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Thursday, July 24, 2008 - 10:56 pm  As a newb (whose not playing on Fearless Blue) I"m thinking I already bought more defensive weapons than I need, and I should build up everything else, first. The nearly 13B SC$ I'm spending every month on defense (assuming no further purchases) seems like a waste. Of course, if I don't buy more, I won't get to a 75 index. But why should I care?
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| Thursday, July 24, 2008 - 11:09 pm Keep them. Instead of decreasing your expenses, concentrate on increasing your income. Best way to do so, is close your State corps and invite Private ones. When your profit increases, you can continue your progressing to level 2.
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| Thursday, July 24, 2008 - 11:37 pm Rather than closing State corps, invite Enterprises to bid on them. The Enterprise often gets a better deal on an upgraded corp, rather than building a brand new one, and your country gets additional funds from the sale. Talking of which, my Enterprise, The Voltaire Trading Company, is looking for new countries in which to expand. Send me a message in-game if you are willing to accept bids on your State corps.
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| Thursday, July 24, 2008 - 11:50 pm I wasn't asking about whether to trash the weapons I already bought, I was asking whether I should keep buying. Buying more is the path to Level 2, but that seems like a distraction, right? I've already deactivated (but not gotten rid of) my offensive force. As for selling my corporations to enterprises, I think I like the idea. I'm pretty sure I could be getting better prices on buying materials, selling product, or both. But right now I don't want to devote the time to learn how to do that effectively. So selling the corps to someone who'll do a better job seems like a win all around. But what are the drawbacks? Eventually (not soon) I'll want to take over some C3s. Are there significant disadvantages in not controlling my own corps when that time comes? I can think of some scenarios where it might, but they seem far-fetched. So I'm inclined to sell. What do others think?
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| Friday, July 25, 2008 - 12:07 am Well, let me ask you this: Is the defensive force index the only thing you need to accomplish to reach level 2? If so, keep buying them.  Some extremely bad stuff may happen when someone controls all your corps, but that hasn't happened in years and I think I'm the only one around with the knowledge to give you with the axe. It's in everyone's best interest that the corps get run properly and so they will. There really is no fear in selling the corps.
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| Friday, July 25, 2008 - 12:08 am If someone really hated you they could do a mass relocate and do some damage to the economy, but at the same time they lose profit and ect.. Something like that can take quite some time to do. There isn't really draw backs aside from the fact that you can't create contracts yourself from them.. On the Plus side.your not paying any salaries, material,damage expenses on the corp... While they pay for all that plus give you a fraction of their profit. I wouldn't buy more weapons if your trying to increase your economy. Buying ammunition for future weapons and ect is a different story. Everything you need can be bought off the world market (mostly) unless you are in dire need of certain supplies don't worry about corps for taking over a C3 ~ Loki
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| Friday, July 25, 2008 - 12:09 am Sorry to double post. John R is right. If all you need is defensive force go ahead and go for it. The coins you get can pull you out of any hole you may have created..and then you can work your economy off of it. ~ Loki
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| Friday, July 25, 2008 - 12:13 am All is well, Loki.
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| Friday, July 25, 2008 - 01:58 am Yes, everything except the defense index is 87-100 (need 75), so all I need is defense for level 2. But the defense index is 21. From 21 to 75 is a lot of weapons and then a lot of maintenance once I buy them. If y'all say the 100 GC make it worthwhile, maybe it is. But the way I'm thinking, the 100 GC are essentially in the bank whenever I get to Level 2; it doesn't have to be now. And in the long run, I'll be better off building up my economy a lot, first. That's why I put postpone in the title of the thread, not forget Level 2. So, overall, does getting the 100 GC sooner and investing them give me a quicker road to major-league prosperity, or does minimizing military spending as long as possible give me a quicker root to major-league prosperity.
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| Friday, July 25, 2008 - 08:41 am The best road to economic prosperity is of course having lots of corps in your country. Private and enterprise owned public corps pay you a "user fee" of roughly 40% of the value of their monthly production, which is your country resources stat in the corp page. You can find the total of all the corps on your finance index page in your country. One thing that you can do to attract corps is to lower your tax rate. Never raise it over 30%, veteran players will avoid a high tax country like the plague. You will make more money off the country resources paid, which is basically a hidden tax anyway. Corps need people, especially professionals. The only way to produce pros is by having schools. If you have not done it yet, make sure you set your education priorities. The game default of 6 across the board is WAY too low. You want the total to be 120, not the 72 the default is. Anything more than that and the game will just prorate it to 120, anything less and you're not making efficient use of your schools. You mention that, except for your DI, everything else is 87-100. When it comes to the education index, if you want a country that can produce the types of workers corps need, a 120 index is minimum, 180-200 is better. Which means you need about twice as many schools as what the game says is good. IMO, waiting for level 2 is not a bad thing. I was a long time getting level 2 (because I took it slow and steady on the DI and concentrated on the other indexes), but had things under control enough that level 3 came just 3 RL days after getting my 2, and I'm on the verge of hitting level 4, two days after getting my 3. It's all a matter of personal taste. Something else you might look into is joining a Federation. There are usually a couple guys in the Feds who like to work with new players and help them get developed. I won't put a plug in for my Fed, but I will say that their help was invaluable. Good luck.
