Join the new world

Lincoln, Nebraska- With October looming just around the corner the days of the beta are over and within the next five to twenty days we will see the take off of Erepublik. This could not come at a better time for the U.S. as we are only 70 citizens away from becoming the most populated country in Erepublik. This is a huge step up from back when we were sixth or seventh back in the summer. Given we might lose a good sum of people to the new fight for freedom wars once V1 is released but we will get them back and continue to grow. Now onto the reason I wrote this article.

As most of you already know V1 will introduce a new aspect of the game with the introduction of raw materials. The United States has a good amount of every material except for iron and diamonds which we only have a one productivity value of in a few regions which will hinder our weapons and gifts productions. The admins have said that they will be making a few changes to the current distribution of resources but it is unlikely we will get a 2 for diamonds although there is a possibility of us getting a 2 for iron which would greatly benefit our weapons industry.

Grain- Grain seems to be a very common resource and it will be used to produce food. We have four regions with a productivity bonus of 2 for grain so we are in a good spot there. The down side about this though is it would be hard to export since almost every country has grain.

Oil- Oil will be used to produce moving tickets and around half of the countries will have access to it. The good news about this is that the U.S. has six regions with a productivity bonus of 2 in oil which gives us the largest oil reserves in the world. Combine this with one of the top three populations and we will for sure be a top exporter in oil. The downside to this is oil is not near as important as it is in real life and will only be used by the moving ticket industry, however oil will probably pick up another use later in V1.

Wood- Wood will be used to produce housing. Domestically we have two main sources of wood, this should be enough for now to manage our housing industry for now however if the admins put a limit on the amount of resources that can be harvested from a region we will have to either resort to our productivity 1 regions or find a foreign source.

Iron- Iron will be used to produce weapons and we are in a tough situation here. There is not a single productivity 2 iron region in North America and our only neighbor to have it is Russia (under Norwegian control). Norway is one of our most likely trading partners to get Iron along with Brazil who holds the only 2 iron in the Americas. This is going to cause difficulty for our weapons market unless we can get a free trade agreement to bring in Iron. It is always possible that we use one of our two productivity 1 iron regions to produce iron but they would produce less and the price would end up costing more.

Diamonds- Diamonds will be used to produce gifts. Diamonds are probably the most rare resource in the game and they will require that we have a good trade network since we do not have a P2 diamond region and we only have region with any diamonds at all in Arkansas. Canada is a likely trading partner with us here.

Now that you know the situation with out domestic resources I will look at a few possible trading partners. Foreign relations are not a huge issue at the moment but we still have a GE before the release of V1 so we can not discuss anything official yet. If you have a question about a certain country then just ask here since I don't have time to go into every country right now.

Mexico- This country will have a hard time with resources. They do not have any P2 grain or wood regions and they do not have a single diamond or iron region, the only thing they have is oil. We are not really in need of oil so we will not import much from Mexico but they are a likely candidate to export excess grain and wood to.

Norway- They have Iron which we need and we have good relations because we are both in Atlantis. We will need to watch the Russian independence movement though because if Russia liberates their territories with Iron we may have difficulty getting the iron out of there if the new regime is unfriendly to us however I can not simply determine the feelings of a country towards us that does not exist at the moment.

Canada- Canada has everything except Iron. We could get diamonds from them but we really do not have anything to export to them that they could not make themselves.

Japan- We have good relations with Japan and should have no problem trading with them. They do not have anything other then grain and some wood but we should be able to export oil to them.

Europe- About the same situation as Japan although our relations with some of the countries in PEACE may make free trade a hard to deal to broker however I would say our relations are good enough to at least make trade agreements. Norway is the only country in Europe to have oil.

Brazil- Despite them leaving us for PEACE we still have good relations with them. Basically they are a Canada with Iron. We won't be able to export much but they would be a good source of iron should anything happen in Russia.