The Economist ~ Why you should play eRepublik

Day 1,339, 09:13 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Spite313


Dear friends,

The following article is entirely fictional. It is an idea. An ideal. A work in progress, and a suggestion.

It isn’t perfect, or complete, but it’s a the best I can do in an hour on a Thursday afternoon. It’s designed to appeal to all different types of players, like many MMOs. It is eRepublik- Rising (how it could have been).

Please leave suggestions and I will add them in 😛 Maybe admins will listen, who knows?



eRepublik is a Massive Multiplayer Online strategy game, where tens of thousands of citizens interact in a simulation of the real world. It is designed so that unlike the real world, you can steer the course of history, make wars, make vast empires, and dominate the media.



Politics Module

eRepublik has a very complex politics module. Each citizen belongs to a country, and has certain rights within that country. These rights usually take the form of the ability to vote, but also the ability to choose how to vote and what for.

Every three months there is a national referendum, where the entire population votes for the governmental system of their choice. Put simply, different government types have different bonuses, which affect the way the country performs. The types of government are explained in brief here:

1. Socialism - Socialist governments have the ability to designate up to 10 companies as “national companies”. These companies are stored on special accounts, have unlimited workers, unlimited storage and produce 10% more goods than normal companies. However socialist countries have a 10% upgrade penalty for privately owned companies.

2. Republic - Citizens in Republics have free newspapers as default. They also get a 5% base production bonus and 20% combat bonus in their home territories. However, each foreign territory held by the country reduces national production by 10%. This is “war weariness” often suffered by republican governments IRL.

3. Military Dictatorship - Citizens in a dictatorship receive a 10% production bonus so long as their country is in a state of war. They also have a 5% additional NE bonus, making 15% total. However they are unable to trade with any Republican country, and are limited to only 5 MPPs, reflecting the lack of trust dictatorships have for neighbours.

4. Liberal Democracy - In a liberal democracy, taxes cannot be set higher than 5%. Cost of upgrading companies is reduced by 20%. Companies can hire 10 workers instead of 5. No bonuses relating to war.


Those are the four (fairly simple) options eRepublik offers for government types. After this, there are three elections per month, Party President, Congress and Presidential elections. Party President elections are a simple first-past-the-post election, with the candidate with the most votes winning. Presidential elections are cast by Single Transferable Vote, where each citizen casts their vote in order of preference. This is so each President appeals to the maximum number of citizens, and so votes aren’t wasted. Congress is elected regionally as usual, though only home regions of a country have congress representation.

Some other recent changes:

1. Party presidents can deselect candidates

2. Presidents can appoint one citizen as “Minister of Defence”. The MoD’s shouts appear at the top of all citizens shout lists.


3. Presidents will have access to the game developers, where they can make suggestions on behalf of their community, without having to make silly articles and hope someone sees it.




Economy Module

Our game has a complex economy module designed to cater for the business minded out there. Every citizen is capable of owning and managing companies. Companies sell products to the eRepublik market for currency, where citizens can buy them. Currency can be exchanged at the eRepublik exchange for companies, special products and gold, the ingame currency. The eRepublik Exchange is an admin-managed feature which has a set cost of companies and a set exchange rate for gold. Citizens can buy companies, health packs, extra storage, newspapers, and special items from the store. Special items include the 50 and 100 wellness buildings, which allow players to increase the size of their wellness “tank” so they can go longer periods without fighting without losing health.

Here are some features you might not be familiar with:

-Companies are set at fixed prices depending on their productivity.

-All weapons have the same damage bonus, but higher Q weapons have a higher number of hits.

-All raw materials companies have a fixed price in gold. Gold can be bought at a fixed price from the eRep Exchange. Raw materials can be upgraded, with a bottom level company (grain) costing 10g, and each upgrade costing an extra 5g. Each upgrade increases productivity by the same amount, so a Q1 RM company produces 20% of a Q5 RM company.

-Different items will use different amounts of storage. Q5 food will use less space than Q5 weapons- this is just common sense. Grain will use less space than an iron bar.

-It will be possible to donate raw materials.

-Governments can “issue money” by specifying how much currency will be available for purchase through the eRepublik exchange.

-A basic ingame stock exchange exists. It allows players to sell stocks, which are registered against assets. For example, if you have a Q1 company you can issue up to 5 stocks of 1g each. You set a dividend rate and this money is taken automatically from your account. If the dividend cannot be paid, it is suspended for up to 3 days, after which it counts as “defaulted” and the assets listed are dissolved and the gold returned to investors.




Naval Regions

In addition to land regions, each area (Baltic, North Sea, East Atlantic, West Mediterranean, East Mediterranean, Gulf, Indian Ocean, South China Sea etc) have their own regions which are associated with a “travel zone” like land regions. Importance of this is explained below.