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| Friday, July 25, 2008 - 09:43 am Thanks. Yes, I've got 120. And the components of my education index were already a little over 100. The composite index hadn't caught up yet. I'll keep raising it. So now I'm trying to think whether going for the GCs and using them to buy nearly 20 million immigrants is better than more directly investing in the economy. I think I'll stick with economic investment and much the welfare index as much as I can. I've got a worker shortage, with maximum corporate upgrades each month, so I can't build corporations quickly. I started with 8 and I'm up to 14. 13 of them are state and one is private. I suppose I should lower the tax rate (now 30%) to encourage CEOs to buy some or all of the 13. I hadn't read about that user fee anywhere. It really works just like a tax? Will 25% get me any nibbles from CEOs? Should I go to 0% and just collect the fees? And how can I tell if I'm getting a good offer? (If you want to answer all my numerous questions, I'd be delighted, but any information is better than none. You've already been a big help.) I'm leary of feds. Should I be concerned about getting drained by a war?
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| Friday, July 25, 2008 - 10:47 am I would go for 0%. I have brought all 3 of my countries down to zero after experimenting in one of them. All the advice on the forums suggested going for zero, but I was a little wary of it in case it harmed my country's income. After lowering it in a very highly-developed slave country (one I bought, rather than built up myself), I found out that it doesn't harm my income and keeps the CEOs happy. The user fee is more than enough compensation to make up for the lack of tax income (and this from a committed socialist - see my posts in other threads!). If you're still worrying about having too many CEO-controlled corps in your country, don't. There's a limit of six that each Enterprise can own in a country (12 for your own Enterprise) so no single CEO can gain too strong an influence on your economy. You are part right to be wary of feds. I joined the United Confederation shortly after starting the game. The advice I got for building my country and learning about the war engine was invaluable. However, two weeks later they declared war on Allied Forces over issues that had been simmering from before I started playing (I make no comment about their veracity or otherwise). I pulled out of the Federation to avoid being dragged into the war and because I couldn't satisfy myself regarding the war's justification. However, you can avoid being dragged into wars that way whilst remaining in a Fed - if you only have one country, you can keep it in Secure mode indefinitely so no-one can declare war on you. Provided that you do not sign the War Treaty in your federation (which is a secret document - if you don't sign, no-one will know), your defensive forces will not join in any action to defend other member states. That said, most feds will frown on members who do not sign the war treaty so beware of doing this. Check the Golden Rainbow Federation List on the Simcountry Wikia for a list of some of the federations active on GR. I would also advise looking through the GR forum and Federations forum to see what they've been up to before you joined.
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| Friday, July 25, 2008 - 10:55 am My turn for a double post! I would suggest moving up the levels as fast as is reasonable. I've been playing since Feb and have hit level 4. Don't overextend yourself conquering C3s as one additional country to manage will double the cost of reaching the next level (the requirements are averaged across your empire). Each level gains you plenty of gold coins (see Game Levels on the Simcountry Wikia) some of which can be invested in reaching the next level. Once you reach level 7 and above, you gain a monthly award of gold coins which is sufficient to maintain your empire in the long term. In order to maintain your defensive index at 100 (for levels 2-5) you are best to reach 8 million population. Your current population should be sufficient to reach level 2. I've reached 27 million in my main country and still can't afford to maintain a large offensive army.
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| Friday, July 25, 2008 - 01:13 pm Damnit! Now I've turned this into a triple posting. Sorry! I've just updated the Game Levels page on the Simcountry Wikia. I've converted the list format into an easier-to-read table layout.
