We are updating some pages in Simcountry. The aim is to streamline some long ones. Make them easier to use and look nicer.
Some functions are spread of too many pages and can be improved. This process will continue for a long time and gradually transform the user interface.
Countries without a president have a population of between 13 and 15 millions. Countries belonging to free accounts will see their population grow to around 20 Millions.
Population growth in these countries is slow and it stops when the population reaches the maximum levels.
Full member countries have a much higher population growth rates. These rates depend on the size of the population. They are very high at the level of 20 to 40 millions. The growth is gradually reduced with the growth of the population. Full member countries can reach a population level of 100 to 150 millions, depending on the health care system in the country and its welfare.
Countries with more than 100 millions can also see population declines. These depend on the health care system, the welfare level and on the age distribution in the country.
Migration is also increasing in numbers. The welfare levels in countries will cause larger fluctuations in the migration numbers.
Small scale tuning is aimed at widening the use of some materials that are used in a very small number of other industries. Some other small changes are aimed at increasing the use of some materials that are hardly used at all. If the number of corporations producing a product declines under 15, the market can become dependent on A diminishing product and increasing production when needed, can take a long time.
We have looked into such products and tuned their usage up a bit to prevent instability.
Some corporations are becoming a bit larger. The aim here is to reduce the world wide number of corporations which went out of control recently and became a problem in the processing of large numbers of corporations and their transactions.
In general, the number of corporations in each world is declining a bit or remaining stable.
We will continue a gradual increase in sizes which also makes it easier to manage countries and enterprises with a very large number of population and corporations.
New navigation features are added to the Simcountry app as part of a longer term push to improve the user experience and bring the feature set more in line with the desktop version. A navigation bar has been added to all relevant pages.
The population in countries without a president and the population in countries that belong to free accounts is limited. Population growth is also limited and these countries will have a total population under 20 million.
Once the account becomes a full membership account, population growth is boosted and numbers start growing much faster.
Larger population allows for fast economic growth and much better results.
New players who login into Simcountry get awarded during the first weeks with population boosts and Large donations of game money. The monthly budget of their countries is also supported with external cash to prevent shortages.
In time, both budget contributions and other special presents are fading and the country is on its own.
7. Data base issues in Simcountry – all resolved [ top ]
Several weeks ago we have mentioned the large size of some database tables in Simcountry and the intensive processing required each game month to process all transactions.
In the meantime, we had a “soft landing” and all extreme sizes and excessive numbers have receded. The main reason for this is the return to “normality” of both populations and corporations in all worlds, smaller numbers of corporations that produce more and population in free countries returning to their normal range.
The reduction in the number of corporations was achieved but tuning countries without presidents to close corporations that were producing at a very low level for too long. This resulted in many closed corporations. Other corporations in these countries were able to increase hiring while not creating new corporations as long as hiring is not at 100%.
Some types of corporations increased their production slightly, and their hiring too, reducing unemployment and the need to create new corporations.
The game core has been updated as we have announced before.
The base score is reduced. Dependency on the population numbers is increased. The welfare index is more important and having war protection switched off, too.
The page describing different factors in the score will be updated in the game update next week.
The score is slow to change to prevent last minute fast changes before the end of each month.
Birth rates are tuned down a bit to reduce run away population numbers. Birth rates are reduced more substantially in countries without a president and in free playing countries.
Cargo shuttles stopped aging at some point. The process is now fixed and cargo shuttles become older and disappear. The process is very slow. Do not expect many cargo shuttles to disappear any time soon.
Corporations in C3 countries are now closed a bit faster if they fail to perform and produce at a very low level. This will allow other corporations in these countries to increase their production and make it possible for these countries to start new corporations producing materials that are in short supply.
The population in free playing countries is now at a level close to 20 million. C3 countries population is being reduced a bit more.
Countries owned by full members have a robust population growth that is gradually tunes down with the increase of the population and will stabilize around 100 M or less.
Some corporations use of workers has been updated to increase the number of LLWs and reduce the number of MLWs and HLWs corporations hire.
The change was mentioned in a discussion on the forum in recent days.
As a result, all countries will see some changes in employment, that will further correct the traditional shortages of HLWs and MLWs and surpluses of LLWs.
It will take several days for the dust to settle and we will then check again if this is sufficient.
The aim here is to reduce (not eliminate) the need for manual conversions of workers. That feature remains important but should not be needed everywhere all the time.
Birth rates are declining a bit in high population countries. The birth rate always declined with growth of the population and was highest in very small countries.
This remains of course but the break even point declines a bit.
It was increased to correct a problem with declining population several months ago and Now returns to a lower pace. Population numbers however remain higher than they were in the past.
The birth rates in countries played by players who are not full member are becoming lower to help maintain Population levels around 20M. Once a player becomes full member, birth rates will increase and population levels will increase quickly. The 20M number is not new but it was hard to maintain while birth rates were very high as with other countries with low population levels.
We have introduced yet another round of increases in the size of some army units. This is part of an effort, requested by players, to increase the size of army units so that the number of units can decline,
reducing the complexity of managing very large numbers of military units. This is the third round of size increases. This time, many land units, all the air force units and the garrisons, all increased in size. The size increase is between 10 and 15%.
The price of many defensive weapons is reduced (again). Also this is done on request of players who would like to see the cost of defending their countries reduced. We agree on this issue and have reduced the cost of defensive materials several times in the past weeks.
Reductions must be small and corporations producing these weapons and ammunitions must be updated too to make sure they remain as profitable as before.
By now, the total of cumulating reductions may have reach 30% and more.
Some military units increased in size. This is the second such change in the past weeks and it is aimed at a reduction in the number of military units in an effort to make it easier to manage the army.
The changes are limited to the land divisions and air force units. The size of the units increased by about 10%.
Such changes have consequences for purchasing of weapons and ammunitions and should be small.
We plan to introduce some more increases in the size of units and extend such changes to more types of units.
The cost of weapons and ammunition is reduced again. Changes are not significant but are adding to recent ones. The main changes are in defensive weapons and defensive ammunition but also other weapons are affected.
These changes are the result of players requests to reduce the cost of the defense.
We had a long period of corrections to the population distribution among age groups in the past months. These changes are completed. We are now looking at the birth rates and are making small corrections to prevent “overheating” and wild growth.
The corrected population model will support population growth at higher levels than before. Currently, growth continues at very high levels and it will be tempered a bit.
We expect population levels to stabilize at about 100M. (a year ago the level was about 60M). Population will increase under that level and may stabilize, or decline at higher levels. Experience will show if this is correct. We cannot predict and will have to wait and see.
Birth percentages in Simcountry, depend on the number of children in the 0-4 year old group. Percentages decline as the numbers in that group increase.
Birth numbers however, depend on the number of people in the age groups between 18-21 and 35-40 years old.
Shortages of high level workers are now smaller than before and this upgrade includes an addition small correction. We also continue to diversify the raw materials needed in production.
Corporations that are managed reasonably, are very profitable. Corporations that produce weapons and materials have profits levels comparable to other corporations and they achieve this With a much smaller number of workers.
January 29, 2019
22. Cost of defensive weapons and ammunitions [ top ]
The cost of defensive weapons and ammo continues to decline and reduces both the cost of purchasing weapons and ammo and the maintenance cost of the army. The army is using cheaper ammunition for training.
The changes are not large but will continue.
Corporations producing such products maintain their profitability despite the price reductions. They compensate by either producing a little more or by using smaller quantities of raw materials.
We are trying to find out what the max population number is if a country does not purchase any population Externally.
Growth becomes slower as the population grows and stabilizes at some level. High levels of health care strongly influence the numbers too.
This used to be around 60 million in the past. It is much higher now and we see growth at 120M. There is no way to compute this and we will continue to watch the numbers to find out.
Death rates settled at a lower level than before recent updates and strongly depend on the health care index. In a country with a healthcare index slightly higher than 200 (very high and expensive), life expectancy increased beyond 100 years.
We think that life expectancy should be a factor in the main score.
The price of all defensive weapons and ammunition is reduced. The reduction is around 10% of the medium price and will influence the maximum price possible when there are shortages and the minimum price possible when there is oversupply.
The real price will of course depend on the market.
The corporations producing these products retain their profitability level and will not suffer any long term reduction in profitability.
Our intension is to reduce the price of defensive weapons even lower but large drops could cause problems on the market. We will make more reductions in the coming weeks.
The size of several military units is increased 10 to 15%. The increase is aimed at a long term reduction in the number of military units in countries. If each unit is larger and more powerful, the country could probably do with a smaller number which is easier to manage.
The large land divisions are now about 10% larger. All air force units, offensive and defensive are now also about 10 to 15% larger.
Changes in the size of military units have consequences for the need for ammunition and other materials and must Be done at a slow pace. A next upgrade will increase the size more, and will extend to more types of military units.
C3 countries, depending on their war levels, also have military units and these units Are also increased in size.
All interventions in correcting the distribution of the population in the age groups are fading away. The correction is completed. Death rates and the Health Index
Death rates have been reduced in the last months and the dependency of the death rates on the health index is slightly increased.
We have experimented with the Health Index in a country with a population of about 115M. We have increased the health index in the country to about 215. The death rate declined in all age groups and it looks like it will end just under 1% with a life expectancy of about 100 years.
Yet another update to accommodate countries with larger population. Population growth partially depends on the size of the populations. In the past, when the population increased above 60 or 70 million, growth declined and the population became stable. At higher levels, the age distribution changed gradually and the average age of the population increased.
In the past months, we have made several small but incremental changed that in time repaired the population model but at the same time increased the growth potential and population keeps growing at much higher levels.
The game update today will increase the birth rates some more and increase the potential of countries To achieve even higher population numbers.
The death rates have been reduced several times in the past months reducing the percentage of the older population and making countries more profitable in the process.
This update adds a little more to that trend. All changes are quite small.
Small scale tuning of corporations, slightly increasing the size of some corporations and reducing the use of high level workers to cut long time shortages. Also this was done already recently.
You may see some more low level workers being employed and some decrease in the numbers of employed high level workers. Hopefully, the need to convert workers to balance the work force will be reduced. We do not want to make large changes and after evaluating the results, we may need to repeat this.
Several changes have been made to the simcountry app. The User Interface has been simplified in several places and text improved. The in-app help bubbles have been updated with new shorter texts.
Another upgrade is increasing the birth rate slightly again. This change might be the last one as we are close to a reasonable rate of growth. Death rates are a bit lower and the decline continues.
We expect birth rates to significantly exceed death rates in all countries with population up to 120M or even more. We expect a lower growth in countries with more population, up to 150M and probably a stable population number or even a slight decline if the population is at about 200M.
This is a long term expectation. We will keep following the numbers and may need another small correction later.
There will be no upgrades involving the population in the coming month or two.
We have checked many corporation types, their hiring and profitability to make sure market situation is not harming the economies of the worlds. We have made very small changes to some low tech corporations and improved their probability for profitability.
Recent updates of the population structure corrected imbalances that accumulated over a long period. However, in many countries the number of youths in the age groups 0 to 21 continues to lag behind the older age groups. The problem is smaller than it was before. If left as is, we could expect population declines to continue or resume.
This current upgrade is a further step to correct the imbalance.
Death rates are updated slightly. The numbers of retired people will probably decline a bit in the long run. It will be more proportionate to the total population and also reduce the cost of social security.
Birth rates will increase gradually in most countries.
The result of this change (as with previous ones) will be the increase in the percentage of young people in the country. It will help to prevent the decline of the population in the long run. The aim is to restore the capacity of the population in general, to maintain required levels in all age groups.
Corporations in Simcountry are very profitable and produce enough profits to enable countries To make sufficient profits and grow.
In recent months however, we see more exceptions, and more products that are in oversupply.
Although we had such periods before and the markets are very hard to predict, we think that the creation of new corporations might have gone a bit too far. We have recently seen the numbers of corporations break records never seen before. The worldwide recent changes in population may have contributed.
We have tuned procedures by a fraction. This may help temper the creation of new corporations. The changes are small and will not change the profitability of the corporations. You may witness a slightly larger number of LLWs and MLWs being hired while the number of professionals needed will decline a bit.
Slight changes in some types of corporations will make them hire a bit more. The profitability of corporations will not be affected.
Recently, on two of our worlds, the number of corporations passed a critical mile stone that could have adverse effect on performance. Slightly increasing sizes will slow down this trend.
changes are small.
August 29, 2018
This document includes changes that are 2 weeks old. The previous update took place on Aug. 14, 2018 but unfortunately, no game news were published at that time.
Crimson One should have started running by August 1. Unfortunately, the number of interested players is very close to zero. Crimson One represents a major development effort that took several months to complete and was done to answer once and for all, the requests for a place where unrestricted wars can take place.
We had long discussions on the forum about the war process and how it should be liberalized and make war possible without any protection, and back to “what is has been before”. This is now done, but interest is extremely limited.
We will keep registration open for Crimson One for a longer period and see if more players become interest. We will start it if at least 25 players are registered. If nothing happens for two more months, we will repay those who registered their gold coins back.
More war levels added to Simcountry. The highest war level is now 18. We intend to add more levels in the coming weeks and months. There are very few players reaching these war levels but it should remain possible. These war levels carry large awards in gold coins and game money.
Population birth rates are too low and the population in countries with very large population numbers tend to decline. Many have asked us to improve this and we have promised to do so in several stages.
We have increased birth rates and reduced death rates in the previous upgrade on Aug. 14. The change had a good effect and the numbers are now more reasonable but as we said before, it is hard to predict what the full effect would be.
Two weeks later, the full effect is visible and we are now introducing a next stage, increasing birth rates again and reducing death rates. Results should become visible on the birth and death rate graphs on the population page. It will kick in immediately and its effect will increase in time. We expect the full effect to become visible after one week.
Death rates can be reduced in every country by improving the health index. We have now increased the influence of the health index on the death numbers twice (Aug. 14 and today) and the result should be visible immediately.
Increasing the health index requires more hospitals, doctors and nurses and increases the cost for the country. It does result in much lower death numbers, keeps more workers alive and working, but it also increases the number of retired citizens and the cost of social services to support that group. The choice is yours.
We have recently added more raw materials to the production process of many products in Simcountry. The reason for these changes is that some materials are only used in the production process of only one or two products and it makes them unstable if the market for these products shows sudden changes. Corporations that depend on only very few buyers can then bankrupt very quickly.
To prevent disruptions to the production process, we have a gradual introduction process of new raw materials to existing corporations. Preventing shortages that can disrupt production. We have done so in the past two upgrades and have increased gradually the use of the new raw materials.
This is a good improvement in stabilizing the markets and we are looking for more products that are being produced by a very small number of corporations and used by very few.
We have added a new ranking system to all worlds for the best “War Lord”. Everyone starts with no points. Winning a war against another player and adding the country into your empire will deliver 100 points. Winning the war and NOT adding the country into the empire will deliver 25 points. Losing a war against another player will deliver -10 points.
Two new boosters are now available both on the desktop application and in the Simcountry APP. One booster allows you to directly exchange gold coins for game money. The other booster allows you to increase the population of your country for gold coins. These boosters are needed for the new “War competition world”. We decided to implement them on all the worlds.
This function allows countries to exchange people between countries, both within their own empire but also with any other country in the same world. The function remains unchanged but a country must have at least 12 million population to use it. We have seen countries that had population under 6 million which triggered rescue functions to make sure they do not collapse.
New corporations need many workers, and in some cases players (mainly new players), did not understand. that when there are no workers they should stop building new corporations. Building new corporations by new players, now requires that at least 50% of the needed workers are available in all workers groups.
48. Required Game Levels when Building New Corporations [ top ]
Each corporation requires a minimum qualification in terms of game levels. Building High tech corporations requires a higher game level than building an agricultural corporation. We have now improved the checking of game levels and require the level as shown on the Corporate building page.
As of today, war level 14 is available. Reaching war level 14 gives you 390 gold coins on FB and 250 on the other worlds. It also leaves 22T in cash in the conquered country. More war levels will be added soon.
The cost of maintenance, the cost of weapons and of government facilities are all reduced. The result will be a lower monthly cost for the country and a lower cost for setting up new facilities.
Two products, Trucks and rubber are now used in the production process of more corporations. This increases the market size and will help in stabilizing the use of these two products. The quantities are small to prevent shortages in these corporations and will grow steadily in the coming weeks.
We may do the same for more products that are used as raw materials in a very small number of corporations.
Simcountry will now notify you if a country is almost expired or expired. You can now choose to receive a notification if a war is lost.
To receive the notifications, you need to have the Simcountry app on your phone/mobile device. The App can be downloaded free of charge from both the Apple store and the Google game store.
All types of ammunition, both defensive and Offensive are now further reduced in price. The corporations producing these products are maintaining their profitability. Also the cost of maintenance for the army is further reduced.
These changes are intended to make war more affordable and are part of more upcoming changes in the war game.
Reacting to a suggestion by players we are looking at the use of some products in Simcountry that are used in a very limited way. We have added trucks as a required product in the production process of more industries and also added rubber as a raw material in more types of corporations.
These changes require a soft introduction to protect the corporations that will use these products. They will now start purchasing small quantities but will not use them. The next upgrade will start increasing the use of these products.
We will look into more products with a very small market.
When winning a war against a C3 country, your country will move into the next war level. Winning the war, already delivered a much larger amount of cash in the conquered country. As of today, the number of gold coins you win is also increased in all the worlds but mainly on FB.
Beginners support functions, if turned on, will now help many more countries. It is in fact an "easy mode" that will help you to develop your country. It can be best used by beginners and if you enlarge your empire, it can be used to improve the new countries in the empire. It can also be used if you are not able to play for a week or two and will try to prevent the country from declining too much.
The support functions do not make large changes but they consistently make improvements and over time, bring the country to a much better condition.
The cost of weapons maintenance is reduced and will reduce the total cost of defense each month. The decline is reached by a reduction in the cost of maintenance products. A reduction in the cost of ammunition, both defensive and offensive and a reductions in the cost of some weapons. The number of soldiers and officers needed in fortifications and defensive bases and military airports is also reduced.
Following a serious crash on KB that ended with full repair, we have improved our system checks and warning To help prevent such problems, and others, in the future.
All C3 wars will now move you to the next war level. The conquered C3 countries now have a much larger cash reserve you can use to develop the newly conquered country Or take it out of the country into your account or into other countries or enterprises you own.
Several problems in the App are now resolved and its functioning is much improved. Much more will be added and improved in the App in the coming weeks and months.
War can now be declared from within the Simcountry App. We plan to update the way war damage points are assigned and reduce the dependency on invading of the enemy country with military units (painting territory). This will be part of a next upgrade.
It is now easier for a New/Free player to wage more wars.
After conquering a country, a next war was not possible because a free account can have a maximum of two countries. Removing one country did not always reduce the count to 1 and war remained impossible. As of this upgrade, when you remove a country from your empire, the empire number of countries is updated immediately and you can start another war.
The price of weapons and ammunitions is reduce (again). This time, the reduction is by 10 to 20%. The aim is to further reduce the cost of war, also increase the production of such products and make it attractive to produce them.
We expect the number of corporations producing such each type of a weapon or ammo, to increase a bit. This is essential if such products must be available when you need them.
Weapons and ammunitions are profitable to produce. The corporations turn good profits while the number of workers is about 25% of the number of workers in other types of corporations. The weapon maintenance corporations use such products more than before and numbers of corporations producing war materials is expected to grow.
Nuclear weapons are now on the market in all worlds and can be produced anywhere. The cost of such weapons is reduced recently and reduced again in this current update.
All premium members can purchase nuclear weapons. Game level 4 is required if you want to set up your own nuclear weapons corporations.
The cost of many weapon and ammunition types is reduced again, this time the reduction is quite steep, making it easier to build up an army. Also production levels in war related corporations increased a bit so that more products become available on the market.
The maintenance of the major weapon systems, bases, and nuclear weapons is reduced. In most countries, the cost of defense will probably decline.
We have made corrections to the beginners support functions and made all these functions dependent on the automation settings. This was the intention from the start but with time, and with evidence of failing countries because of beginners errors, some became standard procedure for all countries.
We have now corrected the procedure and all support functions depend on the settings of the automation options. If you do not need any beginners support, you can go to the automation page and turn off whatever you want.
We advise beginners to keep the automation on. It is on by default when you start and it helps countries a lot, balancing the employment groups, adding money in some cases and helping in creating more work, increasing employment, health and education.
The beginners support functions, if turned on, work for countries in game levels 1-3.
Population growth is faster for countries with lower numbers of population. We have now lifted the limits, and growth will be faster and continue into higher population numbers.
At population levels of 70 or 80 millions, growth will depend more on the health index in the country and numbers can keep growing.
All this is true for premium accounts and growth can be accelerated by the purchase of additional population on the direct trading market.
For free accounts, population numbers will increase fast up to a population level of about 20.000.000. Growth will then stop and these countries will stay at around that number.
Free account countries with a population larger than 20.000.000, will see further declines and the number will settle at around 20.000.000.
Many small errors and some additional improvements are now part of the app. To have full advantage of the new features we advise you to download the latest version of the app.
As we have said before, waging war is now part of the app and the missing function, "War Declaration" will be added very soon.
There are more missing functions in the Simcountry app and we will add them ASAP. work is in progress to complete such functions and they will be added in the coming weeks.
The score depends on many factors, including game level and premium membership. The score advantage for full members is increased and the difference can reach 500 score points more than before. The game level advantage is increased by 30 points per game level.
Changes in the score are not immediate and can take up to 10 days to materialize. Boosting the game level of a country higher in the last days of the month, may be too late If intended to increase the score and win you awards.
Selenium is now traded on all worlds and corporations can be constructed by all players, game level 3 or higher. Before, production was limited to two worlds.
We plan opening the market for nuclear weapons to all premium members.
Setting up strategic corporations now requires game level 4. The limitation on setting up such corporations and the limitations on trade will be eliminated in the next upgrade.
We have upgraded the Simcountry app today to include fighting wars.
The new functions allow you to view the status of your wars on a mobile device, perform attacks and win a war from your phone or pad using the Simcountry app.
The added functions are extensive and include many war details, selecting targets, Selecting weapons for the attack, conducting attacks and they include all war reports in all details. You can view the results of the attacks you have carried out.
The only important function that is not yet included in the app yet is: War declarations.
Starting a war is only possible from the desktop. We will add the missing function ASAP.
There is no need to download the app again. If you already have the Simcountry app on your phone, you can just login and the new war functions will be part of the app.
Another round of tuning of some corporations will reduce the numbers of workers in upgraded corporations and will improve the profitability due to lower numbers of workers.
With efficiency upgrades becoming more meaningful in terms of numbers of workers, Some corporations are using a smaller number of workers and some are using more robotics products. In general, we expect a decline of up to 3% in the number of workers in the corporations in each country.
There is also some effort to increase the numbers of some types of corporations.
Some products are used in very small numbers and it creates volatility in the availability and pricing of these products. We would like to make sure that all products in all worlds are produced by at least 30 corporations. This will prevent large fluctuations if several such corporations are closed.
There are two ways to achieve this. Reduce production per corporation or increase the use of such products. We have used both methods but the changes are small.
Another step in the improvement of corporate profits further reduced the use of raw materials in some types of corporations that were not updated before. most of these corporations are producing weapons and ammunition.
These changes will result in higher profitability for many corporations and may also reduce some of the very high shortages of products in the market.
The entire change is not very significant and may account for 2-3% of the entire economy.
Corporations may increase the efficiency of their production process and as a result, they reduce the number of workers in the corporation, slightly increase the numbers of managers and high tech workers and increase the use of robotics products.
These efficiency upgrades are now more profitable than before for some of the corporations. The trend may be expanded to other types of corporations.
As a result of such changes, some fully upgraded corporations may see the number of low level and medium level workers decline by up to a total of 10.000 while the number of managers and high tech workers may increase by 1000 to 2000. Also the use of robotics products may increase in such corporations.
The net result is a reduction in the number of workers and increased profitability by up to 500M per game year.
During recent testing, we have seen a reduction of 2-3% in the number of workers in corporations in a certain country and we see the use of robotics growing in all worlds.
This change makes it very profitable to upgrade the efficiency of corporations. It also increases the possible number of corporations in a country with the available population numbers.
If you have setup modifications to create an in game message and You have downloaded the Simcounty APP You will automatically receive notifications on your mobile device/Phone.
All notifications that are selected to appear on your message system, will automatically notify you on your phone.
Currently it works on all Android platforms. We are waiting for the installation of the new APP in the Apple store.
It is now possible to add a notification to all your countries at once. or all your enterprises at once. when selecting the country to be notified, you can select "Any country" and the notification will be added to all your countries.
We will add more types of notifications and will extend the war related ones. Any ideas for notifications are welcome.
The notification features are also available in the Simcountry APP. you can use all the functions on your phone.
Many corporations will become more profitable. Some changes to the corporate model will make these corporations more profitable, mainly by reducing their costs.
This change will increase the income of countries and will also increase the market value of corporations.
We are also looking at severe shortages of materials in all the worlds. We think that some shortages will be reduced, The price range of products (the difference between the lowest price possible and max price setting for each product) should be extended.
We think that if products show very long term shortages, their price should increase more, making the corporations very profitable and attracting more players to create such corporations.
On the other hand, is there are surpluses, prices should go down further to the point of bankrupting the corporation. The country will then be able to replace these corporations with ones that can be more profitable.
players can of course preempt this by closing losing corporations or changing them to produce a different product.
It now includes all the older messages we used to have and it is located on the portal. All messages from all the worlds are now forwarded to the new messages system.
We have completed a major development to improve the notifications in Simcountry. You can now receive game notifications on your phone or any mobile device. The feature is now operational on Android platforms.
It is also submitted into the Apple store but the process there takes a little longer. we hope to have it within a week or so.
To get these notifications on your mobile device, you need to download the Simcountry app. Every notification you set up, and you request an in game message, will be sent automatically to your mobile device.
This development took more time to complete than anticipated but it is a major addition to Simcountry. Many types of events can be set up and you can receive warnings ahead of time that can spare you surprises when you log into the game.
It was essential to create this feature before major changes in the war game. It will make it possible for players to get detailed warnings about war declarations, attacks, shortages of materials etc.
The Simcountry Messages subsystem has been redesigned. The primary goal was to add "Messages" to the Simcountry App. As of today you can send messages to other players from the App as well as from the Website. The Messages subsystem will also show messages sent by the Gamemaster.
The Website and the App now share the same User Interface. In future updates the website and app will be brought closer together to expand the feature set available within the app.
The next Simcountry upgrade will add a 4th type of "Notification" to the game. Besides Facebook, Twitter and Email you can also schedule "Simcountry Message" notifications for important events in the game. Email and Message notification can also be scheduled from the App. Facebook and Twitter notifications can only be scheduled from the Website.
