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16 July Edition



Leaders ~ Editorial

Dear Friends,

It’s been a long while since I’ve had to opportunity to write the Economist. Sadly real life has kept me too busy for sports, games and eRepublik, so we haven’t had an edition of the Economist in what seems like forever. This week we come back and everything has changed. Since the election of Hassan Pesaran as President we’ve seen a number of changes in the UK, the most notable of which is the disappearance of Scotland. For those of you wondering where Scotland has gone, don’t worry, it’ll be back some day!

In addition we’ve seen a worsening of transatlantic relations, resulting in an effective break off of relations between us and all former Atlantis nations. Whether it was deliberate or not the UK is not effectively PEACE aligned. The USA and Canada are both currently embargoing our goods, and we can’t trade legally with them. The advice of this paper would be to move an org to the USA/Canada and use the donate button to ship your needed RM across. It can be tedious but since the rulers of the world are fighting it seems like the only solution for ordinary citizens.

In Switzerland this week we see a fracturing in the Theocrat order, as the organisational momentum at the top seems to be slowing down. Although the Theocratic battle damage is soaring, with the order doing over ninety thousand damage in the Alaskan battle, many younger players are feeling put off by the elitist nature of the order. Weapons and tanking are reserved for the best soldiers; the others are lovers of war not Dio and thus are becoming disillusioned and leaving. It may be that the Theocrat project could be drawing to a close.

In terms of internal politics we’ve also seen the election of Mr Woldy (TUP), Stan Wephan (PCP), Craig Rossiter (UKRP), Flamur (RFA) and Dodgy Dude (BEP) as our new Party Presidents. They are now responsible for shuffling Congressional Candidates, proposing Presidential candidates and leading their parties. Mr Woldy and Stan Wephen were both shoo-in choices, with little opposition. The UKRP election was an unpredictable one, as LordJustice is quite important in UKRP circles- however a strong PM campaign gave Craig the edge to win. Flamur was opposed for the RFA Presidency by Rastari, a well known PCP member. However despite getting 24 votes he was comfortably defeated. The BEP saw a close race between Dodgy Dude and Joe Gerrard, a long term member. Dodgy Dude won, though a reduced turnout (45% down from 57😵 suggests that the ‘new party boom’ effect has worn off.

Well I could go on, but I’ll end up spoiling the rest of the article. Without further ado- the Economist.

Edit: For new readers the Nova Scotia swap happened after the Economist was released!



Leaders ~ PEACE at home, PEACE in Scotland

On the 10th of July at around 8pm the Hungarian Army launched an offensive against Scotland from their base in Denmark, mainland Europe. Their forces had fought their way through Germany, liberating the country and occupying Jutland, previously a part of eSweden. Since then, the threat of a Hungarian invasion increased until many eUS and eCanadians were worried that their soil could be threatened by an invasion of Scotland.

However, during that period only threats were received. “Do not ally with Hungary”, “Do not let them pass”. When the UK was asked by Hungary if they could use our region for a training war our leaders were faced by a conundrum. Refusal could result in an invasion, and the Fortis countries weren’t strong enough to stop Hungary. In fact they had showed little inclination to protect us in any case. So in the end the UK agreed because Hungary as an ally is better than Hungary as an enemy.

Then came the accusations, “UK are traitors”, “British are cowards”, “Neville Chamberlain again!”. The UK betrayed nobody- we have no alliance with the USA or Canada. We are neutral. We are cowards because we didn’t commit suicide to give the USA a few more days of freedom from attack. We are apparently appeasing the Nazis, although last time I checked the Hungarians were just playing the game and not committing genocide, so the comparison is a bit of an ugly one.

We can’t condone or condemn the decisions made by the UK government now, we can only criticise those made in the past. Maybe we should have sided with Sweden. Maybe we should have joined FORTIS earlier. Maybe this and that. However when Hassan Pesaran became Prime Minister the options facing him were slim. Side with Hungary and get free training wars and the friendship of the world’s strongest nation- or submit ourselves to an inglorious occupation and the end of eBritain. There wasn’t a choice there.

