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Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 11:23 am  We have introduced a system for Natural Resources. Until today, you could set up corporations to produce any natural resource in your country. Mining was possible for all natural resources, unlimited and the corporations could produce for ever. We have now introduced a new system to manage such resources. Natural resources now appear randomly in countries. You may have a lot or none at all. New resources are discovered from time to time. When you have a certain resource you can start a corporation to mine the resource and produce the products. The quantity of a natural resource in each location is a known and it is limited. The corporation producing it will close when the resource has been depleted. The natural resources page is added. The link is on the country header page, under the Indexes button. You can see the natural resources in your country. You can see what other countries have and you can find the countries where a specific natural resource is found. (That tab is under construction and will be added within one week). Full members and countries without a president can build these corporations. Enterprise CEO's cannot. Free players may have such corporations in their countries but cannot start new ones. Existing natural resource corporations in enterprises and in countries owned by free playing members will disappear in time when the resources are depleted. New corporations, setup to mine the natural materials, will have enough product to last 40 to 480 years at full production capacity.
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 11:44 am Please read what we published. This message is an error that will disappear in several hours. No corporations will be closed. The message already disappeared on Kebir Blue. It will disappear on all other worlds at about 11:00 am EST.
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 11:50 am I removed a comment here that was based on a misunderstanding and an error in the new functions. No corporations will be closed. Please disregard the message showing next to raw materials corporations. We will run an extra month shortly and hope to get rid of these messages even earlier. We expect some raw material corporations to start depleting their existing resources in about 3 months.
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 11:54 am The natural resources system will probably require players to cooperate more and make sure their industry receives the materials it needs. Others may decide to change the mix of corporations they have and have a very long preparation time to do so. We also think that some may increase the size of their empires by war or by purchasing a country for a ten times lower price and make sure they have more natural resources.
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 11:56 am Wow... This is pretty huge. On the one hand I really like this change. It will ad a feeling of realism that I really like. I think that a lot of players are going to dislike this change. I personally know several players that have hundreds if not thousands of mining corporations. They wil feel... screwed... Are the prices of these products also going up?
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 12:02 pm then raise the cap for no of countries regarding rebelion problems "The quantity of a natural resource in each location is a known and it is limited. The corporation producing it will close when the resource has been depleted. " who would build such corps that run out of materials and close after they costed a ton to upgrade ? especially when corps run for years at negative profit till they upgrade
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 12:03 pm The price of mining products will increase much higher if there are large shortages. The top level for pricing is already increased. These corporations will become major money makers. For those who have them now, it is good news. They will make more profits. Any depletion of resources will take months to materialize. For players who said they have nothing to do, this is a new dimension to Simcountry that will add all kinds of dynamics, potential war, search for resources and extra rewards. For those not interested, it will remain possible to purchase what they need.
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 12:06 pm all products have factored in supplies in chain from natural resources prices for natural resources up, other products stay the same, guess what happend with all the corps (as all of them have natural resources in their supply chain) in simcountry and basically whoever had such corps 1000's of them in their CEO now practically prints free trillions however you facet it, this is bad
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 12:09 pm Vladian, your comment on the rebellions makes sense, I will look into it. The natural resource corporations are going to be very very profitable. They will also last 90 to days to 2.5 years to deplete. The average is 5 months. We will make sure the parameters are set in a way that will make it worthwhile to own them. The situation where everyone could produce anything without a limit was too simplistic.
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 12:12 pm A very pessimistic view Vladian. You can just keep buying these products on the market. The price will be higher but we will not let corporations become less profitable. people who make the effort, find these materials and produce them will make more profits. The resources game is open for all. I resources become really hard to find, countries will "discover" more natural resources.
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 12:14 pm If you think about it for a minute, you immediately understand that we could not announce this before it is implemented.
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 12:17 pm there are shortages of everyting, including mining products if the max prices for those increased then the profits for all other type of corps in simcountry decreased
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 12:18 pm Andy, you are right that you should not have announced this in advance. That would have been even worse. This could also become a reason for war. Especially for rare materials like uranium. Like I said before, I really like this.
