Join the new world

So, let's start by saying some of the new changes are pretty good. Others royally suck, but hey, that's life. I'll cover those at the bottom.

Free at Last, Free at Last

Yesterday, at approximately 1235 Erepublik time, Northern Ireland was returned to it's rightful owners. A last minute blitzkrieg, dropping the wall from 100K to -200K in the last hour (with the majority of it coming in the last 30 seconds) was nice to see, with combined strikes from several Phoenix nations. Northern Ireland, to put it simply, is home again, and if the Irish are serious in trying to get it back, they're going to have to try to take it properly this time. If the Irish really have an issue with the UK regaining one of its original regions, I don't feel sorry for them.

This means that all 12 original regions are back under our control. I'm sure many of you, including the ones who have sent PM's to me and several Congressman/MPs are curious as to what we're going to do with the hospital situation, since our only hospital is in London. For starters, we're not putting Q2 hospitals in every region (James), and we're not replacing all of our Q5's. We have discussed the possibility of one more, however, at this time the discussion has not been serious enough to make an official proposal.

The other thing to think of is the upcoming release of V2, and the changes that are set to release regarding Hospitals and Defence Systems having an "affected area". Since this might change the effectiveness of Hospitals, it would be rather shortsighted to go spending a ton of money on Hospitals which may be useless.

So for now, we'll rebuild what we think will be prudent, and start planning for V2 (which brings me to some new updates).

Some for Better, Some for Worse

So, the administrative team has released some new updates today. There are several which will have an immediate impact both politically and in combat.

-Citizenships will now be granted to the original country of the region in which the citizen is born. This means that countries such as France and Germany will not be able to politically manuever in their occupied nations, which would have been an effective tool for getting the Polish and Spanish to release French regions (after all, we wouldn't want the Germans to do a reverse Poland on them, would we?). It also means countries like Spain and Poland, and others who occupy foreign lands like Northern Ireland (joke) will not be able to PTO new countries (like the Czech Republic, or in other words, pull a Belgium) as easy as open citizenships will not be as effective with an original population remaining with citizenship.

This becomes rather complicated. It would have been nice, say, 6 months ago I think, when most countries were either complete or near complete. Now, I think it's a poorly timed "improvement" considering the state of various occupied regions.

-Wellness implementation in Hospitals: The old way to increase wellness from Level 5 was to fight once in a region with a Q5 hospital, and heal, giving you 50 wellness. This worked for new citizens, and allowed for the kamikaze tactic in battles (which, for a nation like Hungary, Serbia, the United States, etc would add an additional 300-500K damage to a battle, and make it very hard to compete against). Now, the hospital will only heal up to the wellness you've lost in a current day of fighting, and new players will start with 100 wellness (they can also fight from level 3, which is an improvement as they can now begin Day 3 or somethinig along those lines).

So, either we can spend more time sleeping in the new module (according to the Insider) or more Gold on wellness packs (which removes more WP's from current fighting standards of tanking). I can't say it's the best implementation in my opinion, however, much like gift bombing in Beta, tactics do expire with age.

-New languages, chat room laws, and forum platforms are coming. I don't expect countries to use the in game forums at this point, as I have always said (you can't use National forums externally for two years then expect to change everything over instantaneously), but otherwise the new languages will be a boost to countries with difficulty speaking english naturally. Personally, I can't wait to use the Farsi version.

Elections and You - Fortress London

Some parties correctly identified that Fortress London was going to skew the vote considerably, and used a proper voting strategy to counteract it. Some did not (as evidenced by two parties taking a combined 28 of 40~ seats). Fortress London works, and we will not stray from it until the time suits (ie if V2 makes it complete nonsense), so I'd suggest each party working more on their voting strategies for blockers and floaters.

Thanks,
Dishmcds