Join the new world

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction
2. The Open Letter reception
3. Gold depreciation
4. Debunking the myth around Training Wars and True Patriot medals
5. The ongoing baby boom
6. Tutorial on the Resistance Hero medal farming

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1. INTRODUCTION

I have a different standpoint from most of the citizens, and I understand that perfectly. Most of you care for your accounts first, your countries second, and the game last, if at all. For me, the game comes first, and always will. It is purely out of selfish reasons, really. To me, there is no point in being the strongest tank, or a citizen of the most powerful country, if there is no fun and challenge. Just like too much pressure and stress weaken an individual or a community, so does overal stability and prosperity. I like to say I would rather be a garbage man in an utopia, than the ruler of a dystopia. And not out of sentimental reasons, they are purely mathematical and logical in nature, actually. I think the same when it comes to this game. That is why I write in English about global game mechanics, instead of in Croatian about my country's affairs. That is why I rejected to run for presidency and why I seem to have to reject a government office every month. There is no point in finding strategies how to get more funds for a country, increase its military power, or attract new citizens, without fixing the game first. Which I try to do. And then some of you, who selfishly buff accounts which will stop existing in a couple of years, laught at me or are even annoyed by my trying to make this game work long term. In the situation described, you are wasting your time playing, not me trying to fix it.


I told you in my last article, I look at the biger picture. Last article was about how admins mortally wounded the game by creating faulty game mechanics. This article is about how you finished the game using those faulty game mechanics in creating and mantaining overpowering alliances, dictatorships, everlasting occupations, endless Training Wars, farming... How many more citizens ought to leave before we starft facing the consequences of our actions?

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2. THE OPEN LETTER RECEPTION

Just one big wow! Let me present you with some numbers that the Open Letter to Plato and the Community generate😛 808 votes, 87 new subscibers, 248 comments, 23140 Currency endorsed by 252 citizens, 3 translations, and a parody. I wrote the damn thing, but you are the ones who turned it into an awesome V1 nostalgia party. The only thing missing was the headless chicken throwing its V1 moves on the dance floor.


Now I am going to talk about some of the complaints I received. The reason this article even has this section is to demonstrate how a loud minority controls the game, using alternative facts, coupled with their authority as older famous citizens with powerful military stats. The rest of the people usually believe their arguments, without even checking if there is any logic to support them.
All that will be supplemented later on when talking about Training Wars.


One of the most common and simplest arguments against reviving V1 I received was that citizens are already retrained into constant fighting every couple of hours and that 24-hour battles with mere 5 hits a day would simply be too boring for most and they would stop playing. That might be true for those really retrained, the power of habit is strong. However, what citizens presenting that argument do not realise is not all of the citizens have been retrained. Not even a majority, a half, or even what is left when we set aside numerical supermajority of citizens. Like Gnilraps said in League of Allies Post-Op Debriefing, only 2881 citizens had used their Energy refil potential in the League of Allies event. 2881 out of 56959 then active citizens. 5%! And the number got so high only because of massive Gold awards, short time period of 5 days, and because citizens like me, who have minimal interest in fighting, still log in regularly several times a day because they do other stuff as well. So, what is the actual percentage of citizens fighting all the time, even when there are no events, competitions, and rewards? A lot lower than 5%. Why most citizens do not fight as regularly as the loud majority? They are poor. You people have become detached from reality just like RL politicians. These people work, train, and cmplete a Daily Order. Before the introduction of Aircraft battles, a lot of them could not even complete the Daily Order. More than 95% of active citizens would have no problems switching to V1 24-hour, 5-hit-a-day battles. Neither would the 400000 citizens that left after V2.


eRepublik oligarchy can be as loud as they want, but as long as they use only loud noise as arguments, my numbers will render them irrelevant.

The second most common objection I received referred to making all citizens' progress for nothing, specifically Strength and Military rank gains. These citizens look at my stats and think I have nothing to lose if there would be a reset because I have low military attributes. They could not be more wrong. They are afraid of losing something the got by clicking Train and Fight. I would lose all the companies and Gold which I earned applying mathematical and other knowledge, investing countless hours into running a business. I would lose my newspaper and all the articles within that show my talent and hard work, and how you liked them by giving me thousands of votes, subscriptions and endorsements. They could always duplicate their military attributes with time. What I wrote would be forever lost. When they say all their playing would be for nothing, they mean all their farming would be for nothing. Battle Hero, Sky Hero, Campaign Hero, Super Soldier, Top Fighter, Prestige Hunter... all those medals gone to waste. Poor they! I farm Resistance Hero medals in Training Wars, and I am about to give that up by giving you a tutorial. Just scroll down.


