History of erepublik economy - a story to make you weep
Day 2,215, 06:23
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Published in Germany 
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by
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by eisenmutter2
GERMAN VERSION
Attention: this article is about the economic system (aka serious business). In case you are not interested in that please return to your afternoon nap or continue and click you some youtubevideos!
In this article I want to outline the development of the economy in erepublik.this will only be quite rough as I can’t mention all the little details - and last but not least - because I just write this stuff as i remember it and i have no perfect memory [some stuff of the original version was edited and new stuff added. thanks to all helpers in the comments of the german version! if you find more mistakes or think i should mention other stuff to please comment or write me a PM]
Aim of the article is to give an overview of the development in erepublik so that newbies get an idea what we oldfags called economy in the past and -more important- how the economy today differs from what we had in the past. however this article is more a tale of an oldfag than a detailed report because i am not erep-wiki. This means the economy is described how the author has perceived it.
The article is divided in 5 parts:
1. the economy in erepublik V1
and 2. the economy in erepublik Rising (v2). In these 2parts I primarily want to show the features that shaped the economy of that time and were different from todays economy. In the 3rd part i want to talk about the stuff that happened in the economy after erepublik Rising until today. The 4. will focus on the consequences of the Work As Manager-system. So these last two parts deal with stuff that shapes the economy we have today. At the end I will give a conclusion (so if you have ADD/ADHD just skip everything and scroll down to 5.)
1. ECONOMY IN V1
In erepublik V1 economy we had many things that differ greatly from todays economy
1.1 many different products
raws: foodraw, weaponraw, wood/stone, oil, diamonds
products made from these raws were: food, weapons, houses, hospitals and defense systems (wood/stone), tickets (oil) and presents (diamonds)
You can find more information about this in the erepublik wiki (products / raws)
1.2 productivity and work
the productivity was influenced by many different variables. First there was efficency (for mining raws: small, medium and high) in regions (this resulted in epic battles especially for the more important weapon-raw-regions like LionKing and HelloKitty). The second variable was the skill of the employee (with level 1 to 4 and the extra level above 4) for the 3 different workskills for mining raws, production and construction. Then you had the Health of the employees and an optimum amount of workers in the companies (so hire and fire was not a very good idea). Different companies had a different optimum amount of workers to get the productivity maximum. If you had less or more workers in a company their productivity would suffer - and the work of the workers was used in an instant (meaning you couldn’t save work to use it and produce stuff later). So you also had to provide money and raws all the time or your workers would not be able to work.
this made it possible to sabotage companies
1. work with low health
2. if a employer had baited you with high salary to work for him but then wanted to kick you out (before he was able to fire you) by not providing raw - so that you quit on your own - you as employee could just donate 1raw unit to the company and work. with this you could get your full salary but -ofc with only 1raw in the company- you produced nearly no products. a nice present for the employer!
1.3 independence from citizen but bound to the region
Every company was managed separately. You could manage your companies with your citizen account. however you could also buy a organzation and manage your companies with the org. The Orgs could be stationed in different countries and with this your companies also produced in different countries, with different boni and different taxes! This made the system very complex especially if you were active in different countries. but at least this was really a managing of companies. Every company had an own account with money for salaries or profits from selling stuff and a storage for raws or products. If you needed money to pay workers you first had to pay it into the company-account - which was free. However taking money out of the company (
But companies were not completely free: companies were bound to the region were they were built. If this region was occupied by an other country the “citizenship” of the company would also change. This resulted in some problems because now you had to pay salaries in an other currency (back then every country had its own currency) and taxes were paid now to the other country (which could be avoided for tax on salary if you paid your workers via donations).
companies in other countries - just imagine!
1.4 Trading on Monetary Market
On monetary market back then you could trade without gold-limit. Additionally you were able to trade not only gold to currency but also trade different currencies meaning currency A to currency B! Because the currency had different worth in gold you could make big profit.
for example currency A was 1g:20A and currency B was worth 1g:80B
now you could more often than you can imagine trade 1 currencyB for 4 currencyA because many people can’t do the math (1A would be worth 4B but 1B only 0.25A!)... well we will come back to the monetary market later. just remember: in V1 the monetary market was FREE (and full of profit)!
problem
even back in the V1-economy you could see low prices and bad profit on some markets because of higher supply and low demand (aka overproduction)
2. ECONOMY IN erepublik RISING
The economy in Rising was very different from V1 but also from economy today
2.1 workskill and professions
one of the bigger differences was that products now were produced in parts and different steps and for every step there was a profession. Working in a profession trained your skill and with this your productivity increased. People with a high skill also get paid more. However there were also good paid professions and bad paid professions - so it was possible to learn the “wrong” profession which made it difficult for newbies. And it was difficult in 2 ways: as worker you got paid less in a wrong job and as employer you had to deal with different types of employees and different skill-level.
different occupations = difficult!