The question now is where to go from here. With Scotland occupied and North America under attack from France, Alaska- and soon other places, we must consider our options for the future. As this publication sees it the options the UK has are: Join PEACE or remain a ‘neutral’ country which is disliked by everyone but PEACE. As the main advantage of neutrality is that it allows you to remain friends with everyone (if done properly) it is fair to say there is no further advantage to remaining neutral. Although nobody can predict the future, it is easy to see that without drastic change the UK will be at PEACE very soon.

Edit: after this article was released UK joined forces with PEACE.



Britain ~ King of the Hill

Most of us, upon joining eRepublik, have had influential figures in our lives. Whether your local congressman, President, party leaders, army leaders or newspaper editors, you have been guided and mentored by older players on the meaning of the game and how to play it.

One of our older and wiser players, Malta_1990, is assembling a list of the top 40 most influential UK citizens. Citizens are invited to list their top 5 influences by filling in the google form in this newspaper article. Users are encouraged not to nominate themselves!

Since everyone is playing a game called ‘guess the top 5’ I thought I’d wade in. My prediction is that the top 5 will all be born before October 2008. My reasoning is that if you’ve been around longer then you’ve influenced more of the citizens who are active today and were just starting out then. I also predict that many of the top 5 will be either former Presidents or long term congress members. This is because when people think of influences they usually think of heroes. An influence is someone who has changed the way you think, but many players will naturally nominate the big personalities they admire.

For this reason I predict the top five will include Dishmcds, two-time President of the UK and one of our most loved (and hated) players. Dishmcds is undoubtedly an influential and powerful character, but whether he gets the #1 spot will depend largely on whether people vote along party lines. I also think that former President JerryGFL and long-term UKRP congress member CertaCito stand a good chance of making it into the top 5. Both have made a strong contribution to British society, and both have strong followings. Other likely top 5 citizens are Malta_1990, John Forseti, Bob Boblo, Hassan Pesaran and Kumnaa. Although it is difficult to predict I expect that the top 5 will be made up of some combination of these five.

But what is influence and what does it entail? Influence is a form of power. Power is the ability to change things, pure and simple. Power takes many different forms, which roughly divide into force, coercion and influence. Force is the ability to simply change things directly, whether you do so as the leader of an army or the President of a Party, and only requires high office and not consent. Coercion is the ability to lever change by exerting power over others. It requires consent but often the consent is either grudging or accepting (in other words the choice to refuse could be hazardous). Influence is the ability to change the situation because those over whom you exert power accept and willingly follow your instructions because they trust you. Influence is gained slowly and by maintaining a reputation for being honest, fair and not self-serving. It will be interesting to see how many truly influential people make it to the list.



Europe ~ Baltic woes

With another world war in progress it is easy to forget that for some smaller countries these super-conflicts represent nothing more than large training wars. The Baltic states have survived mostly intact through their early life, something rare for a new country. In the North, Latvia has had a bumpy history of takeovers, multi-accounting and a Finnish invasion. Now with the help of PEACE forces the Latvians have managed to reclaim one of their conquered regions from Finland.

The future for the Baltic states is a strange one. Traditionally very independent, these countries have little to gain from remaining separate states but everything to lose. A merger however would present its own risks in the form of political take-overs and resistance wars.

In the East Russia has emerged after a recent baby boom as a powerful new country. Although still lacking many of its regions the new power has a growing population that will grow more powerful with time. Whether the state decides to stick with PEACE or go its own way its shear size presents a threat to Northern Asia and Europe.

To the West the fallen Scandinavian powers of Finland, Sweden and Norway sit in a similar position. Norway can barely issue forty thousand damage these days, and Sweden exhausted its last supplies of gold in the failed conquest of Germany. Finland, once a fairly strong and ‘compact’ nation (high average experience points) has slowly slid into disrepair as well.

Poland to the South of the Baltic is now the strongest regional power. Having slowly risen through the national rankings to sixth, it has a large population which will ultimately make it a major world power. Once Sweden and co looked after the emerging state of Poland, now the tables have for the most part turned. In the recent battle for Nova Scotia Poland did a very respectable amount of damage, and their strong active population makes them the backbone of the Eden alliance.

All in all the area is unstable and changeable. The sudden emergence of Hungary and Poland, combined with the steady decline of the former Atlantis nations, means that the balance of power (and indeed ownership of regions) is likely to change very soon.



