Join the new world

The last article published under the eMeditiations masthead (Military Training for Fat Cats) stated how boring a few ultra-rich players would quickly make the game, unless eRepublik's engineers regularly introduced new and innovative ways for us to "burn Gold." Furthermore, the hyper-inflation of Gold would guarantee an unbalanced game without Gold-burning features, such as Lana's professional military trainers. A much broader selection of Gold-burning features are needed though; otherwise, this game will become overburdened with crops of super soldiers. The result would again be boredom. Open-ended games like eRepublik thrive on the quantity and quality of the options that may lead to each individual's success. The last article gave a cursory sample of some game suggestions, and this article will discuss some of those suggestions in greater depth.

First, eRepublik should introduce unique architectural cityscape tabs that could be accessed from the profile page of each eCitizen, Organization, Business, Territory, and eNation. Each cityscape would display eBuildings and ornamental vanities. Purchased with Gold, both private and public eBuildings would differ by zone and by function. eFactories would enable industries greater production efficiency. Businesses, newspapers, and organizations could make use of the facilities of eOffices that would reduce the cost of advertisement. eRestaurants and Spas would provide different levels of Wellness. Players could select items from a catalog of myriad vanities at the eStores.

Players' houses would assume additional benefits. The houses would still provide rest, but they would also enable greater mail and inventory capacities. Players would no longer keep their houses in their inventories, because they would move the homes to their profile's Cityscape page (at their own discretion). All houses would function at Q1, as long as the player kept the house in the player's inventory. Once moved to the Cityscape page, each house would be permanently set like Real Estate to be bought or sold, and a player could only take the house with him to another territory by paying a relocation fee. Every feature mentioned so far has been geared toward helping reduce Gold infaltion in the private sector, but government buildings should also be available.

eNations and territories would also have the opportunity to improve their Cityscapes with monuments, parliamentary buildings, treasuries, and executive palaces. A national parliamentary building could be used like a virtual hospital, giving Q1 healing to all territories. The treasuries would help with the collection of taxes and currency regulation. Executive palaces would add a small amount of damage bonus to each soldier’s attack. Monuments could simply be used for ornamentation, or the nations may devise other purposes as deemed apporpriate.

The ideas illustrated in this article would satisfy the two-fold purpose of increasing the game’s æsthetic value while reducing Gold inflation. Ever more players will continue to join eRepublik as they realize how easy talking to someone at the other side of the globe can be. Seldom can peoples from completely alien cultures interact as easily as made possible by eRepublik, and as the lines between strategy game and social networking site continue to blur, players will add more money to this game – resulting in more money for servers and software technicians… and more fun! Some of the suggestions mentioned here could someday appear in the game, so please remember where you first read about them.

Peace, friends.