2.2 24h day + Health und Wellness
In erepublik Rising the day was divided in 24hours and everything you could do (work, learn a skill, train) would consume time and health+wellness. health+wellness however, were variables of your productivity as worker.
here again you could sabotage companies
just doing all other stuff in the beginning and then with low health+wellness you came to work. this would get you paid full (and probably also get you fired) but you only produced much less than you could have with full health+wellness. historians claim this was common practice in occupied countries...
2.3 productivity and boni
The productivity of employees was not only influenced by characteristics of the employee (skill/wellness/health) but also by resource-boni of the country where the company was located in.
3. AFTER RISING - ECONOMY IN V3 UNTIL TODAY
The economy after Rising was influenced by 4 big changes
3.1 elimination of wellness, professions and many products
the 24h day and with it the wellness-system was eliminated. Also professions and many products were removed which shrunk production down to food and weapons and their respective raws (the different weapons from Rising were most likely removed because of the massive change in the military module from peer to peer back to V1 fighting the wall system). This killed the diversity we had seen in Rising completely.
like in DDR east germany - we don’t have houses, no presents… hey but everything we have, we have too much of!
3.2 removing of organizations and implementation of Work As Manager
Orgs were killed after Rising and with this the option to be involved in the market of different countries at the same time. Companies now were bound to the citizen and until today they are run under his citizenship alone (boni and home market are the ones of the country of your citizenship). This reduced the opportunities of businessmen very much.
In addition real management of companies was removed too. All workers now have the same productivity (which is now only influenced by countryboni) and the same skill… meaning no skill. Nowadays every companyowner can work in every one of his companies (work as manager-system), which would later result in an Odyssey of admin interventions!
work for yourself - if possible as often as possible!
3.3 Monetary Market
The opportunities for citizens on the monetary market were killed almost completely:
- currencies now are merged to country currency (cc) and traded 1:1 (= removing of the different currencies))
- implementation of the 10g-limit per day
=> consequence of the currency merging was a skyrocketing of the cc to 1g:200cc and more in very short time (please note that some individual currencies before had a worth of 1g:20cc and less)
the aim behind the 10g-limit which killed the trading on citizen accounts was to prevent multies from moving big sums of gold to other accounts. however this is still possible via products and currency over donation or anonymously via CO...
trading with bitco… er gold - we won’t allow that!
summary:
=> oversimplification and restriction of the economy and the monetary market
- less products
- work as manager
- just 1 currency left
- 10g-limit
4. CONSEQUENCES OF THE WORK AS MANAGER-SYSTEM AND ADMIN COUNTER-MEASURES
hereafter i will describe how work as manager affected the economy and what admins did to counter the consequences
4.1 Work as Manager
In contrast to working as businessman in the past now you didn’t need to manage employees:
- everything is centralized in the citizenaccount (input/output of products and money)
- work is standardised and can be stored too
- no need for multies just work yourself
=> transition from real management to ‘1 click - just work as manager’ business
[rumors say this was done to make the economy easier for newbies. well… of course they should concentrate on war and spending money...]
summary:
- massive overproduction because everyone produces stuff
- overproduction = low prices = low profits
- food companies were rendered useless for long time periods because newbies are more or less the only customer and they start the game with their own companies now...
oh hi overproduction
4.2 admins save the economy 1: The Bot-Era
To counter the falling prices because of overproduction the admins introduced an “artificial demand” - also known as BOT. The bot bought stuff from market at much higher price than everything was worth.
Details (can be skipped):
A ) The bot was used in countries with low demand in other words more or less in countries with low citizen count (russia had no bot - thailand had a bot)
B ) The bot bought everything for a certain net price (usually above the net price on market) and this bot-price was the same in all countries who had the bot. The only difference were the taxes (VAT, import tax) which resulted in different gross price you had to put in - however the bot only cared about what you would get after tax and so he paid all taxes with a smile on his face.
example: Bot-netprice q5-food 2,00cc
you have german CS and so you have to pay 1,00cc VAT
you have also a licence for japan and there you pay 2,00cc VAT and 1,50cc import tax
- in germany (even with price on market at gross 1,90cc = net 0,90cc) you could sell q5-food for net 2,00cc which would mean you could offer it for gross 3,00cc on the market
(= 2cc netto + 1cc VAT)
extra profit in comparison to selling on market: 1,10cc
- in thailand (even with price on market at gross 2,80cc = net 0,80cc) you could sell the food at net 2,00cc too. here it would mean you could offer it for gross 5,50cc
(= 2cc net + 2cc VAT + 1,5cc import tax)
extra profit in comparison to people who sell at marketprice and only pay VAT: 1,20cc
C ) when you put in a net price lower than the bot-netprice the bot would buy more units. when you put in a price near the maximum the bot would pay he would buy less units (and of course the amount he bought depended also on the kind of product, meaning he bought more raw units than food and more food than weapons)
D ) the bot bought once every hour at the same time (exact to the second!)
if i remember it right it was for example
- germany and netherlands ereptime XX:05
- thailand und bolivia ereptime XX:50
conclusion: the bot paid raised the market price by buying surplus products and even then he paid you more money than you could get by selling at marketprice. the bot bought everything that was sold for low price and only from stuff that was near the botprice parts of the offers remained on market (resulting in lower marketprice than max bot-price).
summary:
- the bot bought products from overproduction on market and paid good which flooded the game with currency
- back then no goldbuyer gold (people who buy gold with RLmoney from admin) came into the game because back then they bought bazookas and so only damage entered the game.