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| Sunday, July 27, 2008 - 10:11 am Thanks for stepping up to the plate, Zetetic. I got sidetracked by RL issues and just got a chance to check the posts. So I thought I'd save you from a quad post. Good advice all the way around. The "user fee" is known in game as the country resources used, Dvd. When you go to your corp page, it's listed in both the monthly financials and in the profit and loss section. Whatever the value of the corp's product is per month, the corp pays 39.99% to the country it resides in. (But your state corps don't pay the resurces fee, so getting a CEO to buy them should bump up your cash flow.) So if you have a corn company in your country it isn't going to pay as much as a FacMaintCorp, and so on. Another plus for having CEO owned corps is that they have a higher quality cap, thereby increasing the value of product, which in turn increases the money you get. One way to get offers for your corps would be to advertise here on the forum. Especially if you drop your tax to 0%. Got my level 4, and now it looks like 5 is gonna be a bear. Keep those indexes up, you're going to need them as you progress. And I'll tell you, the more pop you get the harder it is to keep the health index up to snuff. Back on the original track, the game is confusing in having a Defense Index and a Defensive Force Index. For your level 2, it's the Def. Force index that needs to be 75. The Defense index doesn't come into play until you go for level 5. Concentrate on garrisoning your Capital, cities, forts, towns, bases, and airports. If you're going to sell your corps you don't need to garrison them, if you keep them you need to garrison them too. When that's finished, the quickest way to bump the DFI is by buying and deploying Interceptor wings (400 interceptors and 12,000 missiles each) which are worth 1.39 points on your DFI. Helicopter wings (400 copters and 12,000 missiles) will add 0.86 per. 'Nuff for now.
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| Sunday, July 27, 2008 - 02:04 pm 'Nuff for now It sure is! I learnt a whole bunch too. Thanks.
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| Tuesday, July 29, 2008 - 08:30 am Also if for some reason you can't find investment from CEOs. You can always build your own, create IPOs then set the country portfolio target to 0% ownership, once you reach 0% share ownership Gamemaster enterprises will automatically obtain ownership of the corporation which become a CEO corporation.
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| Tuesday, July 29, 2008 - 08:35 am Double post because I want to keep up with the trend. About the game levels my advise would be, set yourself up to a realistic level to reach (one that doesn't require more then 2 countries), you can check to wiki article to see, set everything else up before military then go nuts, you will have so much gold coins you wont know what to do with them, and because of the population requirements you would have had plenty of time to build up an economy, then if you so wish deactivate you military until you reach, the requirements for that next level if you should choose to go that far.
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| Tuesday, July 29, 2008 - 10:06 am Good advice Angus. Pretty much exactly how I handled it. Like your advice on the having GM come in and buy the corps. Didn't think of that before.
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| Wednesday, July 30, 2008 - 04:08 am The requirements list for levels 4 and above include a minimum number of enterprise-owned corporations. Does that mean that A) president-only players can't get above Level 3, B) the requirement only applies to coes, or C) a country needs to have that many state-owned corps to get to Level 4?
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| Wednesday, July 30, 2008 - 04:20 am It needs that presidents need to open an enterprise and build it up to get to level 4.
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| Wednesday, July 30, 2008 - 07:37 am Keith is correct. If you want to bang out a 4 you need to open an enterprise and get 100 corps (or whatever it is) in it. Level 5 requires that the enterprise have 200 corps. At some point in level advance you need to have a second enterprise and something like 5 countries in your empire, along with something like 1000 corps in your two enterprises. So your answer Dvd is (A).
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| Friday, August 1, 2008 - 08:34 pm Oh, wow, i learned a lot from this thread myself. I see I'm still making mistakes. I thought I had too many schools (my index was like 170) and so I closed a bunch, now it's at 95 last I checked..... Now, about selling my corps to CEOs. Do CEOs bid on my corps when they feel like? Or do they just buy as many shares until they get a controlling interest in them? I'm slowing lowering my tax rate as well. All my corps are doing extremely well on WG. I figured out how to run corps properly. I have like 70% of my resources contracted locally, and the other 30% contracted to my common market. Needless to say, the lest of my corps is at above 110% prod, with 100% hiring. Also, should I eventually open up corps that produce defensive weaps, and just contract fully to my govmt, having them be nationalized, and without having to buy from the world market? or should I just not worry bout that? This is the most helpful thread I found yet. And I didn't even need to ask anything until just now!
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| Saturday, August 2, 2008 - 09:35 am It's a matter of personal choice on having the weapon corps in country. I use the various ammo types in my country, but the actual weapons themselves are a little more dicey. They will put a drag on your economy because of their cost, and also keep in mind that every weapon you buy will draw LLW and MLM away from your country at time of purchase. Ammo is cheaper, and doesn't require workers coming out of your economy. Remember, the weapons and ammo you contract out to your country will come out of your monthly spending limit, so if you tie up a lot of money into contracted weaponry and need to buy something you don't produce on the open market, you might not be able to afford it.
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