In addition, the next upgrade allows you to trigger App Notifications for messages you receive in the game. The App Notifications will popup on each device where you installed the Simcountry App. A new version of the Simcountry App will be available in the App Store to enable this new function.
We have recently and in the last upgrade, continued to introduce war related changes in preparation for a change in the war game to allow easier PvP wars. We have increased the size of air defense units but also the size of garrisons. Air defense units now have 200 interceptors and their missiles are more effective than before. Garrisons are larger and more large garrisons will be used in new countries. These changes will start to correct the imbalance of power between attack units and defensive ones.
91. The cost of the army and army maintenance [ top ]
The cost of many weapons, and mainly defensive ones is reduced. We have also reduced the maintenance cost of the army. As ammunition cost is declining and ammunition is used in the monthly maintenance of the army, the cost declines. We will continue these reductions in the cost of weapons and ammunition.
Other costs in countries are reduced too recently, including government cost, health and education.
92. The messaging system in Simcountry. Work in progress. [ top ]
The new messaging system will consolidate all messages on the portal and eliminate confusion about messages in the worlds and messages on the portal. There are currently too many message boxes.
The new messaging system will be available on the Simcountry website and on the Simcountry APP.
The notification system will be linked to messaging and allow you to set conditions for notifications on a mobile device when certain messages are received.
This could be war related, or messages from another player, or any other message indicating an event in the game.
We consider this important for the game in general but also essential in relation to the war game, alerting you to events during war.
All this is optional. Players can turn any type of notification on or off.
Our intention is to add more functions to the Simcountry APP that will allow players to use functions of the war game from their phone or other mobile device.
Another uptick in the value of fortifications in the defense of the country. On the other hand, we have again reduced the number of fortifications in countries where the numbers are >150. These countries were compensated for the value of the removed fortifications.
Defensive military units and Garrisons are now a bit larger. This is another small step in the effort to increase the defensive power of countries. Also the power of some defensive weapons is increased and some will fire more frequently during fighting.
Special units used to be very very small and used to clog maps. The cost is now increased a bit (They use more ammo for training) and these units will increase in size in the next upgrade and include two special unit weapons (currently 1).
At the end, these units will become more usable for the intended use and less usable as a way to clog maps.
We are trying to diversify the function of nuclear weapons, making them more usable against some targets and a little less against other targets and making them more different from each other. Details are in the weapons document.
September 26, 2017
97. Reduction in the cost of Education and Health [ top ]
Both costs are reduced a bit, due to reduction in the products used and the number of people working in schools, hospitals etc. This is part of an effort to reduce numbers and improve the profitability of countries.
Garrisons are now more like regular military units and invading forces cannot move past garrison as they could before.
101. Placing many map items on to of each other [ top ]
This practice was never intended on a large scale and the numbers are now limited. Some stacking must remain possible because many countries have more items/targets on the map than map cells in the country. When numbers decline, stacking could be limited even more. Current maps are not changed.
This is the third such change and the numbers of cities of all sizes continues to decline. This will reduce the numbers of items on maps and may, as we hope, reduce the time involved in wars.
some weapons are becoming stronger and some targets too. Some weapons can shoot more frequently resulting in more damage to targets. Fortifications are now a little harder to destroy but their numbers will decline. The changes are small.
Some defensive army units are becoming larger. and so do Garrisons. This is done to increase the defensive power of the army. The changes are small but may be repeated after we review some detailed war logs that will allow us to draw conclusions on the results of these changes.
We have added functions that collect data about numbers and types of units in each country and started collecting data on PvP wars, details of the number, and destructive power of attacks, losses on both sides etc.
The data will be used in future functions that will rank countries in their ability to fight PvP wars, and their track records while doing so.
105. Max number of countries with war protection in an empire on FB. [ top ]
The number is reduced to 10 several weeks ago. We will reduce the number to 8 early Thursday Sept. 27.
recent updates make it harder to force the price of shares to increase by placing share buy orders that cannot be completed because all the share owners are in fact one player and no shares are offered.
We have successfully limited such fake transactions and we let share values decline if there are no buyers or sellers and the PE values are beyond any realistic value.
The results are becoming visible on the share markets. More corporations now have reasonable Price Earning (PE) values and with it, also more realistic market values.
We have seen the the process works correctly and will make it a bit faster in the coming days.
An auto reactivation function for weapons is added to Simcountry. The feature can be set on or off. Once on, it will reactivate 10% of all weapons of each type once in a game month. If not turned off, everything will be reactivated within 10 game months.
The feature is done but NOT included today. It will be added tomorrow.
The cost of healthcare, education, transportation and government has declined today. The cost of government started declining in the past days and will continue at a slow pace in the coming days.
The maximum number of military bases and fortifications is now set as follows: Max 150 Fortifications. Max 80 military bases and airports of each type.
Countries with larger numbers of any type of these bases, will see a decline in the coming weeks at a slow pace. If a fortification or a military base is removed, the country will be financially compensated. ,br> Max numbers may decline further in the future.
111. Corporations Contracts for military bases and fortifications [ top ]
Corporations cannot sell military fixed assets to countries. The possibility to do so, allowed countries in the past, to have an arbitrary number of such items, surpassing any game max numbers. The possibility to do so is no more and numbers will not be able to increase beyond game settings.
This function (error correction) was completed and announced before but did not make it into the previous upgrade. It is now added to Simcountry.
113. Countries Trading with their own Corporations [ top ]
When countries trade weapons with their own corporations, they were able to only purchase active weapons from the country. From now on, they can purchase weapons from the reserves and when the reserves are insufficient, they can purchase from the activated weapons.
The function is used as before but the way it works is improved.
The temporary war protection feature is now limited to a maximum number of countries.
For now, the number on FB is 10 and it is very high on the other worlds.
However, we intend to gradually reduce the max number on FB in the coming weeks. When all the war updates are done, the max number of countries on FB that can be protected by temporary war protection will be reduced to one country.
Weapons entering a country from space stations or weapons that are delivered by direct contracts and sales (example: from your own enterprise) are now placed in the reserves.
If war is declared on your country, automatic reactivation will start and continue until all weapons are activated (provided the country have enough workers and medium level managers to join the army as soldiers and officers).
The reactivation can be stopped.
119. War Declarations and the start of the war [ top ]
The time between a war declaration and the start of the war is now restored to two full days as it was before. Worlds now run faster (6 game months each day) and the time was shortened.
It is now set to 12 game months.
Twelve game months will allow all weapons in the country to be automatically reactivated before the war starts.
Many corporations will become more profitable. Upgrading corporation?s efficiency is now more profitable, reducing the number of workers even more than before.
The process is applied in all weapon producing corporations and their work force is further reduced. More such changes will follow and will further reduce the number of workers in corporations, allowing president to add more corporations.
C3 wars may become a bit harder. This is a first step. In time, war levels will change and wining wars against C3 countries will have a different meaning in the game.
Cruise Missiles and Conventional missiles can be used from bases and their capabilities are now improved. More missiles will be fired in each attack with greater effect.
Some air force units are slightly larger while navies are slightly smaller.
There is a long time imbalance in the Power of these units and this change may be a first step in rebalancing them.
This is of course not possible on the real market but in Simcountry, you can be the main shareholder of the corporation, and control the fund which also holds some share while you also have the ability to offer to purchase or to sell shares.
We have introduced some corrections that will hopefully prevent some of the situations when share pricing went out of control.
We are in the process of adding new notifications to alert players to war declarations, attacks starting and more. The first additions will be part of the next upgrade.
More war features and small changes will be introduced in the next upgrade. These changes will include a further improvement in the capabilities of countries owned by new players.
Many weapon and ammunition producing corporations now employ a smaller number of people. There were several such changes before.� This will make it easier for countries to build such corporations.�
As a result, countries with many weapon producing corporations will see a reduction in employment and will be able to add new corporations.�
The change is not very large. we plan some more such changes but the end target is close.�
We see players, who increased their water treatment index to absurd levels (3000+). This has no effect at all as the system takes 2000 as a max and that too is already too high.� we are now removing a water system each game month and spare these countries both the manpower and the money.�
Efficiency upgrades reduce the number of workers, slightly increase the number of professionals in corporations and increase the use of Robotics.�
The numbers are now a little higher for many corporations, improving the profitability of corporations and reducing the number of workers even more than before.�
We want to make efficiency more important for corporations and we want it to bite deeper into the number of workers.�
The change will improve profitability in some corporations and reduce the overall number of workers, making it possible to build new corporations.�
We expect several rounds more of such changes. It is not possible to do it all at once.
March 30, 2017
141. Reduced numbers of workers in weapons and ammunition producing corporations [ top ]
A further reduction in the number of workers in nearly all corporations producing weapons and ammunition, will free more workers and managers and make it possible for countries to build more corporations with the same population numbers. This is a further reduction following several previous ones and the end numbers are in sight. We do not expect any more large reductions but rather some corrections and reductions in several types of corporations that were not affected before.
Also the impact of having weapons and ammunition producing corporations in your country will be reduced and as their profitability is high, they could become more attractive to build.
The use of robotics is increased and many corporations will start using the product. The numbers remain small at this stage to prevent huge shortages on the markets but more robotics products will be used in the coming weeks and the number of corporations producing them will increase too.
Nuclear weapons can currently be used against a small number of targets, mainly fixed assets like cities and military bases and cause 100% destruction. They are not usable against many other targets and considered an overkill.
We are now looking at the entire functionality of these weapons, their use, targets and their price and may try to make them more attractive. There is also the additional issue of potential damage to neighboring countries. Although such weapons are unacceptable in the real world, they might be more acceptable in the game and contribute to a �do and don�t do� discussion.
As we have announced before, Robotics products are now added to Simcountry. The products are currently hardly used and there are no corporations that use them in the production process. However, Robotics products will be used as corporation�s efficiency is upgraded. The number of workers decreases with every additional efficiency upgrade and the use of Robotics will increase.
It is now possible to setup Robotics corporations in all worlds. The use of the products will start next week and will gradually increase. We expect Robotics to become a major product in Simcountry.
145. Increased use of previously introduced products [ top ]
All products that were introduced in the past several weeks are now used in larger quantities. There are already many corporations producing these products but we see shortages in all worlds.
146. War related corporations use fewer workers [ top ]
The number of workers in many war related corporations is decreased again. This means that countries with such corporations may now have more unemployed and can start more corporations in the country and increase their profitability.
War related corporations were always far too large. This was done to reduce the number of corporations in each world as very large numbers resulted in much slower processing. These days, with very large and fast servers, this is not a problem anymore. Many corporations can become a bit smaller and allow countries to increase the number of corporations.
March 9, 2017
147. Last week�s New products are now in use [ top ]
The four new products introduced last week are now being used although the quantities are small. The use of the products will increase in the coming weeks. The gradual introduction will prevent major changes to the markets and allow them to adapt to the new situation.
Strategic maintenance corporations consume many nuclear materials and are limited to Fearless Blue. The products will be used by any country holding nuclear weapons and ammunition but supplies of the strategic maintenance products will have to come from Fearless Blue. Simcountry has several ways to make that possible including space trading and transports between the 5 worlds.
The cost of maintenance will not increase. The new products are used instead of some of the products used in maintenance before. The use of services and military services will decline slightly. The corporations on Fearless Blue that are producing these products are very profitable.
149. Employment in Weapon & Ammunition Corporations [ top ]
Employment numbers in many weapons and ammunition corporations have been reduce a bit. The reduction makes it possible to reduce the cost of these products while keeping these corporations profitable. The unemployment numbers may increase slightly in countries producing weapons and ammunition and it may now become possible to increase the numbers of corporations in the country.
150. New Product is being prepared for introduction � Robotics [ top ]
Robotics products will be added to Simcountry in the coming weeks and will become very important in many corporations. Robotics products will be used in upgraded corporations only and their use will be linked to the upgrade level of the corporations. Each efficiency upgrade of a corporation is linked to a reduction in the number of workers, a small increase in the number of managers and engineers and in the future, increased use of Robotics. This change per upgrade is reducing the number of workers in the corporation and also increases its profitability.
The introduction of robotics into the upgrading process will eventually make robotics one of the largest products in Simcountry.
Space centers can now be destroyed in war. It is not easy but possible. The only weapons that can attack space centers is conventional long range missile. We may add more weapons to the mix at a later stage. Space centers can be protected with a garrison that includes antimissile batteries and a sufficient numbers of missiles.
In the past, airlifting required that the unit which is airlifted, should be fully supplies with supplies, fuel and ammunition. The requirement for ammunition is now dropped and units can be airlifted even if they are not fully supplied with ammunition.
Especially when moving units back to your country, full supply of ammunition is not necessary. The requirements for supplies and fuel remain.
We have made another small round of reductions in the number of workers in corporations. The main changes are in weapon producing corporations but also some in other corporations. The change will affect mainly the number of medium and high level workers needed and is another step in the balancing of the numbers of such workers.
Upgrading corporations becomes more profitable. The upgrades will further reduce the total number of workers in the corporation, make upgraded corporations more profitable and allow the country to set up more corporations due to the reduced numbers needed in current corporations.
A new product was added today. It will be used in the maintenance of strategic weapons. The product can be produced but it is not used yet. We will gradually introduce the product as part of maintenance and in the process reduce the use of other products that are used in maintenance, such as military services, services, high-tech services, electric power and more.
As a result, the cost of maintenance will not increase and some very deep shortages in the service products might be reduced a bit.
The main reason for the introduction of the product is to make the production of strategic weapons a more attractive proposition. Currently, some of these products are not produced at all or there are only very few corporations producing them. Then, when someone tries to purchase such weapons, it is impossible, for a long time, to get any.
Fearless Blue is the best place for such corporations because of the easier availability of the raw materials needed in the production.
A new product was added today. It will be used in the maintenance of many mainly government assets in the country. The product can be produced but it is not used yet. We will gradually introduce the product as part of maintenance and in the process reduce the use of other products that are used in maintenance, such as services, high-tech services, electric power and more.
As a result, the cost of maintenance will not increase and some very deep shortages in the service products might be reduced a bit.
The main reason for the introduction of the product is to make the production of many of these products more attractive. Currently, some of these products are not produced at all or there are only very few corporations producing them. Then, when someone tries to purchase such a product, it can take a very long time before they are delivered.
157. Two more Metals were added to Simcountry [ top ]
We have added Platinum and Mercury as new products to Simcountry. The main reason for this addition is the preparation for the addition of resources based functions to the game. We think that the number of products that are dependent on availability in certain locations should increase. We have added several metals in the past, two today and several more are planned.
The products are not in use yet and will be phased in, in the coming weeks. The main uses will be in the general industry, the car industry and jewelry. Platinum is also used as catalytic convertor in many industries.
February 21. 2017
158. The War Game � Attacking targets from Military bases [ top ]
As announced before, we have now made it possible to launch attacks by Medium range missiles from bases in your country. This is of course in addition to the use of the same missiles as part of military units. There are more weapons that were always used in this way; these include strategic conventional missiles, and nuclear weapons.
Many countries continue to have relative shortages of Medium level workers & High level workers. The number of available Low level workers is frequently much higher. As a result, players need to repeatedly �convert� large numbers of professionals into workers or otherwise they will not be able to add new corporations, or even achieve full employment in existing corporations. The game automatically contributes to the balancing of the workers groups but that process is many times insufficient. We have also increased the number of �auto converted� by the system, each game month.
To improve the situation, we have again, slightly reduced the numbers of Medium level workers & the number of High level workers that are needed in corporations. The change will free workers from many corporations and increase the numbers of unemployed workers in these two groups.
The capacity of air supply units is increased for the second time. A recent case with many stranded air force units showed that the resupply of such stranded units can take a very long time, much longer than intended. In addition, we have improved the computation of the amounts of gasoline and aircraft fuel used each month. The procedure miscalculated the used amounts when many units had shortages of fuel. This resulted in smaller orders made by the automatic ordering system that depends on the amount of product used.
As a result, larger quantities of aircraft fuel and gasoline will be ordered and shortages will subside. The change may cause large immediate orders from many countries but the situation will quickly normalize.
When creating a new garrison template, it is now possible to choose very low numbers of weapons, as in a tiny garrison and up to very large numbers, as in a large garrison. The minimum number of weapons in all cases is now 36.
Currently when moving units to locations outside the country, these units must be fully supplied, including ammunition. Even worse, when they are flown back, they also must be fully supplied with ammo.
We will remove this condition both ways. No ammo will be needed when moving.
A country cannot order more than 150 fortifications but if the country has corporations producing fortifications, they can contract their product to the country and increase the number above 150. This remains unchanged for now and makes it possible to get many fortifications.
We have now slightly increased the cost of maintenance of fortifications and may do so again. Keeping very large numbers of fortifications is expensive.
165. New product � Maintenance of Strategic products [ top ]
A new product will be introduced next week. It will be used for the maintenance of strategic weapons and nuclear missiles and bombs. The production process will, as is the case with other maintenance products, use the nuclear products themselves and by doing so, will increase the use of such weapons and ammunition.
The change will make it easier to build profitable strategic weapons corporations.
166. New Product � Maintenance of State assets [ top ]
A new product will be introduced next week. It will be used for the maintenance of a number of state owned assets in the country, including space centers, universities, schools hospitals, water facilities etc.. The production process will, as is the case with other maintenance products, use these assets themselves and by doing so, will increase the use of such products.
We hope to enhance the use of some of these products and increase their production numbers in all the worlds.
It is currently impossible to attack and destroy space centers in war. We will shortly make it possible to attack space centers, using strategic long range conventional missiles. Space centers will not be easy to destroy and can be defended by a garrison with missile interceptors that can, in sufficient numbers destroy attacking missiles or at least, make such an attack a very expensive expedition.
The change will take place next week. (Feb. 28th).
Many countries have relative shortages of Medium level workers & High level workers. The number of Low level workers is frequently sufficient. As a result, players need to repeatedly �convert� large numbers of professionals into workers or otherwise they will not be able to add new corporations, or even achieve full employment in existing corporations. The game automatically contributes to the balancing of the workers groups but that process is many times insufficient.
To improve the situation, we have slightly reduced the numbers of Medium level workers & the number of High level workers that are needed in corporations. The change will free workers from many corporations and increase the numbers of unemployed workers in these two groups.
The change will also slightly increase the number of corporations a country can build without creating shortages of workers.
The capacity of air supply units is increased. A recent case with many stranded air force units showed that the resupply of such stranded units can take a very long time, much longer than intended. The capacity is increased by a factor of 5. We will check similar cases to see if the change is sufficient. The change is achieved by an increase of the capacity of each aircraft. The unit size is unchanged and there is no need for additional aircraft.
Many corporations use the same raw materials. We would like to create more diversification between these types of corporations, make them use other materials and reduce the use of other materials.
Such changes are small and will not create any problem for these corporations nor will it create any disturbance on the markets. Many small changes will follow.
The war game is currently played with military units that are fighting the war from positions in their own country or invade enemy countries, move to other countries and attack remote targets from wherever they reside.
The war game also has some weapons that are used from military bases in the attacking country. These weapons are not part of military units and never move from their position. These include all the nuclear weapons and more.
We intend to make it possible for several missile launching weapons to wage war from bases in the country without the use of military units. These weapons will become usable in this new way but will remain usable in military units.
Attacks that are launched from bases in the country will always be less effective than attacks by military units that are very close to their target. As a result, the cost of such attacks will be higher than the cost of attacks carried out by military units.
Military base attacks are easier to launch but remain limited in their effect. It will also become possible to launch such attacks from the Simcountry APP. Currently this is not possible yet.
The introduction will be gradual, with ongoing evaluation of its use and step by step liberalization of the war process. In the first stages, wars can only end with victory if the enemy country is invaded and part of it is conquered.
The first step will be introduced in the week of February 20th. Medium range missile launchers will become usable in military base launched attacks.
July 6, 2016
172. Changes in the employment in some corporations. [ top ]
The main changes are in some types of weapon and ammunition producing corporations. Some types of corporations now use a smaller number of workers. As a result, you may see a jump in the number of unemployed low level and medium level workers. The number depends on how many such corporations are in your country. If you have none, nothing will happen.
In case you have many, the change might be large as we have reduced the numbers in some of these corporations by a little more than 10.000. We will continue with such changes in the coming period and extend it to other types of corporations.
Long term, countries will probably be able to add several corporations and increase their profits Without any change in the population. Changes will be small and will not cause any significant disturbance of the markets and in unemployment.
Some corporations produce less than 12 product per year. Such corporations need more cash and are swinging between profit and loss as they are not selling products every month. We have largely solved the problem in the past year by gradually increasing production. In most cases, the production number is 12 or more. In some cases however, the number remains very low (example: space shuttles, space centers and some nuclear materials). We will continue with small changes that will increase production, reduce the product pricing and try to normalize the economics of such corporations.
June 22, 2016
174. Some weapon corporations and weapon maintenance corporations have shed some manpower. They use a smaller number of workers. [ top ]
This will free more workers for other corporations. In the past we made corporations to be huge. One of the reasons was that the number of corporations in a world had to be limited or processing them each game month and the trading of their products could overwhelm servers capacities.
In the meantime, servers have been replaced and new servers can handle some more load. The changes are not very large but we will in the future continue to make some corporations use smaller number of workers and make it possible for countries to have more profitable corporations with the same numbers of the population in the country.
175. Diversifying the use of raw materials. [ top ]
Some corporations use more raw materials of products that were added to Simcountry recently like carbon, electric motors, displays, and some metals. At the same time, they use a slightly smaller quantities of other raw materials. The changes are small and will continue, the profitability of corporations is never harmed.
There are always requests for less interventions by the gamemaster in the world markets. These interventions have never been significant and took place when markets where entering a �danger zone� that could lead to a breakdown.
We have made some more small changes to delay such interventions and we allow product pricing to go higher or lower as a result of shortages or overproduction. There are more opportunities in the markets and some corporations can create very large profits. We will continue such changes as long as the markets are not showing wide range unsustainable shortages.
Some product pricing can now fluctuate more widely, allowing corporations to become more profitable if the products are in short supply. It will also drive them lower if the product they produce is in oversupply for a long time.
The changes are implemented, mainly for products that are more complex, and are not available on all worlds. The changes will continue and make such products more attractive to produce.
178. Using New raw materials in corporations [ top ]
We have made changes to some products aThe production process in some types of corporations is extended and more raw materials are used. For example, glass was hardly used and is now part of the production process in several more types of corporations. Also the used of recently added new products is increased. Their use was very low to start with because of the small number of corporations producing them, they were hardly available. With many more corporations available now, the use is somewhat increased.
These changes do not influence the profitability of these corporations.
The game intervenes sometimes when huge shortages in certain products threaten the markets. There were many requests from player in the past, and recently, to reduce or even eliminate these automatic interventions.
Recently, interventions where reduced by mistake. As a resultwe the markets became unstable and even close to a collapse. Players did not intervene and did not start corporations to reduce shortages. We do think however that the markets will offer more opportunities, and Simcountry will offer more challenges if such interventions are reduced even more.
We have made changes to some products and will only intervene in very extreme conditions. Depending on what happens in the coming days, we may extend the process and reduce interventions even more.
Some products have been tuned to widen their price range. The change in the price range is not very large but corporations producing these products may become more valuable if there is a shortage of the product and may suffer more if there is a surplus. Combined with reduced interventions, prices may start increasing more drastically. The corporations will turn higher profits. We hope that this will be an incentive for players to create such corporations.
In the coming weeks and months, we will add new products and raw materials to the production process of many corporations. The objective is to increase diversification in the products production and include more products as raw materials in the production process of a larger number of corporations.
This process has already started and small changes toward this goal will be made on a weekly basis.
We have now slightly increased the range of product price fluctuations for some products in Simcountry. These products are mainly high tech products for now but we may extend the change to more products.
Products with high persisting shortages will now be allowed to become more expensive than before and Ones with persisting oversupply, will see the price of the product fall some more. The idea is to create more incentive for the creation of high profit corporations at the cost of corporations that make losses.
This has always happened in Simcountry in the past but these changes will make the difference larger. Corporations that produce products that are in short supply, will become more profitable and their market value will increase more. Corporations that are producing products that are in abundance on the markets, will make larger losses and might bankrupt earlier than before.
Simcountry service will be taken offline for planned maintenance on March 22. Downtime is scheduled for 5 AM to 12 AM EST (9 AM to 4 PM GMT). If all goes smoothly we might be back online a little earlier.
We hope this won't be too much of an inconvenience and thank you for your patience!
Several new products have been added to simcountry. This is part of a larger rollout of new products. Introduction of new products starts with 0 usage to give corporations time to stock up before they actually start using them. Usage is then slowly ramped up to give the markets time to adjust.
Carbon was added recently. Usage is currently ramping up slowly to its intended target.
Displays and Electric Motors have been added today. They are integrated into the production economy but currently stand on 0 usage.
Several types of corporations are now a bit more profitable, their turnover increased a bit and in general, they use more of the new products that were added to Simcountry recently, including batteries and mobile devices.
Also production numbers in some types of corporations have been reduced by 2 or 3%, while the price is increased by the same percentage.
A small change will require countries to build a slightly smaller number of schools, universities and hospitals to achieve the same education and health index. The cost per unit is up by a very small percentage and the total cost mostly unchanged. We hope to move away a bit from index value inflation. At the end of the day, an index of 100 should be OK and 150 excellent. At this time, the numbers are much higher.
The score computation is updated and better explained:
1. When you click on the score, the page will show more and corrected details that are now a bit closer to the total score. This improved page does not show yet. It will be showing shortly. (Wednesday afternoon). 2. The finance index weight on the score increased a bit. 3. The defense index on the score increased a bit too. 4. Having a space center will add 200 points to the score (this was 100). 5. Your game level will have more influence on the score and its influence will increase more next month. 6. Selling population will decrease the score by 400 points. 7. The welfare index has also an increased influence on the score. 8. Some other indexes, that are all included in the welfare index, were removed from the computation of the score. 9. The total score is reduced a bit for all countries.
The number of schools, universities and hospitals that are needed to maintain your current health and education indexes is decreased. You need a smaller number and if the numbers remain unchanged, your index will increase a bit. On the other hand, the number of professionals needed in schools, universities and hospitals is increased slightly. The changes are all small, under 2%.
The numbers of professionals graduating from the education system each game month depends on the population but mainly on the education index. The numbers are now increased. It means that to produce the same number of professionals you produced before, you can do with a bit lower education index.
We think that this process should continue. Currently a good education index is higher than 200. It was in the past intended to be around 100 - 150.
190. Shortages in the labor setup of your country [ top ]
Many beginner's countries show an imbalance in the labor system with many shortages. It is hard for these beginners to fix the shortages and grow their economies. Especially for them, and for countries in game level 1,2 and 3, we have introduced more flexibility and more movements between workers groups and try to make it easier for these players.
This support system exists for a long time but we made it work a little harder to balance the workers groups.
