Formal Request for Government Cost Details (Golden Rainbow)

Actually AssHat numero uno, David has been responsible for one of the longest standing federations in this game, for many years. He has also brokered many peace deals between his federation and other powerhouse federations of that time. I could go on, but you can't hear very well. I don't judge David's success by his real life profits. I have not known how much he has made nor have I asked or cared, until you brought the issue to light now. My evaluation on David's long time success has been measured by nothing more than the things he has accomplished in the game with no financial gain in mind.

Your whole tone is condescending to David with relation to his selling coins for real money. All you have done is criticize him and based the backbone of the argument you pose on that very insignificant fact.

<!-Quote-!>Quote:

I'm sure I read somewhere that you make a whopping $600 per year from this game.

I will personally pay you that amount to not take this game so seriously. If you're an adult and consider £31.50 per month as "real money" then you clearly need to spend less time playing this GAME and more time working a paid job.<!-/Quote-!>

I can read very well. If this isn't a condescending criticism I don't know what is. And beyond that, it is way out of line, and you wouldn't pay anyone any sum of money to do anything, which makes you more the asshat than I thought previously.

I do understand how some people can become confused by some wierd perceptions they accumulate along the way playing this game.

I'll give you a true example. One day, not too long ago. After staying awake for a grueling war session I woke up and when looked down I realized I had a penis!!

But then I woke up. OMG!!! It was a waking dream!!!

People need to stay tethered to reality.

My example was about as pointless and stupid as you criticizing someone who can gain from some portion of his success, and claim this proves he takes the game too serious.

Oh, and I still like you a lot. Just a little less than yesterday. Have a great day.

Wow.

OMG Inanna you are so off-topic, we've supposed to be campaigning for transparency!

Perhaps my understanding of an "AssHat" is wrong but I've been led to believe that it is essentially someone that pays to play this game. Ergo, any "AssHat" is good for the game, as, well--you know--if the game doesn't earn money and can't pay server/hosting/staff, then there is no game. The irony is you either play this game without paying and get called a "n00b", you or pay to play this game and get called an "AssHat." In fact, you could argue that people that take money out of the game are very bad for the game- akin to "golf farmers" on World Of Warcraft.

As condescending as it may seem I will quite happily pay David £31.50 per month towards his not-for-profit cause if it shuts him up for a while. He can message me and it can be arranged- surely if he's really doing this for the cause then this should be a fantastic deal for him?

I, uh... I also don't see where I laid down an example. So hopefully you can point me in that direction, else I'll just assume that you first and foremost need to be tethered to reality. Though I have to admit, I did giggle when you said penis.

I'm glad you still like me, though I'm not sure who you are and if we've ever conversed.

Why do so many threads in this game go completely off-topic and end up in flame wars?

That's a rhetorical question and does not require a response ... back to the subject under discussion please.

Gamemasters: it would help many of us to understand how Government costs are calculated. You have given us the actual algorithms for other things in the past, like Finance Index. This one would really help us to understand and play the game better!

Hugs and respect

Jo

Hahahahahahaha!! I missed reading these.

First off just wanna say. I dont like you one bit Sucker. Come to Fearless Blue some time. Just wanted to put that out there.

Being able to understand how the government cost are computed not only will help the older players. But all players to understand how the financing of there country works. Its simply economics. Having all the information at your fingertips to better understand the situation of your economy. I could care less about transparency. All i want is the information in order to come up with a better strategy of running my empire.

It is clear that everybody wants to have government costs reduced.
this is an old discussion going on as long as the game is running.

having a complex formula published on the forum is not going to help in any way.
There are probably more opinions on this than people in the game and there is no need for a complex discussion arguing that some parameter should be reduced or increased to have government cost lower or much lower etc.

The parameters are known:

The number of countries in the empire (not in the account).
The population.
The government salaries.
The quality of materials used by the country.

Government cost is now reduced with other costs but other costs like education, health and defense are down more sharply.
This resulted in government cost remaining relatively high.

If you compare government cost between your countries, you will see that the percentage of gov. cost of the total cost is increasing with the number of countries, the quality of products and government salaries.
It is proportional to the population but becomes a little more expensive for highly populated countries.

Yeah, those are the same parameters as they've always been.

:/

I've always assumed the number of countries and population of the country determined the number of Government Facilities and each of those required x number of workers to staff and x number of products to operate.

Quick check of two countries on same world with different populations and government salaries:

Population: 30.1M
Government Facilities: 413
Government Salaries: 226
Product Quality: ~120
Government Cost: 9.4B

Population: 14.7M
Government Facilities: 225
Government Salaries: 102
Product Quality: ~120
Government Cost: 4.1B

Notice how the government facilities are roughly half in number in the country with roughly half the population? Notice how Government Cost is clearly less than half as much in the second country where government salaries are lower despite having slightly more than half the number of government facilities?

Thank you so much for contributing to this thread, Andy. It's very reassuring to know that the GMs are listening to us. But wanting government costs reduced is not the issue that is being asked for here.

As players, we just want to know exactly how they are calculated, so that we know what we need to do to influence them. Yes, we want to reduce them, but we are not asking the GMs to implement a blanket reduction - or to do that for us. We are asking for the information to allow us to make our own decisions on whether it will be in our interests to change the factors that affect them.

This game has always been about the players having a variety of interactive elements that we can control. The more elements we can control, the more 'fun' the game is. The best players are the ones who understand the interactivity of those elements and configure their empires in the best way. Giving us this information will enhance the game for us.

