W3C - Game News May 15, 2012

1. Game Levels requirements and game level awards

Many changes are taking place in the requirements for game levels. Some are connected to the upcoming game level tutorial that will allow new players to move up to game level 2 very easily while explaining what needs to be done.

Other changes are aimed at making game levels differ more from one to another and in the process, increase the number of gold coins that can be obtained with each game level. Larger numbers of gold coins are now awarded for most game levels.

The cash requirement and population requirement have been increased slightly for the lower levels and more for the higher game levels.

The defensive index requirement is increasing in the process of phasing it out. Reaching higher game levels, now depends on either reaching the required war level or achieving the defensive index requirements.
The defense index level is now a separate requirement for reaching higher game levels.

The war index is also added as a separate requirement but the values needed, are such that it will only influence empires with countries in war and in a devastated condition.

2. New tutorial for beginners

A new tutorial now guides new players through several steps and brings them to game level 2. The tutorial is intended to show several basic functions of Simcountry. Another tutorial is being developed. It will guide new players through their first war against a C3 country and show them how to win the war. We expect the war tutorial within one month.

3. Next Advice

A "Next Advice" button is added and allows players to ask for a next advice instead of waiting for one on their next log in. Checking each advice and making the recommended changes will make it possible for players to quickly improve their country's economy.

4. Searching a country for your Corporation

When a CEO is searching for a country to setup a corporation, it is now possible to select a country that has the workers for the corporation and a reasonable tax level. The function is also available when you look for a country to move your corporation to.

The function was promised long time ago and will hopefully shorten and simplify the process of finding a place to place your new corporations. Depending on its success, we might add more functionality.

5. Security Council - Financial support

The amounts given by the security council on request of players is now reduced from 4T to 2T. The change is a result of the declined pricing in Simcountry. 2T in the current situation is more meaningful than 4T in the previous situation. Contributions by players to the SC fund are now smaller.

The security council funds on all the worlds have a lot of cash to continue their support to requesting players.

6. Direct Trading

When putting offers and requests for gold coins on the direct trading market, there is a maximum period for these requests to stay on the market before they are either being traded or removed for lack of interest.

The period for offers to remain on the trading market is now 6 days. When the offers are removed after 6 days, players can replace them by new offers for a period of 6 days.

Hey, why didn't you publish that you raised the minimum population for transferring population between countries was raised again by a whole 10M from 35 to 45? Some of us actually use that feature.

Great news on the Ceo front. Been a long time coming that feature. Congrats.

Security council untied grant down from 5T to 4T and now 2T.

That just seems a mean move. As you say, there is a large fund in all Security councils coffers. 4T stilll doesn't go a long way, a newb can rack that up in debt alone quite quickly. And now only 2T? Thats just miserly and completely unnecessary.

And I have been reading all about how you wish to make it easier for new players.

Yes the CEO front was a big plus , I like the feature alot but Andy do you think you can add a page where it will show all the eligable corps that can be IPOed. This would reall help alot, any feature than takes less time to do and makes things less annoying realy help. Overall andy nice update.

The purchasing power of 2T now is much larger than 4T did when product pricing, weapons and ammunition were 3 or 4 time more expensive.
Also the contributions to the fund should decline to follow the lower income and cost in the game.
It seems that it is very hard to understand the fact that all numbers have declined. countries now spend 60B where they used to spend 300B.

Beginner countries are now doing quite good. very profitable, low cost and profitable corporations.
This is not new but has improved considerably in the past weeks.
There are very few countries making losses in all the worlds (last count was 460, an average of less than 100 per world) and nearly all of them are part of a profitable empires, and are used to build the army.

A new tutorial helps beginners to move to game level 2 very quickly and will help noobs to improve their position even further.

They also receive additional population and large sums of money.

I can understand that Andy.

I just dont really see why it needs to be reduced, its hardly a large amount in the grand scale of things. But the 2T is a lot of help to a newb.

Meh, I guess it wont make a lot of difference to anyone.

The rest of the announcements sound good to me.

Hmm.. why was my post deleted?

I'll ask the question again slightly rephrased in case the last one offended....
is the raising of the population restriction for population transfers a prelude to implementing the same penalty that applies to population sales? If not I would like to see this limit lowered.

Love the feature to find a country for relocating ceo's though

The CEO relocating feature is great!!

Why did my game level for my empire on KB just fall from level 7 to level 3? I qualify for everything except defense index (lots of stuff in reserves) but i am war level 4 which is high enough for game level 7. Did the settings/requirements change?

I have the exact same problem as Tom. Dropped from Game Level 6 to Game Level 1, on both Peaceful and Include Defense.

All my countries qualify for everything. This happened in the space of me watching a film and I only realized when I could no longer build a Level 5 Corp.

I've clicked to change to both Peaceful and In Defense and both say "Congratulations. It seems like you meet the requirements for Game Level 2.
You will move to Level 2 within several hours."

Hey guys,

Please check the index page and find out exactly what it says you need.
Please read the game news of today.

I don't know how to post it here without it all messing up. I have Green Ticks for everything that needs a Green Tick, and no Red X's.

Please feel free to take a look Andy, Opinio on WG.

Oh, here are my main Indexes actually. You can't tell me that based on today's changes I've gone from Game Level 6 to Game Level 1?

Population 134,078,776
Finance 155.67
Education 182.76
Employment 96.79
Health 118.97
Social Security 141.02
Transportation 157.82
Business 111.59
War Situation Index 50.00

Andy, this is ridiculous. Nothing has changed with my indexes- I have been at Level 7 for months now. Suddenly, I'm required to take my defense out of 'sleep mode' so I can remain at that level? Why can't war levels remain as an alternative to defense index
Taking my defense out of reserves will cost my economy, which is why reserves should count towards the overall index.

Overall, a good update, but a fairly redundant war level/defence index tweak if you ask me.

My game level dropped aswell from 2 to 1. I've had this message for 2 months now without change.

"Congratulations. It seems like you meet the requirements for Game Level 2.
You will move to Level 2 within several hours"

My indexes are way above whats needed.

We will check this today.

Thanks Andy.

I've only just gone up to Game Level 2, now waiting with the "Congratulations. It seems like you meet the requirements for Game Level 3.
You will move to Level 3 within several hours." message. Definitely seems like something has gone wrong.

recent changes related to the new tutorial introduced a small problem for players in game level 2 who sold their weapons and reduced the defensive index and brought it close to zero.
This problem is being solved now. Also a problem with the required level of the defense index.
The defense index is a requirement in addition to the war level. The defense index requirement is now being reduced.

both changes will be installed in the coming hour or two.

Thanks a lot for the quick resolution Andy.

Also, for Game Levels, do the system use the Value of the Leader or the Average of the Empire?

Please check the index page.
It states clearly that the average on the index in the empire counts. It even show the index in the specific country, the average and the required index for the next game level.