Small changes of up to 2% have been introduced in many types of corporations. The changes are aimed at the reduction of exaggerated quantities in production and consumption of some products. In many cases, the change reduces production a bit, and also reduces the amounts of raw materials needed in the production process. In some cases, the production is reduced by a very small amount and compensated by a slight increase in the base price.
In the same process, the profitability of many corporations, was improved. This is mainly true for corporations producing weapons and ammunitions, and for corporations in mining, food products and agriculture.
We expect the profitability of countries to improve a bit. It might take up to a week for the market to absorb the changes but the scale of the changes remains very limited. There are no changes what so ever in the number of people working in any of the corporations.
Some types of corporations are too small in terms of monthly production and sales, and it is harder for them to become more profitable and increase their market value. We have now corrected some of these cases and slightly increased the size of some of them. We may need to do this more often. Changes are very small, (<5%) and some need to grow by 20%. This will be corrected in the future.
September 2, 2015
193. Automatic workforce changes have been improved [ top ]
Changes in the workforce and availability of workers takes place when there are shortages of medium level workers and high level workers.
These automatic updates are now more significant and shorten the time needed to fix shortages and improve the employment in a country.
Also in cases where the education priorities and rebalancing of the workers distribution were abandoned for some time, it is now easier to repair and the repair period is much shorter.
We plan more changes that will make the management of education and the availability of workers even easier.
A major upgrade to the mobile app has been released. It does not require a download through the app store. The changes include:
- Back end system for help and tutorial messages throughout the app. - The system is now in place. Many pages and help info will become available with the next update. - Help pages will show up automatically the first time a page is shown and can be recalled at will. - The ability to customize your account profile is now part of the App. This was only available through the web browser version of the game before. - The army section is now available. This section has the option to manage and build your army. It includes documentation. - Cash transfers from the account into countries are now possible in the App. - You now get a pop-up offering to transfer cash from your account if country cash is negative.
- Zooming into the country map is added to the map section. - The Education Priorities screen is now added. It is possible to view and update the education priorities for each of the professions. - Trading: Presidents can now trade all products. Countries can now purchase or sell all products on the world market. - The account overview is now available on the portal pages.
197. Further reduction of the price of many weapons [ top ]
Many weapons, mainly defensive ones this time, have been reduced in price slightly. The reduction by 2 to 5% represents a continuation of the downward trend in pricing in Simcountry and will continue.
Some products were added in the past months. (Batteries, Lead, Lithium) are now produced in sufficient quantities. We are now increasing the use of these products and add them to the production process of more corporations.
A change in the App has improved overall performance. More improvements will be introduced in the coming weeks, including added functions and more improvements in performance.
The next update will also include the country map.
The cost of several nuclear weapons is reduced again. The corporations production is increased and they become more stable. More such updates will be installed in the future.
Shortages of high level workers (HLVs) have been reduced in the past weeks and another improvement was installed in the update. It will reduce such shortages even further and might eliminate them in most cases..
We will check the numbers again and find out if another tuning round is needed.
The transfer of mobile units between the country and a space center is now limited to 10 mobile units at a time. Much larger transfers are in fact not needed and cause performance problems and related errors.
Navy bases have a very limited function in Simcountry. A navy base is needed for a country to be able to order navy weapons and ammunition but when a base is available, there is no additional function. We have now made sure that these bases cannot be attacked, do not show numbers of weapons as these numbers were not correct in some cases and caused a lot of confusion.
The first version of the Simcountry App is now available. More functions are being added and frequent updates will become available. The I-Phone /I-Pad version is also available but will take a little longer to appear in the I-Store.
We had complaints about the performance of maps, when painting them with many objects. Mainly maps of countries with a large number of military units could take very long before showing on the screen. A major optimization has taken place and the process is many times faster. Showing maps on the screen is now immediate, even with a very large number of military units.
The number of HLWs needed in upgraded corporations is decreased for many types of corporations. The change freed many HLWs in all countries and caused a onetime increase in the number of available HLWs. For countries with large shortages, it has improved the situation a bit.
The change will also reduce the number of HLWs with more upgrading of corporations and will structurally reduce the percentage of HLWs as part of the total number of workers in all countries.
Depending on continuing shortages, another update may follow to further reduce the numbers.
209. Reduced cost of Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Missiles [ top ]
There was a further reduction in the cost of nukes. The change is part of the general trend aiming at a further reduction of the cost of war.
210. Tuning of Production and consumption of some products [ top ]
In an effort to reduce some very large numbers of production and consumption of products, several small changes have taken place. These changes have no financial consequences. Example: The production numbers of eggs are reduced by 10% and the base price of the product is increased by 10%. The corporations remain exactly as profitable (or not profitable) as before. The consumption is reduced by 10% so that the entire economy and market situation of the product remain unchanged.
Such changes may continue but as explained, have no financial consequences.
The Simcountry App is submitted to the store. It will take some time before it becomes available.
The Simcountry App is free.
This first version includes many game functions and it includes the Forum and Chat features. As a first version, it is quite large but some functions remain only available by use of the website.
Some large weapons, ammunition and some other large items in Simcountry have been update and reduced in price. The changes include nuclear weapons, the space shuttle and some parts of the shuttle.
This is another step in the long term general reduction of pricing and specifically the reduction of the cost of war.
More reductions, and at a higher frequency, will continue in the coming weeks.
Some bankruptcies have taken place. We have given players a long time to prepare and repair their countries and messages about possible bankruptcies were showing at login time and on the country pages two weeks ahead of time and then extended by an additional week.
We have also searched through our five worlds and looked for exceptional situations to prevent massive bankruptcies that might have happened on a single day.
The number of alternatives for counter attacks by auto response weapons is increased from 3 to 6. Your choice of target types to attack is now wider. It will increase the efficiency of such counter attacks.
Some weapons and ammunition have updated to reduce their base price a bit. The changes are small in most cases except for very high priced items and nuclear weapons that have been reduced more than other weapons.
This is another step in the long term general reduction of pricing and specifically the reduction of the cost of war.
Some bankruptcies have taken place in the past week. We have given players a long time to prepare and repair their countries and messages about possible bankruptcies were showing at login time and on the country pages two weeks ahead of time and then extended by an additional week.
We have also searched through our five worlds and looked for exceptional situations to prevent massive bankruptcies that might have happened on a single day. We have found very few such cases, one of which was massive.
To prevent a disaster striking any player we have, in only very few cases, added funds to save large empires from a sudden collapse. We have found that these empires were badly managed but added funds to save most of the consequences of bankruptcy. We have also prevented very large amounts of dent from being inherited by the main country. We have seen that the players, even as they were active, did nothing to repair anything.
This intervention was done once because the change in the bankruptcy handling might have destroyed these two empires. However, if they will not improve the economy of their many countries, and continue to neglect their economies, these empire will fall apart, at a slow pace in the coming months. We have warned the players about the huge problems in their countries, with unemployment at 50% plus in many cases and no effort at all to build corporations and fix the shortages. We hope that they will fix what needs to be fixed and save their countries. There will be no additional cash infusions. They have a lot of time to fix and it is very easy too. Their empires are their own responsibility.
218. Small Update in the Health and Education Systems [ top ]
With larger populations in many countries the numbers of schools, universities, hospitals etc. is very large. We have increased the size of such institutions by about 0.5% and the numbers needed was reduced by the same. The schools, universities, hospitals etc. will be slightly larger in terms of numbers of workers needed.
The result is that the health and education indexes may increase very slightly and your countries could do with just a few less of these "institutions" than before. The change is hardly noticeable.
The first release of the Simcountry app is expected within a few weeks.
The first release will include many basic functions of Simcountry. It will also include a fully functional Forum and Chat and will allow you to place messages on the game forum or chat with others.
Countries can setup auto response units as part of their army. There are currently two types of auto response units: Stealth Bomber Wings and Mobile Conventional Missiles Units. These units can be used both as active units in attacking your enemy during war and as auto response units that will react to attacks on your country.
The configuration feature for these units is now improved. For both types, you can decide what exactly these units will attack in case they are automatically triggered. You can decide on a sequence of possible targets. The units will try to attack the first target in this sequence. If there is anything it can attack it will execute the attack. If no such targets exist or the weapons of the auto response unit have no effect on that target, the auto response unit will move to the next priority in the sequence and try the same.
All the possible targets are shown when the unit is configured and you can chose for a sequence of three alternatives. The number will be increased to six alternatives in the next update.
A new feature is added to the "sequence" the player can setup, for the auto response unit to "Attack the attacker". Using this option, the auto response unit will try to attack the unit that was recently used to attack your country and will try to destroy it.
The auto response units can attack several times in each triggered counter attack. The number of times depends on the war level of the player. In most war levels there will be a single counter attack. However, in higher war level, the number may increase to two or three attacks in each round.
The sequence of possible counter attacks is now extended and can include the navy. The choice is for the player when the setup of these units is taking place.
223. The Use of New Products Recently Added [ top ]
The use of the new products that were added in the past two weeks is gradually growing. The slow pace is chosen so that corporations that are using these new products will not run into surprise shortages of a new product and stop production.
There are now more types of corporations using these products and numbers will continue to increase in the coming weeks.
224. Tuning of Army Units and War Capabilities [ top ]
A slight tuning of some units and their capabilities is meant to improve the balance of power between some offensive units and the defense. The tuning is based on recent tests and search into recent war logs.
The stealth units are slightly larger and the same has taken place for the mobile conventional missiles unit that was also improved with some defensive weapons to defend it against counter attacks. The defense wings are slightly smaller and now have 125 airplanes compared to 130 before. Several air force units have a slightly higher ammunition levels that will allow them to function a little longer before they need to be resupplied.
Very small changes to some types of corporations will improve their profitability. This long term trend has contributed to much better profitability of countries. In general we see larger profits in both corporations and countries and a potential for very large profits in countries that are well managed.
Many players have improved the assets of failing countries and increased the assets to a positive value. These countries will not bankrupt. Some countries however have negative assets and the clock is ticking. The best way to save them is by a transfer of funds to the country.
When assets become positive for a period of 8 hours or longer, the "pending bankruptcy" clock is set back to 84 game months and will start again if the funds that were transferred into the country are removed again. This might be a "cheat" to avoid bankruptcy but part of the money will be used to fix shortages and the country will end up better than it was before.
Lead and Lithium have been added as new products and can now be produced. The products will be used, starting next week, in a small number of corporations. The numbers will increase gradually. The corporations that will use the products, will start purchasing them early so that the corporation will have some products in stock when the production process starts using them.
Also Batteries have been added as a new product. These are industrial batteries that are used in the car industry and other industries and not by consumers. Future alternative power industries will also use batteries.
House hold batteries will be added at a later date.
The use of Mobile Devices and Zinc that were added last week is increased. Mobile devices are now used by the population as a consumer product and the numbers will increase. More corporations will start purchasing these products and will use them in the future. We do not expect any corporations to suffer a setback in production as a result of the use of the new products.
The navy is an effective weapon that can be used far away from your country. It is possible to fight the navy with offensive weapons but the defense against attacking navies and especially attacks by frigates and sea based cruise, was very limited. This is a problem for wars where auto defense is used.
We have now added defensive capabilities that can help protect countries against navy attacks. Both defense helicopters and defensive missiles will counter attack navies in war, also conventional missiles and stealth bombers will participate in the auto defense. This change will not diminish the capabilities of the navy but will extract a price for navy attacks. The attacker will suffer more damage to the attacking navies.
We have improved the capabilities of conventional missiles and made them harder to destroy. The missiles are also effective against more weapons, including the navy. Mobile auto response conventional missile units will participate in the defense of countries that have them and will attack a wider range of weapon systems.
233. Lower cost for Some weapons and many types of ammunition [ top ]
A further decline in the base price of weapons and ammunition, including also many defensive weapons will make wars cheaper and allow for a low cost for the defense.
More testing of the war engine and remarks and mails from players, resulted in some tuning of the war engine. This will result in some changes in the working of some weapons on some targets and of some defensive weapons and their response to attacks.
In face of an increasing probability of war between countries with presidents, it is important to make it possible for countries to set up a good defense that will deter attack and also improve the auto defense features in case of a war while the defending player is not available.
More work will be done in the coming weeks to allow for the setup of auto response units and the choice of targets that they attack in case the country is attacked.
November 11, 2014
235. Two New Products - Mobile Devices and Zinc [ top ]
Two new products are added to Simcountry today, these products are Mobile Devices and Zinc.
Mobile Devices: Mobile devices can now be produced by Mobile Devices Corporations. The corporation is in the High tech group. Mobile Devices will be used in many different types of corporations and will be added to the consumption products used by the population.
Initially while not produced in large quantities, Mobile Devices are used in small quantities only in the telephone corporations and internet corporations. Their use will be increased in the coming weeks as their availability increases.
Zinc: Zinc is now added to the mining group of products. It is initially used in the production of Steel and in construction corporations. The use of Zinc will be extended in the coming weeks as it becomes more available. More products will be added into the mining group in the coming months. These products will be needed when the natural resources extension of Simcountry is introduced in the near future.
When a country has a shortage of materials of any type, it should try to correct the situation as soon as possible. When shortages of materials become severe and the total value of materials in the country goes negative (extreme situations), the country risks falling into a managed status to help it correct the problem. Such extreme shortages can cause high emigration rates and severe loss of population.
A warning is issued on the country home page when you login, warning you of the problem. It is also easy to set up notifications to receive a message if such a situation occurs.
237. Fast ordering of products that are short. [ top ]
If the country has material shortages, it can now place immediate orders for the products it needs. These orders will be executed without any limitation of spending space. It will allow players to quickly solve any shortages issue. The country does need the cash to pay for such orders. Please make sure you transfer the needed funds to the country.
Countries with negative TOTAL assets are considered bankrupt. Negative total assets mean that the total of all assets, including government assets, materials, weapons and ammunition, the total value of all corporations the country owns, and the total of all cash and loans is negative.
A warning is shown on the account and the country page that bankruptcy is pending and the number of months you have to correct the situation. If bankrupt, the total negative assets will be paid by the main country in the empire. Correcting the problem ahead of time, ends up cheaper than letting the bankruptcy take place.
To allow more time for everyone to fix what needs to be fixed, we are resetting all warnings back to a period of two weeks. (84 game months). Please transfer some cash to these countries, make it cash positive and purchase the missing materials.
A lot is said about this recently. However, we do not expect any large number of countries to bankrupt. Small players and beginners are financially supported and none will bankrupt. We expect a very small number of countries, members of large empires that are unwilling to support the weak links in the group.
Investment funds pay more to their investors. Many investment funds are very rich and can afford larger payment. These payments increase the income of the population and also the taxes the population pays to the country. Funds that do not have enough cash, and are unable to raise cash by selling shares, do not pay out.
War level 13 is added to Simcountry. The war levels document will be updated today or tomorrow. More war levels will be added in the coming weeks.
241. Reduced Pricing of Weapons and Ammunition [ top ]
More weapons and ammunition have been reduced in price. The process is continuing at a low pace to further reduce amounts in Simcountry and also reduce the cost of war.
Migration numbers are now showing on the country home page. Please check. Migration can increase when the country has severe shortages of materials, negative cash and when bankruptcy is pending.
November 5, 2014
243. Bankruptcy and "Close to Bankruptcy" Conditions Updated [ top ]
The Unclear and outdated conditions for bankruptcy have been renewed and documented. Countries will bankrupt only if their total assets become negative. Assets include not only cash and loans, but all the country government owned assets, army assets and the value of all the materials in the country.
Warnings of pending bankruptcy will show for 84 game months (2 weeks) and it will give the player time to improve conditions.
The documentation is updated and described the condition in all details.
Close to bankruptcy conditions, when cash is lower than -1 trillion or the value of materials becomes negative, are also enforced and a message is showing on the country home page.
New notifications are now available, allowing you to receive warnings if such conditions occur.
Migration is updated to include numbers of people migrating if the country is in a close to bankruptcy situation, salaries are very low or basic materials such as food, energy and some other basic materials, are not available.
The number is showing on the country newspaper and will show also on the country home page.
A bug is fixed in the "unbalanced" exchange that required at least 1 worker to "balance" the numbers. You can now just move up to 200.000 workers each game month.
A problem is fixed in the function that allows you to build types of corporations, depending on your highest game level achieved on a specific world. The function now works correctly.
Conditions for civil unrest have been relaxed. It occurs if you have more than 10 countries in the empire and the chance increases if the numbers are larger. It only occurs in countries in such empire, that are part of the empire for more than 180 game months.
War damage numbers have decreased. The function works as before but the damage is smaller. This will further decrease the cost of wars.
249. Base price declines and Corporate profitability [ top ]
Some products, and some high cost weapons and nuclear missiles are now cheaper. This is a continuing trend. The profitability of corporations is keeping a steady increase.
After fighting 4 wars against C3 countries at your current war level, your war level will auto increase. Increasing war levels win you gold coins on all the five worlds but the number of gold coins is higher on the Fearless Blue world.
When starting a war against a C3 country, you can now choose between multiple options. You can start a war at a higher war level. Winning such a war will move you to the next war level. You can start a war against a C3 country at the same war level you are. Such a war will win you the resources in the country and will move you to the next war level only after you win 4 such wars.
A new option, allows you to start a war against a C3 country at war level 3. The war may win you the country but there are no money rewards. The feature is added on request of some players for strategic reasons, trying to win a country closer to an area where they intend to fight a different war.
The base price of many types of weapons and ammunition is reduced again. The reduction is around 5% but in some cases up to 10%. Some types have not changed at all. The change is a continuation of the reduction in the cost of war.
When setting up a new corporations, the choice depends on your current game levels. This is now changed. The choice now depends on the highest game level you have reach any time in the past with the empire the country belongs to.
When a corporation reduces its production for lack of workers or materials, the minimum hiring levels used to be 10%. The minimum hiring level is now reduced to 5%.
A common market can have a maximum number of 25 members. The max number is now imposed also in cases when players are accepting invitations.
255. Military Bases, military airports and fortifications [ top ]
The number of military bases in a country used to depend on the numbers of weapons and military units. The rules became confusing when players started trading in military bases and were limited in their trading policies by the size of their own army.
We have now simplified the system and removed the dependency on the size of the army. A country can order a max number of 100 military bases or military airports of each type. When the number is reached, manual orders for military bases and airports will be prohibited. However, corporations that contract such bases and military airports or fortifications to the country will be able to do so without any limitations.
October 9, 2014
256. Wars against Computer Controlled Countries (C3) [ top ]
It is now possible for any country in any war level to fight a war against a C3 country at a lower war level. When winning such a war, there is no cash reward and the war does not count as a regular war that was won by the country.
The feature was added to make it easier for presidents to take over a country that is close to a country they want to fight against.
It is now possible to lend a mobile unit to one of your countries in the empire or to a member of your federation. The unit will be placed in the army of the borrowing country and will be under its control. It will be supplied as part of the army.
The origin of the unit will be kept and the unit can always be given back to the owner at any time. However, there is no guarantee that such a unit will be in the same condition as it was at the time it was transferred. It can be damaged or even destroyed in war.
Ammunition shortages are a problem in Simcountry for a long period and have caused problems in countries where the president assumed that the army is operational, only to discover that part of the army cannot be used in war because it lacks ammunition.
Ammunition is ordered automatically in most cases, but when such supply is stopped by the player, or in cases of severe market shortages, or non availability of certain types of ammunition on some of the worlds, supplies could even go negative.
The problem is now solved and the following is added:
1. When ammunition supplies are lower than what is needed for one (game) year, an automatic notification can be issued and the player will receive a message warning of the approaching shortage. There is then enough time to solve the problem. You need to set this notification on.
2. If a player does not resolve the problem and the ammunition goes negative, a new game procedure will, in stages, solve the problem automatically. The procedure will not change any cash conditions in the country. It will take the following steps:
a. Several weapons that are using the ammunition type that shows a severe shortage, will be exchanged for ammunition. The procedure is limited in size and will be repeated each game month until the shortage is resolved.
b. If there are no weapons in the country that can be exchanged, the procedure will try the reserves or a space center in the country to find weapons that can be exchanged.
c. If none are found, the procedure will dismantle an army unit to recover weapons that can be exchanged for ammunition, to resolve the shortage. Such event appears in the country newspaper.
In time all the shortages of ammunition will be resolved. We advise every player to set the notifications on, to get messages when shortages occur. The entire procedure will never kick in if the army is supplied with the ammunition it needs.
The investment funds have been restructured and now do more of what they are expected to do. Until now, funds accumulated cash, invested part of the cash in the stock market and paid very little back to their investors.
The funds are now restructured to pay more to their investors. They will also, gradually start to invest more in the stock market and reduce the pile of cash they have.
Funds that are short of cash will sell some of their holdings in the stock market to replenish their cash. Funds that are short on assets will stop paying their investors until they are able to increase their holdings.
260. Support Functions for Failing Countries [ top ]
Countries that are in bad financial conditions and are in danger of bankruptcy have always been supported to prevent their demise. The supporting procedures are set on automatically when countries are accumulating debt and are making large losses.
The procedure have been improved and is helping such countries in more ways and a bit faster. The procedure does not give the country any cash. It helps in managing the education, making more people available for the economic process and builds new corporations to fix the financial situation of the country.
Corporations continue to increase in size at a low pace. Each game upgrade increases the size of some corporations and improves their profitability. The process will continue at a low pace and will help us to keep the total number of corporations in each world from increasing very quickly.
Some products have become cheaper again. We keep reducing the price of some types of ammunition and of some weapons. The cost of nuclear weapons is continuing to slide, but also the price of some space products, cargo shuttles, military bases etc. The production numbers of these products are slightly higher and the corporations producing them are much more profitable.
We intend to continue this process for some time to come.
263. War Levels rules will change in the coming weeks [ top ]
Countries that fight wars against C3 countries at their own war level, will in the near future, automatically move to a higher war level after winning 4 wars at that level. Countries can move to a higher war level if they fight a C3 country at a war level which is higher than their own.
We will now add an automatic move to a higher war level even if they keep fighting C3 wars at their own level.
It is our intention to make such war more attractive by adding new incentives for the players who are fighting such wars. This is part of an effort to move away from fake wars that are fought by one player against an automatic war engine.
All countries in war level 7 and up can fight any countries in war level 7 and up. The change is not as big as it sounds. War was already possible with countries at higher war levels and now, wars at even higher war levels are also possible. There are currently not so many countries at war level 10 and higher.
It is now possible to turn off the war level protection. Once you turn the level protection off, you can be attacked by countries at any war level that have turned their own war level protection off.
Countries that turn their level protection off, will be rewarded economically. They will see their welfare index increasing, starting immediately after the protection is turned off, and increasing slowly to end up 5 points higher than it was before. Other factors may also be involved in the change of your welfare index but the elimination of the war level protection will end up adding 5 points to your welfare.
The difference of 5 points in the welfare index, is very significant and will increase the profitability of your entire industry and can have a major effect on the profitability of the country. The extra income can be used to boost your defense against any war that may result from the turning off of the war level protection.
267. Preventing Negative numbers of ammunition [ top ]
Further action is taken to prevent negative numbers of ammunition. The procedure now checks if there are weapons in either the reserves or in military units than can be exchanged for ammunition to reduce or eliminate the negative numbers. We assume that the problem will be eliminated in the coming days.
268. Explaining the Income of unemployed, Disables and the Retired [ top ]
The pages where the income of the retired, or unemployed and disabled is showing, now include more details. The pages show what the salary is and which part comes from other income that originates in the pension and investment funds.
We home that any possible misunderstanding of these numbers will be resolved.
Many types of corporations, mostly those producing very large items, continue to grow and their production is increasing. Also the number of employees in these corporations keeps growing. The change is part of the general increase in the size of corporations and especially, in corporations that produce less than one product each month. Many nuclear weapons, bases, and large navy items became cheaper again, and are produced in slightly larger numbers.
Many other corporations have been changed slightly, employing some more workers and their profitability is improving.
A new feature will be installed next week. It will allow players to loan mobile units to other countries in your empire and to members of your federation. It will allow you to support your own countries and your friends in times of war. The units will become part of the army of the receiving country but will also show on a separate list as loaned units and can be given back to their owner.
Loaned units can be lost in war, or damaged and may not be returned or may be returned incomplete and damaged.
To prevent and also repair ammunition numbers from going negative, a new function is introduced that exchanges a small number of weapons, for a larger number of ammunition pieces for the same weapon. The sale of the weapon and the purchase of the ammunition happen as one action, with no cash transactions involved. The country has the same amount of cash before and after the exchange.
Exchanges will continue as long as the ammunition numbers in the country remain negative. and will stop immediately when the shortage disappears. It is easy to prevent shortages. There are shortage notifications you can set and you will be notified either by mail or by a twitter message.
Purchasing the ammunition you need is essential when you try to keep your army operational. Make sure these purchases take place on time, set up these alerts and correct the shortages.
272. Reduced Price for many types of Ammunition [ top ]
Some types of ammunition became a bit cheaper today. Especially, all types of defensive ammo and some types of offensive ammo are involved. The move is part of a long term trend of reduction in pricing in Simcountry, following a downtrend in numbers in general and a reduction in the cost of war.
273. Stay Tuned to some major changes in the War Rules [ top ]
We have recently made it easier to wage war, player versus player by increasing the difference in War Levels between the warring parties. Additional steps are planned, that will make it easier to wage war, player versus player mainly in the higher war levels.
In addition, more steps will follow, reducing the fake wars and making real wars much more attractive and making it easier for presidents to setup a good defense at a lower cost.
The notification system is extended with two new notifications allowing you to request a message by mail or twitter, when there are shortages in your country. There are two new notifications, one alerting you when there are shortages in non military products, the other will alert you when there are shortages in military products like weapons or ammunition.
It is very important to use these notifications. Shortages cause a reduction in the supply index of the country and as a result, also the welfare index will decline, followed by a reduction in productivity in your corporations. We advise you to go to the notification system and turn these (and other) notifications on.
The money transfer function in the direct trading pages is improved. The function became very slow if the player had many countries. The function is now very fast, independent of the number of countries and enterprises you may have.
The cash data of the countries showing on the pages is updated once in a couple of hours but it is immediately updated when you choose to transfer cash to or from a specific country.
The Simcountry site is upgraded in the past week, except for Kebir Blue which will be upgraded before the end of this week. Both the hardware and software are upgraded. As a result, month processing is now much faster than before. The general response of the server is excellent. We did not have any performance problems before the upgrade but this change guarantees sufficient capacity long term.
The change also allowed us to significantly reduce the use of power by our servers.
Some corporations, mainly the ones producing large, high cost items, are now a little larger and they produce more. These corporations include many strategic weapon corporations but also air ports, production plants, space products and others.
In the process, the corporations became more stable and their potential profit capacity is increased. These changes will continue, and in the process will further reduce the price of some large items, including nuclear weapons, military bases, stealth fighters and more.