United States ~ No margin for error

Since the fall of Atlantis the United States has been undergoing a makeover. Constant training wars, a growing stance with relation to Romania and a position of leadership in FORTIS have inflated the USAs opinion of its own prowess. Now that the Hungarian invasion is well underway the Americans have finally realised that they may be a great power but they’re by no means the strongest in the world as their president seems to think. Hungary alone is more than twice as powerful on the battlefield, and in the battles to come it is likely they will be attacked from several fronts simultaneously.

So what will America do? I doubt that PEACE will win this war. Simply because of a matter of game logistics, the USA has fifty regions, and that leaves any conquering country at extreme risk of a PTO. However, I do expect an invasion of US soil. The USA needs to stop being a role playing nation and get its hands dirty like Hungary and co did in the past. This means tactical withdrawals. The goal would be to stretch an invading force thin by retreating useless and low population regions, and then re-attacking them immediately afterwards. By this means the USA’s citizens would be fighting a less MPPs, and would be able to choose the time of attack. It also opens up more regions for resistance wars. Coupled with a strong defence of key high-population and high-resource regions these tactics would use the USA’s main advantage- their 50 regions.

So to win this war the USA has to expect and prepare to lose some regions. As in most wars the forces are unbalanced, and the USA could quickly exhaust its funding tanking to protect every last region. It would be a wise but painful decision to withdraw and protect a core number of regions. Citizens from already weak states should begin to move to the core immediately. The best outcome for the USA is a loss of a few regions with a gradual reclamation through resistance wars. The worst outcome is the occupation of the USA’s valuable oil and wood resources by an enemy which can strike at any time from within the continental USA.



The Americas ~ Canada invaded

After the speculation on the USA it seems strange to come back to talk of a country already under occupation. Canada was attacked by Hungary on the 14th July, using France as a proxy. This means that although France attacked Canada, it was Hungarian soldiers who fought to defeat the combined force of ex-Atlantis countries.

So far the path of invasion looks to be moving along the path of least resistance. The current battle in Labrador covers a region with only 51 citizens- easy pickings. However the region has high oil and medium wood, valuable resources that would allow Hungary to release the Caucasians region back to its ally, Russia. It also borders the Nunavut Regionwhich has high diamonds. The only reason for invasion is to raise rank and gain resources. I predict that Hungary will get rid of the larger regions and keep those with small populations and high resources- like Nunavut.

Canada should retain its populous regions like British Colombia, but the more sparsely populated ones are going to go. They should accept that and save their gold to defend the important regions.

Edit: After this article was released, the UK invaded Nova Scotia through Brittany and conquered the region. This essentially means the USA and Canada cannot hope to counter-attack against France until they declare war on the UK.



Asia ~ Philippines Fights

Since the British moved to the Philippines there has been a strong tendency to keep the country as neutral as possible. Now however the Philippines has made a clear movement towards PEACE as its forces participated in the battle against Alaska.

Filipino President HazzN, a former resident of the UK and MP for West Midlands commented, saying

“We are not at war, we are just helping our allies. They need more soldiers and we have a bunch kicking their heels. Where we are at the moment, we are untouchable”.

Although we agree that the Philippines is untouchable in terms of a direct attack, it is ever vulnerable to political actions. For that reason the declaration for Russia and for PEACE is a dangerous one. We commend the Philippines for their bravery, but also warn them of potential retaliatory attacks.



Business News ~ Ministry of Trade News

In case some of you missed it, Prime Minister Hassan Pesaran asked me to step up to the role of Minister of Trade recently. As such I am releasing another article in a few days with some of the data our hard working members have put together.

I’d just like to ask that anyone who has had any problems with the US/Canadian blockade of goods to forward their queries to Frank Furglar, who is the Under-Minister of Trade for domestic affairs. This includes licencing issues and problems getting supplies of raw materials.

Anyone with a company in Scotland who is suffering losses due to the current occupation can message me directly and I’ll consider how best to help you. For those who own a Q1 business and want to form a partnership to increase profits message me directly.

Finally any company owner reading this, please fill out this form so that we can help you to help yourself.



**The Economist**

Top 10 countries by experience (Hungary = 1)

1. Hungary = 1
2. Indonesia = 0.96
3. USA = 0.57
4. Romania = 0.49
5. Spain= 0.30
6. Poland = 0.21
7. Brazil = 0.13
8. Canada = 0.13
9. United Kingdom = 0.12
10. France = 0.11