=> inflation on monetary market: gold rate skyrocketed from 1g:1000cc to above 1g:3000cc at the end
FAIL
this development on monetary market resulted in q4-raw companies (costing 8500cc) being cheap as dirt. so with the money from bot many people built more companies and produced more stuff which then bot bought (=overproduction and inflation MA
bot has bought stuff - do you need some more bags to carry your money?
ADMINS HAD TO STOP THIS DEVELOPMENT
what did they do? kill work as manager? noooo...
4.3 admins save the economy 2: the slow dead of the Bot
to prevent more and more currency entering the game the admins tuned the bot down (=botprice getting lower). in the end the bot vanished completely from the market.
summary:
- massive overproduction that was stimulated even more by the bot
- big spender known as bot vanished
=> prices and with them also the profits on market go down more and more with nowadays very low or even no profits at all
FAIL
please buy food - what do you mean with not hungry?!
4.4 admins save the economy 3: energy instead of health
with this change the maximum energy was availlable for everyone and not like before only 100health at once. this resulted in higher demand because people who were not online all day now could recover more energy than before. however businessmen now also could use more energy and could produce more stuff...
summary:
- prices going up short, then going down again
FAIL
4.5 admins save the economy 4: Q7 products
admins were in panic because still people produced more than they consumed and nobody stopped even when prices plummeted. the new idea were q7-products. unlike in the past these products really should burn all the surplus raw on market… in theory this sounded nice
summary:
- every guy called John, Otto, Peter … built 9000 overpriced q7-weapon-companies in his backyard (awaiting big profit from having a monopoly on q7-weapons)
- die Waffenproduktion wurde auf den neuen Standard dh auf Q7 umgestellt
- as planned we got massive demand for raw resulting in raw-prices skyrocketing
- because of high rawprices people built more raw companies to get some profit out of the situation (higher demand being canceled with higher supply)
=> weaponraws until today are too expensive for lowquality weapon production and even q7eapons were sold with loss in the beginning
- now q7-weapons are the new standard and low quality companies are dead (=lose money)
FAIL
4.6 admins save the economy 5: rocketfactories
with rocketfactories admins introduced an ingame opportunity to buy damage. goldbuyer now could buy gold from admin with RLmoney, change it to currency, buy weapons from market and built rockets - instead of using the weak bazookas. with this a demand for lowquality weapons was created and goldbuyergold flooded the game which is countering the currency inflation from bot until today (with monetary market hitting the border at 1g:200cc)
summary:
- low quality weapons made profit for a short time
- with the goldbuyer gold coming into the game the inflation of currency was countered
VERY GOOD
rockets made of gold
4.7 admins save the economy 6: airstrike
Airstrikes need much currency and food. This should counter the inflation and get some food from market i guess… however the feature is not used very often (as it is very expensive) and so it had no big influence
summary:
- big price no win
FAIL
4.8 admins save the economy 7: Combat Orders
Combat Orders are not only used by state with taxmoney but also used by individuals who pay with goldbuyergold. With this Combat Orders have the same effect on the monetarymarket like Rocketfactories (see 4.5). Additionally they result in higher demand for food and weapons (especially q7) due to more people fighting.
4.9 admins save the economy 8: worktax
On erepday 2088 worktax was intruduced which is a tax on all managers working in their companies. This is the first countermeasure that attacks the real problem (=work as manager). Aim was to stop people from using work as manager. But the effect of the tax was low: the tax paid is the same for high- and lowquality companies (=oldfag- vs Newbiecompanies) and for most of the oldfags using highquality companies the tax is just to low to get them to stop WAMing.
summary:
- prices gone up short but highquality-companies didn’t stop producing and so overproduction still continues
everyone pays the same - sounds fair!
4.10 admins save the economy 9: various events
Additionally the admins start Missions and tournaments all the time (Military Unit Tournament, National Shield Tournament) and now have introduced the never ending Weekly Challenge . All these events just have one purpose: get the demand up to counter the high supply without attacking the overproduction itself
summary:
- events with big prices will bring a much higher demand than we have usually (with Military Unit Tournament especially weapon demand)
- new is the energy-recovery-boost from the weekly challenges, which lifted the prices of foodraw and food up (especially the first time it was used and recovery was boosted 100 and more times which resulted in foodprices we saw last time when the bot was active) however the effect is only when the boost is active. so now we have prices going up and down and still a down-spiral visible.
