| Andy | Wednesday, April 20, 2022 - 06:32 pm 
The price of free countries you can purchase is currently 30 gold coins independent of the number of natural resources in the country.
The potential of countries with many natural resources is however much larger than the potential of countries with very few such resources.
We intend to set the purchase price for free countries, in gold coins, to the number of natural resources multiplied by 3.
The minimum purchase price will remain 30 gold coins. |
| Lakan High King Rene Sarabia Jr. | Thursday, April 21, 2022 - 03:36 am
Oh well I will just invade then Kek. |
| Tendo Ryu | Saturday, October 1, 2022 - 11:21 pm
How does one find countries with limited or no natural resource and therefore a lower purchase price? |
| Andy | Sunday, October 2, 2022 - 09:38 am
There is only a function to find countries with many natural resources.
we never thought anyone would want to avoid natural resources.
there is a huge advantage in having these resources.
A better solution is then to conquer such a country. |
| Charlotte XI | Monday, September 4, 2023 - 11:30 am
Some players don't want to go to war its costly and too drawn out. Its easier and faster to just purchase a free C3 country for the cheap and build up from there. |
| Taurus Froth | Monday, September 4, 2023 - 04:52 pm
Just found one of those countries totally by accident but didn't think about buying it until I saw this post. It has over 9 trillion in assets and 8 natural resources. If I sell everything in it including the food from peoples cupboards I could easily walk away with over 7 trillion dollars. At 30 million pop though I'll probably sit on it awhile and transfer pop as well. Thank You.
The way I found it was shopping Gamemaster Corporations and looking at corps without full employment. |
| Josias Jorvick | Tuesday, September 5, 2023 - 04:01 am
Happy birthday!!! |
| Eeeee OOOooo | Tuesday, September 5, 2023 - 06:51 pm
Can someone explain to me if I'm not using this feature correctly?
I just looked at buying a country for 30 gold coins, but the cost is actually 216 gold coins because of natural resources? I'm not interested in paying 216 gold coins for this country, so I'm wondering if I'm just not clicking the right things. I have ~100 gold coins in my account.
I am looking at the country in question b/c of location, so I have no idea if that is a high number of natural resources or not. 
 |
| Banedon Runestar | Tuesday, September 5, 2023 - 09:21 pm
If you want to have another country, it's going to be far cheaper to build a military and take it over by force.
You can purchase an ungoverned country, but because of their natural resources, it'll be at a steep price that's not really worth it.
This was added because people would buy a nation, plunder it of resources, then abandon it.
The value in game-cash extracted dwarfed the cost in gold coins spent, so Andy made buying additional countries economically infeasible. |
| Eeeee OOOooo | Tuesday, September 5, 2023 - 09:36 pm
I've never bought a country before and only ever conquered. This one is 15,000km away from where I'm located though, hence me considering the purchase. Weapons don't reach that far.  I don't really feel like paying 20+ USD of value for the country either.
I'd like to echo Tendo's question from above. How can I find countries that don't have natural resources? Part of the reason I never bought countries is I more or less followed your advice and always found conquering countries far more cost-effective. |
| Eeeee OOOooo | Wednesday, September 6, 2023 - 01:58 am
Also, I'm realizing I'm forced to increase war level each war, so I'm punished extra if I want to try to conquer my way there, even if I would just dump the countries.
|
| Banedon Runestar | Wednesday, September 6, 2023 - 05:13 pm
To answer your questions:
1. Every country has *some* resources, there's no way to avoid it.
2. The C3 war level doesn't scale up each time.
It stays at a certain level for a few wars and gradually increases.
I think you fight 1 @ WL1, 2 @ WL2, 3 @ WL3, etc. |
| Eeeee OOOooo | Wednesday, September 6, 2023 - 06:11 pm
Thanks Banedon. Some follow ups:
Why does war level have to be pushed up though? What is the reason for that requirement? I'd argue that being able to beat war level 5 c3 vs war level 10 is just a difference in assets, not at all in skill. The c3s use the same weapons systems in the same way, there's just more to shoot down at higher levels. You're not a better player at WL 10 than WL 5, just probably a richer one.
Why make it so costly to acquire more countries? It just reduces the amount players can play. Why not be able to stay war level 3, and simply not get the bonus gold coins, or have the option to fight at war level 3 for expansion purposes? It seems the war levels just deter players from playing more than they incentivize anything.