Some products, mainly strategic weapons and strategic materials, cannot be traded on the world market. These products are automatically contracted to the country (or more generally: The corporation owner). This is done to make sure the corporations receive some income for their products and makes it easier to offer the products by direct contracts to other players or offer them on the space market.
The profitability of these corporations that are producing these strategic products used to be low and many times, additional cash was needed to support them. We have now improved the profitability of these corporations. The contract price is now higher and will hopefully reduce the need to resupply the corporations with extra cash. At the same time, many nuclear weapons have been reduced in price to follow the general trend of price reduction in Simcountry. More such reductions will follow while the production capacity of these corporations is increasing.
Cargo shuttles can now load up to 100.000 cargo units. Their total capacity is increased to 105.000. The extra space can be used to store cargo maintenance units only.
An improvement in the function, means that the minimum order size in corporations remains at 9 month with a maximum of 120 while the maximum low water mark is 9 months.
When education or health facilities are closed, automatically or manually, a message is showing in the country newspaper. Before, such messages only appeared when the closing was triggered by the system.
July 15, 2014
282. Reduced cost of Weapons and Ammunition [ top ]
The price of many types of weapons and ammunitions have been reduced by 5 to 10%. This is a continuing trend to reduce the cost of war and in line with the general reduced numbers in Simcountry.
This time, it is mainly the cost of defensive weapons and ammunition but also some offensive weapons.
The supply index used to be reduced by 10 points for every product the country needs that is showing a shortage. The welfare index, is influenced by many indexes, including the supply index. The welfare index depends on the supply index+40. The supply index will now be reduced by 2 points for each product that is showing a shortage. However, we will change the influence of the supply index on the welfare index and it will depend on the supply index+30. The change from 40 to 30 will take place in several weeks.
It is now more important to keep your country supplied. A low supply index will reduce the welfare index of the country and the efficiency of its entire industry.
When the exchange is between two countries in the same empire, acceptance is automatic. This was requested by players and voted up several times and will reduce some clicking.
It seems that more players are purchasing products on the market and offer them on the space market. This can cause shortages on the markets and everyone can observe spikes in the purchasing of some products. The reason for this is that space trading can deliver gold coins.
The internal space trading log tremendously increased in size and even failed in the past days. The problem is solved. The log is kept to enable checking of the way the space markets work but does not have any influence on the trading itself.
When offers to purchase such corporations are made, it takes between several minutes and two hours for the transaction to complete. Once completed, you can make for offers and purchase up to 6 corporations in each round.
After converting many pages in a recent game update, there was a problem with a message that was printed in white on a white background. (Not easily readable). It is now solved.
Some corporations continue to grow slowly while other corporations see an increased advantage when efficiency upgrades are used. This is a long term trend. It means that in some cases, the number of units of some raw materials used in the production may change a bit. Long term, corporations will become even bigger and in time, will allow us to introduce new production features.
292. Indexes Document and especially Health and Education [ top ]
A new document will be added ASAP and will describe the indexes in Simcountry. Coinciding with this, there are very slight changes in education and health that are aimed at an increase in the size of institutions both in health and in educations.
In the current update, both the education index and the health index have a slight increase of their influence. The change is about 1% meaning that the same education index will produce 1% more graduates and the same number of hospitals will have a 1% higher influence on the death rates in the country.
It is now possible to set order quantities for all corporations and to set "low water" levels, or the product level that will trigger an automatic order for supplies. This feature was voted for and was promised some time ago. It is now added to Simcountry.
Countries and enterprises can also set default order and low water values for new corporations in the same way they set default values for production levels, quality of materials etc.
It is now possible to decide if you want professional soldiers and officers to serve in mobile units only, or for these soldiers and officers to serve in all other units too. Until now, professionals were allocated to mobile units first and if more were available, they were allocated to the regular forces. By doing so, they replaced other soldiers and officers who then went back to the labor market. The disadvantage of the feature was that some of them would die in any war while not serving in mobile units.
With the new feature, you can decide how to use these professional soldiers and officers and can use them as before or in mobile units only.
If serving in mobile units only, remaining unused professionals will be sitting on their hands until they are needed for service in mobile units.
Also this feature was requested by players and we have promised to add it to the game.
More corporations became slightly larger and employ more workers but on the other hand, some upgraded corporations see a larger advantage of these efficiency upgrades and a reduction in the number of employees and in the cost of labor.
All these changes are small and will continue at a slow pace. They will have an increasing impact on the corporations game in the long run.
The changes, announced in the game news last week, will go into effect tomorrow. The max possible war level difference when declaring war will increase from 3 to 4 on all worlds except for Fearless Blue, were it was, and remains unlimited. The change applies to countries in war level 4 and higher.
The cost of space transport for many products is reduced today. The reduction is achieved by enabling cargo shuttles to carry more products than before. The change does not apply to all products. For some the cost is cut by 50% and for others the reduction is even steeper and up to 5 times. More reductions will follow.
Some corporations now need a slightly increased number of workers to perform their production process but at the same time, many upgraded corporations reduced their hiring of low and mid level workers.
The change will help in coping with the increasing number of corporations across our worlds and reward players who are upgrading the efficiency of their corporations. These changes are a continuation of an ongoing process. It was paused for a while and will now resume, at a slow pace because otherwise, the number of corporations and trade transactions may slow down processing.
Many more pages have been converted to the new Simcountry style. The country game is largely done. Work will start on pages of the enterprise part of the site.
A tag is added to the listing of shares on the share markets and share pages showing if you are the main shareholder. This was requested by players (voted on recently).
A serious bug in the loan system was reported on the forum and solved. The bug prevented quick paying back of many loans at once. (it was solved immediately after it was reported.)
In the current situation, countries in war level 4 and higher, and countries that have removed their war protection, can be declared upon if the war level difference between the warring countries is maximal 3. This rule will change on June 18. The max difference will increase to 4.
This step will make it easier for player to player wars to take place. Further relaxation of the war rules may be considered at a later stage.
A country in war level 3 will now automatically move to war level 4 if at the time it wins a war, the number of times it won reaches 20 or higher. Presidents of such countries will be considered experienced and ready for the move. Countries that have already won 20 or more wars will remain in war level 3. The change will take place when they win a new war.
The war level awards are increased on all the worlds. Mainly the awards for the lower war levels have increased substantially. The war level document is updated to show the new numbers. Most changes are from 30 gold coins to 50 gold coins and some are from 60 to 90 gold coins. Details in the document.
307. Rewards when winning a war against a C3 country [ top ]
The rewards in terms of game money are changed. They are slight reduced for winning a war against a C3 country of war level 2 and 3. The amount is now much higher for winning wars against C3 countries with a war levels 4 to 7. Other amounts, at higher war levels are tuned down to follow the declined cost of war.
War declarations that are the result of a federation war will now keep new players safe. Before, it was possible to declare on a new player in this way while war actions were prevented, resulting in confusion.
More errors are being reported by players, mainly on the forum and are solved in this update. Some errors in maps and the share purchasing page. We are happy with every documented case and will keep solving every reported problem.
May 13, 2014
312. The Simcountry Marketing - Affiliates Program [ top ]
The new marketing program for Simcountry is now fully available for everyone. The program is open for players and non players. It is free and very easy to join.
The program pays everyone who is participating in the marketing of Simcountry, 25% of all revenue generated by these marketing activities.
When participating in the program, you get your own unique ID that can be used in promoting Simcountry. All traffic to the site, generated by your activities will be recognized by your ID and any revenue will count as part of your account.
Traffic to the Simcountry site can be created by placing links, including your unique ID, on web sites, Facebook pages, Twitter etc. Affiliates can find examples of the URLs that can be used and some marketing resources on the Simcountry Marketing page.
Your results are shown on the Simcountry marketing pages and in addition, an email service will deliver daily results showing clicks generated, relevant clicks from new IP numbers, registrations and payments received.
Traffic and revenue generated by your own account with Simcountry or your IP number does not count as part of this program.
The Simcountry pages on Facebook are greatly improved, include new information and receive much more attention within the W3creative company. Please check the new page and add your own comments.
314. The Simcountry.com Welcome page is improved. [ top ]
The Simcountry Welcome page is now improved with a new tab showing the latest awards given to the best players of last month. The page shows all award winners, their name in the game, and the award they won. We will also publish the page on the Simcountry Facebook page.
Many pages have been improved and converted to the current desktop style, with more pages showing tabs and improving the usability. This effort will continue until all pages are converted.
The president can now set priorities for the stealth bomber wings to counter attack automatically when the country is attacked. The feature will make the stealth bomber units more usable in defending the country.
The financial pages now include a new tab showing the monthly spending by the citizens and by the government. The numbers show per product used. More data is expected and will be added to the page ASAP. It will include the number of units that have been purchased and the consumption per citizen in the country.
Dismantled garrisons were not deleted, they are deleted now.
An error message is now showing when a unit that should be airlifted or used for an air dropping, is too far from an offensive airbase. Now an error message is showing and the unit should be moved closer to an offensive air force base before a new attempt is made to transport it from that base.
The notification pages, (on the left frame when you login), are improved. A new notification is added and it is triggered when the number of gold coins on your account has changed. You can request notifications by use of Facebook, Twitter or by email.
More types of transactions have been added to the cash log, including all loan related transactions and payment by the population for consumption products that were paid for by the government.
The space trading pages are improved and in all cases, show the price in gold coins for the standard size offer of products. The change makes it clearer what is being offered and also clearly shows the difference in price between offers.
The quality of ammunition has now more influence on the number of ammunition pieces used in the ongoing operations of the army. The higher the quality, the lower the number of ammunition pieces used. Ammunition quality is also a major factor on the quality of military units.
More price reductions have been introduced. Also this time, the declines are largest for weapons and ammunition. Weapon and ammunition corporations produce more at a lower price.
A partial cash log is introduced on the financial pages of the country. The log shows many of the cash transactions that have taken place in the country in the past period. The log will help you in finding out what happened to your money while you were away.
Although there is a cash flow page where you can see recent incoming and outgoing cash, the page is not very detailed while the log has all the information about single transactions.
The log however is incomplete.
The financial transactions of countries include many details and many types of payments and income and not all are now recorded. Work will continue and more types of transactions will be added to the log. The next update will include all transactions that are related to loans and interest payments. It will become available next week.
War level awards have been increased again. The correct numbers are showing in the war level document. The numbers are now higher, mainly for achieving war levels 4 to 7, in all worlds.
The move to reduce the price of products and mainly weapons and ammunition is continuing. The price of many weapons and ammo products was reduced again by 5-10%. The corporations produce larger numbers of products and the profitability of the corporations remains unchanged.
The profitability of countries and enterprises is excellent. Anyone who takes good care of the base parameters of Simcountry can make a country reasonable profitable, and enterprises are even easier. It is also possible to increase profitability much higher and make countries and enterprises into big earners. Make sure you know the markets and see which products are in severe shortage. There are many big earners and it makes sense to create new corporations making these products or convert existing ones to produce them.
Space trade pages have been improved to show more data. Trade pricing is now clearer, showing the price as a number of gold coins for a fixed number of products. When products are offered on a space station and then moved away, a trade sometimes cannot be executed or only partially executed. From now on, if the number of products offered is not available, the transaction will not take place and the offer will be removed. When you offer products on a space station, please make sure you have these products on that space station for delivery when these products are bought.
When the full production of a corporation is offered in a contract, the quantity used to be set to whatever "full" production was at the time the contract was created. We have now made such contracts adapt the quantity to the full production when the contract is executed each game month. If production increases or is reduced, the contract will adapt automatically.
Existing contracts will not change. New contracts for "Full Production" will be flexible starting today. Contracts for fixed numbers of products remain of course possible too.
336. Bug fixed: Moving a specific type of a military unit into a Depot [ top ]
A rare error was reported, found and fixed. It caused the disappearing of a unit when moved into a depot. The error did not occur in all cases and luckily did not cause a lot of damage.
Navy units on the move now show current position. Before, a nearby country name was shown. The navy units show up on the world map instead of showing on the map of that country.
When converting a corporation, some products could show a shortage. This happened because the quantities of products used, depends on the upgrade level of the corporation. This problem is now solved. The initials supply of the products depends on the upgrade level of the corporation.
More weapons now use some of their ammunition as part of their on going operations. This includes even nuclear weapons where very small numbers are used. This is done to make sure more products in Simcountry are being used on monthly bases and corporations producing them can survive. It is also more realistic to extend the use of ammunition to all weapons.
February 19, 2014
340. Quality will matter for more products - starting today [ top ]
For most products, quality matters. The higher the quality, the better the price on the market and when used, higher quality has advantages. Welfare, fighting qualities for weapons and ammo, better production process and a higher quality in corporations etc.
For some products, quality is currently not relevant and we have stated in the past that this issue must be resolved.
We have now introduced a new feature that will make quality relevant to more products. To start with, the problem will be solved for the maintenance products used to maintain weapons, aircraft, and the navy and military bases and fortifications.
In general, this improvement will result in an advantage when using a higher quality weapons, ammunition and maintenance products. The advantage will be more significant than the increase in the cost of the products that are used in the process when these are purchased at a higher quality.
The change may cause the total price of maintenance or upgrading to increase in some cases or decline in other cases. The feature will be introduced gradually to prevent and major changes in production and in the markets and we will give enough time for quality settings by players to take effect.
Here is how it works: When using high quality operating/maintenance products as part of the operating of weapons, the number needed will decline if the quality of the products and materials used is higher. On the other hand, the number of maintenance product needed, and the amount of products needed for the operating of weapons and military units, will increase if the weapons being upgraded are already at a high quality.
The number of products that are needed for maintenance/upgrading will decline first in a linear way with their quality, and on top of that, there will be an additional decline factor, which depends on the difference in quality. This factor will be around 10 - 25%.
On the other hand, operating or upgrading a product that is already at a high quality, will require more upgrading and operating products. the number will increase in a linear way, depending on the quality. There will be no additional factor.
As a result, the number of products needed in the process of maintenance or upgrading will decline faster because of the added factor and will result in a lower cost.
Example: A weapon of quality 120, might currently use 2 pieces of ammunition per (game) month in the maintenance of the weapon. If the quality of the ammunition is 240, the amount used will be around 0.8. (reduction of more than a factor of 2). If the weapon quality is higher, say 240, the amount of product used will be 1.6 which remains less than the amount that was used before (2).
A first change was introduced today and applies to the operating cost of most weapons. The changed is small and will not affect the use of materials by more than 10% (up or down), compared to what it was before.
341. Improved Back to Work and Special Clinics pages [ top ]
The functionality of the pages is improved and it is now clearer what these features are about.
These airplanes are now faster. Their flight speed is doubled. We have been shown that the time it takes them to reach their target is too long, especially when the distance flown is very long.
Some small changes have been introduced. The financial index requirements are slightly higher (to keep up with a general increase in that index), the traditional increase in defensive index requirements, a reduction in the required cash levels in the higher game levels (to keep up with declining numbers in the game).
The cost of all products, and mainly the cost of weapons and ammunitions was reduced further today. Production numbers increased and profitability remains at a high level. These cost reductions are a further step in the long term process that is aimed at reducing the number inflation in Simcountry and bringing it to more realistic numbers.
The increased production of some corporations may help to stabilize the market that suffers large shortages. The changes are too small to make a big difference. Short term, even small changes can affect the market that will then take several days to stabilize at a slightly different balance.
Corporations can upgrade their efficiency but there is some confusion about these upgrades and their advantages.
Every efficiency upgrade reduces the work force of the corporation. The number of low and medium workers can be reduced by several hundred but on the other side, the number of managers and high tech workers and executive increases slightly. In general, the efficiency upgrades reduce the work force but increase the average education level required for workers.
The total number of the work force decreases. The cost decreases slightly and decreases more if the salary level in the corporations is high. More workers become available to work in other corporations. The country can maintain more corporations with the same number of the population and the profitability of the corporations increases.
Increasing the efficiency of many corporations requires a good level of education that can deliver the larger numbers of higher educated works. If education fails, there will be shortages of professionals and corporations will not be able to hire the workers they need. The advantage of efficiency will turn into a disadvantage with reduced hiring and reduced production.
We have now started a process that will increase the advantages of the efficiency upgrades. The reduction in the number of workers will become more steep and the cost to the corporation too. Using efficiency upgrades in combinations with a good education system will result in more productivity and profitability.
A first step in this direction is part of the current upgrade.
More war level awards are paid now and they start when you reach war level 4. more changes and a further increase of these awards will be added in the coming weeks.
The country newspaper is improved. It now includes more news about corporations closing including the case when a corporation was owned by an enterprise and not by the country itself. It also includes news about moving of corporations, both in the country and the enterprise newspapers. These changes will reduce the number of cases when a corporation "disappears". It will be clearer what exactly happened.
The newspaper is now kept for 24 game months, up from 12 game months in the past.
the notification system allows you to set automatic notifications for many events that happen in the game, concerning your countries, enterprises and your account. You can request a message, email etc.
New notifications have been added today. You can get a notification when a first bid is made for one of your corporations and another notification when an auction has ended. These notifications can be set at your own convenience.
353. Supplies - Orange link on the corporations pages [ top ]
The link used to become orange when supplies were reduced to 2 months. This is now changed and the link becomes orange when the supplies are under 3 months.
354. Searching for a country to build or move a corporation. [ top ]
The Search Country page now allows to also look only for countries with a president. The page also includes a message about the way the search is conducted. The search takes place at random and looks into 300 countries. The results are never complete and if no acceptable results are available, the search can be repeated and will deliver a different selection of countries.
355. Special Clinics and Back to Work pages [ top ]
The pages are improved and are easier to use. More may be added at a later stage. -> Weapons Document
The document is now available directly from the defense pages where weapons are ordered. The document is up to date, it was always available but it is now easier to find.
It is now possible to move multiple military units at the same time and give them a single target. The units will then move all at the same time and there will be multiple arrows showing which units are moving to the target. Moving multiple units was also possible before but they had to be manually started one after the other. Now, it is possible to select multiple units and activate them at once.
The same applies to airlifting of units and the dropping of units and the same also for navy units. This feature was requested and voted for by players and was promised some time ago.
Two new products were added to Simcountry today. The two products are: Defensive weapons maintenance units and Offensive weapons maintenance units. Both products are used in the maintenance of weapons in the country and use defensive and offensive weapons in the production process. The products can be produced now but as with other maintenance products, their quality is currently insignificant. The cost of maintaining the army is not changed. Increased use of these products in the coming weeks will replace the use of services by the army.
A new feature is being developed that will make the use of high quality maintenance products much more attractive. This feature will be added to Simcountry in the coming weeks.
The notification function is extended with new types of notifications. You can now get more events reported by email or on facebook/Twitter.
New notifications when: - An airbase construction unit is dropped in your country. - Special forces landed in your country. - A military unit is lifted into your country.
These notifications will show up not more than once in two hours.
Supply and demand numbers on the utilization page could sometimes show a wrong number or appear incorrectly on the history graphs. The errors occurred if the products were offered or requested after the month processing was completed and the history data were recorded.-
As of now, the data is recollected before new processing starts and both the totals on the utilization pages and history data are updated.
- Air dropping and transport of multiple military units. - Additional maintenance products for defensive and offensive weapons. - Making quality important for maintenance products. - A new detailed document showing details on all the products in Simcountry.
Beginners gifts are increased. The number is unchanged but they receive more money and their population gifts are larger too. As with the current gifts, they do need to login to receive these gifts.
A bug we have introduced in a previous update is now fixed. All auctions now work correctly.
369. Corporations - Even more profitability [ top ]
Corporations are made more profitable. The markets have slightly more flexibility and some products show price fluctuations. Corporations must have a wider range of profitability and should remain profitable even if the price declines a bit. Corporation will not remain profitable if the price of the product goes much lower due to long term oversupply. There is no profitability possible in such conditions.
The base price of many products is slightly reduced. The change is in the range of 1% to 2% and many are not changed at all. The base price of many types of ammunition is reduced by a larger percentage, sometimes up to 5%. At the same time, the production level of these types of ammunition is increased. These changes are a continuation of a general reduction is cost.
The larger change in the cost of ammunition is intended to reduce the very large shortages and at the same time, reduce the general cost of war. These changes have been announced and discussed many times in the past months.
In the current war process, military units in your country are merely blocking the way of invading forces and they must be destroyed only if these invading forces want to move on. The units will defend themselves against direct attacks but their attack weapons are never used.
We intend to change that process and make these passive military units more active and make them participate more actively in the defense of the country.
This is a preannouncement. The feature will take some time to prepare and more explanation of the working of such units will be published at a later stage.
A new navy unit, the Strategic Carrier Group is add to Simcountry. The New unit is a bit larger than the Aircraft Carrier Group, has more defense Destroyers and other vessels and it has several Nuclear Submarines.
All navy groups are updated. The weapons set is tunes and is slightly larger and Attack Destroyers, not included in the initial release are now part of the carrier groups. Also attack submarines are now added to all the navy groups.
Stealth bombers are now a bit harder to destroy and are more capable in their attacks. Stealth bombers are now also able to attack submarines but the damage level is low. It should be used when the navy groups attacking you are seen as a major danger and there are no navy groups available that are able to counter them.
Stealth bombers are organized in smaller wings but constitute an effective weapon that is capable of auto attacks when the country is in war, and able to inflict substantial damage on your enemy.
Corporations are made more profitable. As the markets now have more flexibility and some more products show price fluctuations and are sometimes swing into over supply, corporations must have a wider range of profitability and should remain profitable even if the price declines a bit.
However, no corporation can remain profitable if the price of the product goes much lower due to long term oversupply. There is no profitability possible in such conditions. In the entire history of Simcountry, corporations that produce products that are in over supply most of the time, have hard time to survive, make losses and should be closed even before they bankrupt.
Vessel maintenance product corporations do not any longer use nuclear submarines as a "raw material". Instead, these corporations now use submarines and also seals units.
In the same way, Air force maintenance product corporations do not any longer use strategic bombers as a "raw material". Instead, these corporations now use Navy Interceptors.
These changes, remove the need for a nuclear weapons in these types of corporations and will make it easier to purchase everything these corporations need.
In the current war process, military units in your country are merely blocking the way of invading forces and they must be destroyed only if these invading forces want to move on. The units will defend themselves against direct attacks but their attack weapons are never used.
We intend to change that process and make these passive military units more active and make them participate more actively in the defense of the country.
This is a preannouncement. The feature will take some time to prepare and more explanation of the working of such units will be published at a later stage.
Navies are now extended with attack submarines that are non nuclear and will become an important part of some navy groups. Attack submarines are especially strong in navy fighting and are harder to trace and destroy than other vessels.
The first added navy group is an attack submarines group that includes only submarines and seals units. More navy units will be added and the carrier groups will also be extended with attack submarines. These additional units will be added in the coming week and the following weeks.
Some game level requirements have been updated. Most changes mean a relaxation of requirements for the highest game levels. Cash requirements, the number of countries required in the empire, the financial index etc. are all reduce a bit. The game level manual is also renewed and includes all the updated requirements.
The document is recreated and will now be updated automatically with each addition or change. It will be more precise and will not lag behind the changes. The sections about recently added weapons will be completed next week but all data about the exact working of all the weapons including the very new weapons, is part of the document.
market shortages that became very large in the past months may start to ease again as we have slightly increased production levels in corporations. We do not expect shortages to disappear but a lower shortage levels and some surpluses in other products may add flexibility to the markets and reduce corporation failures due to lack of raw materials.
- Exchange workers: Improved 'max worker exchange' message. - Disaster relief resources: allowed to cancel shipments from the main page. - You can now sell the last helicopter or aircraft carrier in a direct sale. Selling the carriers on the world market was already possible.
The new navy units will become part of Simcountry today Nov. 6 These new units bring a major change in the navy and how it functions.
The main changes
All current navies are dismantled and all weapons in these navies return to the country stock.
Navy fleets become Navy Bases, located close to your country.
There are now 3 types of navy units, details follow.
It is immediately possible to set up new navy units.
384. Three Types of Navy Units - more will be added [ top ]
The first release of the Navy Units will include 3 types of units.
The Aircraft carrier group
The unit includes 2 aircraft carriers, and a total of 250 navy fighters and 250 navy interceptors.
There are 30 additional ships, 12 defensive destroyers, 10 guided missile frigates and 8 missile cruisers. There are also 20 seals units. The group also includes 200 navy missile batteries and 200 navy anti missile batteries.
The aircraft carrier group can also be created at a smaller size, with numbers of weapons down to 50% of the maximal size.
The Helicopter carrier group
The unit includes 2 helicopter carriers with a total of 300 navy helicopters.
There are 37 additional ships, 15 defensive destroyers, 12 guided missile frigates and 10 missile cruisers. There are also 40 seals units. The group also includes 250 navy missile batteries and 250 navy anti missile batteries.
The helicopter carrier group can also be created at a smaller size, with numbers of weapons down to 50% of the maximal size.
Each group will include up to 40 supply ships. Smaller size units will need a smaller number of supply ships.
The Navy supply unit
The unit includes 20 defensive destroyers. The group also includes 600 navy missile batteries and 60 navy anti missile batteries.
The supply unit can also be created at a smaller size, with numbers of weapons down to 50% of the maximal size.
Depending on its mission, the supply unit will be extended with supply ships to carry the needed weapons, ammunition and supplies to the navy groups.
More types navy units will be added quite quickly. They will include navy groups without carriers and also navy groups with nuclear submarines.
Attack (non nuclear) submarines will be added to navy groups when they become available. This too will take place quite soon.
Immediately after the installation of the new navy units, it will become possible to set up such units, using the weapons and ammunition that were used in the current navies that will not exist anymore.
The missing components are:
* Supply ships that can currently be purchased on the market. (we will add some supply ships to the markets in the initial days after the introduction).
* Navy defense Interceptors which are new to the game and are available with the new units. These interceptors are only needed if you build an aircraft carrier group. we expect production to start fairly quickly and we will add some navy interceptors into the markets in the initial period after the introduction of the new navy units.
Navy weapons have wider capacities than most similar, land based weapons. Navy fighters, navy interceptors are more effective and all the navy vessels are now more robust and forceful than before. As a result, smaller number of weapons are needed in the navy and navy units are an effective addition to the army units in Simcountry.
The production numbers per navy weapons producing corporation are now a bit higher and the base price of the weapons is reduced.
Cruise missiles, both land based and sea based types, are no longer effective against navy carriers. Instead, cruise missiles will become effective, starting with the next update, against space centers, nuclear defense batteries and some nuclear weapon installations.
Both types of cruise missiles can now be produced and traded on all the worlds.
The sale of a corporation is executed immediately is the CEO and the previous owner is the same player and there are no other offers to purchase the corporation.
The log of transactions is extended and now includes all the transactions, not only those resulting from contracts. A much large log is now showing, containing a lot of information on executed sales and purchases. The log is showing all transactions for presidents, corporations and enterprises.
Military units can now be sent back to base even while moving towards a target. Before, you had to wait for the unit to reach the target before giving it a new destination. Only units that are being airlifted cannot be redirected while in transport.
