[UKGOV - MoF] - eRepublik money making 101
Bank of England
Introduction
Most players on eRep are fantastic at spending money and are fairly clued up on how to do that most efficiently, however many struggle to make money and rely on communes and supplies to keep fighting. In this article we hope to outline how to best posture yourself for an economically successful future.
Training Grounds
The best place to start is your training grounds. These not only make you stronger but earn you money in the form of Super soldier medals
You earn 5G every 250 strength which converts to just more than 1000cc.
This means if you are gaining the following strength, you are effectively earning this much each day from your free training grounds.
The most profitable combination of Training grounds is to get Both 1 & 2 to Q4
*note your second training ground won’t break even until its at Q4 - You will lose money training with it before this point.
Getting your first training ground fully upgraded should be your first priority in game, put all the money you can get towards it as it will pay dividends in the long run. Make sure you utilise the MoF’s Training ground loan schemes and only upgrade in the monthly sales to save yourself as much money as possible
The 3rd and 4th training grounds are only viable with a training contract, if you are interested in this you can learn more here and play about with various upgrade options, contracts and see the cost/ income per month;
http://tools.narrenturm.eu/trainingCalculator.php
WRM Companies
Following this your best bet is to invest in WRM companies.
You have a choice of 5 to buy from and the 10G aluminium mine provides the best cost to production ratio out of them all,
These only cost Work tax and 10 energy to work and will provide you with 125 WRM multiplied by the eUK’s weapons bonus, which out of war time is 60% giving you 200 per company.
At the current market rate this gives you an income of 8cc per day which can either be re-invested or provides you almost 1 extra Q7 weapon per day if you buy them when the market is at a low price.
Do remember however that this can rapidly fill your storage if they don't sell immediately, so don't forget to upgrade this either through buying storage or looking for it as one of the rewards in the weekly rewards.
9000 storage rewards usually sits around 3500 prestige points.
To reach this it will cost you around 19.5 - 20.5G in Q7 weapons and food which is substantially lower than the 35G ticket price. Do remember however that you will need to be really active to get this many prestige points in a week so don't jump into this too lightly.
It may be worth considering selling your WRM at 0.03 or 0.01 below market rate if you have filled your storage completely, you will usually sell them in a matter of minutes and whilst you lose a bit of money it will allow you to continue producing to sell.
This may well be both necessary and convenient to do until you have a larger storage.
Avoid Weapons Companies
Weapons companies are in fact a great way in many circumstances to DEVALUE your production.
By this I mean for a Q1 factory all the way up to Q5 factories (dependant on market conditions) the weapons you produce from them will have a lower overall value than the weapon raw materials used to create them
For example my Q5 factory (that I’m hopefully upgrading soon) at base production uses 500WRM to create 10 Q5 weapons
I could sell the 500 WRM for 20cc on the market at 0.04cc per piece
Or using the factory I produce 10 Q5 weapons selling g at 1.8cc each giving me 18cc minus the 0.29cc work tax giving me a net of 17.71cc
You are better off just selling your WRM.
You tend to find this is even worse for the lower Quality weapons companies so as a new player these aren't really worth your while. The profits from the higher quality weapons factories tend to be small compared to the equivalent investment in WRM companies.
It will cost you around 400G to get a Q6 factory that starts to make you a profit, you would make a much bigger profit investing that in 40 aluminium mines giving you 320cc per day!! Compare this to a Q6 which adds 12.5 cc to the value of the WRM you run through it and you can see which is the best way to spend your money.
One of the only positives of weapon companies is that they reduce the number of items you have in your storage significantly, so whilst they can devalue what you are selling they may be more profitable than not being able to produce any more WRM.
Its not complicated maths so if in doubt grab a calculator or excel to look at your own situation.
Avoid employees
If you are employing anyone to work in anything less than a Q7 factory, chances are you will be losing money. With average wages around 30cc you need to look at how much they are making for you compared to their wage. In a Q6 you will loose 17.5cc per employee, In an aluminium mine you will loose 22cc per day per employee.
If you are looking to expand your production or even to make even, this is something you probably can’t afford, so my advice would be to send all the best to your employee and then in the nicest way possible, send them packing.
Fighting
Fight in Battles with CO’s
Combat orders effectively pay you for your damage. Whilst many players on lower strength will receive far less than the cost of the weapons used, If you were going to fight anyway, you might as well get paid for it…
Fight for the eUK
All the damage you do goes towards True patriot medals, always prioritise UK fights if you want the money… 5G every now and then comes in handy
Fight Less !!
If there aren't any UK or priority battles, fight a little bit less… Don’t keep clicking because you can, click because you either want to or your country or allies need you to. Every penny you save from fighting slightly less every day can go towards a company that MAKES you money.
Don’t buy Energy Bars
These can seem tempting, especially to people in their first few days. Many of us are guilty of blowing out gold on these when we started. They are REALLY BAD VALUE FOR MONEY. Be patient, the energy from one energy bar takes an hour to recover, the money spent could take you days to earn back.
If you haven't realised it yet, you will soon learn this is a game that takes a long time, so don’t jump the gun and be too hasty, theres always another day.
Closing notes
The only way to make money in this game is to invest, Invest in whatever gives you the best return for your money. There is a reason some of the biggest economic players are as wealthy as they are today, and thats because they invested wisely early in their eLives and have reaped the rewards.
