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Friday, March 30, 2012 - 07:59 pm  The recent round of reductions of the numbers in Simcountry resulted in more than 10%. Except for an unfortunate error in the Oil price, the balance returned or is in the process of returning to what it was before, less 10-20% Countries with an income of 120B are now seeing 100 and the cost went down too. There are some delays because many corporations have products that were bought for a higher price and they keep using them. when new products are purchased, the price of raw materials declines. This can take several days. Profits are lower in terms of SC billions and higher in terms of gold coins. Corporate values are now much higher than before. Values used to be 0.1 to 1 gold coin a year ago. They are now 1 to 20 gold coins. The reduction process should continue, hopefully with no errors, and numbers should continue to decline. Weapons and ammunition are now priced lower and the price of war should decline even more. Some older players may be unhappy as they are used to huge numbers but they are in general the greatest winners because their old stash of cash is now values 10 times or more what it was before. new players are now more stable than before with profitable and stable economies. The countries develop quickly and only the purchase of a very large army, too quickly can spoil the profitability.
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| Friday, March 30, 2012 - 08:37 pm Andy, is the calculation of Finance Index taking these changes into account? FI is a key index in levelling and I have been seeing mine drop steadily across the board since you started gradually reducing these things months ago. May I plead for a review of either the Finance Index calculation algorithm, or a reduction in FI required for ALL levels? If they have stayed the same, while profit across the board has dropped, it will make a significant difference to those of us who play the levels game. Hugs and respect Jo
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| Saturday, March 31, 2012 - 12:25 am Andy, sorry... I'm very confused... How can lower profits in SC equal higher gold coins? If you make less money, then don't you have less to buy GCs with?
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| Saturday, March 31, 2012 - 12:43 am Can the next update do something cool, like increase profits? Or productivity? Or drastically reduce cost of govt? Or anything that would show a positive effect on country income?
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| Saturday, March 31, 2012 - 01:54 am My Financial Index went from 115 to 99 in 3 days after these changes, and all of my empire members experienced noticable declines. What's worse it that the index is not coming back up. My CEO has lost $10Trillion in assets since Tuesday. Fix this please. T
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| Saturday, March 31, 2012 - 01:57 am Gothamloki, I think Andy's point is that you can now buy many more GCs with fewer SC dollars, so they are reducing how many dollars profit we can make, otherwise the number of GCs we could buy with it would get ridiculous. 1 GC used to cost 400 SCdollars, now it costs less than 100. So, effectively, we can buy > 4 GCs for the same number of SCdollars it used to cost for 1 GC. Andy - I understand the way GCs v SimCountry cash balances, but FI doesn't seem to be included in the changes ... Tom, that's my point exactly about FI. The CEO profit is a different issue, I think, and much to do with the spike on the price of products which will hopefully even out in a little while ... Hugs and respect Jo
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| Saturday, March 31, 2012 - 01:58 am "There are some delays because many corporations have products that were bought for a higher price and they keep using them." Well, this explains a lot on my end...
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| Saturday, March 31, 2012 - 02:50 am Recently i have seen general cost of goverment increase in my country from 74B/M to more than 145B/M why, i did not do much expanding only added about 24M people.
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| Saturday, March 31, 2012 - 02:54 am monthly profit, 50B+, after general goverment cost increases my profit has gone down -39 B-53 B-67 B-81 B-95 B-109 in less than 5 game years.
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| Saturday, March 31, 2012 - 03:17 am I did nothing and still saw 70B increase in government
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| Saturday, March 31, 2012 - 03:55 am MY FI index on FB main went from 212 to 180ish :s
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| Saturday, March 31, 2012 - 09:09 am i lost over 40 trillion so far and going down further
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| Saturday, March 31, 2012 - 12:22 pm The gov. cost depends on the population and is even higher when population is very high, but it also depends on the size of the empire. If the empire grows, gov. cost grows much harder. also, gov. cost depends on the price of services, energy etc. used by government. it makes sense to check and recheck the quality of products used by the country. I will check the FI calculation. it should depend on the relation between income and cost and not on absolute numbers. If needed, we will update. also, I will publish more data on how it is calculated. We know that country profitability is essential. Most countries are profitable. The game balance is not changed, just the numbers. It is returning to what it was and both extremes are fading. If anybody has a specific case, like losing 40T, please mail us with world and country names. There is nothing that could make and drastic change and even the Oil error effects have faded.