4.11 admins save the economy 10: Raw-Companies special offer
with monetary market going down more and more - and even touching the moneyprint border at 1g:200cc - admins now made a Raw-Company offer with 30% discount. this lifted the MM up to old 1g:230cc. however more companies will mean more products, lower prices, lower profit... do we really need this?
5. CONCLUSION
The opportunities in the economy module were reduced more and more and the economy became “easier” (easy to just 1click but hard to live on no profit…). Additionally admins introduced work as manager which resulted in massive overproduction and this overproduction is still killing the economy and troubles the admins again and again. Consequences are to this day: low prices (with foodraw down to 0.01cc from time to time), low or no profits (or even losses) by working companies and as a result low wages for employees. Foodmarket was killed as almost everyone was self sufficient in regards to food.
The admins tried to counter the side effects of work as manager since it has been introduced in various ways:
With most of their interventions they try to boost the demand to get people to consume the surplus of products. But all interventions that only bring higher demand and with this bring higher prices will only have a short effect. This applies to short events (Missions) but also to longterm events ( Q7-weapons, energyrecovery-boost). The reason for this is that higher prices because of these events also mean higher profits and higher profits will bring people to produce more - the higher demand only will be countered with an even higher supply.
Other internventions do not really have an effect at all because they are either not used often (airstrike) or affect the wrong persons ( worktax for work as manager hits lowquality-companies newbies use more than the 100raw-company-oldfags).
Some interventions even bring new problems or even destroy more than they fix. Classic examples are the Bot and Q7-weapons. On the one hand the bot made up for the missing demand of real players and with this it could cover up the overproduction and all of its concequences. On the other hand however the bot flooded the game with currency and brought the inflation and companies that resulted in an even higher overproduction. Q7-weapons increased the demand for weaponraw so much that until today lowquality companies can’t produce weapons and make profit. with this a big part of the weaponproduction was killed.
Until now there was no intervention that was just positive Even the implementation of Rocketfactories and with this the goldbuyergold flooding into the game could become a problem - it works like the bot but the other way around. if the price for gold gets too low all gold companies will be cheap and people will build more companies.
This shows that the economy module is seriously broken since the end of erepublik Rising The admins do not really fix the problem but only try to counter its consequences - which results in an up and down. We citizens can only wait for the next ‘improvement’. But it should be clear for everyone that the admins only want to find a quick fix and don’t want to invest time to completely overhaul the module.
You have read everything or at least you have scrolled down to the end - congratulations!
more infos about the old erepublik and history can be found in the EREPUBLIK INSIDER or in the (history part of the) wiki
Attention: this article is about the economic system (aka serious business). In case you are not interested in that please return to your afternoon nap or continue and click you some youtubevideos!
In this article I want to outline the development of the economy in erepublik.this will only be quite rough as I can’t mention all the little details - and last but not least - because I just write this stuff as i remember it and i have no perfect memory [some stuff of the original version was edited and new stuff added. thanks to all helpers in the comments of the german version! if you find more mistakes or think i should mention other stuff to please comment or write me a PM]
Aim of the article is to give an overview of the development in erepublik so that newbies get an idea what we oldfags called economy in the past and -more important- how the economy today differs from what we had in the past. however this article is more a tale of an oldfag than a detailed report because i am not erep-wiki. This means the economy is described how the author has perceived it.
The article is divided in 5 parts:
1. the economy in erepublik V1
and 2. the economy in erepublik Rising (v2). In these 2parts I primarily want to show the features that shaped the economy of that time and were different from todays economy. In the 3rd part i want to talk about the stuff that happened in the economy after erepublik Rising until today. The 4. will focus on the consequences of the Work As Manager-system. So these last two parts deal with stuff that shapes the economy we have today. At the end I will give a conclusion (so if you have ADD/ADHD just skip everything and scroll down to 5.)
1. ECONOMY IN V1
In erepublik V1 economy we had many things that differ greatly from todays economy
1.1 many different products
raws: foodraw, weaponraw, wood/stone, oil, diamonds
products made from these raws were: food, weapons, houses, hospitals and defense systems (wood/stone), tickets (oil) and presents (diamonds)
You can find more information about this in the erepublik wiki (products / raws)
1.2 productivity and work
the productivity was influenced by many different variables. First there was efficency (for mining raws: small, medium and high) in regions (this resulted in epic battles especially for the more important weapon-raw-regions like LionKing and HelloKitty). The second variable was the skill of the employee (with level 1 to 4 and the extra level above 4) for the 3 different workskills for mining raws, production and construction. Then you had the Health of the employees and an optimum amount of workers in the companies (so hire and fire was not a very good idea). Different companies had a different optimum amount of workers to get the productivity maximum. If you had less or more workers in a company their productivity would suffer - and the work of the workers was used in an instant (meaning you couldn’t save work to use it and produce stuff later). So you also had to provide money and raws all the time or your workers would not be able to work.
this made it possible to sabotage companies
1. work with low health
2. if a employer had baited you with high salary to work for him but then wanted to kick you out (before he was able to fire you) by not providing raw - so that you quit on your own - you as employee could just donate 1raw unit to the company and work. with this you could get your full salary but -ofc with only 1raw in the company- you produced nearly no products. a nice present for the employer!
