gold rewards based on any Gold they earn or purchase. Over time this adds up. Get your friends to play using your Referral Link. It’s worth it.

You can only receive a maximum of 10G per day through donations+MM.. If someone donates Gold to you, you MUST accept it by clicking the appropriate link in your Alerts. Once you have accumulated 10G through either/both donation/MM, you must wait until the following day to retrieve more.

The MM is where you can exchange USD into Gold or Gold into USD. You should never BUY anything on the MM unless you have such a surplus of USD and you don’t care about paying the exchange rate.

Instead, you should SELL your USD for Gold. By posting an offer, USD will be taken out of your accounts and held in escrow until your offer either sells or expires. When placing your offer, note the going rate. There will be page after page of similarly priced offers. There is almost never any reason to post your offer any differently than that.

Once your offer to Sell USD has been placed, you will be waiting for your offer to matriculate to the top of the list of offers. This can take up to 10 days. If your offer does not sell after a week, it expires and the USD in escrow are returned to your accounts. If your offer sells you will find an amount of Gold in your accounts reflective of the amount of USD purchased.

It is generally a good idea to always have 10G worth of USD available for sale in the MM.

Spending Gold ought to be done only during promotional events. Gold buys TG upgrades (very wise), Manufacturing and RM buildings (sometimes wise), Energy Bars (rarely wise), Rocket Factory upgrades (probably unwise), Storage space (sometimes wise), and occasionally other items like bazooka parts (typically unwise).


eUnited States Dollars (USD)

USD is the working capital for buying and selling the consumable commodities in eRepublik.

You can accumulate USD by selling goods (watch out for taxes), selling Gold, receiving a donation, fighting for a Combat Order (CO), or working your job. You can’t really survive without it.

When trade is done internationally (for instance, if you are buying Q7W from the Poland market because their prices are cheaper, the Polish seller will receive your USD as Polish currency. There is NO international currency exchange market.

If you notice that the gap between selling G and selling USD is particularly wide, it is probably a good time to sell some G. If the gap is narrow, hold off.

When you sell Gold, do not just post your offer 0.001 below the currently lowest offer. For one thing this market can be quite volatile and an entire page of offers can disappear in a minute. (While it is true that Citizens can only acquire 10G per day, Government Organization are not limited. Some of these Organizations are being operated by citizens who are either renting them or have special access to them and they may be doing some significant work on the market. It’s rare to see massive piles of gold disappear, but you’d hate to miss out if it does happen).

Look at the Monetary Market page.


At this particular time, because there is such a large amount of Gold available at the top of the page, there isn’t much you can do except 1 - wait for the market to change, 2 - go ahead and price your gold just below the offer for 202.798 which will likely cause a quick sale, or 3 - do nothing.

To illustrate just how volatile the Gold market can be, however, here is a screen capture taken just 2 minutes after the prior screen capture:



Notice that the two large offerings at the top of the first screenshot have moved down. The market for USD is dropping, so you might want to wait if you can. Even despite the drop, however, notice that somewhere along the lines the offer at 202.798 managed to sell off 15G.

Ultimately it is up to you to decide how patient you can be. Gold/USD can move several dollars over a short period. If you are selling off a small amount of Gold, this may not matter to you. But if you are selling off a large portion of Gold, patience and careful observation will pay dividends.


General Rules

In eRepublik, there is really no excellent path to becoming a business mogul. The Gold investment for companies is terribly outrageous compared to the Return On Investment. In most cases, companies will actually lose money. But you can usually squeeze a couple dollars per day out of a Q7W Factory or a Q5F Factory. It will still take you about a year to make enough USD to “recoup” the Gold outlay. That is why the ONLY worthwhile advice is to sink all Gold into Training Grounds upgrades. In the long run, getting strong while maintaining low XP is the only way to make a “profit”.

There is an active Black Market for eRepublik trading. The margins are pretty slim, so the only way for the Black Market to be worth it is if you 100% trust your trading partner. One bad deal can erase months of shaved profits.

Know how much a Q7 hit costs you in Battle. This is a fairly simple calculation. If you find a CO which is paying more than your cost/Q7 hit, fight there. You might as well make money.

To calculate your cost per Q7 hit, add the current cost of food per 10 Energy, add it to the current cost of a Q7W/10. The result is your cost per Fight click. Remember you might pay less for food than the market price (due to various factors), so be sure you know YOUR cost per Fight click.


eRepanomics

In a nutshell, because there is an unlimited supply of Gold available for purchase with RLM, the products market will always eventually become bloated with cheap goods. Goods are not produced with limited resources, they are produced with unlimited resources, funded with gamers spending RLM.

This means that it is extraordinarily unwise - unless a major overhaul of the economy comes - to consider manufacturing and production as a career pathway in eRepublik.

However...

If companies are owned, there are ways to become successful.

The trick about it is to exploit the flaw in the Economic Model.

I am not talking about an “exploit” in the sense of a “hack” or robotic device. This is not a computer or software or interface exploit.

The trick is to ride the waves of price fluctuation which always continue to occur because of Plato’s defined need to sell Gold. Because Gold is unlimited, so is product supply. When product supply proliferates, Inventory space becomes the hot commodity.

The clever businessman will be observing market conditions across the spectrum of products for sale while also understanding what is going on in the game (not so much from the perspective of political drama but in terms of what Plato is doing.) So contests, promotions, sales, specials… they call cause a shift in the market.

And when the prices go up, it’s already too late to buy. Inventory is the key. Buy low. Sell high. Repeat.

Patterns can be discovered without patience becoming a burden. Then all one needs is Storage.

It is my belief that more money can be made from Gold/USD invested in Storage than from any other Economics building. A million in Storage is a good goal. But more is greater than less regardless of how much.

The bottom line is this: because supply is totally elastic, the ONLY current game dynamic which can lead to profits is wildly increased consumption. Do whatever you can to plan ahead so that you are ready to take advantage of Plato’s Military Damage promotions. You can make thousands of USD.


International Markets

I almost feel like skipping this last topic because it has become functionally irrelevant. Those who have learned how to take advantage of international dealing are doing so at a fairly large scale and do not need my advice. So the best advice I can give to my readers is this: Only use foreign markets to buy from. Don’t bother with a license to sell in a foreign market. You’ll probably waste your Gold.



In Part 5 of this guide, I will be discussing the relationship between the ingame interface and the so-called meta-game. I will also offer my advice on how to use each to your benefit in the other.


You may now return to your regularly scheduled clicking