W3C - Game news September 10

Population birth rate

The birth rate is increased again. It is also continuing longer and then, at very high levels, it declines slowly to about 1% e (game) year.
Death rates are in general >1.0%.
The break even will be at a higher number of population.
Impossible to predict now but we will be able to observe.

Life expectancy is now computed correctly and will start to change in the coming days and land at a more realistic level.

Upgrades and profitability

Corporations that are being upgraded to become more efficient, will see a steeper increase in profitability.

Many types of corporations are now rewarding higher upgrade levels with higher profits.
At the same time, more automation products will be used in more corporations.

Just checked several countries.

The number of births increased and will increase more.
the number of death increased too but the distribution is different.
The numbers are smaller for younger groups and higher for the much older groups.

The graphs are always late in showing the results.
It will become visible in the coming days.

In these countries I saw the young groups decline and the older ones increase in numbers.

We want to see these trends flip over.
(Provided the health index is high and population not extreme.

HIGH index and EXTREME will have to be defined more precisely but we need to wait a bit.

We agree that this change is quite essential if we want to allow high population countries.

Andy,

Excellent changes, keep up the great work!

The rebalance of death rates for different age groups, will make high healthcare indexes viable. Before they were an +80 year old printing machine. Now they can genuinely help us grow. This will improve Simcountry's demographic distribution.

Great change to Corporation worker requirements at high upgrade levels. Automation is a major force transforming the real world. It's good to see Simcountry catching up to those changes.

Signed President of DanNation on LU

Great news!

More profitability is always a good thing.
Glad to see having high population countries will be a bit easier.

Printing machine? Haha.
not quite but it was prolonging the life of each age group in the same way.

we are now differentiating.

I just checked two countries again.
It does move in the right direction but it will not stop the decline any time soon.

next upgrade will probably do more.

Andy,

"Printing machine? Haha."
I'm glad I could make you laugh XD

"not quite but it was prolonging the life of each age group in the same way."
"we are now differentiating."
Does raising the healhcare index have different effects on each age bracket, or are deaths still reduced by the same % in each group, as healthcare improves?

"next upgrade will probably do more."
Awesome, I'm always happy to hear about future updates.

Signed President of DanNation on LU

The health index is doing more to prevent death in younger groups.
It also reduces the death rate in older groups but at a slower pace.

Increasing the index is becoming more attractive.

Andy,

Excellent. I've increased the education priorities for medical staff. So that I will be able to take advantage of the improved healthcare system.

Signed President of DanNation on LU

Andy,

Requarding some of the last rounds of changes. Items where added to industries, but the players where not notified of which items or the uses. Would you be so kind to clarify what the products where?

Also Andy,

Currently players are allowed to convert 100,000K people per month into Low/Mid/High level workers. This number was based when population numbers where smaller. However, with increases in population and sizes this number is very low! I know several players who have more educated positions then workers and the 100,000 limit is very burdensome.

May I request that the GM increase to the number to 200,000 or 250,000 per month in order to allow this to keep pace with the worker changes or population changes that are now in place?

Andy, SupersoldierRCP,

I have been thinking about this as well. With higher populations, some of the old caps, ie, maximum Demotions/Promotions, maximum Opening/Closing of Corporations, maximum Spending Limits, maximum number of Enterprise Corps, maximum number of National Corps, etc, will have to be raised or players will likely run into issues as their population grows.

By far the most pressing would be demotion/promotion limits, so that we can adapt to changing workforce needs.

Signed President of DanNation on LU

Super,
About supplies, the changes that I've noticed are:
All mining corps are using Robo's
Power companies and services increased Robo's
Cattle feed and Spices are using Peanuts
Other Food is using Beans, Cocoa and Coffee
Boats and Household Prod's are using Silver

I doubt we'll see a complete list from the GM.

JohnV,

Thank you for posting what you have found.

Everyone,

Wow, since the last update my population growth has gone through the roof. From about 22,000 per game month, to roughly 70,000 per game month. I'm not complaining, but it has made me have to order new infrastructure, and Corporations, a lot more often, haha.

Signed President of DanNation on LU

About population
I think the growth may have overheated. Look at the Health Index for any country it's dropping sharply. From a quick comparison at the graphs for the Health Index and number of hospitals it's going to take several new hospitals a month just to keep the index from falling. I was building 1 or 2 hospitals a day it now looks like that will have to be 5 to 10.

The demand for transportation and water has also skyrocketed.

I do not have a problem with purchasing the added infrastructure. I do wonder if that next week the GM makes more changes and everything flips again.

Population growth is increased temporarily because declines went too far (we did not find any structural reason) and we had to act.

even with our improvements in the recent upgrades, declines could continue another real month.

The "overheated" growth will start to fade away but only if the structural problem with the distribution of the population across the age groups is improved.

I will collect info about the addition of raw materials to some products.

It is not very significant at all.
It was done because some products were used in a very small number of other products. Sometimes a product was used in the production of a single product.
Increasing the use contributes to more stability.

Andy, JohnV,

I think John V is right. My population growth is out of control. 167,000 people per game month. In a country with only 50,000,000 people. That's an annual growth rate of 4% per game year. And it's still accelerating.

It's to much, how long before this "fade away" begins? I'm not managing to open enough new Corps fast enough to stop my unemployment rate from rising.

What's more, with the population figures changing so fast. It's incredibly difficult to figure out where my education priorities should be.

Signed President of DanNation on LU

Gentlemen,

I would have to side with the GM on the grow rate in terms of this being a short term fix.
Please allow me to explain.

Sure lower level nations might be hurting slightly, but that's not the bigger issue. I understand your struggle and if there's something I can do let me know.
However, in others nations that had stagnate population or even worse declining levels we had population ages that where UNSUSTAINABLE.
I had several countries where the combined populations of the 0-18 and 65+ demographics where near or above 50% of my population. Of that remaining 50% only a portion of that was able to join the workforce.
Right now 45% of my population in my main country is employed compared to the 35-40% it was at.
The issue was that the small nations where relatively fine, but the mid or larger nations really suffered from the population issue. In addition those are the ones that need advanced economies

Population is the greatest resource you can have.
players pay 6 GCs per million.

I would see this as an opportunity to grow the economy and create a positive cash flow on the long run.

we will not continue this for a long time, just enough to restore a more acceptable distribution across the age groups.

many countries also suffer from distorted numbers of older people, not helping the work force and increasing social security cost.

You just need to check your education priorities and availability of workers (The most important page in Simcountry),
and make sure health and education indexes are not falling.

Increasing population is not a good thing to complain about.

Whatever you do, do NOT sell population for GCs. Your indexes will suffer drastically.

Andy, SuperSoilder,

I certainly don't mind increased population. I was just a little surprised at the speed. It's already settled slightly, back to 110,000 population growth per month. At the rate of growth I was experiencing, I was worried I wasn't going to be able to open enough Corps to give them all work. I'd heard one person say they had 250,000 monthly growth, and was like oh god, what if it keeps speeding up.

Glad to hear the GM is on the case

Signed President of DanNation on LU

It is different for countries with small population size (up to 60.000.000), these are now in a better shape.

we are looking at the larger ones but it starts to reduce pace.