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| Saturday, March 31, 2012 - 05:28 pm Strange, I'm seeing govt costs going down and FI going back up again at last. On FB at least, seemingly the worst economy at the moment. I do miss the larger numbers when it comes to counting my beans and it seems to me, though I understand the balance with greater GC but less $$$, it seems to me that I would rather have more cash as cash is what is needed to do most things in game. Transferring your greater GC pile to cash hurts as the exchange rate is so low. The last 6 months of changes has cost me about a quadrillion in cash to keep everything afloat. How many GC is 1 quad SC$ nowadays...many thousands.
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| Saturday, March 31, 2012 - 05:57 pm Crafty has a great point. I have not understood (yet) why the move has been made to deflate cash value and inflate GC value. Like Crafty said, we use SC$ for a lot of things i.e. building infrastructure, population, etc. Can anyone explain this?
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| Saturday, March 31, 2012 - 06:45 pm In order to reduce values would it not be easier to just move the decimal point 1 place for everything? Then we would have smaller numbers but no levelling out. I understand what the GMs are trying to do in terms of bringing down values to smaller level as numbers got very large, and if that is just the case, then we'll be no worse or better off than we would have been in the long run. I think the lack of detail about how far the GMs want to reduce the numbers, how they do this (eg. reducing base values by x%) and how many updates this will be spread over, is the cause of great frustration. A clear plan would allow players to understand what is going on and what will happen. I've played for so long that I know I have to just ride out the storm. However, I understand the frustration of many players that see this as an unnecessary storm and doesn't allow them to see the correct values for products until the markets level out. For new players, this must be desperately confusing, and the quicker the full devaluation is implmented the better, so that players can make sense of the economics engine.
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| Saturday, March 31, 2012 - 06:52 pm As for government costs, it would massively help if we could have information on how they're made up. We need to know what products are used, the price, the quantity, the number of workers used and how much we pay due to the size of the empire. We should be able to see clearly the total costs and the penalty that we incur for the size of our empire. I'd like to know how much I pay as a penalty for the the size of empire in term of population and the number of countries respectively.
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| Saturday, March 31, 2012 - 08:20 pm Again, a prevailing question among a lot of players is this: Why are we moving to devalue SC$ at a huge rate while at the same time inflating the GC values? Reducing base values I get. What is puzzling is why the discrepancies are so large e.g. trading GC's for cash and buying GC's with SC$?? I would like someone to explain to me how that helps the players. How does that help the game?
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| Saturday, March 31, 2012 - 09:54 pm The more GCs you can buy, the more you're worth in real money terms and the more real money you can make. Smaller values shouldn't in itself create any long-term problems as a smaller amount of SC$ will still have the same purchasing power.
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| Saturday, March 31, 2012 - 10:37 pm From Andy "Most countries are profitable. The game balance is not changed, just the numbers. It is returning to what it was and both extremes are fading." Most countries are 1/2 as profitable as they were. Oil companies or not. The game balance HAS changed and not just the numbers. ??? You are living under a rock Andy. All you are doing is looking down the road and telling us that both extremes are fading based on what they Should do and not what is going on right now. Yes the numbers should eventually equal out, but they are not yet. Profits are sitll down, industries are still in distress and things are not improving. Stop telling us what should happen and take a look at what is happening, or is NOT happening. How many game years will it take before we climb out of the latest hole you put us in? The sky could be falling and you would tell us that is impossible because your mathamatic formula could not predict it. None the less you'd get hit in the head before you would believe us.
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| Sunday, April 1, 2012 - 03:34 am Thanks David.
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| Sunday, April 1, 2012 - 04:58 am Let it go QB. Just play and have fun.
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| Sunday, April 1, 2012 - 10:28 am sent this to gm no reply just looked at the total income for workers in Botulism and punisher on lu and the country punisher on lu total income of all workers 161,995.06M SC$ is nearly triple of botulism 64,795.49M SC$ but both countries have similar population and same salary and settings the result is punisher more than triples its income tax revenue whats going on most of my countries especially on lu are going backward
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| Sunday, April 1, 2012 - 11:07 am any compensation for losses
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| Sunday, April 1, 2012 - 11:56 am someone send me some development aid lol
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| Sunday, April 1, 2012 - 01:50 pm Lovely. Index dropped to 64. Woooo bloody hoooo.