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 12:22 pm Very much looking forward to try this out! It is interesting to understand this new dynamic and see how to best use it. I think it also makes sense to improve functionality which allows to change corporations from one type production to another. I image that players will be building and closing much more corporations than today. One of the options is here: Promote of changing corporation type
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 12:30 pm A ============== instead of rising the max price for mining that makes all other corps less profitable better would have been to increase base production of mining corps. this would lower shortages and also dont affect profitability ofall other corps B =============== even if a corp runs 20 months at big profit , when you close it, if you dont get back the cash in it + value of supplies, you lose money. so i still dont see why would you build such corps now. and also that is very disconnected from the existing CEO mining corps that run magically. solutions would be: a) dont change max price, increase base production for mining corps b) make closing a corp refunding all cash in it + value of supplies in it c) give all CEO's 1 product change per mining corp to other class of products d) make exsiting CEO mining corps to follow same rules as new mining corps after a couple of weeks after giving them product change vouchers
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 12:31 pm Vladiam, You are right. we know that. The math is simple. We will however, increase (again) the profitability of all corporations to make sure they remain at least at the same level of profitability.
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Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 12:35 pm  Does this mean I can build 4 Oil corporations? Would it be possible to add value in SC money of these resources? 
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 12:39 pm price increase also has some other effects, who had stashed mining products .... much simpler to make them more profitable by increasing output and not changing prices , that has a domino effect and some collateral issues like the one above
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 12:53 pm i see CEO corps now have around 1000 months worth of mining resources on counter left this mean when that qty reaches 0 they will close ?
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 02:15 pm Lord, Every line is one corporation you can build. Vladian, the quantity produced each month is subtracted from the "remaining" quantity. you get a warning when nearly depleted. They close when quantity goes under zero.
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 03:19 pm Vlad when corps close for any reason, the cash is deposited the following month. You can see it in cash log. This happens for natural disasters, war, or even your own close requests.
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 03:36 pm This seems like an interesting change. It will take some adjustment but I think it is going to be good for the game. I have around 900 oil corps on LU and another 900 on FB. I will be losing many corps, but I will adapt and overcome. I would be shocked if anyone will be losing more than me haha. Change is good for the game. This will be fun. I am looking forward to the increased profitability before my sweet sweet oil corps are taken from me.
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 03:40 pm I think that the error messages in corporations are now all gone. I hope this misunderstanding is over. no corporations were closed.
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 03:42 pm Andy corporations that do not require natural resources still show the natural resources section in their corporation page. It lists the resources available as 0. This may confuse players. Could it be changed to say "unlimited" or something to that effect. Or just remove it entirely from corps that do not require it.
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 03:53 pm Found a bug. If you put a build request for a corporation that uses natural resources and then you cancel it, the resources disappear from your country.
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 04:57 pm Yes, I mentioned this bug in my description in the game news. we will fix it ASAP. True. the resource disappears. I will think about a solution. I also know of a special case where you build the corp, and then can build another one. complex feature and shit happens.
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 05:03 pm This is an awesome change, should dramatically alter the game play. One suggestion would be that perhaps wood and rubber being they are both plants and renewable should be handled a bit differently. Seeing both will regularly self replace. Or perhaps they should have a regrowth rate, if you use harvest more than so much per month you will run out. The rate of regrowth could vary based on nation.
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 05:56 pm I understand why Enterprises aren't allowed to found these corps, but I think you would have more interesting gameplay if they could, but the host nation was required to approve the construction first. IRL gov'ts sell 'mining rights' to large corporations all the time, and establishing a premium, on a per-unit basis, that countries would receive in exchange for allowing private-sector development of their natural resources would definitely encourage cooperation between CEOs and Presidents since CEO-held resource corps are immune to attacks. Also, do efficiency upgrades extend the life of a resource deposit? If not, I feel like it should. That would make upgrade investment in such corporations more worthwhile.
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 06:51 pm I will respond in more detail to this tomorrow as I have many questions and concerns on this change. Although I will reluctantly like the change for now. I think it may bring in too much realism into the game.
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| Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 09:09 pm It is interesting to see that most people who have been playing for a long time seem to like this change more then the relatively newer players. Despite the fact that they are the ones losing the most corporations and money.