1.3 independence from citizen but bound to the region
Every company was managed separately. You could manage your companies with your citizen account. however you could also buy a organzation and manage your companies with the org. The Orgs could be stationed in different countries and with this your companies also produced in different countries, with different boni and different taxes! This made the system very complex especially if you were active in different countries. but at least this was really a managing of companies. Every company had an own account with money for salaries or profits from selling stuff and a storage for raws or products. If you needed money to pay workers you first had to pay it into the company-account - which was free. However taking money out of the company (
😛rofits) to invest them in other stuff you had to pay income tax. However most people used the monetary market to transfer money out of companies in order to avoid this tax. Rwas and products also had to be traded on the market and it was not possible to take products out of the company.
But companies were not completely free: companies were bound to the region were they were built. If this region was occupied by an other country the “citizenship” of the company would also change. This resulted in some problems because now you had to pay salaries in an other currency (back then every country had its own currency) and taxes were paid now to the other country (which could be avoided for tax on salary if you paid your workers via donations).
companies in other countries - just imagine!
1.4 Trading on Monetary Market
On monetary market back then you could trade without gold-limit. Additionally you were able to trade not only gold to currency but also trade different currencies meaning currency A to currency B! Because the currency had different worth in gold you could make big profit.
for example currency A was 1g:20A and currency B was worth 1g:80B
now you could more often than you can imagine trade 1 currencyB for 4 currencyA because many people can’t do the math (1A would be worth 4B but 1B only 0.25A!)... well we will come back to the monetary market later. just remember: in V1 the monetary market was FREE (and full of profit)!
problem
even back in the V1-economy you could see low prices and bad profit on some markets because of higher supply and low demand (aka overproduction)
2. ECONOMY IN erepublik RISING
The economy in Rising was very different from V1 but also from economy today
2.1 workskill and professions
one of the bigger differences was that products now were produced in parts and different steps and for every step there was a profession. Working in a profession trained your skill and with this your productivity increased. People with a high skill also get paid more. However there were also good paid professions and bad paid professions - so it was possible to learn the “wrong” profession which made it difficult for newbies. And it was difficult in 2 ways: as worker you got paid less in a wrong job and as employer you had to deal with different types of employees and different skill-level.
different occupations = difficult!
2.2 24h day + Health und Wellness
In erepublik Rising the day was divided in 24hours and everything you could do (work, learn a skill, train) would consume time and health+wellness. health+wellness however, were variables of your productivity as worker.
here again you could sabotage companies
just doing all other stuff in the beginning and then with low health+wellness you came to work. this would get you paid full (and probably also get you fired) but you only produced much less than you could have with full health+wellness. historians claim this was common practice in occupied countries...
2.3 productivity and boni
The productivity of employees was not only influenced by characteristics of the employee (skill/wellness/health) but also by resource-boni of the country where the company was located in.
3. AFTER RISING - ECONOMY IN V3 UNTIL TODAY
The economy after Rising was influenced by 4 big changes
3.1 elimination of wellness, professions and many products
the 24h day and with it the wellness-system was eliminated. Also professions and many products were removed which shrunk production down to food and weapons and their respective raws (the different weapons from Rising were most likely removed because of the massive change in the military module from peer to peer back to V1 fighting the wall system). This killed the diversity we had seen in Rising completely.
like in DDR east germany - we don’t have houses, no presents… hey but everything we have, we have too much of!
3.2 removing of organizations and implementation of Work As Manager
Orgs were killed after Rising and with this the option to be involved in the market of different countries at the same time. Companies now were bound to the citizen and until today they are run under his citizenship alone (boni and home market are the ones of the country of your citizenship). This reduced the opportunities of businessmen very much.
In addition real management of companies was removed too. All workers now have the same productivity (which is now only influenced by countryboni) and the same skill… meaning no skill. Nowadays every companyowner can work in every one of his companies (work as manager-system), which would later result in an Odyssey of admin interventions!
work for yourself - if possible as often as possible!
