eRepublik Analysis for Early June

War and Peace, Volume 3

For any player that is not familiar with me (and we seem to have many new players here over the last few weeks), I have been in Erepublik for roughly 7 months now (mid-December). Anyone can tell you that I enjoy writing, as it’s one the true pure ways to express yourself here. With more than 190 articles in four different countries and two primary newspapers (the original CS&L Newsletter is now the Mongoose Corporate Newsletter, which I believe I wrote all but 3 or 4 for that one), it’s my outlet to express myself.

This article will be no different in length than any other editorial I have written, so make sure you brought your lunch with you.

StereoTypical Players

A few months ago, I wrote an article (before the release of the war module, but I cant seem to find the link) about the 4 different stereotypes of players we have in Erepublik. Over time, we have gathered citizens from many different types of online communities and circles of friends, which has changed our demographic dramatically. Erepublik only really peaks the interest of certain types of people, so many different citizens from many countries sign up and bore from the lack of technical requirement necessary to do our daily chores.

The fact is that Erepublik, being in BETA stage and under development, really only applies to intellectual individuals who take things upon themselves. We are all doers in our own way, whether that be selling high quality mercenary services (Alucard) to creating tables of economic statistics for every country (or at least the top 20) in Erepublik (Kaleb, Reformer’s Chronicle). Both are highly time consuming, since no one can perfect a craft they do not apply themselves to. Both take quite the amount of effort and intelligence, just in different areas.

The good thing about where we stand in Erepublik is that we have gathered a strong base of intellectual individuals from all kinds of backgrounds (from Legal, Platonic, to Economic, to military, etc) and from all over the world. At almost any time of day in any time zone you’ll find something to do somewhere. Now, all we lack is the open channel of bringing in other players that do not want to spend the time necessary to accomplish things such as gaining Presidency, running companies, growing countries, etc. To be honest, one of the most time consuming things I have ever done is to lead a political party, between setting election candidates, communicating issues, and setting party ranks.

Bring in the RAID man

One of the larger complaints we have all had from time to time is the existance of bugs. Even I have become extremely frustrated from time to time at some of them, which have hindered my ability to control things that I must be able to. I have had a good relationship with the admin and dev team for some time, which has helped me to get to know the things they go through as well.

See, we forget sometimes that this is still a new concept, and that there’s roughly 20 people in a small office complex trying to fix problems from all over the world. I am unfamiliar with code, but I do know that it is time consuming to not only fix but find where bugs exist. George, Alexis, and Company have done fairly well up to this point, outside of my obvious criticisms of lack of manpower in their team. That, I have been told, may change in the future as I am sure they’ll hire others to help out once it releases, but for now we must remember that even if all 20 members were community relations (rather than programmers) they’d be looking at dealing with 1000 citizens per person.

Big Picture Thinking

Now, on to the real issue I think we all face each day. We are all inter-dependant which I have said before. Even a company owner relies on his workers to come to work, and his customers to purchase goods. Workers rely on companies to have money to pay salary and be competitive in the marketplace, but other consumers in order to keep their jobs. Both rely on the Government to regulate tax, protect domestic industry, and ensure ready supply in all areas.

Where we run into issues is trying to apply one train of thought to a problem.

For instance, I carry a large and expansive government staff that all have their own departments and responsibilities. I check on the once per week, and we have a cabinet meeting to discuss pertinent issues facing us. Each department has the option to expand to more members should they choose, and I have given the option to pay each department so long as they complete the required work that I have asked for (which is the balance I implemented to keep from paying for nothing). The benefits to this are that more members are involved therefore we get more opinions on each subject, and it cuts the amount of communication each department has to make to that which only applies to that department.

The other side to that spectrum is small government. The benefits are little control over the population (which can also be viewed as a problem for some), and a smaller gap between what people would call the Elite and the “Regular Joe”. Downside to this is that with less control means less insight.

The bigger picture requires a combination of both, and only those applicable to Erepublik. Not only do I, as President, have a responsiblity to protect my own citizens from paying too much for product, but I have a responsibility to those same businesses to ensure that that are given equal opportunity to be profitable. Then I have to turn around and analyze markets overseas and our own to see what supplies we need, and where we have a surplus to export for profit.

Combine that with ensuring that every citizen’s wellness is being cared for (National Gifting Program, which is still more successful than any other in the US), unemployment goes and stays down (down from 20 pages to 15 in the last two days) through the US Unemployment Agency, to ensuring growth of the country at a steady rate. While growth is always good, spikes and sudden influx of new citizens without direction or knowledge simply creates chaos in both our economy, media, and military. Then, most of those quit because they get frustrated.

So the challenges we face as a Nation arent all that easy from a President’s Standpoint, but the poosibilities are still there. Any citizen can do anything they want. Thats the American way, dream, and ambition. To be the best. While we all look forward to changes in various aspects of Erepublik come V1, to me we have just as much of an opportunity to change now. We, as players can implement just as much in the form of ideas and actions. All it takes are citizens willing to take the time do so.

http://www.erepublik.com/article-352351.html

TRC: Attack of the Clones

The recent invasion of South Africa by Indonesia has already broken a number of Erepublik records, most fights, most countries involved, largest battle, but there is another record that has been broken that most people won’t be aware of…

MOST CLONES!

The other day, whilst watching the fight on the third day (where South Africa and her allies were actually on the attack) I noticed a guy called Gustav_Sigurd killing off a load of South African and Allied attackers.

Gustav? That doesn’t sound very Indonesian.

Let’s click on his profile. Oh, he’s Swedish? I thought they were on our side? And it turns out he only moved to Indonesia today after being in South Africa killing off Indonesian attackers. Right, so he’s moving around to get the defender bonus and build up his kill ratio, ‘interesting’ tactic.

And it seems to be working, over 80 kills and only about a dozen deaths. He’s obviously also not afraid of spending his own gold to recuperate, he dies and pops back again later to fight on!

Let’s watch him in action…

Oh that’s lucky - many of the people attacking him, whilst he is defending on his own, are guys who have just been born and don’t even have a weapon. Str 1, wellness 50, and -50 for being unarmed aren’t going to do much damage to a seasoned veteran.

Hmm, ‘lucky’. These are obviously clones and he seems to be killing an awful lot of them! Thinks I’ll send a report to the admins with the urls of a few of these clones so they can investigate, I also tell them my theory that Gustav is the one behind the clones.

www.erepublik.com/profile-497631.html
www.erepublik.com/profile-505291.html
www.erepublik.com/profile-504831.html

I then send Gustav a message asking him if he is enjoying killing of a load of clones (no doubt using the Gold from inviting them, he had lots of ‘money market offers’ posted to transfer the Gold without detection, or so he thought).

I got this reply: “and also yesterday i fight for africa.also today i secured a lot of places.I am trying to get rank.i am always near who is defending.they pay me and i am going near defending team.
if south africa defends i will go to south africa side.
i have nothing to do against fakes.ıf someone puts them against me i have to kill.i am joining the war and figthing with anyone who comes to attack.”

Sure you are…

Anyway - next day I get a reply back from admins - “Thanks you helped us a lot with this.

Thanks to you we have banned 230 multis created for fighting.”

230 multis

Holy Guacamole!

And sure enough, Gustav was one of the ‘original’ citizens behind the cloning:
www.erepublik.com/profile-13237.html

Bye-bye cloner!!

I don’t know if there were other people behind the clones but they are hopefully also banned.

So the moral of the story - keep an eye out for clones! The tactic seems to be mainly used for getting the defender some cheap kills in order to boost their kill ratio.