392. Conventional Missile Units - Auto responding [ top ]
Conventional missile units now auto respond to attacks on the country. Generally, they attack a fortification but the targeting will be improved and include settings by the player. The units will also be used by C3 countries at higher levels.
The average quality of raw materials now takes into account the price of the product in the computing of the average. In extreme cases, the use of military bases of any quality, in the production of maintenance products, did not have any influence on the resulting quality due to the very small number of products used and despite their very high price.
Sneak attacks can now be used from the country maps. When you click on a target, you can decide which type of attack, or a war declaration, should take place. It is easier now to select targets and use sneak attacks.
Corporations can now be converted within their industry group and become a different corporation, producing a different product at the same quality the previous corporation used to produce. The change of type makes it easy to change a corporation that is failing because its product is in oversupply, into one that produces a product that shows a shortage on the market. The corporate type conversion, is similar to boosters and requires one gold coin.
The cost of many types of ammunition is declined and the monthly production is increased. This is discussed before and comes when many types of ammunition swing from a large oversupply that ran for a very long period, into severe shortage, mainly because large quantities of ammunition that were dumped on the market are all bought by many countries and because we currently have many more wars.
This was expected and it would be impossible to build so many ammo corporations to produce the larger numbers.
The production numbers were increased by 10% and the cost per piece of ammunition declined by about the same. It is unlikely that shortages will now disappear and repeated action might be needed.
The increased production will not be such that the production of ammunition will become less profitable.
The price of many products on the market went down by about 0.7% It will cause a slight decline in both income and cost. This process is ongoing and will continue. It is unrelated to the decline in the cost of ammunition.
The transaction log will include all the transactions that take place for both the country, enterprise and all the corporations. The log will increase in size and will contain millions of transactions each day. It is kept for 5 real days.
This change is experimental, and pending performance testing. The log might be reversed, or partially reversed if we encounter any problems in its creation and its daily use. It will be part of the next update on Oct. 1.
Other planned updates include the completion of the "favorites" and "recents" feature on the country maps (Left pane) and the upgrading of conventional mobile units into auto response units.
Next on the plan is a start of a chain of improvements to the navy that will end up with an upgraded navy function with all features that are available with other types of units.
It is now possible for countries at higher game levels to drop to lower game levels down to game level 1. previously the decline stopped at a higher level which was unfair to players in lower levels as the game level has a major influence on the score of countries and the potential awards they can win.
Empires that are in heavy debt and have a total empire net cash under -10T, are now prohibited from declaring war on another president. When cash is added, it can take several hours before the change takes effect and war declarations become possible again.
These empires can of course fight wars if such wars are declared against them.
Empires that have a history with more than 100 wars, should be considered experienced. Some, continue to hide behind a low war level and continue to attack countries at low war levels. We consider such players experienced and are preparing a change that will force a higher war level, depending on the war experience (very large numbers of wars).
As a first measure, we have limited the possibility of such extremely experienced players to pray on inexperienced players in a low war level.
Sneak attacks and war declarations should be initiated by a click on the map and a choice of attack, or a sneak attack or a war declaration. The feature is being developed and is currently being tested. It was planned for the current upgrade but it is delayed until next week.
The completion of the sneak attacks and more use of the map to initiate wars and attacks will be part of the next update, planned for next week. Also the corporate conversion is planned for the same update.
Other planned updates, short term, include the addition of manual orders into the orders logs, providing details information on recent orders, the completion of the "favorites" and "recents" feature on the country maps (Left pane) and the upgrading of conventional mobile units into auto response units.
Next on the plan is a start of a chain of improvements to the navy that will end up with an upgraded navy function with all features that are available with other types of units.
The voting page is now available more directly from the portal pages. we hope that more players will find it.
- Creating an air strip in another country is improved. A Rapid Deployment Unit can be transported, or landed in another country. The player can decide to turn it into an airbase and a remote depot, or use an air transport unit to transfer the Rapid Deployment Unit to another location and build the airbase even much further away. The transportation of the unit and the airport building functions are now separated. When the unit reaches its final destination, the player manually starts the conversion to an airbase (and a remote depot).
- Corporations have more flexibility in the ordering of raw materials for periods of up to 120 game months.
- Share trading is improved. The max market price change when the price is very high or very low, is now 7%.
- The share market price of a share is only changed when there is a shortage or a surplus of offers or orders at market price. In some cases in the past, the price could change even with fixed price buy and sell orders and offers.
Expected updates next week:
- Sneak attacks will be easy to operate from the country map.
- Corporation conversion will be possible within the industry group and game level limitations. Conversions will be immediate and preserve the corporation quality and efficiency levels.
The range is increased from 10.000 to 15.000 miles. This will enable stealth fighters cover a much larger area of the world. (More than twice bigger).
- The range of conventional missiles
The range of conventional missiles is 20.000 miles. Conventional missiles have a more significant role in the armies than they had before and will have an additional, auto response capability added to them in the coming weeks.
The range of conventional missiles will however be reduced from 20.000 miles to 15.000 miles. This will match the new range of stealth bombers and will prevent the unlimited operation of such missiles with their increased capabilities.
The auto response capabilities and the reduced range will be implemented in September.
- Earlier Changes
-The max stock levels of corporations is increased from 60 to 120 months. This will also resolve the supply problem with some of the new types of corporations where only tiny quantities of certain products are being used. The increase is now possible because of the decline of product pricing and the reduced need for cash in corporations.
Presidents can now purchase shares in all the public corporations that are located in their countries even if they do not own any shares yet. - Some operations on the big maps have been improved and made much faster. More optimizations will follow.
- More changes that are expected soon:
- Manual orders will be added to the transaction logs. It will make it easier to follow what has taken place and how orders have been executed. - Air lifting and the moving of units will be simplified when multiple units are involved. - Corporations will be allowed to convert into a different type within their industry group if the game level requirements are met. They will keep their quality and efficiency levels. The conversion will be instant. - Upgrading ammunition that is stored in military bases and outside the units. - Minimum stock levels settings and auto ordering for both countries and their corporations including CEO owned corporations. - Improvement of the navy. - More improvements and the addition of voted features are also expected.
Air lifts and air droppings are now managed from the country war map. you can select the units to airlift and select the target country and location. The new functions will simplify both air droppings and air lifts.
July 9, 2013
411. Several changes to Simcountry on July 9, 2013 [ top ]
- The game level awards for game levels 5 and 6 increased. For game level 5, the award is increased from 50 to 60 gold coins. For game level 6, the award increased from 70 to 90 gold coins. Game level awards will increased much further in the coming weeks.
- Several game level requirements have been changed. The defensive index requirements are higher. The war level requirements remain unchanged. The game level requirements are for the war level OR the defensive index.
This change is announced before and defensive index requirements will continue to increase. The war index and defense index requirements are also slightly increased but the change is not significant because the previous levels were nearly always exceeded by a large margin.
- Quality of products used by the country have more influence on the welfare index. When quality is increased the welfare will follow although changes may take a day or two to materialize. The increase in the weight of higher quality may result in a 1 to 2% increase in production in the corporations.
- War level rules have been slightly relaxed. Until now, on 4 worlds, you could start a war against a country with a president if that country was in war level 3 or higher (this remains unchanged) and if the difference in the war level was 0 to 2. The difference is now 0 to 3. This means that there is more flexibility and more choice when going to war and more countries can participate. Countries with war level 1 and 2 will see no difference and cannot be attacked. Fearless Blue remains unchanged. There is protection for countries in war levels 1 and 2 and all others can fight or get war protection.
- Immediate orders are now always delivered immediately. Immediate orders are delivered at a price hike of 40% above market, and quality is of course taken into account. The total value of immediate orders is about 20% of the spending space and orders can be placed if the spending space allows. This means that immediate orders should not be huge and should be used to solve a serious shortage problem that is damaging the country economically or during war when materials might be needed urgently.
- The maximal number of fortifications in a country is increased to 150. During war and in peace time, each fortification represents 0.33 points in the war index. In the near future, military bases will also count as part of the war index, reducing the war index weight of fortifications and replacing part of the war index by the number of military bases in the country.
- When orders are cancelled, the spending space is now restored.
- CEOs can reduce cash in their corporations, down to the level of 30B, this was 60B. Numbers in Simcountry are lower now and there is no reason for such a high amount in the corporations.
- When nationalizing corporations, rules apply that are the same as when building new corporations.
- Small changes in the way new corporations are supplied, make sure that no products enter the market out of nowhere. All products corporations receive during setup, are ordered on the market. This was not done correctly before and caused some unintended addition of some products. The same applies to C3 countries that are receiving fortifications in their initial setup.
- The score page is corrected. There was an error in the "Population sales" penalty on that page. It is now corrected. The score computation was done correctly. The score can now increase by 20 points if the country has a space center.
- The defense indexes are slightly updated, with Fortifications, and military bases weighing a little more on these indexes. As a result, defense indexes may increase a bit, and the score too. The differences are small.
- The requirements for game levels: The war index requirements have increased a bit. Players should have a high war index, especially when they are not in war. Economic players are unaffected by this change. The defensive index requirements are being increased for all game levels >3. The requirement is a choice between the defensive index OR the war level. War level requirements remain unchanged. If your war level is as required, you do not need to worry about the defensive index.
- New product added for the maintenance of all vessels. The product will be used in small monthly quantities for each vessel and will replace the use of services and high tech services that were used before.
- Another new product added for the maintenance of all airplanes. The product will be used in small monthly quantities for each airplane, both military and civilian. The new maintenance product will replace the use of services and high tech services that were used before.
- Military base maintenance products that were introduces on June 12, are now being used in small numbers in the maintenance of all military bases and fortifications.
- Notifications were added to alert players to nuclear attacks on their countries, or in case an earth quake has occurred in the country . You can set these alerts on. They are now part of the notification system.
- Twitter notifications and Facebook notifications have been upgraded. Check the notification pages.
- An "End War - Peace offer" feature is reintroduced on the war window.
- Corporations show the availability of supplies more precisely. If small amounts are used, the numbers show with two decimals.
- War declaration messages have been improved and include information about a possible availability of nuclear weapons in the country that has declared war.
- The profitability of many corporations is improving. Especially, high tech corporations that require game level 4 or 5, are becoming more profitable and are expected to increase in value. The new maintenance corporations are placed in the high tech group and have the potential to become very profitable. Defense industries that require game level 3 will also become more profitable.
- The price range of products is slightly increased. It means that products that are in short supply will increase in price more than before. Products that are in oversupply decrease in price and the bottom level remains unchanged.
- A new page explains several aspects of the score, including the award penalty.
- A new product added: Military Bases Maintenance. A new High Tech product that will use all types of military bases as raw materials and produce products that are used to maintain the bases. The product will revive the production of military bases. Its quality will become relevant. Corporations can be built now. The product will be used starting next week. More such products will be added.
- Enterprise registration pages are improved.
- Corporations you have bid for are now listed more clearly on multiple pages.
- Mobile Nuclear Defense Units were added to Simcountry. These units have 20 Nuclear defense missile batteries and many Nuclear defense missiles. They will participate in the defense in case of a nuclear attack within a distance of 40 miles from the attacked target. The units will enhance the defense against nuclear attacks. The units can also be traded on the Crusis space station.
- Some errors on the Forum have been solved, preventing Authentication errors and preventing arbitrary names on the chat system that are designed to confuse players as to who the participant is. The name on the chat is the name of the player in the game.
The cost of weapons and ammunition but also the cost of many other products is reduced a bit. This will make building armies cheaper and reduce the cost of maintaining the army and waging war.
- A major hardware upgrade increased the performance of all systems. It will allow for faster processing even in peak hours and when the month processing is running.
- The Exchange of Mobile Units and Country is now faster even when large numbers are involved.
- The pages showing the lists of military units are improved. Also the detail page of military units is improved.
- Military Units move in smaller, but more frequent steps on the map.
- Nominal value: Link to country finance page is only usable if finance is not secret.
- Country Year-to-Date cash was incorrect after country was conquered. Fixed!
- Some targets, defended by Garrisons, were mistakenly removed when the country was conquered - fixed.
- The Enterprise score increased by 3000 to prevent negative scores. Country scores are also climbing to prevent the same.
- The White Giant world now runs 6 months per day.
- Maps are improved. The large maps are now also used for more war functions. - Moving units on the maps is now consistent, in war time and in peace time. - Many maximum quantities for products stored in countries have been raised. - Spending is tuned down a bit to partially compensate for the declining cost of products. - More price declines, mainly for weapons and ammunition, make the war process cheaper. - The mobile Units document is completed and improved. It includes all operational Units. - More systems (worlds) have been upgraded. A large additional upgrade is expected within several days. - Some of the documentation is improved, more will be available in two weeks. - The White Giant world will start running 6 game months per day. The change will take place within several days. - Chat names are now identical to the player name in the game. Some players appeared on the chat with different names, confusing others. The naming is now consistent.
- Remote Depots can now harbor mobile military units. - Cargo shuttles can now land in remote depots you own in any country. - Cargo shuttles can load and unload military supplies, weapons and ammunition in depots where they land. - Cargo shuttles can unload all types of mobile military units in depots where they land. - Cargo shuttles can load all types of mobile units in depots where they land, provided these units are complete and undamaged. These units must be close (up to 25 miles) to the depot. - Mobile units in a remote depot can be dismantled into the depot. - Mobile supply units have been added as a new type mobile military unit. - Golden Rainbow world now runs 6 times every day. - More systems are upgraded. Slow down during processing is now less likely. More and massive upgrades will continue in the coming weeks. - The White Giant world is now 3 times faster than before and could run 8 - 10 game months every day. The pace will be increased from 4 to 6 game months per day in the coming weeks. The difference in the pace of the worlds is a problem when communication between the worlds is involved. Moving WG to 6 game months per day will bring all the worlds to the same pace.
- Improved performance for most worlds. More upgrades are expected. - New and improved assets page and more accurate reporting. - All asset reporting is unified, including nominal values. - Golden Rainbow now runs 6 game months each day. - Ammunition quantities in military units brought back to reasonable quantities. - Month Awards increased. Multiple awards are possible and awards score penalty is implemented. - Country transfers minimum price reduced to 100 gold coins. Cash remains with the seller. - Country transfers allow the same country to be sold once a week. - Account Status is added to the country world Menu. - Exchanging products between world & portal Market possible after 7 days of membership. (Down from 14 days). - Fortifications that are added to the visibility list are now not painted at the same position any more. - Solved Bug: When Military Units cease to exist, they are now always removed from the map. - Quality of products purchased by the country has an increased influence on the welfare index.
March 6, 2013
420. The Score and your War Level/War Protection [ top ]
The war level has more influence on the score if War Protection is turned off. Turning temporary War Protection on has a negative influence on the score.
421. The gold coins exchange is now taken care of by the Game Master. [ top ]
One land based mobile unit supports the defense of an attacked target, if such unit is located close to that target and has weapons that can be used in the defense.
424. War Level awards are now twice higher on all the worlds. [ top ]
425. Many of the Game Level Awards have been increased. The changes are in game level 7 and higher. [ top ]
Following a preannouncement on the use of nuclear weapons, we are now requiring a country to have a minimum population of 20M before it can use nuclear weapons.
The country can have the weapons or even produce them but will not be able to use them in war unless the population is at the required level.
430. The Score and your War Level/War Protection [ top ]
The influence of the war level on the score is increased. A country with a high war level will see its score increase gradually, depending on the war level. This change also depends on the use of war protection. The increase will only take place if the country does not use war protection.
The use of war protection will have a negative influence on the score that will also depend on the war level.
Turning war protection on or off will not have any immediate effect. It may take a week or longer before a change of the war protection mode will have a significant effect on the country score.
This change will over time, give players who are not using war protection a better chance of winning higher gold coin awards.
Cash transfers were possible within the empire in two ways. Direct transfers of cash to empire members took place on the empire pages, or by use of the direct trading feature.
We have now eliminated this double function. Cash transfers are now only available by use of the direct trading feature.
433. Maximum number of weapons or units per military base [ top ]
Each military base can support a maximum number of weapons. The number is currently 20.000. Instead, we will introduce a maximum number of military units that can be supported with each military base.
To prevent any sudden changes, we have set the maximum number of military units per military base to 300. When you set up new military units and the number of military bases does not allow more units, you will be alerted and required to set up such bases before more units can be constructed.
Mobile units are not included in these numbers and do not require any military bases.
The process of improving pages continues and we have replaced more black style pages by new ones. The financial pages will be improved in the next update.
One mobile unit will support the defense of an attacked target, if such unit is located close to that attacked target and has the capabilities to support the defense against the specific attack.
This feature was preannounced and discussed before. It will now involve a single mobile unit. {text] Mobile Air Defense Units
A mobile unit will be added that has 400 anti aircraft missile batteries as the only weapon in the unit.
More features may be included in the March 5 update.
Several errors in the deployment of RDU have been corrected. The errors caused delays in the functioning of the units and were old. The errors were exposed after the introduction of the immediate deployment of such units and a fast buildup of remote bases in C3 countries.
437. Using a new acquired country to start a war [ top ]
Using just conquered countries to start wars will be delayed to avoid riskless wars by countries without assets. A new acquired country will be able to start a war two weeks after it was acquired.
This feature will be added to simcountry later this month.
Nuclear weapons are currently used in wars where recently conquered countries are used to attack others, with a small risk to the attacker. A country that attacks another country with nuclear weapons will be required to have a population of at least 20M.
More steps will follow, to make sure that countries that start a war are risking some of their own assets.
This feature will be added to Simcountry later this month.
439. Mobile units participating in (Federation) wars [ top ]
Mobile units will participate in the defense of targets if the unit is located very close (about 10 MI) from the attacked target. Initially only one mobile unit, the one that has the best capabilities to response to the specific attack will participate.
Any mobile unit, belonging to any player, located near the attacked target may respond. The unit may belong to a federation member who is participating in the war but it can also belong to a federation member who is not involved in the war but has stationed mobile units in the country. It may even belong to an unrelated president who received permission to move units into the country.
Federation members who are at a very different war level and cannot participate in the war are also able to participate in the defense by stationing mobile units in the country.
This feature will be added to Simcountry later this month.
Some weapons now require a smaller number of soldiers and officers. This will result in a slightly smaller army without any reduction in capabilities. More such changes are expected on 4 of the worlds while numbers on Fearless Blue that are much lower already, remain largely unchanged or slightly higher.
An error was fixed in the procedure that computes the value of materials in the country. The error caused the value of materials to show values that are too low and several corrections will now follow. Also other valuation functions are being rechecked to make sure they take all quality aspects of materials, weapons and ammunition into account.
443. More Types of Mobile Units will be added [ top ]
Several additional types of mobile units will be added in the coming weeks. The Mobile Strategic Missile unit will be added and will include 50 strategic missile batteries. At a later stage, these units will acquire an auto response feature that will allow them to hit targets in the attacking country as a response to attacks close to their location.
The mobile Nuclear Defense units will be added and provide nuclear defense coverage in an area surrounding their position.
The mobile Radar Units will be added and will increase the quality of air force coverage and defense if attacks are launched against targets in the area where they reside.
These units will be added to Simcountry in the coming weeks.
Several errors on the country page settings and colors were repaired and also a problem with the product popup window on the CEO pages. A timing problem, connected to daylight saving time was fixed. It caused some unexplained delays in various functions.
The product offering pages that did not make it to the previous upgrade is now improved.
446. Reducing the size of Existing Military Units [ top ]
Some existing units are much larger than the new units that became smaller over the past months.
we will start reducing the size of existing units if their total size is now larger than the max size of similar new units. Example: If a unit has 1500 weapons while a new unit can have up to 1800 weapons, the unit will remain untouched. If however, the unit has 2000 weapons, it will be reduced.
The quality of the unit will remain unchanged and any surplus weapons will be returned to base and their quality will average (weighted average) with the quality of the weapons already stored in the country bases.
No changes have taken place yet but we are now able to carry out such changes from time to time. A reduction of 1% will take place within a couple of days and it will be repeated from time to time, until units size comes closer to the size of newly constructed ones.
447. Professional Officers and Soldiers Additional Info [ top ]
Professional can be added to each country independent of the use of mobile military units. If no such units are available, the professionals will be integrated into the army and become part of regular units, reducing the need for workers and managers who will return to the work force.
During war, professionals who are part of regular military units can be among the dead. The number of professionals among the dead will be limited to a maximum of 10% of the number who died in the war.
When mobile units are constructed, they will have a first priority in use of professional soldiers and officers. Mobile units cannot be constructed if there are no professionals and if needed, all the professionals will leave the regular units and move to mobile units.
448. Quality of Supplies and the country welfare [ top ]
The quality of supplies the country is purchasing is influencing the welfare index of the country. That influence was increased last week and increased again today.
The quality of products the country is purchasing has and increased influence on the welfare of the country and in turn, an increased influence on the welfare in corporations and their production level.
Higher quality supplies in the country will increase the cost for government but a higher production levels in corporations will increase their profitability and income for the country.
The higher ordering quality will also improve the average level of requested quality in the market and bring it closer to the quality of products that are produced in corporations. We intend to continue and increase the influence of quality on the welfare even more in the future.
All the changes are slight and their effect on the corporations will take time before it can be noticed.
The quality of products the country is purchasing has and increased influence on the welfare of the country and in turn, an increased influence on the welfare in corporations and their production level.
Higher quality supplies in the country will increase the cost for government but a higher production levels in corporations will increase their profitability and income for the country.
The higher ordering quality will also improve the average level of requested quality in the market and bring it closer to the quality of products that are produced in corporations. We intend to continue and increase the influence of quality on the welfare even more in the future.
All such changes are slight and they effect of the corporations will take time before it can be noticed.
The trading menu is improved and some of the underlying detail pages are improved too. The order and sell pages are simpler and the product pop up page is clearer.
When countries have product shortages with negative stock, they now issue and immediate order for a 12 month stock of the product. This used to be 3 months and did not solve the problem, resulting in many small orders on the product market.
The radar plane function was largely broken and it is now restored and can be used more easily.
454. Spending Limits and Military Spending Limits [ top ]
Spending numbers have been reduced a bit. The numbers dated from the time when prices of products and weapons were several times more expensive and are now updated. More updating might be needed. Also spending boosters have been reduced.
455. Reduced Numbers of Ammunition in New Military Units [ top ]
Some land units now have a smaller amount of ammunition, both at creation and when they are resupplied. The reduced numbers do not change the use of ammunition but do reduce the cost of creating the units. When in war, supply units will have to resupply these units more frequently.
Mobile units and the Long Range land units will retain their larger ammunition numbers.
The nominal value of countries is improved. The double counting of some military assets is eliminated. A more complete report of assets will show up on the improved financial pages in the next upgrade, expected next week.
With a changed user interface, including some menus and screens, messages about blackout periods did not always come through. Attacks were blocked during such hours but the attacker was sometimes wondering what happened. This is now improved.
A bug is fixed. It does not display "you can bid in 0 months" any more. When 0 months left, you can place a bid on the corporation again.
459. Closing Corporations by a Free Player [ top ]
No economic reason to close the corporation is now showing at corporate market value > 250B (was 150B). Corporate values are now generally higher than before. The feature prevents new "free players" from creating an account for the sole purpose of closing corporations.
Four new types of mobile air force units have been added to Simcountry. The four new types are: Mobile Helicopter Wing, Mobile Interceptor Wing, Mobile Attack wing and Mobile Stealth Bomber Wing.
These units can be upgraded to a quality level of 600 and can be transported by cargo shuttles to any country you own or traded on the space market. The Mobile Stealth Wings are auto response units and are slightly larger than the current stealth bomber wings.
The mobile units manual is unfortunately not updated yet. It will be updated within several days.
462. Mobile Units and Defending your Country [ top ]
Mobile units will assume a more active role in the defense of your country in the coming weeks. When a target is attacked, any mobile unit that is within range of the target will actively participate in the defense. It means that if a military unit or a city, or a fortification or in fact any other target is attacked, by land or by air, the garrison at the attacked target will as before, participate in the defense but also any other land based mobile unit that is stationed close to the attacked target and has weapons that can be effective against the attacker, will participate in the defense.
463. Smaller numbers of ammunition pieces in military units [ top ]
Military units used to be created with very large numbers of ammunition. These numbers are now reduced in new units which means that the units will be supplied more frequently in case of war but will be cheaper at setup time.
The change will have no influence on the cost of using the weapons.
464. Faster upgrading of Weapons & Lower Cost of Upgrading [ top ]
The upgrading process of weapons is enhanced and it is now twice faster than it was until today. Upgrading twice faster requires twice as many upgrade products but the cost of upgrading products, for both weapons and ammunition is reduced.
465. Country Page Menu Restructuring continues [ top ]
Several more menu features are now included in commands on the left frame of the page. The restructuring is part of a continuing effort to make the site easier to use, remove double references and simplify the interface. The current changes include the common market, Federations and the security Council pages.
It is now easier to set your main entity to a different country or to an enterprise and back. Changes were limited to once per 30 days and are now possible one in 7 days.
It is impossible to turn an expired country or enterprise into the main entity.
One of the war features that might have been forgotten is the power of attack units during war and their dependency on military units that are close to their targets.
When you attack a target, the power of your attack will be twice stronger if one or more of your own military units is stationed close to the target you attack.
Attacking targets while your army is far away and none of your military units are within range is much less effective.
This feature is part of the war game for a very long time and many players might not know about it.
A new beginner's area is added on the country home page. The area shows the current tutorials and will in the future include more beginner's features.
470. Country Page Menu Restructuring continues [ top ]
Several menu features are now included in commands on the left frame of the page or in the page header. The restructuring is part of a continuing effort to make the site easier to use, remove double references and simplify the interface. The current changes include an easier access to the newspapers page and statistics. Also restructuring the disaster pages.
471. Some Military Units are now slightly smaller (again) [ top ]
A further small decline in the size of land divisions will help in reducing the general cost of war by reducing the numbers of weapons involved in war. Only land divisions and long range land divisions are reduced in size.
The change does not have any consequences for existing units. When building new units, the new numbers will be used.
The price of many products continues to decline very slowly. The decline in the price of weapons and ammunition is a bit faster. The change is hard to notice if you look at the daily graphs and some may show large fluctuations and even a steep increases. These short term changes depend on the markets and the oversupply or shortages in some products. However, if you save some of the prices you see, and check them several weeks later, a small decline will be noticed.
The decline in pricing follows the increase in value of the game money, relative to gold coins. It will result in a significantly lower cost of war.
A further reduction in the cost of weapons and ammunition is expected next week. It might coincide with an increase in production of some types of ammunition that have turned into the red recently and show structural shortages.
The upgrading process of weapons and ammunition will be enhanced and will take place faster than in the existing units. Also the cost of upgrading very light ammunition will be reduced.
