Two-year anniversary of the cities update – So much money

Day 4,198, 01:19 • Published in Finland Finland • by TheJuliusCaesar

Greetings, it's been a long time.

The cities were added to the game exactly two years ago. Along with the update, it was said that the local elections module would be added in the following weeks.

Granted, we're still living "the following weeks", but one might have thought it a little shorter timespan. In any case, along with introducing cities, a host of taxes were introduced for the sake of our wellbeing by the thoughtful Plato:

- Country subsidies - 10% of the national income is divided equally between all the cities
- Residential tax - what you pay to become a resident
- Property tax - paid for activating or transferring houses

The money taxed went–and is still going–to the city budget, which unfortunately cannot be used without the local elections module promised. Result? The city budgets hold globally over 219 863 095cc of money which cannot currently be used. Yes you read that right. Nearly 220 million currency. 245 000 gold with the current exchange rate.


As inaccessible as this island.

The amount of currency and its distribution was last gauged by Zordacz in his magnificent article nearly three hundred days ago–in the summer of 2018. Since then, the amount of currency in treasuries has grown significantly, from a bit less than 95 million cc to the current and already mentioned 220 million.

Master_rg from erepublik.tools was kind enough to provide the dataset for the current distribution of currency in city budgets. Kudos also for zRTx for helping with the navigation with the mess of formatting this article.

Without further ado, here's first some overall stats about the current state of cities:

Total cities: 574
Total residents: 19 150 (-1 276)
Total visitors: 50 139 (-8 66😎
Total GDP: 100 103 021cc (+63 970 461cc)

As the smartest might have noticed, the total amount of residents has gone down by nearly 1 500 citizens and visitors by 8 000 citizens during the last three hundred days. Perhaps this tells something about the current direction of the game.

At the same time, total gross domestic product has nearly tripled in three hundred days. The raise is most likely attributable in citizens bying more companies to produce with.

Here be, then, the top five cities sorted by their size of treasury. In spite of my steadfast opposition towards emojis, I've used some here as zRTx told me they'd increase the readability of this article. I yielded.

The cities with largest treasuries
💰 Gdansk (Pomerania, Poland) - 9 388 044 cc
💰 Iasi (Moldova, Romania) - 8 143 089 cc
💰 Buenos Aires (Pampas, Argentina) - 5 940 339 cc
💰 Belgrade (Belgrade, Serbia) - 4 323 583 cc
💰 Punta Arenas (Zona Austral, Chile) - 4 011 217 cc

As we an see, the list is crowded with familiar big nations–the top two cities of Gdansk (Poland) and Iasi (Romania) having roughly twice the size of treasury than the rest in the list.

Next, cities sorted by their gross domestic product–meaning who produces the most valuable things and how much, total production.

The cities with most production
👷Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Canary Islands, Spain) - 17 532 766 GDP
👷Olympia (Washington, USA) - 6 448 837 GDP
👷Tallahassee (Florida, USA) - 5 449 817 GDP
👷Zahedan (Sistan and Baluchistan, Iran) - 3 976 563 GDP
👷Krasnoyarsk (Eastern Siberia, Russia) - 3 745 418 GDP

The list differts significantly from the top treasuries presented earlier, all five cities above are regions with bonuses for house production. As constructing a house requires paid labour and cannot be worked as a manager, the resulting GDP increases significantly.

Worthwhile to note that the leading region in this, Spanish Canary Islands, has the gross domestic product of nearly three times the GDP of Washington, USA, which occupies the second place in the list. Though, United States occupies also the third place in the list with Florida. Combined, Washington and Florida have a sizeable GDP of over 10 million cc.

And, for comparison and a rough overall picture, top cities sorted by their residents:

Most populous cities
🤖 Belgrade (Belgrade, Serbia) - 404 residents
🤖 Gdansk (Pomerania, Poland) - 337 residents
🤖 Iasi (Moldova, Romania) - 316 residents
🤖 Buenos Aires (Pampas, Argentina) - 311 residents
🤖 Budapest (Central Hungary, Hungary) - 304 residents

The listing matches the top cities sorted by size of treasury, with the exception of Budapest (Hungary) taking the fifth place instead of Punta Arenas (Chile).

Finally, I decided to look how the treasuries add up when taken to the national level instead of regions and cities:

The wealthiest countries by city treasuries
💸 Turkey - 21 473 169 cc
💸 Romania - 16 075 949 cc
💸 Poland - 15 926 747 cc
💸 Serbia - 14 205 993 cc
💸 Hungary - 13 980 492 cc

The wealthiest nation by city budgets is Turkey, currently occupying Bulgaria, with a rather large margin of over five million citizenship currency. Romania, Poland, Serbia and Hungary follow in tight succesion after that.

What does it all mean, then? As mentioned, the gross production is significantly up while the number of residents is slightly down. We have more weapons, more food, more houses and more raw materials in our hands than three hundred days ago. As we have numerous sinks for in-game currency where the money used completely disappears, however, the prices have not decreased the same amount as production has increased.

Further, the big nations have a sizeable chunk of cash in their city treasuries which they cannot currently access. Of course they also have significantly bigger incomes, as the treasuries are mostly a proportion of their income, but making the stashes available suddenly would probably cause momentary increased spending, airstrikes and increased Combat Orders, perhaps increased prices. A lot would depend on how the local democracy promised would work.


On another note, I'm a bit surprised we are still as numerous as 19 000 residents globally. That number might have some artificial inflation to it, but we're probably still talking north of 15 000 citizens still living.

Perhaps another hiatus of 450 days with articles is in order now,
- Caesar