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| Sunday, April 1, 2012 - 05:02 pm Andy, I'm not sure if this part of the update or not. I understand that government costs are related to size of pop and empire, but can we please have a reduction in the cost of government equal to the reduction in corp profits (10-20%)? The lost of profit is a direct loss, but compounded with govt costs that remain as they were or (in my case, just continue to go up) we are in fact getting hit twice. I just think it's fair to ask for some immediate balance in cost/benefit for the player.
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| Tuesday, April 3, 2012 - 01:11 am It sucks to want to be successful in this game. Well you work at it, even though naturally you shouldn't have half the time it takes to maintain an empire under these conditions in the first place. So you spend an hour or two everyday, relentlessly clicking to balance workers and costs to profits. After a month's long battle repairing the damage of not logging in for only 48 hours, your work is dashed. Your work and efforts pasted with diarrhea of update upon update. Farting in the general direction of your country isn't too fun when you have to be cautious of the runs. When one push to many can end up in disaster, and your undies soiled to your surprise. Shock and awe settle in and clickety click clack syndrome wears you down to simcountry depression. Logging in becomes painful, gameplay and interaction are dominated by futile efforts at managing your countries into profitability. "Saving the clicks" is so cliche at this stage it isn't worth the effort to save them. So should you quit? No. Truth be told, I stopped playing "the game" a long time ago. It is pointless and void, absent of substance. Not worth the effort of my daily attentions. I hold more value to the players, the reach the game has, and the people who once graced the chats. Being harassed by multiple personalities, an infinite and seemingly pointless number of changes, forcing an equal and infinitely futile number of reactions and adjustments to offset the changes is losing the "fun value" it once had and I have found myself wondering if this is even worth my attention anymore. We all feel like this, but who cares? They don't so why should you? Promote your way toward free and illegitimate accounts with no value toward the permanent premium players and we are headed down the road to simulation perdition. Where everyone plays free and it doesn't matter what you do or don't like about the game because you can quit or go play for free. Be real the only reason any of us give two chits is because we pay to play. But free accounts and the future of nothingness is all that matters and is the new frontier that has been elected in the place of dedicated paying players. Oh. And there it is Homer, all I have to say. Now even I have weighed in to no avail. Nevermind.
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| Tuesday, April 3, 2012 - 04:27 am I have to agree with Wendy. Six months ago I was at level 14, valiantly striving for level 15 and only one FI point off it, expecting not only to make it in a few weeks, but to stay there. Over half my countries were fully garrisoned and three of them were war slaves with serious offensive weaponry. Whatever the GMs have done since then, now I am back down at level 12, struggling to stay there, and all because of my falling FI. I have turned one of my war slaves into an econ country, raised my war level so that I could sell / destroy weapons in 80% of my countries and used the workforce in all of them to build more corps, but still my FI falls. No weapons, 100% private corps (most of the owned by me so they have good salaries and they are good, mature corps) 80M+ population and the countries are still struggling to hit 130 FI. Some of them are only just above 100 and still falling! It's incredibly depressing to log on day after day, build another corp, balance workers, think up every strategy you can to improve finance, and see the graph still steadily going down. I've been playing for 6 years but I've never seen this before. I don't pretend to understand this game so well that I can tell the GMs why. All I know is that it's happening, and nothing I can do seems to make any difference. As Wendy says, it's the people that keep me playing. But for how much longer? I have no idea ... Hugs and respect Jo
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| Tuesday, April 3, 2012 - 06:26 am I agree with Wendy and Jo. I've been playing for over 5 years and the recent changes have sent my countries into debt for no apparent reason. No weapons, 100% of my own corporations, corps are selling product, gov. cost increasing and I've changed nothing in my countries. I'm getting tired of this nonsense, and its about time the GMs started taking care of the paying members that have been here for a long time. As Wendy says, it's the people that keep me playing. But for how much longer? I have no idea ... I feel the same way.
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| Tuesday, April 3, 2012 - 01:36 pm +1 Wendy, Jo + Keto
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| Tuesday, April 3, 2012 - 08:41 pm It can't be helped.
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| Tuesday, April 3, 2012 - 08:56 pm I agree with Jo,Wendy,and keto. Especially keto's point. I am having the same issues. Been here the same amount of time and noticed things. The government costs are out of control while u cut profits. There is no balance it is less profits and increased costs. I thought the whole point of making corps bigger was for more profits. Then u tell us your cutting profits by 10-20%. U promise us one thing only to do another. I got a #3 war fighter losing less money then my main country. It makes no sense you messed with the war side of the game to the point there's no more wars. This time your killing the econ side of the game. How many players does it take before you see the error of your ways.