3.3 Monetary Market
The opportunities for citizens on the monetary market were killed almost completely:
- currencies now are merged to country currency (cc) and traded 1:1 (= removing of the different currencies))
- implementation of the 10g-limit per day
=> consequence of the currency merging was a skyrocketing of the cc to 1g:200cc and more in very short time (please note that some individual currencies before had a worth of 1g:20cc and less)
the aim behind the 10g-limit which killed the trading on citizen accounts was to prevent multies from moving big sums of gold to other accounts. however this is still possible via products and currency over donation or anonymously via CO...
trading with bitco… er gold - we won’t allow that!
summary:
=> oversimplification and restriction of the economy and the monetary market
- less products
- work as manager
- just 1 currency left
- 10g-limit
4. CONSEQUENCES OF THE WORK AS MANAGER-SYSTEM AND ADMIN COUNTER-MEASURES
hereafter i will describe how work as manager affected the economy and what admins did to counter the consequences
4.1 Work as Manager
In contrast to working as businessman in the past now you didn’t need to manage employees:
- everything is centralized in the citizenaccount (input/output of products and money)
- work is standardised and can be stored too
- no need for multies just work yourself
=> transition from real management to ‘1 click - just work as manager’ business
[rumors say this was done to make the economy easier for newbies. well… of course they should concentrate on war and spending money...]
summary:
- massive overproduction because everyone produces stuff
- overproduction = low prices = low profits
- food companies were rendered useless for long time periods because newbies are more or less the only customer and they start the game with their own companies now...
oh hi overproduction
4.2 admins save the economy 1: The Bot-Era
To counter the falling prices because of overproduction the admins introduced an “artificial demand” - also known as BOT. The bot bought stuff from market at much higher price than everything was worth.
Details (can be skipped):
A ) The bot was used in countries with low demand in other words more or less in countries with low citizen count (russia had no bot - thailand had a bot)
B ) The bot bought everything for a certain net price (usually above the net price on market) and this bot-price was the same in all countries who had the bot. The only difference were the taxes (VAT, import tax) which resulted in different gross price you had to put in - however the bot only cared about what you would get after tax and so he paid all taxes with a smile on his face.
example: Bot-netprice q5-food 2,00cc
you have german CS and so you have to pay 1,00cc VAT
you have also a licence for japan and there you pay 2,00cc VAT and 1,50cc import tax
- in germany (even with price on market at gross 1,90cc = net 0,90cc) you could sell q5-food for net 2,00cc which would mean you could offer it for gross 3,00cc on the market
(= 2cc netto + 1cc VAT)
extra profit in comparison to selling on market: 1,10cc
- in thailand (even with price on market at gross 2,80cc = net 0,80cc) you could sell the food at net 2,00cc too. here it would mean you could offer it for gross 5,50cc
(= 2cc net + 2cc VAT + 1,5cc import tax)
extra profit in comparison to people who sell at marketprice and only pay VAT: 1,20cc
C ) when you put in a net price lower than the bot-netprice the bot would buy more units. when you put in a price near the maximum the bot would pay he would buy less units (and of course the amount he bought depended also on the kind of product, meaning he bought more raw units than food and more food than weapons)
D ) the bot bought once every hour at the same time (exact to the second!)
if i remember it right it was for example
- germany and netherlands ereptime XX:05
- thailand und bolivia ereptime XX:50
conclusion: the bot paid raised the market price by buying surplus products and even then he paid you more money than you could get by selling at marketprice. the bot bought everything that was sold for low price and only from stuff that was near the botprice parts of the offers remained on market (resulting in lower marketprice than max bot-price).
summary:
- the bot bought products from overproduction on market and paid good which flooded the game with currency
- back then no goldbuyer gold (people who buy gold with RLmoney from admin) came into the game because back then they bought bazookas and so only damage entered the game.
=> inflation on monetary market: gold rate skyrocketed from 1g:1000cc to above 1g:3000cc at the end
FAIL
this development on monetary market resulted in q4-raw companies (costing 8500cc) being cheap as dirt. so with the money from bot many people built more companies and produced more stuff which then bot bought (=overproduction and inflation MA
😵. this is the reason why oldfag businessmen have some more companies (aka over 9000 RAWRs)
bot has bought stuff - do you need some more bags to carry your money?
ADMINS HAD TO STOP THIS DEVELOPMENT
what did they do? kill work as manager? noooo...
4.3 admins save the economy 2: the slow dead of the Bot
to prevent more and more currency entering the game the admins tuned the bot down (=botprice getting lower). in the end the bot vanished completely from the market.
summary:
- massive overproduction that was stimulated even more by the bot
- big spender known as bot vanished
=> prices and with them also the profits on market go down more and more with nowadays very low or even no profits at all
FAIL
please buy food - what do you mean with not hungry?!