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| Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - 08:27 am Wow, Epic changes are here. We've finally depleted these mega worlds, the age of abundance is coming to a close, it's time to search for those natural resources. Hopefully the GM team will be on hand to fix any unintended bugs that might happen. With a change this big, there are bound to be some wrinkles to iron out. Thanks to the WC3 team for all the work they have been putting in, we really appreciate it. This will add a whole new form of game-play to Simcountry. Signed President of DanNation on LU
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| Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - 12:17 pm Great addition to the game, my thanks to the GM's. I'm glad you gave the existing corps a supply to allow us time to adjust. Andy I have a few questions. "Natural resources now appear randomly in countries. You may have a lot or none at all." Are the resources distributed equally or is Sand and Stone more abundant than Platinum and Uranium? "New resources are discovered from time to time." If I have a country with 120M pop shouldn't I be able to discover more resources than a C3 with 15M pop? "You can see what other countries have and you can find the countries where a specific natural resource is found." Could you add the Resources button to C3's main page so that from the map you can see what resources are in that country? Could you add a Resource Tab to the Empire view so that we can get a overall view of our resources? Could you add a Resources tab to the Corporations page so that we can see what each company has left? Thanks again,
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| Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - 01:39 pm Thank you for your responses. We will of course keep checking how it works and will fix any error you or we, find. We will complete the search function for natural materials ASAP. All existing corporations have a remaining quantity in the ground that is around 100% or more of the normal capacity. No one is loosing money here as they will all make more money from these corporations. For now, we will just complete the natural resources page and will not start adding more functionality. Our experience is that good improvement ideas take some time to mature. We do not think that the amount of available nat materials has anything to do with the size of the population. This is not how it is in our real worlds, and although we do not try to be very realistic, this case does allow us to be more realistic than with other features. A large population country however, is more powerful and can do more to get more natural materials under its control.
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| Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - 05:02 pm I am foreseeing a big problem in a few real life days when oil reaches it's new peak price. Electric power is the main user of oil and I can see those corps becoming unprofitable even at peak electric price. Their raw materials cost have already risen around 0.2 billion per month and oil is no where near peak yet. Has any testing been done on the second order effects on corp profitability caused by rising mining product prices?
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| Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - 06:23 pm so with this new change here are my questions. 1. When a country runs out of all natural resources will new ones appear in time or will that country never be able to build mining corps again? 2. If a country only has one line of a resource like say one line of coal are you then limited to only building one coal corp or can you build multiple and mine the resource quicker? 3. Does this mean that at some point a world could potentially run out of natural resources and technically die?
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| Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - 06:44 pm 1) you can get more over time according to Andy. 2) yes. One Corp per line. 3)I foresee shortages but we will likely never run out. Also if shortages get too bad the game magically creates some to prevent world collapse.
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| Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - 07:30 pm My country has 2 lines for oil but I have 15 oil corps. So 13 of them will be closing? Will this happen slowly? Will I be notified each time one closes? Can I convert them to something else (not mining) without losing their upgrades? I only have 2 lines of resources that I don't have a corp for. I could convert 2 of them to those I guess but that is still a loss of 11 upgraded corps.
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| Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - 07:45 pm Hi Zentrino, Corporation will only close in 1000 game months which is half a real year, so you have a lot of time to get nice profits from them before they close. The price will raise up to 100% from current max price level so mining corporation will become extremely profitable. Don't do any conversions right now!! Don't close any mining corporations!! Keep all mining corporations!!
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| Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - 10:18 pm 100% agree with Mndz. Don't make any big changes yet. The 1000 month grace period is going to be super profitable for everyone. If you open the corporations Zentrino you can see how much oil each of them have left to mine. Any new mining corporations will only be allowed to be built if your country has the resource, and it will be limited to how much is available in your country.
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| Thursday, October 24, 2019 - 10:16 am Indeed one line is one corporation. If you build it, the line will then disappear. More natural resources will be found and added to the countries once in a while. There will be no problem with the profitability of corporations. Profitability is increasing and will increase more and indeed, the cost of natural resources will increase. we hope that players will make an effort to produce more natural resources. it is up to you to do this and it can increase your profitability by a high margin. If you just sit and wait, your profitability will on average remain unchanged. depending on your industry, it could increase a bit, or decline a bit.
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| Thursday, October 24, 2019 - 03:22 pm Questions and Suggestions 1. How does one 'discover' new natural resources? 2. In searching and looking for natural resources how can I see what natural resources are in which country? Can I see this in any player or computer controlled country and if so how? 3. If aiming for realism than have natural resources according to geography and climate -example a country by the equator in other words a tropical country one should be able to find things like rubber and oil etc... Countries in a mountainous area should be abundant and rich in mining resources. 4. Why do all natural resources have to deplete? How bout each country is limited to two natural resources that never deplete and has one or more additional resources that deplete over time. 5. Why not add agriculture and food corps to the list of natural resources as they are in fact natural resources. And again limit according to geography in other words a polar country should not be able to grow cotton. This can be effected in the game by the coordinates on the map (for programming).
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| Thursday, October 24, 2019 - 03:39 pm Please read Andys posts. Litterally every question you asked has been answerd by him.
