W3C - Game News, April 18

New Ranking System
We have added a new ranking system to all worlds for the best "War Lord". Everyone starts with no points. Winning a war against another player and adding the country into your empire will deliver 100 points. Winning the war and NOT adding the country into the empire will deliver 25 points. Losing a war against another player will deliver -10 points.

Boosters
Two new boosters are now available both on the desktop application and in the Simcountry APP. One booster allows you to directly exchange gold coins for game money. The other booster allows you to increase the population of your country for gold coins. These boosters are needed for the new "War competition world". We decided to implement them on all the worlds.

Exchanging professionals
This function allows countries to exchange people between countries, both within their own empire but also with any other country in the same world. The function remains unchanged but a country must have at least 12 million population to use it. We have seen countries that had population under 6 million which triggered rescue functions to make sure they do not collapse.

Building New Corporations
New corporations need many workers, and in some cases players (mainly new players), did not understand. that when there are no workers they should stop building new corporations. Building new corporations by new players, now requires that at least 50% of the needed workers are available in all workers groups.

Required Game Levels when Building New Corporations
Each corporation requires a minimum qualification in terms of game levels. Building High tech corporations requires a higher game level than building an agricultural corporation. We have now improved the checking of game levels and require the level as shown on the Corporate building page.

ive made lvl5 but now dropped back to lvl 3 ,so im not able to build lvl 5 corps now?

Nope you're not allowed to build lvl 5 corps anymore. Previously you only needed to hit the game lvl once and then you were good. Now you need to stay there. I don't really understand what they hope to achieve with this.
I think they want to make game levels more relevant and in a way it does. But isn't it just better to raise the lvl requirement and keep the old way in tact? If something goes wrong or you're involved in a war you get punished a little bit more because now all of a sudden you can't build the corps that you previously could.

If you just raise the lvl requirement it would ad a lot more incentive for people to go for those higher levels. Just my 2 cent. This looks like it did in 'the old days' and it got changed to the current system for a reason.

Have you thought about the consequences about the building changes?
I understand why you guys did it. It makes sense if it's to help newer players and it's a very decent safe guard. I was just wondering if you thought about the people who wage wars?
When I take over a country the first thing I do is order 10 new corps. It takes 10 game months (well over 2 days) just to get those corps. At the same time my conquered country is not going to have the right population for those corps by a large margin for 2 reasons:
1. it takes time for the population numbers to adjust for losing a lot of corps.
2. a lot of people died and there are simply not the right amount of workers

Because it takes so much time to build new corporations you still order them and just accept the loses because otherwise you need to wait even longer and now they can at least start buying their upgrades.

Just my 2 cent.

Game levels should give players privileges.

Building certain type of corporations is one but there should be more.
we plan to add more game level related privileges.

Reaching a certain level and keeping it requires a foundation for all the relevant indexes, keeping them at a high level long term.
Preventing shortages of materials, and keeping the supply index high is one of these requirements.

Previously it was exactly as it is now.

we have changed some time ago to make it easier but we have in the process in fact, removed the need to show you can manage a higher game level.

we are back to where is was before.

Has the update for Game Levels and War Levels ballsed something up?

My country (Commonwealth of Kahveh on WG) has dropped from Game Level 8 to Level 1. If I look at the requirements to reach level 2, it says I need 1 country, but only have 0.

Only thing on lvl 5 is Space, upgrade companies, and FMU and str weapon maintain
Space unstable
str green
upgrade green
which leaves FMU

Mrp, Andy, GMs,

True. The level requirements for building corps are generally well balanced. Although, I can't for the life of me, figure out why they would make factory maintenance require game level 5.
Factory Maintenance is required by every single Corp in Simcountry (including Factory Maintenance Corps), a shortage in this product can absolutely destroy the entire economy, without constant GM intervention.
Locking the majority of players out of producing one of Simcountry's most basic core goods, by locking it behind a level requirement that forces you to have an empire with 2 nations AND an enterprise, seems ill advised to say the least.

There are plenty of Corps that would be far better suited to the game level 5 restriction than Factory Maintenance. All the Strategic Weapons Corps for a start. They are interesting to players, provide an incentive to get to game level 5, shortages of them don't can't destroy the world economy, having them to abundant threatens global nuclear war. And to top it all off, in real life, they are a hard to produce product, that genuinely is limited to only powerful nations.

Signed President of DanNation on LU

Good point. I'm not sure what the overall benefit would be. It seems more punitive to the lower levels than a benefit to higher levels.

CEOs can still build any corp, game levels not affecting them. CEO's can build factory maintenance corps as well. This should be like that so their are differences between countries and ceos. If a country wants to get to a higher level of development than it would need to invite ceos and have them build the right corps or get a ceo one or the other or reach and stay in higher game levels. I support this move by andy to require countries to stay at a higher game level to build higher level corps. Reaching game level 4 is quite easy level 5 will require them to start to look at becoming a premium member. Smart move by andy.

Alfonsocsr, Andy, GMs,

Level 4 requires premium membership (I am perfectly ok with that). Level 5 requires having 2 Countries and an Enterprise. Which kind of makes level 6 requirements a bit redundant. Since by meeting level 5 requirements, you've already got an Enterprise, which can build level 6 Corps.

Either the level requirements for Corps need re-balancing, or the levels themselves need to be re-balanced. Needing two nations and an Enterprise just to maintain a factory... but being able to build hydrogen bombs that can incinerate whole parts of the planet with just 1 lower level country o.0

The game level requirements may have been very suitable in the past, but really need an update.

For example, according to the documentation, peaceful level 16 requires you to have 12 countries. However since that standard was put in place, the soft cap for the number of countries you can have in an empire, has been lowered to 10. So any Empire with 12 countries, would be crippled by rebellions, used to enforce a cap, that the game levels are telling you to brake.

Meanwhile you would also be required to have an Education Index of 280, even though that would overheat your education system and result in an unbalanced workforce. Transportation Index of 280, even though levels above 140 have no effect.

In total contrast to these extreme requirements. The required Wages index is only 350. A level many lower level countries can already exceed. And an index that actually results in better wages and living standards for the people.

Whats more, very few players, even experienced high quality players, have high game level Empires. Largely because, the requirements for game levels simply don't line up with having a high quality, well balanced empire.

Please consider addressing some of these balance concerns.

Signed President of DanNation on LU

+1 Daniel

Daniel,

You have a point.
we will have another look at game level requirements.
This is a good thing to do from time to time and did not happen for a long time.

as to requirements when building corporations:
This could also be reviewed but in general, High tech corporations that require many high tech professionals, and have the potential of higher profits, should require higher game levels.

Factory maintenance is a typical one in that group.

And of course, as Alfons said, CEOs can build anything.

Enterprises are very profitable and have the possibility to build very large numbers of corporations that require a high game level and produce high profits.

..what else is there besides profit..?
(something to ponder)

no the requirements for lvl 6 is pretty high. 6trill avg cash. 70 months of not buying anything