It's not enough to give us four elements that 'affect' the calculation. How do they affect it? We need to know.

How far do I need to reduce / increase the number of countries in my empire and how much of a difference will that make?

How far do I need to reduce / increase my population and how much of a difference will that make?

How far do I need to reduce / increase my government salaries and how much of a difference will that make?

How far do I need to reduce / increase the quality of materials in my country and how much of a difference will that make? And have you taken into account that increasing the minimum order quality from 100 to 120 will have affected this? It has definitely had an impact on Financial Index across the board. Have you adjusted the Government costs or FI calculation to take this into account?

Is there anything else you haven't mentioned that affects the calculation? Because, if there is, I would like to know about it so that I can control it.

When I make a change to these things, it has an effect in other areas. If I decrease population, I can host fewer corps, which will affect my income. If I decrease government salaries, I will earn less through income tax and if I run into worker shortages, my hospitals and schools may close. I need to know how much these things will affect Government Costs, to know whether the payoff is worth it.

PLEASE give us the detailed calculation! What reason do you have not to do this?

Hugs and respect

Jo

Thanks Andy for acknowledging our cries, but I do agree with Jo on this one too. We need the details.

T

Agree with Jo.

I'm going to agree with Andy.

Sue me.

Thanks to everyone who agreed

/me blows a raspberry at John

One more thing to say: Andy, having a complex formula published on the forum is going to help. If someone doesn't understand the formula then it doesn't hurt them, but it does benefit the ones who do.

Most of us are very good at understanding complex formulae. Please don't underestimate your customers - this is not, and hopefully will never be, a game which appeals to imbeciles.

Hugs and respect

Jo

You should not be restricted to how many countries you have in an empire i dont want to be forced to close countries down that i have had for years i have never had these problems before now i am in debt and not prepared to pay out of it everyone should be compensated and the problem fixed so things can be normal again.

With respect, Steve, that's not the point of this thread. We're not asking the GMs to change anything. We just want to know how it is calculated.

Hugs and respect

Jo

+1 Jo.

I concur with Jo.

Well we should at least get compensated for the costs to our countries since the new changes why should we wear it. fiances may have got slighty better but what about the losses since the updates and the current loss a lot of players have got.

As I said, population is influencing the cost in a linear way. Scarlet gave an example.

You can reduce the quality or increase it and see the results. You can also play with government salaries.

You can easily compare results between your countries and other countries. There are plenty of examples to learn from.

They don't want to publish the exact formula because when you think something is wrong, you can go use the formula and find out that something is not right.

We all know when you say anything is wrong, they deny some things until you can present proof.

So, if we never have the formula for how the cost is compiled, we can never present any real proof if we think it is too high.

The same applies for the welfare index. If we don't know how the game is supposed to apply this index to our profitability, we will never know if the feature is functioning correctly.

In this case players think that costs are too high while profits are going down. Some players think they are being overcharged. I think, as I have for a while now, that the welfare index is suppressing profits which is why the increases in Government costs are becoming noticeable.

In each and every case if we knew how to compile what these figures should be if we had the formulas, we could quickly check or prove the notion of dysfunction and go on playing the game. These posts and this conversation, along with all conspiracy theories would vanish.

There still has been no logical explanation as to why we should be denied these formulas to check for ourselves. leave it to speculation, maybe GMs and players begin to take offense to everyone's illogical ignorant conclusions.

Be careful though. If we all knew all the algorithms the game uses then it would, at least in theory, be possible to ascertain maximum/minimum values and run the 'ideal' country. If everyone could do that there would be very little experimenting, trying things out, discussing with others and scanning successful peoples countries/CEOs. In other words, no game play, what with PvP war about dead too.

Well then when problems are reported I would certainly like to have "Show us some examples or proof" to not be thrown in our faces every time something is wrong before I stop asking.

Even if we knew the min/max values knowing how an index is computed that does not give away the best settings. It will only tell you how what you do in your country is going to be used to compile x index. All inputs are generated by choices players make. Otherwise we have no way to provide the proof that seems to be required of us.

No Wenders, with some mathematical know how you can calculate optimum results from any given set of variables, providing you can define your optimum.

But, yes, I see your point of not being able to show a possible error if you cant see how a result is arrived at. But generally we must consider that all these indexes etc are derived by a computer and the chances of an error are extremely small. You and I both know that 99.9% of errors are player misunderstandings.

done the playing with quality and reduction in salary still dosent rectify the obvious

Oh I know you didn't just say that CC. This game especially for as long as you have been around you know for %100 certainty that 99% of deviations from what things are supposed to do is NOT player error.

I would bet that in the last two years 99% of every major addition caused some abnormality or was bugged. Period and you know that just about sums it all up in a nutshell.

I'm not saying that they don't get fixed. Do a word search on "bugs" + "update" + "error" and tell me how many threads pop up.

I'm sure that the GMs do get a lot of messages complaining that there is a bug when, actually, it is just player misunderstanding, although I wouldn't want to guess at the percentage.

But you would think that giving us more information would prevent so many misunderstandings and reduce those emails, thus making life easier for them and more fun for us.

Crafty - your argument doesn't really work. If the formula really can be worked-out by testing, then why not give it to us, the way the GMs have published the FI and DI formulas? If it can't be worked out by testing, then why keep us in the dark about it instead of allowing us the fun of controlling it, the way we do with all the other aspects of the game? IMHO the skill comes with balancing the way in which all the aspects interrelate and affect each other, not with working out a highly complicated formula.

Hugs and respect

Jo