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| Friday, October 25, 2019 - 01:34 pm Resources are distributed randomly across all countries. We manage the discovery process for now and will make sure nothing is even close to running out. In the real world they deplete. Quantities underground are limited. If they do not deplete, what is the point of the entire resources game. We think that agricultural products can be produced everywhere and currently are. We might add new products but these will be ones you need to mine. Example: rare metals and other metals that we do not currently have. No urgency. we will see how this works. Players may succeed in securing some natural resources in large quantities in their empires and then specialise in industries that use these resources.
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| Friday, October 25, 2019 - 05:57 pm Hi Andy, Prices for natural resources have stopped raising, should we expect another round? My Oil corporations are making like 1,4B per game month, so there a lot of space for increasing this even more. I think 3-5B per game month would the the profitability that would encourage people to actively build them. 1,4 in my world is just above average.
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| Friday, October 25, 2019 - 06:00 pm 3-5B per month for people with 1000's of them ? extra 20T per real day for doing nothing ? why anyone would be playing after that, those people already won the game for the existing corps fixed costs should have been increased to keep the profits at the level before the change
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| Friday, October 25, 2019 - 06:10 pm Vladian, you need to understand that all this is temporary. If you increase the production amount by 100% you will have 500 months instead of 1000 so the amount people are receiving in total will not change. Also you should not worry about people who have thousands of corporations, 100T more or less will not change their situation, but that will change situation for thousands of players who do not have thousands of corporations. you are one of these people.
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| Friday, October 25, 2019 - 06:23 pm i dont know seems to me like a 20T per day for 250 days or so, absolutely free gift for a few players would completely unbalance the game especially since FB will be practically open season in a few weeks (not that i care as i dont plan to exist on FB but the people stomped will have something to complain when their attackers can lavish in this free, 0 effort, gifted income) to clarify, im all for new mining corps to make 10B per month but existing, prior to change, mining corps should have been tuned to pre change profits.
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| Friday, October 25, 2019 - 06:41 pm I understand your point and you also need to understand that there should be some grace period which is not easy to manage. I think the current W3C strategy is very generous and should be appreciated by players. maybe this increase in profitability will happen when initial 1000 game months period will end and it makes a lot of sense. In the past corporations were making up to 25B a month with costs 5-10B which allowed to have 15-20B profit per single corporation per game month. Large cash boost in the game allows to sustain great armies and fight great wars, nobody is just sitting on pile of cash.
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| Friday, October 25, 2019 - 06:47 pm @Leslie No they were not! And furthermore I was asking Andy and the GM's not you! But thanks as always for your input!
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| Friday, October 25, 2019 - 10:52 pm @Vladian You have a good point. I would like to put some things in perspective. Not to put you down but to explain why this will have almost 0 impact on the game. I am not a big player, I have a few countries and a couple of mid size ceo's. The income from those countries, my ceo's and the trading I do on the world market are already enough for me to earn enough money that I can buy almost anything I want. There are only a few players with 1000's of corporations. Those players already have more money then they can spend. They are more worried about how they can replace those corporations. Replacing them will require a lot time after those mining corporations close. Time is worth much more then the money they will earn. Will those 3/4 players earn a lot of money. Yes. Will it unbalance the game? Not at all, those people can already out spend you, me and most of the people in this thread combined by huge margins. @Michael Sure... As always thank for your input. It is more important to help the larger group of players. I hope this puts your mind at ease.
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| Saturday, October 26, 2019 - 05:21 am Well, that was a weird editing mistake. My comment @michael was supposed to be below the rest and read: Sure... as always thanks for your input.
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| Sunday, October 27, 2019 - 04:57 pm What kind of timeline can we expect for discovering new natural resources? I just built corps for all of my resources empire wide and am curious to see how long it takes to get more. Also, if you don't use any of your resources, will more be discovered at the same rate or do you eventually hit a maximum amount.
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| Tuesday, October 29, 2019 - 10:01 am I do not think that many players have 1000 or more natural resources corporations. Previously there was a discussion here about how these people are going to make huge losses when these corporations will close. so what is it? profits or losses. Building natural resources corporations should be very profitable also because these profits are for a limited period and the ability to build new ones if not trivial. This is in fact a very good argument to limit the numbers of corporations in enterprises, certainly not to increase the number. There are currently between 15.000 and 28.000 places per world where natural resources are sitting in the ground. There is no need for more discovery. we will see how this works before we make any changes in the price structure or any additional discoveries.
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