AlphaMFPEFM_Z thinks the game lacks goals. Like when so many of you scream there is nothing to do, and you demand events and such. MMO games as default have no distinct objectives. That is why this game used to be referred to as the second life: you have to find your own purpose in life. And yet, V1 had goals, both collective and individual ones.


Q1-Q5 companies all had their respective markets, and the goal of an ambitious businessman (me) was not simply to own Q5 companies, but all of them. V1 economy had 3 construction, 4 manufacturing, and 5 raw materials industries, and they all had Q1-Q5, even the raw materials ones. 12 industries, each with 5 quality versions. To build a business with all of the 60 companies and become the ultimate businessman, one needed to earn 8160 Gold. It took me 2 years of playing for a Q5 Weapons, a Q5 Food, a Q1 iron, and a Q1 grain companies, worth 780 Gold.


When it comes to collective goals of a country (which pretty much do not exist anymore), all the countries had the same goal as me, but to meet their military strategic goals, not economic. Speaking of collective goals, do you remember national goals? They covered society, military, and economy, meaning all the modules. The Community back then was more important than any tank, businessman, or a famous person in general.

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3. GOLD DEPRECIATION

Gold price has been dropping for weeks now. It dropped by around 30%, and if it continues to do so, one of the more direct consequences would be cancelled financial profitability from raising resistance wars in order to gain Resistance Hero medals. That will not happen for as long as the Gold price remains above 200 Currency. Plato might have partially used (would not be the first time) my idea from How Can Plato Earn More by Enliving the Economy. After all, he did like something about it since he endrosed the article. This time, he liked the idea about lowering the Gold price, but not by reintroducing local currencies, but by introducing other changes and consecutive events.


3 events just weeks apart have been fueling the Gold depreciation:
- increase in Gold awarded by medals,
- increase in Pack purchase with Currency during the events,
- increase in Pack purchase with Currency regardless of the events,
- more Currency needed for Combat Orders since events destabilize even Training Wars,
- more Currency needed to buy large quantities of Weapons and Food before events,
- countries stopped issuing Currency,
- Plato hinted at changes in economy which might depreciate Gold,
- other citizens panicking.

If 14 terrains and divided strength from the Days of Mayhem become a regular feature (no reason they will not to at some point), just like deploying allied forces from the League of Allies did, the True Patriot medal will never be lucrative to anyone ever again, regardless of bonuses, boosters, and packs used. And if the gold price plummets, Plato might even return gold instead of currency rewards when it comes to True Patriot, Freedom Fighter, and Mercenary medals. That is how Plato could effectively devalue citizens' both gold and currency income.


Might eRepublik Labs have a relatively long term plan for the game after all? They did introduce a lot of changes lately after a long period of peace and quiet. They are recruiting new stuff, some for this game even. And eRepublik Labs merging with Stillfront Group is conditional upon the financial success of the Labs in the next 2 years.

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4. DEBUNKING THE MYTH AROUND TRAINING WARS AND TRUE PATRIOT MEDALS

The last article was about how the big shots who run this game ruined it. This section is about the big shots who play this game and ruin it. Yes, I am talking about the same loud minority to whose fake authority you tend to succumb. Some of them are dictators in name only, others more so, profiting from dictatorship in the political module. Some of them actually benefit from the training wars, others parrot their alternative arguments. I am talking how all the training wars turned the military module into a joke. Common argument is so all citizens could farm the True Patriot medal. I alreday covered the topic of why farming is bad. But in this case, there is no farming. Not even a Legend in Military rank with 200000 Strength can make ends meet. Boosters can only get you so far because they are rare and expensive. The only people who can truly profit from farming here are people with aforementioned military attributes who use packs. But citizens do not know that, because the facts are being obscured from them.


One of the more extremes to this case is Croatia. Croatians have their holding companies in North and South Dalmatia. Our government agreed to leave those in Serbian possesion. The issue arose when the two governments agreed on a training war: Serbia would occupy other our regions, and we would free them in resistance wars. The scenario disabled all Croatians citizens working as managers in their companies for over a month. Hundreds were losing money and stopped fighting since they could not produce Food and Weapons for personal use. Croatia's work tax income was on an all time low. Our government continued parroting how individual profit from farming the True Patriot medal and country's profit from taxing those medals are greater than individual profit from Working as Manager and country's profit from the work tax. That state of affairs ceased only after a month of constant protests. Croatia negotiated another training war with Thailand and paid for the Airstrike with Currency and Food donated by the citizens, only so the big shots could farm.