A new type of mobile unit is now added to Simcountry. The new unit is a Mobile Attack Unit. The unit is described in many details in the mobile unit's document that is part of the simcountry documentation.
Mobile units can now be moved into space centers and then transported by cargo shuttles to the space market or to another space center you own. When placed in a docking station, the units can be traded and change owners. They can be transported by the new owner to any of his own space centers.
Details about these units are in the mobile unit's documentation.
When building military units, you are frequently delayed because some of the weapons or ammunition or materials you need are not available in your country. Orders must be placed and the unit can be built once the orders are delivered.
To make it a little easier, a new button is added on the military unit building pages that will automatically order all the materials you need. Using this function, all the missing weapons, ammunition and materials will be ordered. The orders are place in immediate mode; the quality is set to the average quality of the materials you already have and the quantity ordered is slightly (20%) higher than strictly needed.
If you prefer to place the orders yourself or get the materials from elsewhere, don't use that function and solve the shortage problem in your own way.
Some types of ammunition have swung into shortages on the market. This happened when military units were forced to fill their shortages of ammunition and become fully supplied. It caused many ammunition orders.
The change caused several types of ammunition to go into shortages on the market and it seems that for some, the change is structural.
To solve the problem and prevent accumulating shortages, we have slightly changed the structure of some ammunition corporations, increasing their production by 10 to 20% while reducing the base price. This change might not be sufficient and depending on the market, we may repeat some of these changes.
The total potential revenue of the corporations and their profitability did not change at all.
Two types of mobile units are now added to Simcountry. The two types are: Mobile Land Units and Mobile Missile defense. The units are described in many details in the mobile unit's document that is part of the simcountry documentation. You can create your own mobile units in the same way other units are created but you need professional soldiers and officers. The main features of the mobile units are: - The units are smaller and their structure is fixed. - The units can be upgraded to a higher fighting quality than regular units. Max quality level is 600. - The units can be loaded onto cargo shuttles and can be transported to a different country, or to the space market and can be traded. - The units can be used in wars in any country. The owner of the units can move them to one of the countries in any of the owner's empires and use them in war.
The ability to load mobile units onto cargo shuttles and transport them and the ability to trade such units on the space market is added. More types of mobile units will also be added in the coming weeks. These will include mobile air force units and intelligence units.
Details about these units are in the mobile unit's documentation.
Many of the military unit's pages have been improved. This is part of our effort to upgrade to simcountry site.
482. Quality of Military units and weapons [ top ]
When weapons and ammunition were moved from the country into military units, there used to be a change of quality. Quality reduced when the weapons were moved into units and increased if the weapons returned to the country. The quality changes were reduced several times in the past months and are now eliminated.
The quality of weapons and ammunition is always averaged when weapons are moved. The new quality is the (weighted) average between the weapons that are being moved to some target and the weapons that are already at the target (where the weapons or ammunition is moving to). This averaging remains unchanged.
When the values of some fields did not change much, the history graph ended up flat, and small changes where hardly noticeable. The history graphs are now improved and scale differently to show even small changes in value. This problem was solved before, but the solution was insufficient for variables with very small changes.
We will view the new graphs and may intervene again if necessary.
The navy is too weak when facing stealth bomber attacks. Missiles can be intercepted but if interceptors are too far to help, stealth bombers are not facing any serious threat when attacking the navy.
Defensive Navy Missile Batteries that are effective against other airplanes are now effective against Stealth Bombers. The chance to hit a Stealth Bomber with a single missile is 2% but every battery uses up to 6 missiles in each counterattack and if there are many such batteries participating in the defense, the chance of hitting some of these stealth bombers becomes realistic.
Some corrections are implemented, fixing some cases when the navies were not painted correctly on the maps. Also some other items on the maps have been improved.
The monthly usage of ammunition was not computed correctly and as a result, some types of ammunition were not ordered on time or not ordered at all. The usage numbers are now corrected. Ammunition is ordered automatically, like all other products, unless the player decides to stop such automatic orders and orders products manually.
The economies of C3 countries keep improving and more settings have been updated to optimize their finances. The C3 strategy for the closing of corporations is updated to prevent sudden closings of many corporations when they temporarily swing to a market surplus.
C3 countries have an important role in stabilizing the markets as they start new corporations if there are severe shortages. However, C3 countries were too quick to react and caused very large changes in production.
A complete set of new map icons is added today to the Simcountry maps. There are also more icons to choose from when you decide to make your choice of icons.
Unit icons used to blink when the unit was blocked and could not move to its target or when the unit was out of fuel. The blinking is now replaced by different icons showing an exclamation mark on the unit icon.
The beginning conditions for both C3 countries and beginners have been improved with higher salaries, optimized quality of raw materials and trading defaults. Some more settings will be improved to make these countries run successful economies.
Awards on the Fearless Blue world are at their highest level ever. This is the result of an increase in the number of players on the FB world. The first award on Fearless Blue increased to 370 gold coins. Other awards also increased in numbers and in the number of gold coins.
The total number of gold coins awarded on FB is now 1400+ and increasing. This is 50% more than on the other four worlds.
492. Initial 14 days reset of trade Strategies [ top ]
Beginners can now change the trade settings from day one. This change is made because of confusion and many questions on this issue from beginners who were wrongly advised on the values they should choose. However, contrary to many of these remarks, the initial settings are excellent and keep players from destroying their economies in the initial days while they are unaware of the results of their changes.
We advise players to keep the initial setting but we also give them the right to "Improve" their economies if they wish to do so. The initial settings have proven to keep corporations stable and profitable.
The cost of maintaining the army and the cost of war have been reduced. The reduction is a result of a drop in the number of soldiers and officers needed for some of the weapons. This in turn, reduces the size of the army and the materials it uses.
Also the base price of weapons and ammunition has declined. Many defense related corporations reduced the number of workers they need, lowered other costs as well and produce the weapons at a lower price while maintaining their profitability.
This change is part of a long term process that is aimed at a reduction of cost of war as a percentage of the total cost. Similar changes have taken place before and more reductions are expected in the future.
A serious error was fixed that made it close to impossible to see the navy of your enemy and attack it. The navies now show in the list of targets and can be attacked.
The "Account & Membership" option is extended and improved. It now shows a "Private Profile" option and a "Public Profile" option. As a result, uploading a pictures and an avatar are easier to find.
498. Removed Limitations of Cash Transfers on the Direct Trading pages. [ top ]
Limitations on cash transfers on the Direct Trading pages have been removed. It is now possible to move money around your empire as long as your "Net Cash" is positive. Net cash is the total of your cash and loans.
These transfers are possible between all countries in all your empires. Cash transfers between countries in the empire on the empire pages are in fact obsolete and will be removed in the future.
The Simcountry portal page is now restructured and the menu became obsolete. All the functions are now reorganized and available from the left frame on the portal page. We hope that the new set of functions on the portal page will be easier to use.
500. Direct Trading Market link on the portal page [ top ]
The cash market link on the portal page is removed. The cash market functions are now placed on the direct trading page. The two related functions should have been merged some time ago and the change is now completed. The functionality remains unchanged.
No. More changes are being prepared to more pages on the Simcountry site. Map Icons will be replaced in the coming week and more pages will undergo changes.
The Simcountry forum will be replaced. This change requires a conversion of all current messages to the new format and may take longer to complete.
Several types of weapons and ammunition corporations have been slightly reduced in size to reflect the smaller numbers of weapons and ammunitions that are being used in war. Production numbers and the cost per weapon or a piece of ammunition is reduced and also the number of workers and the use of raw materials.
Only a small number of corporation types are reduced to prevent any major changes in employment. However, countries that have these types of corporations will experience a decline in employment while the corporations will show 100% employment. This is good news because the freed work force can be used in an additional corporation or more than one, that can be constructed without the need for more population.
Changes will not be very significant because the numbers of such weapon and ammunition corporations is small. Other types of weapon and ammunition corporations remained unchanged but may be subject to similar changes in the coming weeks.
Both revenue and cost of the corporations were reduced and the profitability remains unchanged. Profit as percentage of the revenue will increase as the profit level will remain while the revenue will decline.
A similar small reduction in price is applied to products that are used by the government in health and transportation. The reason for the change is to achieve a decline in the cost of health and transportation that remained relative high while other country costs declined in the past months.
Several types of corporations producing such products are now a bit smaller. Their cost is lower, the number of workers declined too and their revenue is reduced, following a lower product price. All product prices are base prices. The real price of products depends on the market.
505. Additional Reductions in the size of the army [ top ]
Another reduction has taken place in the numbers of soldiers and officers that are used per type of weapon. This reduces the number of soldiers and officers in the army. The change is only effective in four worlds. The numbers on the Fearless Blue world are already much lower.
When share values move out of some minimum and maximum values, they are split 1 to 2 (when values are high), or reverse split (2 to 1) when values are low. The splits change the total number of shares and their values follow these changes with no effects to the market value of corporations or values of portfolios. Share holders see the number of their shares double with every split and decline by 50% with every reverse split. These splits are a standard feature in the real world. They prevent the range of share values from widening to several cents to millions.
In simcountry, having share values in the range of 20 to 200 or lower, resulted in very large numbers of shares in many corporations. These values are now allowed to increase. The result will be that share values will become much higher but the numbers of shares will decline from the current multi billions.
The cost of moving corporation depends on the market value of the corporation but moving can be free under some conditions. These conditions were unclear in some specific situation when corporations were forced to lower production and were recovering from these lows. The free moving conditions are now improved in such situations. The documentation, which is part of the corporation�s document, is updated.
September 26, 2012
508. Searching for a country to build a corporation [ top ]
The search function for a country is extended with the welfare index. It is now possible to specify the required welfare index level and countries will be selected that have the required level. This feature will make it easier to quickly find countries where corporations have more chance of becoming successful.
In addition, the number of countries showing on the screen is increased and a next page feature is added.
A new page is added showing all the corporations that can perform an IPO and allowing for multiple IPOs to take place. This feature was requested by many players and it is now part of Simcountry.
Production in corporations now shows the number of products produced in precision of up to 2 decimals. For some products this is essential as very small numbers are produced each game month.
The target level of salaries is now removed when a corporation is being moved to another country. The owner can set new targets once the corporation is moved. The change will prevent salary changes in moving corporations that are probably not relevant in the new country.
The buy and sell pages for shares now show the number of shares that can be purchased or sold. This will speed up the procedure and prevent wrong numbers from being entered, causing the transaction to fail.
The page also shows the minimum and maximum price that can be offered or requested for the shares. This too will simplify the transactions.
Funds will now become more aggressive in trying to increase their share holdings in corporations or, when this is impossible, sell very small holdings. This change is aimed at reducing the number of shareholders in corporations and create a smaller group of shareholders that hold larger percentages of the shares.
Investment funds will also make more effort to invest larger part of their capital in the share market instead of keeping most of their assets in cash.
Share prices used to move in the range of 10 to 100. Once above 100, the shares would split 1 to 2 and the price will be reduced by 50%. When under 10, a reverse split took place, the number of shares was reduced by 50% and their value doubled.
This was done to prevent share prices from going into the tens of thousands while other shares would cost fraction of cents.
We currently see that many corporations have very large numbers of shares and transactions now involve billions of shares.
We will now split shares when the value reaches 120 and reverse split when the value goes under 20. Several more changes will follow and the numbers of shares will decline while their values will increase.
Share splits and reverse splits have no influence on the market value of corporations nor do they have any influence on the profit or loss of corporations.
More tuning of the share market will take place in the coming days and weeks to try and stimulate more trading in more different shares. Funds will be allowed to trade more different shares while the processing time of the share market will be monitored to prevent it from slowing down all other processes in Simcountry.
The reduction of the very small stock holdings may help processing as the number of share holders per corporation will decrease. This may allow for more transactions to take place.
517. Inside Information - for all players to know [ top ]
The changes in the stock market are likely to increase investments in shares and there is a chance that the price of shares will increase. This does not mean that the price of all shares will increase, it will depend on the performance/profit of the corporations but a more aggressive involvement of the investment funds and their effort to invest a larger part of their assets in the market creates a larger buyers market and is likely to push prices up.
Many Windows are improved and they are all in the same style. This is part of a general improvement of the war maps, and war process. All war windows are now black on white and upgraded to HTML 5.
Investment funds of countries without presidents ignore the "Auto Trading" flag and always participate in share trading. These investment funds will participate more actively in the share trading and sell shares when they realize at least a 100% profit on the shares they hold.
As a result, it will now become easier to purchase shares in such corporations which will move them from the gamemaster enterprise to the corporation list of the player - share holder.
Following the introduction of the new war log, the war process is now improved and requires less clicking. A pop up window where the results of the attack were showing is now eliminated.
The war log is improved and it is easier to see the losses inflicted during the attack and the damage to your own army. Counter attacks are also shown in a clearer way.
Work continues on the war functions and more features will be added in the coming weeks. Features will include the mobile units. An effort will be made to avoid targets and objects on the war maps from covering each other. It will make it easier to click on all objects and will further reduce the need for the target lists.
Corporations can issue new shares but the number of such shares, although limited per transaction, was in fact unlimited because multiple transactions could take place very quickly. This resulted in misuse that did not serve any purpose and many times ended in the bankruptcy of either the corporation or the enterprise.
Issuing shares remains of course an important way for corporations to raise cash but such share transactions will now remain in proportion to the total number of shares.
When corporations do not sell their products but keep them in the corporation, they risk bankruptcy and a large loss of resources when the corporation is closed and the unsold products are lost.
This can happen when the products that are produced are not traded on the world markets like several strategic weapons, cruise missiles and batteries etc. The corporation will try to sell the products to the owner country or enterprise and use the cash to continue production.
In case the country or enterprise do not have the cash to pay for these products, sales will not take place and the corporation will sink into debt . The owner, when in debt, is unable to supply cash to the corporation and it will bankrupt fairly quickly.
The solution is simple: Sell such products on the space markets or direct trading market and use the proceeds to finance the corporations. These products can produce a very high profit. If you are not interested in trading in this way, you should stop producing such products because stockpiling will sooner or later cause the corporations to bankrupt.
The existing procedure to get rid of stockpiled products, kicks off when more than 40 months worth of production is held within the corporation. In such cases, 10% of the stockpiled products are sold on the market and if the products are not traded on the market, they are sold to the owner of the corporation.
This procedure is part of simcountry for a very long time. It can however fail as described above.
Share trading used to stop for periods when the main month processing took place. This resulted in share trading to be immediate at some moments, but share trading could also take a long time to process. It was unpredictable for most players and used in ingenious ways by others.
The share trading is now improved and continues at all times. It takes place also when the month processing is running and as a result, the processing of manual share trading orders will be almost immediate at all times.
A new war tutorial is added today and it shows after login, for all players who never conducted any war. The tutorial is detailed and includes all the steps from war declaration to victory.
Anyone who follows this short tutorial will win the first war.
The tutorial was tested with players who had no idea about the war functions in Simcountry and they were able to win and have all claimed to understand the way it works.
The war maps and war process are now improved and make it easier to conduct the war process. Moving the mouse over targets during war provides you with more information and attacks are better prepared to save unnecessary clicking. (Excluding one click that will be cut out in a next update).
It is now easy to find out about unit types on the map and there is a much reduced need to use the target lists.
533. All objects are on the map during war [ top ]
The war maps now show all the objects on the map of your enemy and it is now easier to select a target from the map instead of using the target list. This is faster and reduces the number of clicks needed for each attack.
For those who are used to the list and want to continue using it, we have improved the list and now show Destroyed, next to each destroyed targets and finding the ones that are not destroyed yet is easier. The list too is easier to find with a blue button showing high on the left side of the war map.
The war maps include several zoom levels (this was part of the update last week). Zooming out allows you to view your country and all of its neighbors and it is easy to locate the units you want to move and send on their way. All the functions survive zooming and all movements will continue uninterrupted.
More functions and improvements are being developed and tested and will be added to Simcountry ASAP.
These improvements include the possibility to show multiple maps of various locations and will allow you to follow multiple wars at the same time, independent of their locations and it will become much easier to switch between wars. They will also include mobile units and intelligence units as was announced before.
An improvement to the trading process will improve differentiation between reasonable priced offers and very high priced offers. The result is better deals and probably higher income for most offers. The �Very high product offer� handling remains unchanged.
After a long period with more weapons and ammunition being offered on the market than produced each game month, it seems that the market is stabilizing. Although some surpluses remain in many weapon and ammunition types, the numbers are now smaller and some show shortages.
Our expectation is that with more shortages, the price of weapons and ammunition may increase on the market.
On the other hand, the slow long term process of declining prices following the lower exchange rates is continuing, and will in the long run reduce the price of all products.
There are several cases of corporations issuing many billions of new shares and try to use a scheme that will end up with large profits. Such actions always appear on our radar screens and if needed, they are addressed. Old and new maximum and minimum cash limitation are making these schemes obsolete.
We advise everyone to make use of the share market but also make sure the transactions are reasonable and do not push the corporation or the country into a negative cash position. Corporations that are running into large debt will be bankrupted immediately and the owner will inherit the cash shortages and loans. This can cause large damage that cannot be recovered. We have already seen cases where several Ts were lost. The temporary high market value of these corporations is vanishing quickly and what is left is a large negative amount of cash.
The war process is now managed on the large game maps. There are three zoom levels allowing more details view of the war and a much better view of the country and its neighbors. The movement of units is improved and it is easy to see where they are heading.
This change will help in upgrading the war level in Simcountry and allow us to introduce more war features and many more improvements in the coming weeks and months.
This is a major change and we do expect some problems that escaped our testing but the war process itself and the power of weapons or units is not changed at all
All weapons function in the same way they did before and their destruction or defensive powers are unchanged.
The score of countries depends on a large collection of indexes and it is recomputed each game month. The game level of the country is an important factor in the score. The war level also depends on many indexes and it is a good gauge of the quality of the country.
We have slightly increased the dependency of the score on the game level. We expect to see a higher correlation between the game level of players and their score in the game.
During war, only state corporations can be attacked. On the war maps, all corporations looked the same and attacking them was by trial and error which required more clicking. State corporations now show on the war maps with a green border meaning that they can be attacked. Other corporations show on the war maps with a red border and cannot be attacked.
The quality of products used by the population and by the country has an influence on the monthly cost of the country. The products that are consumed by the population are paid by the population and do not increase the monthly cost but there are many products that are used in health, education, government in general and in the army. The quality and cost of these products has a direct effect on the cost of health, education etc.
It is hard to measure what the cost increase will be if you increase the quality of the products that are purchased by the government, some experimenting could help but the cost increase depends on the size of the population and the change in the quality.
The quality of these products does have an influence on the welfare in the country. For example: if the quality of the products will increase by 100 points, the welfare index of the country will increase by an estimated 2.5 points. This in turn can increase production in the corporations by 1.1%.
It is not clear that the additional cost of products is fully compensated for by the increase in productivity. We will also do some measuring and may increase the advantage in even higher productivity. It is important to realize that only a fraction of the increased cost for these products is paid for by the government and most of the cost is paid by the population spending most of its net salary buying these products and it has no impact on the government finances.
Summary: Increasing the quality of products purchased by the government is already increasing productivity and will become profitable for the country in the long run.
Older Game News
544. Attacking Targets without land units support [ top ]
Attacks against any war targets depend on the proximity of your own military units to the target you attack. Example: If your air force attacks a military unit and none of your own military units are close to the target, the destruction power of your air force will be lower by a factor of 4 compared with its power when one of your own units is close to the target. The factor is now change from 4 to 3 which means that remote attacks became more powerful although moving units close to targets remains very important.
In the current war game, it is impossible to win a war without having your forces invade the country you fight. (Except for a first war against a C3 country). Future updates and tuning of the war game are intended to make this possible again but such wars will remain harder to win.
Winning a war by the use of the air force only, means that air attacks will be 3 times less forceful. These attacks cause a smaller damage, and the attacking units suffer larger casualties. Invading the country and having units close to the attacked targets will remain much more effective but if a player wants to rely on air attacks only, such wars will become possible.
A new type of military units will be introduced to Simcountry in the coming weeks. This (mobile) unit will have only ballistic missile batteries and many anti missile batteries to protect the ballistic weapons. The units will react automatically to attacks on the country and will actively attack targets in the attacking country to cause damage and prevent the continuation of the attacks.
The units will become part of the defense in case the player is not available to fight the war. A country could set up a number of such units and reduce or eliminate the need for temporary war protection.
Temporary war protection cost the players gold coins and the number of gold coins needed, will probably increase in the future. Setting up auto defense units will be a way to reduce or eliminate the need for temporary war protection, replacing it by real protection and a deterrent against an enemy.
Players will be able to define priorities for counter attacks, including a reaction to an enemy effort to destroy the country by use of nuclear weapons.
Mobile Intelligence Units
Mobile Intelligence Units are designed to collect military information about their surroundings. When clicking on the unit on the map, you will be able to get all the information about objects within a distance of 25 around the unit. The unit will provide full information about these objects including weapons, ammunition quality and the supply situation.
Mobile Intelligence units have the size of a brigade and include defensive weapons only. The fighting quality of the unit can reach a level of 500. The total size of the unit is 400 weapons. The unit is manned by 1300 military personnel including 900 professional soldiers and 400 professional officers.
Mobile Intelligence Units can move across all borders. When entering a country that is not in war with the country that owns the unit, there is no possibility to attack any targets. The unit can move around the country and will not be blocked by any objects or local army units.
The country that is being crossed by such mobile units is able to attack the mobile intelligence units. The unit will use its weapons to try and fend off the attack. Mobile Intelligence Units are unable to cross the sea between continents.
The units includes the following weapons: Defensive Missile Batteries 100 Defensive Missile Interceptor Batteries 60 Defensive Anti Aircraft Batteries 40 Defensive Tanks 100 Defensive Jeeps 100
547. Max Quality of Military Units and the air force [ top ]
The max quality of all military units, weapons ammunition and their fighting power is now increased by 50 points. This means that the units and both weapons and ammunition, can be upgraded to that level.
The quality of the units has a linear effect on the fighting power of the units. Doubling the quality will double the fighting power of the unit. The maximum weapons and ammunition quality in the country is now 450. This is the same for all the worlds. The maximum weapons and ammunition quality in military units of all types is now 350 on all worlds except for Fearless Blue where the maximum weapons and ammunition quality in military units is 450. The maximum fighting level of military units of all types is now 350 on all worlds except for Fearless Blue where the maximum fighting level of military units of all types is now 450.
The minimum limit for population transfers between countries in the empire was linked to the limit used when population is offered on the market. That limit increased in the past weeks and months and unintentionally raised the limit used when moving population between countries of the empire.
We have now separated these two functions.
When moving population between countries in the same empire, the country where the population is moving out of, must have 20M people remaining in the country after the transfer. This is a reduction from 60M.
The limit for the sale of population is now increased to 80M. That limit has been raised several times and will be raised again. The population sale function is obsolete and will eventually be removed from the game.
Invading the enemy's country is part of every war and it requires you to conquer at least part of the area of the country you fight against. There is an additional reason for using land units in war. That reason may not be known to everyone. When you attack a land target, the destruction power of your weapons is higher if one of your land units is located close to the target you attack. The assumption is that with your forces being close to the target, you have more accurate information on the target which allows your forces to be more effective.
In the current round of improvements to the war game, we will consider a reduction in the need to conquer areas of the enemy's country or even eliminate it. On the other hand, attacking targets with no units close by will become even less effective and the level of destruction from the air will have to increase even further to replace the damage points you used to get by invading the country.
All in all, the war game will continue to offer the current functionality but will offer an alternative way of conducting war, especially when there is no common border. This way of waging war will require much more air power and missiles because they will need to destroy more targets and their efficiency of doing so will be reduced for the lack of land forces invading the country.
The required P/E ratio for a corporation to go public is recently (temporarily) increased to make it easier for more corporations to go public. However, this resulted in unattractive shares of companies that are economically not strong enough, to be offered on the market and the investment funds which are the primary buyers of such shares, refused to purchase them in some cases.
Recently, corporate market values have undergone a correction and also, profits increased. These two way movements caused P/E ratios to fall and it is time to start correcting the required P/E ratio level needed to an IPO.
We will decrease that value in several steps, following a further decline in the P/E ratios. We expect that IPOs will remain easier than in the past and that the shares offered will be more attractive to the investment funds.
551. Population Sales and population transfers within the empire [ top ]
Population sales will be more limited starting next week. The limit when selling population will increase to 60 Millions. However, we will change the status of population transfers between countries in the same empire and allow them to continue at lower population levels. These transfers do not cause any damage to the economy except for disruption of the numbers of people in each age group that can cause a decline in the number of the population. Population transfers within the empire do not cause any damage comparable to the damage when population is sold.
A "Next Advice" button is added and allows players to ask for a next advice instead of waiting for one on their next log in. Checking each advice and making the recommended changes will make it possible for players to quickly improve their country's economy.
554. Searching a country for your Corporation [ top ]
When a CEO is searching for a country to setup a corporation, it is now possible to select a country that has the workers for the corporation and a reasonable tax level. The function is also available when you look for a country to move your corporation to.
The function was promised long time ago and will hopefully shorten and simplify the process of finding a place to place your new corporations. Depending on its success, we might add more functionality.
As of today, the advisory system is active for all players in game levels 1 to 4. It is on by default and can be turned off on the automation pages.
The number of different messages is increased from 10 to 30 and it is leading players to many more improvements in their economies. Each advice shows once in two weeks and will of course disappear if the problem does not exist anymore.
A "Next Advice" button will be added on May 15 and will make it possible to see more than one message. Currently, one single message is showing at log in. Players will be able to go through all the messages and fix all that needs fixing in their countries in one go.
Players who follow the advice will quickly improve their finances and their countries will become profitable. A fast buildup of an army may however change this as large armies require large investments in weapons and ammunition and use many people as soldiers and officers.
Presidents need to give their permission for the setting up of private corporations in their countries. If the president does not react and refuses, an automatic permission is given. The period between the request and the automatic acceptance is now 24 hours or longer on all worlds. The period was shorter on most of the worlds.
A new advisory system is now available in simcountry and will help players to repair errors in the settings of their countries.
The advisory system is available for everyone up to game level 4 and will show a popup window when you go to your country home page. There are currently just 10 different conditions that the advisory system will test and that may trigger an advice.
Example: If the country is purchasing very high quality products and the game level of the player is under 5, it will advise the player to reduce the purchasing quality and cut the cost.
Players in game level 5 and higher will not receive the messages.
We expect that beginners too will not receive these new messages because beginners have their country setting fixed by the game and these are good enough to prevent the need for such messages.
Countries that are selling off their population are seeing their population decline in the age groups that are essential for long term growth. (21-40). They also see increasing migration that is damaging for their possibility to recover from the population imbalance.
Migration numbers are higher if the country has sold more of its population. This was in the game news many times in the past months.
Both migration and the decline in the welfare index are felt throughout the entire empire.
