The Erep Economy, Part III
Day 1,623, 06:15
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Published in USA 
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by
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by Rigour6
This is Part III in a 4 part series on the Erepublik Economy.
The series is in 4 parts:
Part I: Oversupply, its causes and effects
Part II: Platobots and The Motivations of Their Masters
Part III: What You as a Player Should Do in the Present Economy
Part IV: Possible System-Wide Innovations and Their Effects
Part III: OPTIMUM PLAYER STRATEGY
In our previous two installments, we established that there is a massive and permanent oversupply in the food and weapons markets, that there is no natural price floor (although one might expect a nominal one at some minimal pennies per unit), and that platobots are unlikely to change this condition because doing so would be counter to the profit motive of the admins.
Now we come to providing advice to the player. Before we get to this, a word of caution: one of the "exciting" "features" of erepublik is the tendency of the admins by sudden fiat to change the rules of the game.
Today's optimum strategy is hence susceptible to being turned into tomorrow's very poor strategy, so the prudent player hedges against that by not putting all his eggs into a basket that may get thrown away tomorrow.
This is especially true when the optimum strategy requires several months to show a profit.
Chances are pretty good things will not stay the same for that long.
That said, you've got resources in this game and the best you can do at any given time is use them in the optimum way, so here it is:
Once you understand that the floor price of glut products is actually zero, your course is clear. You should aggressively price yourself in the market to clear your products, then aggressively convert that sham currency into gold. I say this with full knowledge that the more players do this, the worse the situation will become but my mandate here has always been to give players solid advice.
You want to as much as possible get out of the sham market and into the real market - out of food and weapons and into gold. Which brings us to training centers in general and the Base Center in particular.
To harken back to my earlier point, I have serious doubts how long this will be the case, but the best gold producer you have available to you now is your free training center. Every 250 strength points it produces is worth 5 gold, so a Q1 Free training center produces 0.1 gold per day, a Q2 0.2 gold and a Q3 0.3 gold per day.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking a profit can be made on training centers which one pays gold to use (Climbing Center, Shooting Range, Special Forces). Even upgraded, those drain gold from the player (and thus generate gold – profits – for the admins). Where players show such profits they are almost always making the error of looking at the entire training area as whole, and the free center is cross-subsidizing one of the others.
Each upgrade to the free center generates 0.1 gold per day, so depending on when you buy them, the upgrades will eventually pay themselves off.
What the upgrades to the Base (free) Training Centers represent is a profit-taking development from the admins that hurts the profit margins going forward.
The faster the admins allow players to gain super soldier medals and the attendant 5 gold, the less need for players to buy gold going forward. This is why I wonder how long the present SS 5 gold reward will continue.
Unfortunately for the players, there are multiple examples in the history of this game of sudden changes to the rules. What is the optimum strategy today may easily become the wrong strategy tomorrow when the admins suddenly alter the conditions of the contest. Planning for tomorrow is always a bit of a mug’s game, and in particular making investments which have a long turnaround time is risky.
Now it is a fair comment that the entire boosting of strength is of course a sham market of its own, since the perpetual war of the eworld rarely results in more than temporary changes for the players, but let's not meta-game too much in this installment. For now, digest that the place to invest is in gold producers, and your best gold producer is your base training center.
Tomorrow: System-wide changes which might make a big difference
N by NE Volume 6, Number 3
The series is in 4 parts:
Part I: Oversupply, its causes and effects
Part II: Platobots and The Motivations of Their Masters
Part III: What You as a Player Should Do in the Present Economy
Part IV: Possible System-Wide Innovations and Their Effects
Part III: OPTIMUM PLAYER STRATEGY
In our previous two installments, we established that there is a massive and permanent oversupply in the food and weapons markets, that there is no natural price floor (although one might expect a nominal one at some minimal pennies per unit), and that platobots are unlikely to change this condition because doing so would be counter to the profit motive of the admins.
Now we come to providing advice to the player. Before we get to this, a word of caution: one of the "exciting" "features" of erepublik is the tendency of the admins by sudden fiat to change the rules of the game.
Today's optimum strategy is hence susceptible to being turned into tomorrow's very poor strategy, so the prudent player hedges against that by not putting all his eggs into a basket that may get thrown away tomorrow.
This is especially true when the optimum strategy requires several months to show a profit.
Chances are pretty good things will not stay the same for that long.
That said, you've got resources in this game and the best you can do at any given time is use them in the optimum way, so here it is:
Once you understand that the floor price of glut products is actually zero, your course is clear. You should aggressively price yourself in the market to clear your products, then aggressively convert that sham currency into gold. I say this with full knowledge that the more players do this, the worse the situation will become but my mandate here has always been to give players solid advice.
You want to as much as possible get out of the sham market and into the real market - out of food and weapons and into gold. Which brings us to training centers in general and the Base Center in particular.
To harken back to my earlier point, I have serious doubts how long this will be the case, but the best gold producer you have available to you now is your free training center. Every 250 strength points it produces is worth 5 gold, so a Q1 Free training center produces 0.1 gold per day, a Q2 0.2 gold and a Q3 0.3 gold per day.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking a profit can be made on training centers which one pays gold to use (Climbing Center, Shooting Range, Special Forces). Even upgraded, those drain gold from the player (and thus generate gold – profits – for the admins). Where players show such profits they are almost always making the error of looking at the entire training area as whole, and the free center is cross-subsidizing one of the others.
Each upgrade to the free center generates 0.1 gold per day, so depending on when you buy them, the upgrades will eventually pay themselves off.
What the upgrades to the Base (free) Training Centers represent is a profit-taking development from the admins that hurts the profit margins going forward.
The faster the admins allow players to gain super soldier medals and the attendant 5 gold, the less need for players to buy gold going forward. This is why I wonder how long the present SS 5 gold reward will continue.
Unfortunately for the players, there are multiple examples in the history of this game of sudden changes to the rules. What is the optimum strategy today may easily become the wrong strategy tomorrow when the admins suddenly alter the conditions of the contest. Planning for tomorrow is always a bit of a mug’s game, and in particular making investments which have a long turnaround time is risky.
Now it is a fair comment that the entire boosting of strength is of course a sham market of its own, since the perpetual war of the eworld rarely results in more than temporary changes for the players, but let's not meta-game too much in this installment. For now, digest that the place to invest is in gold producers, and your best gold producer is your base training center.
Tomorrow: System-wide changes which might make a big difference
N by NE Volume 6, Number 3
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Comments
good read, going to read first 2 parts now
Yes it's true about radical changes concerning medals, the only case in erepublik history ocurred when leveling up reward was downgraded to just 1 Gold, before it was possible to get up to 10 o 15 G for higher levels. I really hope Admins leave the reward how it is.
I get a super soldier medal every 11 days getting the max gold and the max points without losing, it works.
Rigour 6 this is a great series of articles, well done.
againm well written and very good argumentation.
I followed your advice by myself without knowing you, and they worked.
The only practice I dismissed was to invest in the free training center, because it will take a little to pay itself, and the risk that in the meantime the admins would change the rules too high.