4.4 admins save the economy 3: energy instead of health
with this change the maximum energy was availlable for everyone and not like before only 100health at once. this resulted in higher demand because people who were not online all day now could recover more energy than before. however businessmen now also could use more energy and could produce more stuff...
summary:
- prices going up short, then going down again
FAIL
4.5 admins save the economy 4: Q7 products
admins were in panic because still people produced more than they consumed and nobody stopped even when prices plummeted. the new idea were q7-products. unlike in the past these products really should burn all the surplus raw on market… in theory this sounded nice
summary:
- every guy called John, Otto, Peter … built 9000 overpriced q7-weapon-companies in his backyard (awaiting big profit from having a monopoly on q7-weapons)
- die Waffenproduktion wurde auf den neuen Standard dh auf Q7 umgestellt
- as planned we got massive demand for raw resulting in raw-prices skyrocketing
- because of high rawprices people built more raw companies to get some profit out of the situation (higher demand being canceled with higher supply)
=> weaponraws until today are too expensive for lowquality weapon production and even q7eapons were sold with loss in the beginning
- now q7-weapons are the new standard and low quality companies are dead (=lose money)
FAIL
4.6 admins save the economy 5: rocketfactories
with rocketfactories admins introduced an ingame opportunity to buy damage. goldbuyer now could buy gold from admin with RLmoney, change it to currency, buy weapons from market and built rockets - instead of using the weak bazookas. with this a demand for lowquality weapons was created and goldbuyergold flooded the game which is countering the currency inflation from bot until today (with monetary market hitting the border at 1g:200cc)
summary:
- low quality weapons made profit for a short time
- with the goldbuyer gold coming into the game the inflation of currency was countered
VERY GOOD
rockets made of gold
4.7 admins save the economy 6: airstrike
Airstrikes need much currency and food. This should counter the inflation and get some food from market i guess… however the feature is not used very often (as it is very expensive) and so it had no big influence
summary:
- big price no win
FAIL
4.8 admins save the economy 7: Combat Orders
Combat Orders are not only used by state with taxmoney but also used by individuals who pay with goldbuyergold. With this Combat Orders have the same effect on the monetarymarket like Rocketfactories (see 4.5). Additionally they result in higher demand for food and weapons (especially q7) due to more people fighting.
4.9 admins save the economy 8: worktax
On erepday 2088 worktax was intruduced which is a tax on all managers working in their companies. This is the first countermeasure that attacks the real problem (=work as manager). Aim was to stop people from using work as manager. But the effect of the tax was low: the tax paid is the same for high- and lowquality companies (=oldfag- vs Newbiecompanies) and for most of the oldfags using highquality companies the tax is just to low to get them to stop WAMing.
summary:
- prices gone up short but highquality-companies didn’t stop producing and so overproduction still continues
everyone pays the same - sounds fair!
4.10 admins save the economy 9: various events
Additionally the admins start Missions and tournaments all the time (Military Unit Tournament, National Shield Tournament) and now have introduced the never ending Weekly Challenge . All these events just have one purpose: get the demand up to counter the high supply without attacking the overproduction itself
summary:
- events with big prices will bring a much higher demand than we have usually (with Military Unit Tournament especially weapon demand)
- new is the energy-recovery-boost from the weekly challenges, which lifted the prices of foodraw and food up (especially the first time it was used and recovery was boosted 100 and more times which resulted in foodprices we saw last time when the bot was active) however the effect is only when the boost is active. so now we have prices going up and down and still a down-spiral visible.
4.11 admins save the economy 10: Raw-Companies special offer
with monetary market going down more and more - and even touching the moneyprint border at 1g:200cc - admins now made a Raw-Company offer with 30% discount. this lifted the MM up to old 1g:230cc. however more companies will mean more products, lower prices, lower profit... do we really need this?
5. CONCLUSION
The opportunities in the economy module were reduced more and more and the economy became “easier” (easy to just 1click but hard to live on no profit…). Additionally admins introduced work as manager which resulted in massive overproduction and this overproduction is still killing the economy and troubles the admins again and again. Consequences are to this day: low prices (with foodraw down to 0.01cc from time to time), low or no profits (or even losses) by working companies and as a result low wages for employees. Foodmarket was killed as almost everyone was self sufficient in regards to food.
The admins tried to counter the side effects of work as manager since it has been introduced in various ways:
With most of their interventions they try to boost the demand to get people to consume the surplus of products. But all interventions that only bring higher demand and with this bring higher prices will only have a short effect. This applies to short events (Missions) but also to longterm events ( Q7-weapons, energyrecovery-boost). The reason for this is that higher prices because of these events also mean higher profits and higher profits will bring people to produce more - the higher demand only will be countered with an even higher supply.
Other internventions do not really have an effect at all because they are either not used often (airstrike) or affect the wrong persons ( worktax for work as manager hits lowquality-companies newbies use more than the 100raw-company-oldfags).
Some interventions even bring new problems or even destroy more than they fix. Classic examples are the Bot and Q7-weapons. On the one hand the bot made up for the missing demand of real players and with this it could cover up the overproduction and all of its concequences. On the other hand however the bot flooded the game with currency and brought the inflation and companies that resulted in an even higher overproduction. Q7-weapons increased the demand for weaponraw so much that until today lowquality companies can’t produce weapons and make profit. with this a big part of the weaponproduction was killed.
Until now there was no intervention that was just positive Even the implementation of Rocketfactories and with this the goldbuyergold flooding into the game could become a problem - it works like the bot but the other way around. if the price for gold gets too low all gold companies will be cheap and people will build more companies.