When a country is sold, its history of population sales is forgotten. The remaining empire, if it has sold some of its population, will remain damaged, especially if the numbers sold are large.
Countries that have lost large numbers of their population have a damaged population model. When population is sold away, some age groups are depleted more than others and the remaining population is not balanced between the aged groups. The country will take a long time to recover and the population will decrease much more even if population sales stop. Buying such a country is not a good idea.
Countries that belong to an empire that has sold more than 5 millions of its population will not be traded until that damage is repaired. This will protect players from purchasing a heavily damaged country without knowing about it.
Selling population after the country is offered for sale will make the actual sale of the country impossible. Population numbers at the time of the sale of the country must be at about the same level they were when the country was offered for sale.
560. Uploading Icons to customize Simcountry Objects [ top ]
A new feature is now available, making it possible to upload your own icons for all objects on the Simcountry maps.
You can now add your own icons to the available ones on the map pages and choose the icon you want for each city, corporation, fortification etc. Each uploaded icon will be available, automatically, to the entire empire.
To avoid any possible confusion during war, the war maps will not be changed and will always show the standard set of icons.
It seems that many players are not aware of the most important parameters that can improve the profitability of their corporations. Some reduced their raw materials quality to 100 to reduce raw materials cost but their revenues declined even more. Quality of up 160 or even 180 may increase profits.
Salary levels should be at 300 and even more but will start costing more than the advantages they bring at much higher levels.
Many players are unaware of the welfare index and its influence on the production in corporations. A low welfare index is a major factor resulting in low profits in many corporations.
562. Selling products and requesting a price above their quality [ top ]
This strategy used to be very popular and produced results. We have advised against it and current declines in product quality will make such a strategy less and less profitable.
As announced before, countries that are in fact bankrupt, are now selling a small amount of products, automatically to try and restore their financial situation.
The sale only takes place if the country has more than -1T in cash (meaning that is has another 16T in loans). And the player is experienced enough to understand what he needs to do but he doesn�t.
The feature can be turned off easily but a transfer of funds into the country, making sure the cash is positive. There is no need to pay back all loans.
There are only a small number of such countries and they have also stopped placing orders for products they need. This results in negative stocks of products that will be ordered once the country has some cash.
We do not think that a country should land in such a situation and it should in fact be declared bankrupt and removed. This feature is a measure of last resort to prevent bankruptcy.
After using this feature for some time, we may decide that it helps these countries or if it does not, declare them bankrupt and removed them from the empire. As with all bankruptcies, other countries in the empire will inherit all cash of these countries and all loans too.
564. Uploading Pictures to customize Simcountry Objects [ top ]
A new feature, making it possible to upload pictures for all objects in Simcountry is added.
Currently, you can choose from a set of pictures provided by the game. With the new feature, you will be able to upload new pictures and add them to the set to choose from.
Each uploaded picture will be available, automatically, to the entire empire.
Notifications have been extended today and now include the option to request notifications by use of twitter. All the available notifications are now available for use with Mail, Facebook or Twitter.
566. Product Shortages in countries and automatic orders [ top ]
Some countries have severe shortages in some products and some presidents have turned of the automatic ordering of ammunition that is used by the army. This have resulted in some time negative stock which should never occur. Also some military units end up with no ammunition or supplies and even with negative numbers.
In some countries, such shortages are the result of negative cash. Countries with negative cash stop ordering products but keep consuming them.
Countries with negative stocks of products will order these products even if auto ordering is turned off. Ordering can be off if the president takes responsibility to order the products manually. It cannot result in negative stock quantities in the country.
567. Automatic Selling of products to raise cash [ top ]
If countries have negative stock and negative cash, an automatic procedure will sell 10% of any products the country has, each game month, to raise cash that will be used to resolve the negative cash situation and also used to order the products needed to resolve any negative stocks.
Some countries have very large numbers of some weapons and ammunition, or other products, while on the other hand, they have very large shortages of construction, services and ammunition. Selling some of the weapons and ammunition will generate cash that will help to resolve the shortages.
Presidents should in fact resolve these problems by themselves but if they fail to do so, the new function will resolve it for them.
A new feature is added today that enables automatic notifications. Notifications are about changing situations in your account, countries and enterprises. Examples: (you will choose which ones you want)
- Your gold coins balance is under some value or higher than some value. - a specific country goes from profit to loss. - an offer is made to purchase a corporation in a country you control. - War declaration against your country (currently email message is being sent). - Your rank goes under a specific value or higher than a specific value. - Your cash goes under some level. - etc
There are currently two types of notifications:
1. You receive an email message. 2. A message is sent to your FB wall (when set, a permission will be requested). A third type of notification will be added next week: 3. Twitter message (when set, permission will be requested).
It is possible to choose all of the notifications and specify, per event type, which ones you want.
More notifications will be added to the current set at a later stage.
The notification features shows on the portal page.
569. Full Control of the Defensive Capabilities [ top ]
It is now possible for presidents to reduce their defensive capabilities, sell their defensive weapons or destroy them, independent of the remaining capability of the country to defend itself.
Previously, Simcountry did not allow presidents to completely remove their defenses and leave their country un-defendable. This was a very old function, dating from a time when temporary war protection was not available and it was intended to defend players against themselves and prevent cheating.
Investment funds are now allowed to purchase shares in a limited number of corporations. The change is intended to reduce the number of share holders in a single corporation and have larger share owners instead of hundreds of very small share owners that added nothing to the functioning of Simcountry. The unlimited number of share holders in a single corporation resulted in many long screen; slaw and complex processing.
The trigger for this change was an ever increasing numbers of share holders records and the slowing of share trading processing across the worlds.
The trading process that drives the investment funds will stimulate the sale of very small holdings and reinvestment of the funds in increasing the share holding in a smaller number of corporations. This will be an ongoing process that in time will reduce the number of share holders per corporation.
A new feature will be added this month and will enable automatic notifications. Notifications will be about changing situations in your account, countries and enterprises. Examples: (you will choose which ones you want)
- Your gold coins balance is changed, or under some value or higher than some value. - a specific country goes from profit to loss. - an offer is made to purchase a corporation in a country you control. - War declaration against you (currently email message is being sent). - Your rank goes under a specific value or higher than a specific value. - Your cash goes under some level. - etc
There will be three types of notifications:
1. You receive an email message. 2. A message is sent to your FB wall (when set, a permission will be requested). 3. Twitter message (when set, permission will be requested).
It is possible to choose all of the notifications and specify, per event type, which ones you want.
In wars that can invoke a counter attack by stealth bombers, such attacks will take place even if the attacked country is in secured mode.
A country in secured mode can start a war against a C3 country. If the attacking country is in war level 7 or higher, it will be counter attacked by stealth bomber units that are located in the C3 country they attack.
The attacking country can be in secured mode but it will be counter attacked by the responding stealth bombers.
Corporations that are trying to sell products at a high price should make sure the requested price increase factor is lower than the quality of the product. Example: If the product quality is 300 and the price requested is 330% of the market price, the product will most probably remain unsold. The product price will be reduced and the trading process will retry to sell it in the next game month. This can repeat itself several times and the product may end up selling at a much lower price and only several game months later.
Reducing the requested price factor to a level equal or lower than the quality level will speed up the trading.
Many players now purchase raw materials and products for their countries at a lower quality level and there is less interest in very high quality products.
Auto attacks by Stealth Bomber units are now active in all the worlds.
If a country has stealth Bomber units, and the country is attacked during war, the Stealth Bomber Units automatically respond. Each attack on the country is immediately followed by a counter attack by a stealth bomber unit if such a unit is available in the country, and has the ammunition and supplies it needs.
The counter attacks are directed at air force units. The first priority is to attack offensive air force units. If those are not available, defensive air force units will be attacked.
The counter attack feature will be extended in the future with control by the president on the exact targets and the priorities when counter attacking an enemy.
575. Moving corporations out of a C3 country [ top ]
When moving a corporation out of a C3 country, a message appeared about payment of "moving out costs". The message was wrong and it is now removed. There was never any cost when you moved a corporation out of a C3 country.
This feature is not operational yet. It was announced before and will become part of Simcountry in the next 10 days.
If a country has stealth Bomber units, and the country is attacked during war, the Stealth Bomber Units will automatically respond. Each attack on the country will be followed by a counter attack by a stealth bomber unit if available and armed.
The counter attacks will be directed at air force units, first offensive ones but if those are not available, defensive air force units will be attacked.
More details will be published when the feature becomes available.
The counter attack feature will be extended in the future with control by the president on the exact targets and the priorities when counter attacking an enemy.
Moving objects on all the simcountry maps is now improved. The feature was only available on the small country map and is now improved and functions on all the maps in the game.
The way objects are moved is also improved. Just click the object and hold while moving it to the new location.
The movement of military units is not improved yet. It will be introduced ASAP.
All maps will be reprocessed in the initial hours after the upgrade to enable the feature. It will then become fully functional.
Remote depots, airports and bases are now dismantled automatically when a war has ended. In some cases in the past, some of these objects remained outside the country and caused military units to remain at these bases instead of returning to their bases in their own country.
Once these items are dismantled, we expect all rare cases of military units stuck out of the country to be resolved.
Some products are only sold on the space market. Corporations should setup a contract with their owner, to deliver the products to the country or enterprise. In some cases, such products are accumulating in the corporation and remain unsold. In new corporations, a contract is automatically created and the products never accumulate. This is an existing feature.
To prevent the corporation from bankrupting and make it possible for the president or CEO to trade the products on the space market, such unsold products that are accumulating for too long, are now sold automatically to the owner.
Laser guided bombs have been added today as a new product in Simcountry. Laser guided bombs are used by stealth bombers.
Laser guided bombs can be produced and traded on the FB world only. They can also be traded on all worlds in direct selling between countries or enterprises and in contracts between players. In addition, laser guided bombs will be traded in the future on the Cervus space station.
Laser guided bomb corporations can be build on FB and will produce 240 bombs per game year when running at 100% production.
A new air force unit is added. The unit currently has 12 stealth bombers and can be used to attack military/air force units, weapons and military targets. The units will be used in the very near future to auto attack the enemy as a response to an attack. The auto attack feature is not available yet but manual attacks can take place now.
The size of the units may be changed next week after some more testing is done in a real environment. The size may be set to 25 stealth bomber but the definitive number will be decided upon after current testing is completed.
Stealth Bombers are now added to Simcountry as a new weapon. Stealth bombers where discussed and preannounced several months ago and their introduction now into the game will enable follow up enhancements the war game and make it possible to add new war levels.
Stealth Bombers can operate in small units and are excellent in attacks against air force units, land units and military targets in general. The bombers are not intended for attacks on non military targets.
The main special feature of stealth bombers is their ability to carry out automatic attacks on the enemy. The stealth units (not introduced yet) will operate on command by the player but can also carry out attacks as a reaction to attacks on your country. This makes stealth bomber units a new weapon to defend your country while you are not available to carry out the defense on your own.
Automatic Stealth Bomber attacks will never win you a war but rather enhance your defense by destroying enemy units.
Destroying stealth bombers is not easy as they are hardly visible for weapon radars but both interceptors and anti aircraft missiles are capable of shooting these aircraft down. The chance to hit them is smaller but stealth bomber units will be small and a large number of interceptors and missiles will be able to destroy them.
C3 countries at levels higher than 7 will be equipped with stealth bomber units and will attack your country when you are fighting to move to higher war levels.
Stealth bombers can be produced on the Fearless Blue world only. They can be traded on the market of the Fearless blue world and can be traded between players in one time sales or contracts on all the worlds. The bombers can also be traded on the space station Cervus
It is now possible to set up stealth bomber corporations on the Fearless Blue world. The corporations, when in full production at 100% can produce 3 stealth bombers each game year.
Although stealth bombers can now be produced, they are currently not usable in war yet and cannot be attacked by any weapon. Stealth bomber bombs will be added to Simcountry next week. The early introduction of these weapons allows you to decide your position on these new weapons and it gives everyone time to start producing them ahead of their full introduction into Simcountry.
The max number of population in a single country is now increased to 300M. At that level, the population should decline quickly as the birth rate becomes very low. To prevent the population from declining, we have fixed the 0-4 years old group and do not allow it to decline unless you are selling population. This feature was introduced many months ago and ever since its introduction, population numbers are not declining.
In case you are selling population, the natural decline will go into full force and will continue for a long time. Your population could end up 20M lower before the decline stops or you could purchase several millions in population to compensate for the sale and return to stable numbers.
It is impossible to grow population numbers by natural growth to the 300M level or even to n 80M level. Natural growth stop at a much lower population number, (50-60M) and that limit depends on the health index. The higher the health index, the higher the natural growth can reach.
The population can continue to grow by the purchase of population on the direct trading market. The measures taken to stop the population from declining just made sure that if you purchase population, it is not dying off.
Small declines can continue however, due to natural death in all age groups. Babies and kids but also adults can die before old age and this continues but these numbers are small.
The largest decline in the past was caused by reduced birth rates. This is no longer a problem.
The detailed numbers on the population pages can be incorrect when the population is very large. The formulas computing the number of births and natural death numbers will be updated to reflect these corrections.
Cash levels required for higher game levels have been increased slightly. At the same time, several game level awards have been increased too. The award for game level 9 is now increased to 150 gold coins and the award for game level 14 is increased to 200 gold coins.
War levels are becoming more important when moving up the game levels. To reach higher game levels, the country must have either the required defense indexes level, OR the required war level. With defense index requirements increasing, the war level will become the leading requirement.
Players who choose the peaceful option have a different set of requirements that do not include any defense indexes or a war level.
For more details, please refer to the updated game level document.
The rules concerning war declarations and the limitations there of, have been relaxed for players in war levels 3 and higher.
All players in game levels 1 or 2 are protected from war and cannot be attacked by any player. This remains unchanged. This feature will continue to protect new players and players who are not interested in the war game.
The protection of players in game levels <3 remains unchanged on all 5 worlds.
The rules on the Fearless Blue world also remain unchanged. On Fearless blue, when a country is in war level 3 or higher it fully participates in the war game and can attack or it can be attacked by any other country which is in war level 3 or higher.
The changes apply to the KB, WG, GR and LU worlds.
The rules for war declarations on the 4 other worlds, (all worlds excluding FB) have been relaxed. It is now possible for any country in war level 3 or higher, to wage war against any other country with a war level up to 2 levels higher or lower, excluding countries in war levels <3. The same applies for the participation of federation members in the protection of a member of the federation. If the difference in war levels is smaller or equal to 2, the federation member can participate in the war. Automatic war declarations that are the result of war treaties, abide by the same rule.
This means that when you are in war level 3, you can wage war against any country in war levels 3, 4, and 5. If you are in war level 4, you can wage war against any country in war levels 3, 4, 5 and 6. Etc.
At the currently highest war level 7, you can wage war against any country in war levels 5, 6, and 7.
More war levels will be added to simcountry and the same rules will apply to these higher levels.
It is now possible for enterprises to close contracts with their corporations. This is an old omission and has now been solved. In addition, enterprises automatically close contracts with their corporations for delivery of products that are not traded on the world market. These contracts already exist for countries and are now added to enterprises. Example: cargo shuttles.
587. Activation after an automatic deactivation [ top ]
When automatic deactivation of weapons takes place, it is impossible for the president to reactivate weapons for three game months. This was done to prevent automatic deactivation from being reversed by the president immediately reactivating the same weapons.
The reactivation is now only blocked for two game months.
CEOs can now fully participate in the space game. It is now possible for CEOs to set up space centers, cargo shuttles they produce are moved automatically to their space centers and they can trade and transport products in the same way presidents do.
The support and automation functions can be viewed on the automation page (automation button on the new style country page) or from the settings pages. The link is on the country home page.
The support functions and interventions have triggered some to complain about changes in their countries. In all such cases, we have looked into the details and found that the action was warranted as these were in most cases, beginners who did turn automation off after receiving an explanation.
Beginners can better leave automation on as it will set the country on a course to profitability. When they learn more, they could drop the automation and try to improve and optimize their economies.
The support system is part of simcountry for a long time but was never explained in details in a single document but rather bits of information were published on the game news and the forum. Recently a new part is added to the system, with interventions in countries that have unacceptable low levels of money. A new document is being prepared and is intended to explain all the details.
The current upgrade of simcountry includes a better tuned support and intervention feature that is updated to current loan levels, acceptable cash shortages and current exchange rates and values of assets.
Countries owned by beginners are supported in the first 90 days. Also players in game levels 1, 2 and 3 are supported in various ways. In addition, there are interventions in countries that are failing economically, including countries with very low cash levels. The simcountry support system can be turned off by both beginners and by other players in the first 3 levels and the interventions will stop. The forced interventions in countries that are nearly bankrupt cannot be stopped. These interventions will automatically stop when the unacceptable conditions cease to exist.
A new feature is added, allowing countries to manage the quality of products that are purchased for use by the population. Before the installation of the feature, a limited setting was possible, for all products at once. It is now possible to set the preferred quality per product. Check the trade menu for the new feature.
Quality is a major factor. The quality of products purchased by corporations is an important factor in the quality of the product produced by the corporations. The quality of weapons is used in the setup of military units and has a major influence on the fighting quality of the units.
The quality of consumption products had a very limited function; it is a small factor in the total score of the country.
The next update of Simcountry, will add the average quality of consumption products as a factor in the welfare index. Initially, the change will be small. In time, the influence of the consumption products can have a 5-10 points difference in the welfare index of corporations in the country.
A small number of enterprises have very low levels of cash. These enterprises may be allowed to bankrupt. Initially, we will let go of enterprises with a cash level of -50T and lower.
It is now possible for countries and enterprises to trade airplanes between them and the corporations that produce Airplanes. This was an exception for a long time and the exception is now removed. Airplanes are only used in the building of airports that are used with air transport corporations.
Countries and enterprises can store airplanes and trade them on the markets.
The professional army is quite different from the regular army and stands outside the regular population and its members cannot participate in the economy of the country.
The professional army consists of soldiers and officers that are hired to serve in the army and are not part of the population. They can be seen as mercenaries, hired guns or any other description that makes clear that they are here to be in the army and nothing else.
Most countries do not have a professional army and most of them do not need it. If the country has a small army, mainly intended for the defense of the country and it is only a small number of soldiers and officers that do not have a large impact on the economy then a professional army is not needed. Those who want a professional army will have to purchase groups of soldiers and officers and the more they purchase the larger their professional army will be.
When the army is checking the availability of crews to operate its weapons, it will always check if there are available professional soldiers and officers. If there are some available it will use them to operate its weapons. When everyone in the professional army is already in active service, and more soldiers and officers are needed, these will be recruited from the ranks of the low level workers and medium level officers as is the practice when no professionals are available.
The professional army does not have age groups, it has no sick or wounded and when soldiers age, they are automatically replaced by new recruits. It does however have losses during war and in fact, losses are always assumed in the professional army if the country has such an army. In this way, the impact of war losses will have no effect, or a reduced effect on the general population. Civilian losses stand separate from the army losses and do have an impact of the general population.
Professional soldiers and officers that are used in the army receive the same salary as the existing soldiers and officers. In case some of the professional soldiers or officers are not used in the army, they are not paid.
Purchasing a professional army
Professional soldiers and officers can be purchased on the direct market. Both are seen as a resource that can be purchased or sold on the open market. Purchasing will be for 3.000 officers and for 10.000 soldiers.
Organizing the Army
The army management procedure in Simcountry is repeatedly looking at the human resources that are needed for the army and updates the operating model as needed.
The highest priority is the organization of the mobile units. Mobile units are currently not part of Simcountry but they will be added in the near future. Specifications of the functioning of mobile units will follow.
Next, all military units are checked for the soldiers and officers needed. Professional soldiers and officers will be used as long as these are available. If not available, recruitment will continue from the ranks of workers and medium level managers.
The same will then take place, checking all garrisons and making sure these are fully manned and have the needed crews.
If more professional soldiers and officers are available, they will operate all other weapons that are available in the country. If even more are available, they will remain unused and available if needed when the army becomes larger.
It is possible, at any time, to purchase more professionals and add them to the available numbers. Within several hours after such a purchase, the new professionals will join the army, freeing the same numbers of soldiers and officers that were recruited from the general population and will allow them to return to civilian jobs.
It is also possible to sell groups of professional soldiers and officers on the direct trading market to other players and reduce their numbers in your country. Within several hours after such a reduction, the army will update its operations and hire more low level workers and medium level managers to replace the professional soldiers and officers.
If you purchase these professionals on the direct trading market and move them to your country, they will be used automatically as part of your army. Not having them or reducing their numbers will also automatically change the army to replace them. There is no need to micro manage the army and its military units or weapons.
595. Low cash in countries and Enterprises - automatic management of failed countries [ top ]
In an effort to reduce shortages of cash in many countries, we have introduced features that take control of failing countries, blocking use of the country by the president and start optimizing conditions in the country to bring it back to profitability.
These functions are in place for several weeks and have been optimized again to improve conditions even faster.
We have looked into some countries under external management and it is clear that conditions do improve. We will continue to observe how the process works and may optimize it even further in the coming weeks.
The Measures already include tuning of the education system, automatic building of corporations to reduce unemployment, increase in taxes, reduction in salaries to very low levels and deactivation of the entire army. All purchasing of products cease to preserve cash and the country may see shortages in many products.
Corporations in such failing countries that are showing losses are tuned too. They reduce the quality when purchasing raw materials and optimize the sales and purchasing strategies. Salaries decline gradually down to a level 10 times lower than base levels and although the welfare index may decline, the corporations are squeezed to produce a profit.
Once cash levels increase above the minimum limit, all measures are stopped and the country returns to normal functioning.
Some countries have very low cash levels and are unable to function. These countries are unable to purchase materials and are in fact out of the control of the player.
Currently, countries are falling into this category if their cash level is lower then -20T. The countries are in fact close to bankruptcy.
Bankrupting such countries will not solve the problem because their debt will be inherited by another country in the empire and can lead to the fall of more countries.
To prevent such bankruptcy, a last ditch effort takes place to try and save the country. Loans are automatically reduced; tax levels in corporations are increased. If unemployment is high, new corporations are created and workers are moved more easily between groups to enable easier hiring, reducing unemployment and improving the income of the country.
In addition to these measures that are aimed at increasing income, the army of such countries will be deactivated. All weapons will be moved to the reserves and the cost of the army will decline.
We expect that with all these measure, countries will become profitable. If they do and cash levels begin to increase, the countries will come out of this de facto bankruptcy and start to function normally. The correction measures will stop but salary levels, taxes etc. will not move back to previous values.
The president will regain control of the country and will hopefully keep it solvent.
All such measures can be prevented if the countries with low cash receive cash injections and their cash level is increased above the current limit.
The current limit of -20T will increase gradually. We expect it to be halved to -10T within the next weeks.
The transaction log on the trade page (also in the trade menu) is extended and improved. The log now shows all contract offers, acceptance and refusal of contracts, removal of contracts and all transactions resulting from all contracts (also one time direct sales).
If the contract cannot be executed, or only partially for lack of product or money to pay for the contracted products, this too shows on the log.
The transaction log is kept for a longer period and work is underway to prolong the period even further. Currently it is kept for one week and much longer in the W3C archives.
Cargo shuttles will never auto load more maintenance products than needed until the shuttle is retired. Manual loading and unloading of maintenance units remains possible. Auto loading was already limited to 200 units (each unit uses 2 storage units on the cargo shuttle).
Countries with negative cash are being urged to reduce the deficit. This can be done by reduction in cost, improved corporations and in many cases, by the sale of assets and the use of gold coins to exchange for game money to reduce cash shortages.
When a country is in such a situation, it is impossible to purchase products and existing contracts are suspended. The contracts remain unchanged but no transactions take place.
Starting with this update, such cash situation will cause all automatic orders to stop. No products will be ordered until the country cash situation improves. As costs decline, cash might improve and automatic orders will resume automatically.
600. More improvements in Negative cash situations [ top ]
When countries are very low on cash they are unable to pay their ongoing costs. Solving the problem requires a cut in salaries that will reduce shortages and make it possible to improve the cash situation.
A new feature will start automatic reduction of government salaries to reduce cost. This reduction could cause a reduction in corporate salaries.
Once the cash level increases, such reductions will stop.
Sneak attacks are now possible in war level 3 and up. This will complete the protection of players in lower war levels against unwanted participation in the war game.
602. CEOs building corporations in countries with presidents [ top ]
New CEOs cannot build in countries with a CEO in the first period they play and as long as they do not have at least 6 corporations in C3 countries. The feature is intended to protect countries against unwanted interference from short lived CEO accounts.
The period used to be 42 days. It is now reduced to 28 days.
603. Corporations producing products that are not traded on the world market. [ top ]
Corporations producing products that not traded on the world market are now automatically contracting their product to the country. The contracting takes place once when the corporation is created. This is done to prevent stockpiling of such products in the corporation that can cause the corporation to bankrupt for lack of sales. Until now, the corporation owner had to setup such a contract and some forgot to do so with unfortunate consequences.
This will apply among others to Cargo Shuttles that will now be contracted to the country.
The contracts are always for a minimum of 1 product per game month but are not tagged as bad if the expected production level is less than 12 products per year. This solves the problem of contracts that were not delivering because the contract quantity (1) was higher than the production per game month.
Currently, the feature is available for all state and national corporations.
604. Cash Levels in Corporations and corporate contracts [ top ]
Corporations that are producing large objects and their full production stands at less than 2 products per game year used to have cash problems because of the long period between sales. Mainly some corporations producing cargo shuttles had cash problems.
We have now increased the max cash levels in such corporations by a factor of 3 to 300B. Also the contracts these corporations have for delivery of their products are not cancelled when the corporations do not deliver.
These changes are already part of Simcountry and will make it easier to manage such corporations.
Simcountry has many support functions that help beginners in the initial period. The help functions include the addition of gold coins, population and game money. It also includes an increase of the country income that helps new players to finance the growth of their countries and build some financial reserves.
In addition, there are support functions that help new players in balancing their education system, prevent financial losses and support the economy in other ways to make sure the countries can prosper. Some of these support functions were only triggered if a player did not login for several days.
All support stopped after 180 or 360 days or when the country reached game level 4. There is no support for countries that are part of an empire.
Some players were mailing us questions and some complained about interventions in their economies. In all cases, there was a very good reason to intervene but some players did not want this intervention even when they needed it.
We are convinced that new players need the support that makes playing easier, especially when you start. We have now intensified the support functions and extended their effects but we have also shortened the support period to 90 days.
Most players who asked for the interventions to stop, where playing beyond the initial 90 days.
The initial income support for new players is now increased form 33B per game month, to 50B per game month and the duration is now 360 game months, up from 180. The amount is 50B in the first game month and it starts declining each game month, like it did before this change. It is reduced to zero after the 360 game months period is completed. This change is already activated and has consequences for existing player. All new players in the first 360 game months will see their finances improve as a result of increased beginner's bonuses.