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| Tuesday, April 3, 2012 - 09:54 pm Well Smoke, i'll tell you something. Now that i'm in the red with -150b to -200b per month, if this carries on, i will DEFINITELY take another break from the game. I'm not gonna keep playing if i see my profits reduced from (corps) 220b back down to 120 - 150b. Then my costs increasing by 100b out of god damn no where. To hell with that.
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| Tuesday, April 3, 2012 - 10:02 pm Let's start with a basic request of asking for a breakdown of government costs. At the moment, we know what we see but we don't know why. Once we know, we can then challenge any issues with facts. For example, has the empire/populations penalty been reduced in line with recent reductions? As governments, we should know what we're paying for. Let us start on a constructive note and make constructive requests.
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| Tuesday, April 3, 2012 - 10:16 pm I can accept that. Constructive Request:- Could i have back my 40T that i lost to Gov costs? Thank you.
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| Tuesday, April 3, 2012 - 11:50 pm Yes. Ahem. Me too.
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| Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - 12:57 am Explain to me how you go from 108 billion a month government cost to 216 billion a month in just one month. Go ahead. Tell me. https://sim03.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=w3graph&miTable=cntrhist&miKey=2547&miColumn=vCcostOfGovernment
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| Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - 01:17 am So, let us ask for a breakdown of how government costs are made up. We need to know. We should know how many goods are used, how many people are employed and what the penalty is. We should also know the penalty is a fixed amount of x per million people + x per number of countries. Without this information we cannot lead our countries. Let us seek unity as the playing community and ask for this information. It's no good asking for compensation when we don't have the facts at our fingertips to judge any losses etc. Often, the GMs say government costs account for about 20-30% of income, so that would suggest a penalty on income and not the size of an empire?!?!?!?!? We should all be suffering the same penalty as we expand, and we should know it fully before expanding. We know large empires have more administrative costs but one can not lead if they do not know what they're leading. Unite in asking the GMs to reveal the penalty!
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| Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - 02:46 am I agree, we need to know how government costs are calculated.
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| Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - 03:35 am And where does the money go when its deducted?
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| Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - 03:44 am Ahh. I see said the blind woman... That age old request of "The formulas". It isn't just government costs we need, we also need to see how the WELFARE index is calculated and what role it is playing in profitability. It is just as likely that the government costs are on par and the welfare index is cutting production efficiency and killing the overall income. Income may be what the problem is relative to the increases in govt costs. I've noticed welfare decreases it could be me adjusting salaries to try and figure out what is ailing my economy but I would bet welfare is a really big factor here.
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| Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - 03:53 am I second David's post. That information is vital.
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| Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - 04:08 am I'm not sure welfare index is an issue. All the countries of mine that are tanking(literally in one day) have a flat line for welfare index
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| Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - 04:23 am I am in agreement with David's post.
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| Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - 05:37 am I also agree with David's post.
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| Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - 06:47 am I'm not exactly sure if it is myself Keto. In fact, no one can be sure of anything because none of us have a clue as to how it is calculated. But the one way to be sure is for w3 to publish it. And if anything is not working right, players can report any problems. If government costs are where w3 wants them, which is why I think they aren't really responding to this thread, it is very likely that the welfare index is suppressing profits. But again, there is no way to be sure of anything absent of the formulas.
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| Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - 06:50 am I also don't see why any of this is not front and center in the documentation. It doesn't make sense that w3 would have a valid reason for keeping us in the dark about how any index is compiled. This is why people go down the road to conspiracy theories because things don't add up. When you have to draw your own conclusions as to why things don't add up while the people with all the answers stay quiet, the conclusions often mirror players' suspicions that something isn't right. So why not have some transparency.
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| Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - 07:12 pm Losing about 12T a week as opposed to 1T a month... Interesting. This means in 1 month, i'll be rinsed dry of my finances.
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| Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - 08:21 pm I agree with Wendy and David. Just give us the info! You wont lose any power (control) by giving it to us. You still get to change the game any way you see fit.
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| Thursday, April 5, 2012 - 03:12 am If anything it will make us trust the GMs more. Right now, frankly we don't trust the GMs because we're being bled dry and don't know where the money is going. T
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