National Projects

A new idea recently implemented was “National Projects”. CPs have the option to set a “national project” to construct. Each citizen has the option to “work on project” on their land page, which costs 50 health. Working only produces 1 productivity, and each project takes many thousands of points to construct. Once constructed though, national projects give a big advantage to the country who builds it. If all regions are lost, then a country loses 1 national project at random and any project they are working on right now. Here are some of the choices available so far:

-Battleship project - With the new naval warfare option (see above) the nations of the world have the options to construct deep dry-docks to house their navy. The project gives the nation a “battleship fleet” which can be moved to a naval region. When it is in that region, any regions attacked in that zone which have a coastline will only require 1600 points to capture, due to the naval bombardment offered by battleships. However, enemy battleships in the same region negate this effect.

-Aircraft Carrier project - working on the same principle as battleships, Aircraft Carriers can be moved to a region. Once there, travelling BETWEEN regions within that zone is free. For example, if Carrier was in zone A3, moving from one part of zone A3 to another part of zone A3 would have no cost.

-Entrenchment project - Moscow is behind us! With this project the defender gains an extra 10% damage when defending their capital on top of other bonuses.

-La Resistance - With this project, secret caches of supplies are built throughout the country. In the event all regions are lost, the cost of starting a RW in any region is reduced by 25%.

-Satellite project - Many moons ago the Pakistani Space Project was the first to put a satellite in space 😛 Now you can construct your own. Satellites allow advanced weather and military surveys, reducing the cost of travel by 10% to all zones.

-Tactical withdrawal - Building a strong infrastructure, this project allows for the fast withdrawal of troops from a region. It gives the President the “retreat” option, and also automatically teleports and citizens of the countries nationality to the nearest friendly region. Very expensive to build due to the logistics of so many portal devices 😛




Military module

The military module is a grid based design (some people from V2 might recognise it!). Each citizen moves across the battlefield/board in a series of 2 hour minibattles. To win the minibattle, you must hold at least 66% of the tiles plus the capital after 1 hour 30. Any time up to 2 hours is counted as “overtime”. If no clear winner has been declared by 2 hours, then the battle is considered a draw and no one is given a battle point. The first player to win 6 consecutive minibattles wins the region.

Each player has the ability to recover 100 health each hour, up to a maximum of 600. It is possible to extend this “tank” of wellness in increments of 100. Each extension costs 100g.

On the battlemap, there are several bonuses which can be received. Defence bonuses are awarded for different terrains. Hills give greater attack (attacking from a higher altitude onto a lower) and forest regions give greater defence bonuses. Mountains give a high defence bonus, but are impossible to attack from. It is possible to attack by crossing rivers on the map, but whilst on the river you cannot attack and if you are attacked that turn the attacker gains a bonus. Attacking a unit when you are moving from from the river tile gives you a 20% attack penalty. This makes establishing beachheads very important and defending rivers a strategic necessity.

When you deploy to the battlefield, you gain a 1% attack and defence bonus for every 5 people from your MU which are deployed within 2 tiles of your citizen, up to a maximum 10%. This creates the idea that you are fighting as a unit and not as individual fighters. This can be especially important if you are taking and holding a strategic location, such as a hilly region or a riverside.

There are also ZOC (Zones of Control) around certain terrain features. For example, it is impossible to bypass a city or mountain if it is held by the enemy, unless you circle around its surrounding ZOC. This is because of the possibility of a sally into your flank.

There is a 5% flank bonus for each flank which is protected, up to a maximum 10%. For example, if your citizen is on a tile with soldiers on neighbouring tiles he gains 10% bonus.

Stacking these bonuses is the new strategy element of war in eRepublik. By organising units to fight together, you can get truly massive bonuses. Holding strategic locations will be the most difficult challenge. This also gives an advantage to the defender, returning balance to the game.

Finally, citizens deploy on the left of the map to defend, and the right of the map to attack. The exception to this is in a RW, where for the first 30 minutes of the battle, those with citizenship of the country whose original region this is can deploy anywhere on the map.



Well that was a lot longer than I expected. So here are just a few ideas I had in the last hour. You can see how much better this game can be. As a game, we are terminally bored. The rush of new citizens is drying up, and the game is becoming one sided. But this isn’t because ONE is so strong. This is because people in conquered countries can’t be bothered to fight for a baby boom. The lack of challenge is boring the sin out of ONE countries too, and no missions or buildings is going to make that go away.

In my opinion rising had the potential to be great. The only problem is, there was no beta testing. The economy module was unbalanced, and a lot of the great ideas that came later (like eating up to 2400 wellness a day!) came too late. Extended testing would have perfected the V2 modules, and given us the game I have outlined above. Admins saw that there were problems, that people wanted V1 back, and now they equate simplicity with more players, complexity with less. Other MMOs like EVE and so on show this isn’t true, just that players want a well designed and well tested game.

So give it a go admins!

Best wishes,

Iain



Ps. Feel free to post suggestions in the comments, I do read them all 😛 If you hate something, say that too 😛