A Chinese proverb says…
“If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for life.”
The same idea can, in many ways be translated into this browser game. You can spend money to do a lot of damage for a day, or you can invest that money in training grounds and companies, and you can in the long term do far more damage from it for an eLifetime.
And that, in a nutshell is the most important message, become self reliant, make a profit, and you will be able to do far more damage for your country than if you spend everything you have whenever you have it.
What I've advised in this article could well change in the future as the markets in eRepublic are slaves to supply and demand, so just use your head, invest in what gives you the best return… and the maths isn't that complicated either!!
If anyone has any queries, wants clarification or even help with their personal eRepublik economic circumstances, message one of the members of the MoF team who will be happy to help, or if they’re too busy, happy to refer you to someone less busy but still able to help.
Guide produced by ArgoFookYourself - Deputy Minister of Finance
The rest of your MoF June team
Huey George - Governor of the Bank of England/Minister of Finance
Alan Warwickshire - Deputy Minister of Finance
Comments
o7
Excellent article! Great and concrete points, without empty words.
Vote and shout (which I rarely do).
v
Is Gold Fishing still a viable way? I assume not...
I don't know how much the bot is buying up but profit margins are razor thin.... current return would be 25cc for every 1000 you can sell, so 2.5 every day for a grand. Bearing in mind that as a person you can only invest enough to give you 10g, you can only stick in 2000... so you're looking at 5cc a day.
Only way round it is with orgs, even then maximum payout is still tiny, even a million cc fully selling would only be 250cc a day. You only have to invest 64k into Aluminium mines to get them producing that much a day, only difference is you keep the cash in fishing
It's a shame they killed eRep...
Voted.
However about the 9k storage you are wrong. For gaining prestige points you do not need to use any weapons at all. Only food is needed for that (with weapons you get more kills, useful for Freedom fighter medals and/or getting your daily order ready fast, with weapons you rank faster too). So 3500 PP to get a storage of 9k is a good thing to get.
I was looking at it from the new players perspective of wanting high rank points compared to their level, however if that isn't an issue you are absolutely correct and it is a much more economical way of getting the storage.
Well done, nice article.
Is WRM really a good idea? Al mine cost 10 gold which is 2000cc. At most you get 250 (full bonus) at .04. That is 10cc a day, so it takes 200 days to break even. With your example of 200 WRM per day less work tax less energy cost and selling at .03cc because of lack of storage it will almost take a full year to break even.
Medals are really the best way to make money. Fight for TP, FF, and MM.
Closing notes "a lot of player are where they are today because the bot was buying WRM at .33cc and gold was 2500cc."
Getting TP medals and FF medals does however require a big investment in tanks and food to obtain them, I know at my level it costs far more than 5G in tanks to get my next TP medal. Whilst the first few are easy to get they are increasingly harder to earn.
And yes, other than Strength medals WRM is the biggest return for your investment currently. This is a longer term game and whilst the return is slow, its better to invest it and get a return than spend it on tanks. this is what leaves many higher level players finding it difficult to make money.
Granted, those players got there under different circumstances and its unlikely people starting now would ever catch them without a visa, but the principle remains the same, invest in whatever gives you the biggest return.
Asking a new player to have to wait a whole year before they get any benefit is asking a lot. At least spending the 10 gold is a little fun. Being cash strapped because you invest in WRM is not a fun way to play this game IMO.
@Cpt Jackson: but that's the best return rate this game has to offer. Take it or leave it. Plato wants you to use Visa, not to make money in the game. You will make some money in the low levels from medals, then those medals jump over the threshold of being lucrative (takes more to get it than what it gives back, ie it takes ~15 gold for me to take FF medal if not using bazookas) and then you are left with no options but to make those 1 year return investments.
Freedom fighter medals are also a nice way to make some gold every now and again
Excellent Article, voted!
terrific guide - mwcerberus
good article, voted
don't listen to any of this. You cant sell wrm at market price, you have to go down. Investment vs return on training centers is awful (though if you want to train as fast and as much as possible this "profit" will happen on it's own but lately Plato has been timing contracts just so you can't earn money), and I didn;t read any further, this is a well done "sub this, see how good it is?" kind of article.
Sorry mate, but a profit of 0.446g daily with an investment of 187g is about one of the best (and not to mention easiest) deals around. Not to mention that the game is indeed about strength, more strength is always good, e.g. for collecting CO money, BH medals etc.
Also iirc you can't make money with contracts, the only exception being when you train 4444 with a 90% contract and include HW gold, then it's 0.186g effective profit in those 31 days of training.
The problem with the "buy WRM factories and avoid weapon factories" advice is that if everyone follows it, you will end up with an oversupply of WRMs (and see the price falling), and a shortage of certain types of weapons - hence the price could raise there at times.
WRM oversupply happened a long time ago. Weapon shortage - not so much. People with lots of WRM tend to make factories so they can "move" WRM easier. It's a bad investment but that's as good as it goes in eRep economy. Best way for beguiners to make money is to take free stuff from political parties and sell that stuff.
I get that there is oversupply, but its clear that there is a big oversupply in the lower Q weapons as well given their non profit making prices... as mature players get round to purchasing Q6 and 7 factories for their own supply and to sell it balances the whole equation in a rough sense.