So, I decided to do the calculations myself. Here is a table which presents in which cases is farming the True Patriot medal lucrative.

Settings which represent an average citizen in the game:
- 100000000 damage needed for a single medal,
- 990 currency awarded by a single medal,
- no Boosters, Natural Enemy, Rockets, Combat Orders, Packs
- no Battle Hero, Campaign Hero, or Sk Hero medals won in addition
- no Food expenses


Pay attention to the Q7 Weapons prices that make True Patriot medal farming lucrative. Now check the prices at the Marketplace. Arguments supporting farming the True patriot medal are dumber than those supporting trickle-down economics.


Apparently, yes. I just got heavily insulted on Croatia's country feed by a former multiple Country President, now the Prime Minister of Croatia, Samohajduk101, for exposing uselessness of our Training War with Thailand, for choosing to write to Plato instead of directing my efforts towards helping Croatia, and for calculating my moves instead of wasting 5 million Currency in failed resistance wars against Serbia like he did.


He and his friends have been rulling Croatia for almost a year now. And for them, I am the public enemy, for I play rationally and expose them mathematically, instead of going full emotional and patriotic. And yet, Croats vote for them every month.

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5. THE ONGOING BABY BOOM

I write about this from Croatian perspective. Many of the active citizens got happy because of this sudden and totally unexpected increase in our, as well as global population. They started messaging them, writing tutorials gain, made a new party even to include them into the community. Ideas about baby boom initiatives arose, and some of the congressmen even wanted to give advice to our ally countries on how to replicate the process themselves. You read that right: these people lost their collective minds and foolishly hoped things would start going for the better. Bitter reality hit them when they realised that even active babies started quitting after a couple of weeks of playing.


What people seem to miss is there is no point in inviting new players while the game is broken. They are of no use in any of the modules, and if the game ever gets fixed, they will not be willing to give it another try. You fix the game first, and then you invite others. And people call me crazy. I guess they have not read 16 Shells Interviews Brand New Citizen by Gnilraps. However, there is a way to increase a country's active population. Take the efforts of Norway, Switzerland, and Cyprus for example: they are small organized communities which try to draw foreign citizens who want to be active but have no chance to do so in their home countries. The USA is an example of that approach as well, although on a smaller, more controlled scale. And their approach seems more logical: why waste time and effort to attract new players, of whom most will quit within a couple of weeks, when you can import old players from other countries, who have already proved themselves, wish to be active, and have some meaningful stats and resources? Not to mention they could be a great source of inside information.



I am sorry, man, but they were not free. You got 19, others got 19000. It might seem like free taken out of context, but compared to others inside that context, you went into the red. This Punkin Party was another proof there will never be balance for the new citizens. In no other major game or real life does tanking equal profit. Everywhere else tanking means severe taxation of resources, energy, and money. Something V1 ha😛 if you had fought hard one day, you did not have the weapons, wellness, nor money the next day to fight at all.

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6. TUTORIAL ON THE RESISTANCE HERO MEDAL FARMING

First, you have to know which countries agreed on Training Wars, and on which conditions. You can do so by monitoring their government newspaper, or finding other sources. Take [CP] Day 3,630 - Training wars on Danish territory for example: there is clearly stated which countries Denmark has Training Wars with, which regions are included, in what order should they be occupied and liberated, and how around the Congress elections or another event Danish government might decide otherwise.


You can find the appropriate regions using eRepublik-Deutschland.de Battle Watcher. Just type in a country you are interested in, and you will be able to see its recent campaign, which regions had been fought over, and eRepublik time when campaigns ended.

Requirements:
- region was occupied at least 24 hours ago;
- in case of an Airstrike, invader must have at least 2 occupied regions, or 1 occupied and another under attack. Otherwise, by freeing the last occupied region, Training War will end. Most likely, the two countries in question will not allow such scenario to occur. When that happens, you lose the ability to start another resistance war for a week;
- there is no other resistance war between the two countries.

Usually, I open the World Map first which shows which countries and regions fulfill those requirements, and then I check the time data on the Battle Watcher. There is one other thing, and it concerns the smaller countries, usually dictatorships, mostly in Asia: their leaders, usually non-natives, often negotiate a Training War not only to farm True Patriot, but Resistance Hero medals themselves as well, and because of that will crush all outsider attempts to take advantage of the situation.



Oh, the irony! They think those small countries belong to them. We have seen all the downsides of RL politics, affairs, and corruption here in eRepublik, but I have never even dreamed that I would be seeing Europeans go to other continents, establish their dominance over local populace, and then close their borders, shouting „Imigrants steal our medals!“ Boo-hoo!

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WTR