Divisions by Wealth

Day 3,309, 16:29 • Published in Croatia North Korea • by William Thomas Riker

Let's just forget the Air Battles and the 4 divisions in Ground Battles for a minute here, 'cause they haven't done squat for the little guy! It's not about medals, it's about providing a meaningful contribution to the battle. It's not a pleasant feelling at all knowing that most of gold buyers can equal their air damage to my ground damage, no questions asked.

Forget divisions based on strength, rank, and/or max hit. There are no constants there. Variables are too great for that shit. Forget Rifle, Tank, Artillery, and Air Unit military skills in V2.

Plato lived in Classical antiquity, so why wouldn't we take a military most characteristic for that time? The one based on wealth, the legion of early Roman Republic?

Basically, the core of Roman legion consisted of light and heavy infantry. And then there was cavalry, among others (not important right now). They all had to acquire equipment on their own, meaning light infantry consisted of the poorest of citizens and cavalry had all the rich and powerful Romans among their ranks. And so do we, we have to buy our weapons, food, chocolate bars, packs, boosters...


Heavy infantry variants (left, middle) and light infantry (right)

Light infantry, heavy infantry, and cavalry never fought at the same time (exceptions coming as a last resort), they took turns. Much like Ground and Air Battles in eRepublik today. Heavy infantry had the greatest number of fighters in the legion, and cavalry the least. Same shit here.


Cavalry

So imagine if all of the players in eRepublik were to be divided in those 3 divisions. I mean, it fits perfectly. Light infantry would consist of players with no companies and no gold purchase history. Those who have companies and maybe occasionally buy gold would be heavy infantry. Cavalry would be made of company owners and frequent gold buyers. The ratio between company ownage and gold purchase would be arbitrarily made. Companies would be criterion instead of gold because they are not as solvent, making the status of a player less prone to change.

Benefits over current divisons and battles:
1) taking turns: each division would fight only in every third battle, giving more time for rest in RL (now every player can fight in every consecutive battle being online 24/7);
2) everybody would be encouraged to fight more since their division would not depend on experience;
3) since all the battles would make equal points in a campaign, non-gold buyers would be as important as gold buyers;
4) since there would be a natural progression from light to heavy infantry (at least for most players), there would always be space made for new players;
5) gold buyers would still be as important and creme de la creme, so they would continue buying gold;
6) balanced chance to win a medal.

It shouldn't be too hard to keep track of players' wealth and gold purchase since eRep already has something called Loyalty Program with 5 separate categories for different gold buyers.