Last I played it was like 1 or 2 wars per level after 3. I can't remember where I stopped, maybe war level 10? You certainly can't just *stay* at level 4, for example and keep expanding.
As you said: "1. Every country has *some* resources, there's no way to avoid it."
Why are countries advertised for 30 gold coins if they cost many times this and it's almost impossible to find anything that costs less than a 3 month membership? It's too expensive for many/most players to expand, which again just reduces the amount players play. Generally, less ability to play = less fun had. |
| Banedon Runestar | Wednesday, September 6, 2023 - 06:54 pm
I believe that if you're buying a 1st country on a planet, it's 30 GC.
For additional countries you pay the additional resource cost.
As to why the C3's level up at all...
1. For the "challenge"
2. I recall some Game Levels require (or used to) certain War Levels to reach |
| Eeeee OOOooo | Wednesday, September 6, 2023 - 07:16 pm
Agreed, Banedon.
I guess my question is do you think it should be required to be "challenged" every war or every other war without having a choice to play war and settle at a certain level?
Or
Do you think some players would enjoy being able to re-play lower levels to expand their empire? I don't imagine many players are buying c3s that cost 100-200-300 gold coins, so what other options to do they have for expansion?
It used to be very different and simpler to expand using game mechanics. I don't imagine it hurts any players to resume those older mechanics. It seems that all changes are focused on making it harder to expand and thus harder to have things to do in the game. If the goal is to limit the number of countries a player can acquire, I just wonder why. There are game mechanics already in place that penalize empires of more than 10 countries.
There's only so much you can do with one country, and if players would like more, I think it makes sense that they could be rewarded for spending time logged in, playing. These are the types of events that got me hooked when I started. Being able to expand without exponentially increasing costs of attacking other *computer* countries doesn't seem like a ton to ask for from my point of view. |
| Yo Zhou | Thursday, September 7, 2023 - 10:36 am
I personally think the whole thing with buying a nation and it costing gold at increasing levels is personally stupid. Who cares if they are plundering it for resources, same thing happens when you invade and conquer a nation, nothing stopping me from doing that.
Let players decide what's best here I say, not the GM. The nations get reset anyways and some of us actually try to build a viable empire with nations we purchase. Unfair to limit us for the idiocy of the few. |
| Yo Zhou | Thursday, September 7, 2023 - 10:36 am
I personally think the whole thing with buying a nation and it costing gold at increasing levels is personally stupid. Who cares if they are plundering it for resources, same thing happens when you invade and conquer a nation, nothing stopping me from doing that.
Let players decide what's best here I say, not the GM. The nations get reset anyways and some of us actually try to build a viable empire with nations we purchase. Unfair to limit us for the idiocy of the few. |
| Yo Zhou | Thursday, September 7, 2023 - 10:36 am
I personally think the whole thing with buying a nation and it costing gold at increasing levels is personally stupid. Who cares if they are plundering it for resources, same thing happens when you invade and conquer a nation, nothing stopping me from doing that.
Let players decide what's best here I say, not the GM. The nations get reset anyways and some of us actually try to build a viable empire with nations we purchase. Unfair to limit us for the idiocy of the few. |
| Banedon Runestar | Thursday, September 7, 2023 - 08:26 pm
It's not idiocy, it's reality.
Andy takes in RL cash and converts it into in-game assets for you.
That means there's an actual exchange rate of RL $ into in-game $, be that GC or BobBucks.
You can (or at least at one time could) reverse that process and convert BobBucks into GC and then convert those GC into RL $.
Or skip the middle stage and go straight from BobBucks to RL $.
If someone can take a C3, extract massive amounts of BobBucks from the natural resources, and then convert the gains back into RL $, Andy's basically paying that person to play.
If lots of people do that, the game goes under because this is likely Andy's side-line, and I doubt he has any interest in making it a cost-center. |
| Eeeee OOOooo | Thursday, September 7, 2023 - 10:03 pm
You can only buy game cash from Andy, the inverse isn't true. You can't sell to other players either.
The only way to use game cash is in game, so Andy isn't paying anyone to play. |
| Yo Zhou | Sunday, September 10, 2023 - 02:20 am
Yea ive never seen that be an issue nor has it happened, the measure is at best a future anxiety based ideal of such a scenario but its still so far off its just plain nonsense at this point, again, I was still able to purchase well over 12 nations, 12, and thats just from the GC i had stockpiled. so adding cost at increasingly levels still results in the same plundering, just with a few extra steps. |