This shows that the economy module is seriously broken since the end of erepublik Rising The admins do not really fix the problem but only try to counter its consequences - which results in an up and down. We citizens can only wait for the next ‘improvement’. But it should be clear for everyone that the admins only want to find a quick fix and don’t want to invest time to completely overhaul the module.
You have read everything or at least you have scrolled down to the end - congratulations!
more infos about the old erepublik and history can be found in the EREPUBLIK INSIDER or in the (history part of the) wiki
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Comments
V
Miss and Mister eScandinavia 2013- Voting
http://tinyurl.com/kzbq3hl
SHOUT!!!
V
Top stuff, voted and shouted o7
Weird thing is about this game, when I try to think back how things like the Econ Mod used to be I can never recall with any specificity. I still remember the old Battle Mod, but that's probs as much to do with the fact eSim have a copy of it running in their game.
how about erepublik rising playlist with someone talking crazy stuff you don't understand? http://tinyurl.com/qh787d6
but yeah i had some oldfags pointing out mistakes in the german version too. it all became one big slime and you are not sure what was first and what later and then you remember stuff long forgotten.
that's a wall of text..
but, that's really nice article.
voted + shouted
V
awesome work there man. greetings from Greece. keep it up!
Good sum up. Voted!
mega vote
v & agree
Voted
o/
Voted.
Good recap of the thing we like to call eRep economy.
Fun fact (this is a question from one of my tickets to the Admins):
Question 3: Was using bot to sell products at a higher price considered as exploit?
3) bots, no matter what they do, are forbidden
So, we should all have been banned already 🙂 I even reported myself for exploiting market bot but I wasn't banned. So much about Admins following their own rules 🙂
sounds like newbie admin who doesn't know what "the bot" is
...or admins are just denying their past
or just retarded
No, actually it was a very experienced Admin. Ticket was sent long time ago anyway. But it's hilarious. On one hand, they say it's forbidden. And when you report yourself for using it, you don't get banned! One other player, dSokre, he wrote a few articles about how to use a bot, what prices were used, where and when market bot was buying products. The articles were never deleted, many players, including myself, were using those tables and he (or anyone else) never got banned for exploit.
This reminded me of a logic puzzle, it goes something like this: Can a god make a stone that he cannot lift?
Can Admins create a feature that is forbidden by their own rules? - Well, the answer is obvious: yes! 🙂
[removed]
well admins can't deny its existence anyway with
- the net price being everywhere the same and
- the prices for all higher qualities being [q1 * qualitylevel]
- buying every hour at the same time (in the same country)
somehow i remember that they at one point admitted it's existence and that they will have to kill him (was on the all high of the MM when they slowly turned the botprice down more and more)... adjusting the prices in storage for the changed bot price every other day was a bit of a pain but i shoutet the new prices for food and raw in my friends feed until bot was gone completely - nothing ever happened...
Voted very nice article!
Nice article.
Excellent (long) read!
nice one but it´s just pearls for swines i stoped trying to help them improve their game for the simple fact that one can only help people who want to be helped
Great article.
Greetings and luck.
v
V
in my eyes: german version beste.
voted anyway o7
why? because less subitems in 4. ?
V
nice. voted
Super! thx! V
schlechter artikel
nicht viel besserer Kommentar
btw hab eh alles von irgendso nem Artikel aus Deutschland abgeschrieben und es nur ins Englische übersetzt, damit man es nicht mit Plagiatsoftware findet
ok, ist genehmigt
very nice article indeed
Great effort, read and memories.
vote + sub.
tnx for that article.
Ist das jetzt echt der selbe Artikel nochmal lauwarm aufgeblüht?
/me ist etwas verwirrt, deja vu oder Ideenlosigkeit?
Hätte eher den Nachfolge Artikel erwartet
Ja ich weiß, ich hätte es ganz professionell in 6 Teilen und dann später nochmal zusammengefasst als ein Buch herausbringen sollen...
bei 4. sind aber hier 2zusätzliche Unterpunkte, falls das tröstet
sehe grad er hätte ja wirklich 2mal unternander gepasst... haben die admins die maximale Zeichenzahl für Artikel erhöht?
Naja kann ich dann später, wenn mir danach ist, beide zusammenlegen und den einen Artikel für irgendwas anderes verwenden oder so
aufgeblüht?? doofe Autokorrektur am handy. soll natürlich "aufgebrüht" heissen
derselbe Artikel, ja
aber dieses mal für das internationale publikum.
ich verstehe das mutti diesen weg gewählt hatte, ich meine, HEY! wie lang wäre der Artikel bitte zweisprachig geworden?
Musste das Teil auch erstmal übersetzen und hatte keine Lust zu... Freitag wo ichs dann gemacht hab war der alte Artikel ja schon wieder in den ewigen Jagd.
Excellent history article!
For posterity, I seem to remember the reason they added work-as-manager: to make it 'fair' after some people were already doing it as a cheat
v
Great view back through time, I forgot most of that.