Purchase a new country

This might be a stupid question, but was a cost of purchasing a country without president always 0? Where's the point of running a war against C3 country then?

Just to clarify - I don't mean the first country you get when you register. I mean adding additional countries without president as slave countries to your empire.

Looks like a big ass bug! Just bought one Country to test.
Don't use this feature right now as I guess this will be repaired and reversed all buying actions soon

Yes, it seems ilogical :-) What would be stopping anyone to "buy" all free countries and plunder all their assets? :-)

Although I did later found this text under "account and membership>purchase a free country", which could mean that it is not a bug. I quote:

If you have a country in a world, you can peacefully extend it into an empire.

Find a free country (Computer Controlled) in that world.
Browse to the home page of that country and use the Purchase link. The cost is 0 Gold Coins.

Free in this context means free of president

I understand that, but it also says, that the cost is 0 Gold Coins.

Well, if you are too new to know, the regular price to buy a country this way is 300 GCs

Yes, I am too new :-) Although I beleive I even saw this last week when I started playing. So, the big question is, is this a bug or a deliberate change. I hope we get the answer soon. I "purchased" a couple of countries before I started this thread, but I will stop further actions in this direction for now. Thanks for your help.

Well, I'm no GM so my advice is only so you dont put too much effort into building up those countries when they might be taken away from you later. It still could be a Promotion as long as there is no answer from the GMs.