The duration of the interventions in the economy has now been reduced to the first 90 days but they apply to every new player even if the player is logging in each day. There are many types of interventions and they apply if needed.
607. Interventions in the employment and unemployment numbers [ top ]
If a country has very large numbers of unemployed in any group or a severe shortage in any other group of workers, the support function will move people from one group to another. It will, in several steps, eliminate shortages and remove very large numbers of unemployed. This will have an effect on the numbers in all groups and the balance will influence the numbers in the low level workers group.
The function does not have any effect on the number of the population in the country. The result of this intervention is that corporations are able to hire the people they need. The function does not cure all problems within a single game month. It makes small corrections each game month. Within several days, the employment situation will find a new balance, employment will grow and the function will stop its intervention as long as the balanced situation continues.
If the player is becoming experienced with the education system, the interventions will become obsolete.
The changes are now faster than before and they apply to all new players.
New players can overspend and run out of money. The financial support functions will prevent them from bankruptcy. They will not create an unlimited supply of cash and the player will need to solve the problem by improving the economy or by exchanging the initial gifts of gold coins into game money to pay the debt.
The support function will prevent the situation from turning desperate and beyond repair.
This is a disputed function but a necessary one. If a player (in the first 90 days) gets the country into more than 4T of debt and the country losses per game month increase to more than 40B while taxes in corporations are low, this function will start increasing tax levels in corporations each game month until the tax levels reach 60%. The aim is to increase the contribution of the corporations to the country and improve its finances.
If a corporation in a new player's country has lost money in the previous year, in the current year and has loans above 36B, corporate salaries will decline by 10%. This will continue as long as these conditions persist and corporate salaries can decline to a level of 10 (10% of the standard start salaries).
The same will take place if the corporate salaries are more than 1.8 times higher than the government salaries in the country.
Salaries in private corporations will also decline in the same way if similar conditions exist in these corporations.
If the country is in debt (>3T) and makes a monthly loss of 50B or more, government salaries will be reduced by 10%. This will be repeated as long as the conditions persist. Lower government salaries reduce the cost of the government, the army, health care and education and can result in an improved financial situation for the country.
This is a disputed feature because in most cases presidents do not want new corporations to appear in their countries without them making the choice.
However, in the first 90 days of playing, if debt is >6T and unemployment reaches very high levels with more than 1.000.000 low level workers unemployed, new corporations will be created automatically until the situation improves. It is very easy to avoid this function if you create new corporations yourself.
All these functions become active if the specific conditions occur and only in the first 90 days of the account and only if the player is in game levels 1 to 3.
614. War level awards and gold coin awards [ top ]
When conquering a C3 country, the winner will in general find a large amount of game cash in the conquered country that can be used to compensate for the cost of the war. The amount depends on the war level of the C3 country.
When winning a war against a C3 country of war level 1, the amount of cash that remains in the country is around 250B. The amount is increasing with the war levels and is currently 15T if the C3 country is in war level 7.
The amounts are now four times higher for winning wars against C3 countries of war level 1 through 3 and increased to 6T for winning a war against a C3 country in war level 4.
In addition, there are gold coins awards for players who reach higher war levels. These awards are currently implemented on FB only.
As of today, war level awards on Fearless Blue world have increased.
When reaching war level 3, the award is 10 Gold coins. (was zero). When reaching war level 4, the award is 50 gold coins (was 10 gold coins) When reaching war level 5, the award is 50 gold coins (was 10 gold coins) When reaching war level 6, the award is 75 gold coins (was 25 gold coins) When reaching war level 7, the award is 100 gold coins (was 25 gold coins)
The total of award gold coins is increased from 70 gold coins to 285 gold coins for moving a country from war level 1 to war level 8.
Producing Cargo Shuttles is a good business but has some strings attached. A corporation that produces cargo shuttles will take more than a game year to produce one and the corporation needs large amounts of cash to pay for salaries and raw materials during an extended period while the cargo shuttle is constructed. The corporation has no income during that process and must be provided with a lot of cash or it may bankrupt.
When a cargo shuttle building corporation is starting operations, it is provided with close to 1T in cash from the country that is the owner of the new corporation. This amount will enable the corporation to build a cargo shuttle or even more than one with no need for extra cash.
Once a cargo shuttle is produced, it can only be sold to a country. This can be done in a direct sale.
A cargo shuttle that is sold to a country will automatically be placed in a space center in the country. This is not immediate and can take several hours to complete. If the country does not have a space center, the cargo shuttle will remain in stock but will not be of any use. It can be sold to another country but cannot be used unless the owner country has a space center.
Once the cargo shuttle is placed at a space center, it can be used for missions and it can be offered for sale on the direct trading market.
A cargo shuttle cannot be sold on the world market. The only place to trade cargo shuttles is on the direct trading market and recent prices for a quality 100 cargo shuttle went around 2 GCs or a little more. We expect the price to go up in the near future.
The current cost of production for a quality 100 cargo shuttle, is about 50B-80B which is about 1.5 Gold Coins.
The cash flow of cargo shuttle corporations must be checked from time to time to make sure that there is sufficient amount of money available to allow the corporation to continue its operations.
Enterprise owned cargo shuttle corporations can also sell their products in direct contracts. An enterprise can store cargo shuttles but cannot use them in any way. Once sold to a country, they will be placed in the space center of that country and become operational.
616. Maintenance of weapons stored in a space center [ top ]
The maintenance cost of weapons that are stored in a space center was only partially counting as defense cost for the country. As of now, a larger portion of the cost is taken into account.
Several more changes will take place in the coming weeks until the maintenance cost is fully computed and becomes part of the maintenance cost of the army.
Storing weapons in a space center became a way to avoid maintenance cost. This error is being phased out.
Countries can decide to nationalize private corporations. We have recently seen that sometimes several such nationalizations are requested by the same country while it has no cash to pay for them. This can lead to large cash shortages.
We have now added a procedure that will check if the country is able to pay for the nationalization. If not, the nationalization request will not be carried out.
It is now possible to move a corporation out of a country if the president of the country is not doing what is needed to optimize conditions in the country and keep the corporation in production.
A corporation can be moved with no penalty if one of the following conditions occur: - The country has no president. - The tax rate in the country is 40% or higher. - The president has recently sold population. - Production is limited because of lack of man power while the corporation is paying salaries at a level above government salaries in the country.
A CEO can now purchase an existing corporation only if the enterprise is debt free and cash positive. Setting up new corporations remains possible within the existing debt limits and enterprises retain the possibility to borrow and expand.
Several bugs in contracts were solved. Going over 100% of production is now corrected and contract cancellation was limited to one contract at a time. It is now possible to cancel all contracts at once.
Loans are given automatically to all players when their country cash is going into the red. The current limit is 8 T. When a country has 8 T in debt, it will not receive any additional loans and if spending continues at a higher rate than income, cash will go negative.
Negative cash has consequences to the country and spending is becoming more difficult. A country with negative cash cannot purchase any offensive or strategic weapons and even purchases of defensive weapons are now limited.
Some of the game support functions may be triggered and start reductions in salaries and interventions in education and corporations to try and reduce cost and bring the country back to profitability.
We advise players to prevent negative cash or very high loans. This can be done by timely reduction of cost, improved employment and by building more corporations. Even starting corporations, producing products that are in short supply will be profitable from the start.
In case you want to continue the buildup of the army or develop your country beyond the current availability of resources, we advise you to use some gold coins to exchange for game cash on the direct market. This can bring you cash level back up again and even help in paying back some of your debt.
To create more differentiation between our 5 worlds, we will start some product specialization that will be specific for a single world.
The first such specialization will allow for some nuclear weapons to be produced on Fearless Blue only.
This change will be introduced only after space shuttle automation is completed. Space shuttle automation will allow for automatic transport of products by cargo shuttles between a country and a space station without manual intervention to start each mission.
Once this is in place, we will start some product specialization and extend it to more products in the future.
The change was suggested by a player and adapted by W3creative. In time, it will allow for more differentiation between all the worlds.
The population in countries depends on several parameters and for a long time, we heard complains about population growth or rather decline.
The population depends most of the time on the number of births each month, and the death rate. There are also other events that can change the numbers of the population, like war with many casualties, and also population purchases on the market and the sale of population. Migration can also change the numbers.
Death rates depend on the age group. Each age group has a different death rate and these rates increase with age and the highest age groups have a high death rate. The death rates also depend on the health index. The higher the health index, the lower death rates will be.
The population birth rates depend on the total number of the population in the country. The higher the population, the lower the birth rate becomes.
In countries with very high population numbers, birth rates can decline below the death rates resulting in a decline of the population.
Some players are buying large numbers of populations to boost their countries and then see the numbers decline slowly in the following game months and years.
We have always advised players not to increase the population beyond 50-60 Millions because the numbers will decline due to the reduced birth rates.
Free membership does have several limitations but allows players to use nearly all of the game functions.
The main limitation for free players is that they cannot get any gold coins. Both game awards and level awards are only available to Premium Members. It is also impossible to obtain gold coins on the direct market. Exchanging game money into gold coins will remain the privilege of the Premium Members.
A complete list of conditions that will apply to free members will be published on the site within the coming two weeks.
626. Improved Level checking in Federation Wars [ top ]
Federation members can now attack countries with war levels 1 or 2 lower than theirs, if the attacked country is known as an aggressive warrior.
The transfer of cash out of corporations is reset to 60B. This will be for both state and private corporations. The amount is now lower than the previous limit of 80B. There is no need to make any cash transfers into corporations.
The limitation of cash transfer out of private corporations was described as a new feature but this was part of simcountry for a long time. The limit used to be 80B and is now reduced to 60B.
Corporations continuously transfer money to and from the owner. This results in quick changes in cash levels, many questions to us, bankruptcies and also allows room for misuse of corporate loans.
To stabilize the cash situation in corporations, combined with their larger size and need for more cash, we have now made several changes.
Corporations will not transfer cash out, or allow any cash transfer out of the corporation unless the cash level is higher than 80B. Loan requests by corporations will be possible if the corporation cash position, including loans already requested will be lower than 20B.
These changes will reduce bankruptcies, and prevent fraud that has been going on for quite some time with misuse of corporate loans.
629. Defense Support by Federation Members [ top ]
Up to two federation members will be able to support an attacked federation member country. This is up from one and will enhance the defense capabilities of countries that are members of a well organized federation. The participating units must be within striking range.
630. Cash Management in State Corporations [ top ]
State corporations with a high level of cash are transferring part of their cash to the country where they reside. We have now added a transfer of cash from the country to a state corporation if the corporation is short on cash.
This is done to save many corporations that are bankrupting because of high loans while the player does not know about the debt or does not realize what should be done to prevent their closure.
This change will save mainly beginners corporations and make the game easier for them.
While revisiting this function, we have increased the level of cash corporations can hold before it is transferred to the country.
Several RSS feeds have been implemented: gamenews.xml on the Simcountry portal votenews.xml on the Simcountry portal warnews.xml on each of the worlds.
We have now created several twitter accounts and we are feeding some game information into these accounts. Following is the exact list and the type of messages that are being fed into these accounts:
Game News: To stay informed on the simcountry Game News, follow the tweets on "SimcountryNews"
Vote News: To stay informed on the simcountry Vote News, follow the tweets on "SimcountryVote"
Development News: To stay informed on the simcountry Development News, follow the tweets on "SimcountryDev"
War News on Kebir Blue: To stay informed on war news on the Kebir Blue world, follow the tweets on "SimcountryKBwar"
War News on Fearless Blue: To stay informed on war news on the Fearless Blue world, follow the tweets on "SimcountryFBwar"
War News on White Giant: To stay informed on war news on the While Giant world, follow the tweets on "SimcountryWGwar"
War News on Golden Rainbow: To stay informed on war news on the Golden Rainbow world, follow the tweets on "SimcountryGRwar"
War News on Little Upsilon: To stay informed on war news on the Little Upsilon world, follow the tweets on "SimcountryLUwar"
All News retweeted All of these tweets are retweeted on "Simcountry". You can follow "Simcountry" instead of the tweets above if you want all to read all the news.
The blackout periods have been extended from 4 hours to 8 hours per day. You can specify, per hour you want to black out. No attacks can take place on your country during a blackout period.
When a new corporation is created, the country or enterprise building the corporation provides it with start capital and raw materials for the initial period.
When corporations are created, the start capital that is provided for the start up period and the initial purchase of products is around 6 x the estimated year production of the corporation.
If the corporation is expected to produce for a total amount of 15B per year (based on base price and 100% production), the start capital will be 90B.
However, a cargo shuttle corporation that is producing at a rate of 140B per year will receive 640B in start capital and the money will be provided by the country (or enterprise). This is a very large amount of cash and countries, or enterprises may see their cash going into the red with automatic loans being requested to cover for the cash shortages.
New corporations receive raw materials to be able to start production at day 1. A quantity, sufficient for 5 month production is available at setup time.
Space industries do not receive any products at start up time and must wait for delivery before starting production. This may result in a slower start of production. The raw materials for the space industries must be purchased on the space market or in direct contracts and sales between players on the world where the corporation resides.
Selling population is very bad for countries. Countries that are selling population damage their state corporations, and they damage private and public corporations that are located in their countries. These CEOs assumed that they can continue to run these corporations, only to find out that workers are gone.
The minimum population number to allow a transfer is 30M. Countries with lower population numbers cannot sell their population. In addition, when population is being sold, migration out of the country accelerates and many will leave in the following months.
The population sales have a very negative influence on the welfare in the country and productivity declines in the entire empire. The decline in the welfare index is not immediate but it will decline overtime. The damage is retained for a prolonged period and can be reduced either by the purchase of population of by a long wait where the damage counter that jumps 100 point with any population sale, will recover one point at a time during a long period.
Private corporations in countries that sell their population can leave the country without any payment to the president.
It is now easier to move corporations out of empires that are selling their population. CEOs are sometimes trapped in an empire that is engaged in selling its population. As a result, CEO corporations may run out of workers or are forced to increase salaries to keep their workers. When the CEO wants to move a corporation, to a country that will make sure workers are available, he ends up paying a high premium to the president of the country that created the problem..
Moving corporations out of such empires is now free of any payment to the president
639. New players - bidding for CEO owned corporations [ top ]
Bidding for CEO owned corporations is closed for new players. New players can easily make offers to purchase gamemaster corporations or corporations in C3 countries and they can setup new corporations. More experienced players are able to bid for any corporation.
The corporations that are involved in these products require high game levels. The corporations are very large, they have a high yearly turnover and a very high potential for profits.
All the parts that are needed for the buildup of cargo shuttles are traded on the space market but like other products, they are also traded in direct sales and contracts between players.
Cargo shuttles are traded on the direct trading market and their price is quoted in gold coins. Player who are able to produce such cargo shuttles, will place them on the direct trading market for anyone to purchase.
A CEO can bid to purchase up to 2 corporations from the same enterprise at one time. Once the process is completed, more bids can be entered. The premium on the price that is paid for such corporations depends on their market value. At market value under 200B, the purchase price will be increased by 50B. At a market price of 200B to 400B, the premium will be 100B and above 400B in market value, the premium will be 200B.
This means that setting up new corporations, purchasing corporations from C3 countries or purchasing corporations from the gamemaster Enterprise, is cheaper than hostile bids for corporations owned by a CEO.
Each type of corporation in Simcountry requires a certain game level to allow the player to build it. If a player is playing at game level 3, she may be able to build corporations that require game level 1, 2 and 3. She will not be able to build corporations that require game levels of 4, 5 and higher.
Examples: All food producing corporations require game level 1 while all the High Tech corporations require game level 3 or 4 or 5.
Following several incidents on the chat room where communication was made difficult by some players, we have now created a new chat room for Premium Members only.
W3creative will react on reported unwanted behavior on the chat rooms and remove the user, block the IP etc. It remains easy to start a new account from a different computer and repeat the same. In general, action to remove such players cuts the severity and duration of these problems.
The number of people migrating into your country or out of your country each month depends on your migration index. There are three levels of exit migration, depending on your migration index.
Level 1: If the migration index is lower than 26: 0.03% of your population will migrate each game month. Level 2: If the migration index is lower than 18: 0.06% of your population will migrate each game month. Level 3: If the migration index is lower than 11: 0.1% of your population will migrate each game month.
The total number of migrants will enter countries with a high migration index also depend on the migration index. There are three levels of incoming migration:
Level 1: Incoming migration will start if the migration index is >55 Level 2: Incoming migration will become larger if the migration index is >70 Level 3: Incoming migration will be highest if the migration index is > 85
The numbers also depend on the total number of migrants who have left their countries.
Migration numbers could become larger if the country was involved in selling its population in the preceding period. The more population sold, the higher the emigration will be. Purchases of population compensate for such sales, the more population is purchased, the smaller the damage will be. Numbers are reduced in time and the effect of population purchases will slowly disappear. Other population and professional transfers do not influence migration.
Population can migrate from countries where conditions are bad to countries where conditions are much better. Good and bad conditions are measured as a function of salary level in the country, health care level, education, transportations social security etc. The migration index is also dependent on the way the president handles the population. If population is transferred out of the country then it will cause more people to take their own decisions and move out. If the president is not initiating such transfers, or replaces transferred population by population from outside the country, the negative effect on migration will be reduced and diminish.
Each transfer of population from the country causes migration to increase and more people will leave the country. The effect of such transfers will decline in time and eventually disappear but the process can take many game months to complete.
The migration index and the numbers of people who migrated into your country or have left your country in the past game month, is showing on the index page (also the game level page).
646. Target proximity and the effectiveness of the air force [ top ]
When air force units attack a target, their effectiveness depends largely on the distance of friendly army units to the target they attack.
If the air force is attacking a far away target and none of your military units is placed close to that target (less than 40), the effect of the air force attack will be four times weaker than the effect of the same attack, on the same target while at least one of your military units is placed at a short distance from that target. If the distance of one or more of your units to the target is indeed smaller than 40, the force of the attack will be multiplied by a factor of four.
The same applies to air force attacks on a fleet. If one of your own fleets is close to the attacked target, at a distance of less than 400, the effect of the air force attack will be four times more powerful.
647. Population Transfers after war declaration [ top ]
Population transfers are blocked once war was declared. The limitation is only active if the war is against a country with a president. Wars against a C3 country do not cause any limitations on population transfers.
It is now possible, for each country president, to set up to eight blackout periods for each country. Each blackout period is one hour. During these blackout periods, the country cannot attack any other country and cannot be attacked by any other country.
This feature allows presidents to set up to eight hours each day in which they do not need to be available to fight any war.
Blackout periods can be changed once in 6 game months and cannot be changed during war or once war is declared.
Troop movements are also prohibited during the blackout hours.
The Security Council can decide to give financial help to countries. These countries should not belong to members of the Security Council. The receiver of such Security Council financial support must have less than 2T in net cash.
650. Deregistration of a Country During War [ top ]
There are some strict conditions that make it possible to abandon a country during a war. These conditions are: The war duration is >30 game months AND the war index is > 10 AND net cash of the country is < 0. If all three conditions are met, the country can be abandoned while the war is ongoing. The result of such action will be that the war will end instantly and the country will belong to no one.
We have improved the price setting in contracts. The price will now include unlimited quality. Contracts will be executed with any product quality that is offered. The seller will receive the full price and the buyer will pay the full price.
The quality of raw materials is a major factor in the quality of the products corporations produce. The raw materials quality is a weighted average of all the materials that are used in the production process. Weighted average is used because some products are used in larger quantities and should have more influence on the quality of the output than the influence of raw materials that are used in small quantities.
The army spends a large part of the money for defense on ammunition that is used month by month even if there is no war. This causes automatic orders for ammunition. There are no automatic orders for weapons.
The concept is not simple and the resulting transactions are confusing as the orders may seem unrealistically large and involve large amounts of money.
Another type of transaction that could be added to the log is the Manual Transaction. These are transactions that are entered manually by players and not triggered by any automatic process. The number of such transactions is in the hundreds to a few thousand per game month and does not add much to the log.
The idea here is that you will be able to see exactly what is ordered and how much was paid for it.
654. Profitability of Corporations - an overview [ top ]
The main parameters in the profitability of corporations are: 1. Private and public corporations are in general more profitable. In addition, such corporations are much more beneficial for the countries where they reside. Private and public corporations pay a percentage of their gross revenue to the country. Countries receive much more money from any type of private and public corporation under any conditions than from their own state owned corporations. 2. Corporations must produce at 100% or close to it. Profitability will decline quickly if production is much lower. The reason is mainly because some of the corporate cost is fixed and does not depend on the production level. If production is lower, these fixed costs may quickly surmount to a substantial portion of the total revenue 3. Market price is essential. If there are surpluses on the market, the price will decline and it will have a major influence on the profitability. 4. Quality is an important factor as the price you get on the market may be much higher if quality is high. Quality has its limits because the price will be obtained only if there is a buyer for the products at the offered quality level. 5. The type of product matters. Some products are designed to have a higher profitability. These products include high tech products and at a lesser level weapons and ammunition. The difference between the most profitable and least profitable products is not more than 15%. 6. Salary levels are important as with high salaries, productivity will increase and the corporation will make more products. This has its limits as the production levels do not grow at the same percentage as the increase in salaries and at some point, there is a break even that depends on all other parameters. 7. Upgrading the efficiency level of corporations has a very limited influence on their profitability. The main advantage is a decrease in the total number of workers. This will allow countries to set up more corporations with the same number of total population.
Moving weapons between countries in the empire is used a lot to enable some countries in the empire to wage war while the weapons were initially stored in one of the larger countries in the empire where assets are kept secured. This is designed to allow an empire to take some risk and keep some of its assets safe.
Weapon transports do require that the receiving country does have the manpower to absorb the weapons. If the receiving country does not have the necessary manpower and had suffered a very recent automatic de-activation of weapons, such weapon transports will be prohibited until the country is increasing its number of soldiers and officers and is able to absorb the weapons.
Population transfers will help of course as such transfers increase the numbers of people in the groups that are recruited to the army.
This feature is aimed at solving a problem with small countries that are quickly overloaded with many weapons and used to attack large countries while in fact, the number of people in the country is not able to support a large army. The de-activation process was insufficient to move the huge quantities of weapons to the reserves fast enough to prevent large attacks by a defunct army that did not in fact have any soldiers.
City Maps are available for all the cities in all countries. If you click on a city on the map, many details about the city are showing and a small city map. Click on that small map and a full map of the city will show.
It is possible to replace the map if you do not like it. It is also easy to move objects on the map or drag additional objects onto the map. More details will be added later. All maps are different.
Maps become larger if the city becomes larger. The existing objects on the map remain at the same location.
When you launch a sneak attack, you will not be able to return the attacking country into secured mode or temporary war protection in the next 24 hours, following the attack. A warning is shown when you go to the sneak attack page.
Game level awards are now set to zero if the player have purchased or sold a country or an enterprise in the past month (30 real days). The practice of selling large enterprises for the purpose of winning level awards is now more difficult and will not deliver any gold coins.
Level awards remain of course and will deliver large numbers of gold coins to players who are reaching the conditions that are set for such levels.
When ordering products it is possible to set minimum quantities that will trigger automatic orders and it is possible to set the ordering quantities for each product.
Minimum quantities and ordering quantities can be set in terms of Months use or in terms of Absolute numbers.
Months use can only be used for products that are used each month.
There are minimum and maximum quantities and minimum and maximum ordering periods. This is done to prevent ridiculous orders.
Very small orders can cause very large number of transactions across all the worlds and cause processing time to increase.
660. Lowering corporate salaries if the corporation is making losses and is in debt. [ top ]
The salaries in corporations are being reduced automatically if the corporation is in debt and making losses. The corporation must be losing money now, year to date and in the previous year.
Simcountry is giving free Blogs to each player. The blog is installed automatically on the name of the player and is available to the player.
The blog is available outside the game and free for use by the player, including possibilities for membership, text contributions by others etc.
The Blog is complete and has all the standard functions that can expect from a Blog and it is fully installed and ready for use when registration is complete.
Login can be done in two ways:
You can go to your Blog directly and login or You are logged in automatically when you log into Simcountry and can use the direct link.
Each player is the admin of her/his own Blog.
Simcountry may place some contribution from the game newspaper or the country newspaper into the player's Blog. These contributions can be removed or changed by the owner of the Blog or refused altogether.
Players are free to develop their own Blogs and even allow external ads.
When countries are in a very bad economic situation, salaries may start dropping to prevent very high shortages. Gradual reductions will continue, until the country finances are in balance or improved to a lower level of shortages.
Lower salaries reduce the cost of education, the army, health and government. They also reduce tax income from the population but the drop in cost is more significant while income from corporate tax may become higher.
A drop in salaries will also influence all state corporations and the country may end up with a very low salary level that will in fact turn it into a third world country.
Such countries may become attractive to private corporations because of the very low salary level. Producing in such countries will become very profitable.
Automatic drop in salaries will only kick in if a country is in very high debt and no cash and its monthly loss becomes such that the country can run into bankruptcy.
Countries and corporations with high level of cash and outstanding loans will pay back loans early. If a country has more than 300B in cash and it has loans outstanding, it will pay some of the loans early but its cash level will not drop below 300B.
The same will apply to corporations. If a corporation can payback a loan without dropping its cash below 30B, it will repay one loan early.
A function that measures the distance between any points in the world is can be used from the war overview map. Maps have been updated to include the distance measuring function.
665. Leaders and Different forms of Government [ top ]
Simcountry allows players to change their title and form of government. There are several leadership options, titles and various forms of government. The page can be reached from the country home page or by using the settings page.
There are no rebellions against any CEO corporations. This is the case also in large empires. Rebellions can damage state and national corporations. The corporations are also immune to war damage.
Private and public corporations are immune to external damage and their value depends on their success in business. This is another factor in the importance of private and public corporations that are immune to war and rebel attacks and are even more profitable for all countries.
The enterprise game is easier and is frequently played by presidents who use them to build private corporations in their countries and improve their economies.
Enterprises can easily achieve profitability. They can build up strategic stocks of many products, weapons and ammunition and deliver when needed to their allied presidents.
The corporations in the enterprise, both private and enterprise controlled corporations contribute to the enterprises, paying part of their profits as dividend to the enterprise.
668. Voting in federations and common markets [ top ]
Voting in federations and common markets has a set period allowing members to vote on any issues. The voting period to allow new members into the common market may be seven months but the result may be known long before because a majority of the members already voted one way or another.
The votes are counted during the voting period and the vote is immediately when the result is known and cannot be changed by the missing votes.
Examples: If there are 12 members and 7 voted against, the voting is closed and the result is no.
Enterprises can purchase or sell products on the market, trade raw materials with their own corporations and trade products with other countries and corporations. This includes direct selling and purchasing but does not allow long-term contracts. Strategic storage of products is now possible in all enterprises.
Enterprise trading is limited by a spending space of 500B per game month. Enterprises can only purchase products if they can pay for them. Net cash must be positive.
