W3C - The Economies of individual Countries (White Giant)

Poll atm: 0 players have seen their profit increase and losses decline. 12 have seen their profits decreasing.

I would like the names, Tom, of all any country that is doing better finacially now, than it was a month ago.

September 17, 2008:

Total Income and Cost 969,549.96M SC$ Click to see history 166,671.27M SC$ Click to see history
Profit / Shortage 802,878.69M SC$ Click to see history

February 16, 2009:

Total Income and Cost 694,084.99M SC$ Click to see history 149,186.25M SC$ Click to see history
Profit / Shortage 544,898.74M SC$ Click to see history


To top it off, I presently have MORE corporations in the country now than then, still NO military - actually a little less since I finally destroyed my lingering forts. MORE of my corporations are now either private or truly public CEO-controlled corps, fully upgraded, AND I've started ordering supplies for my corps manually in a fashion that ensure I get the lowest costs for the optimum quality.

So.... -300B in income, -20B in costs is your idea of proportions, Tom? I know where that -20B came from too, it's because a month ago I cut my government salaries to as low as possible to try and keep my margin alive.

Back in September I my income was in the range or around 6x my costs. Now it's around 4.5x. You said who cares about zeros? Well, that's fine, but you're obviously not making the costs proportional to the profits, considering I've had profits fall 150% against costs, even after taking all the measures I could to ensure they stayed up.

Of course my country is still doing well, but it's my secured leader, my war countries have seen the same fall in profits, and many many people aren't taking the extreme measures I have in my country. However, the point is what the changes have done to profit versus cost, namely nerfed the former and left the latter mostly untouched.

I would post numbers for all my countries, but I see that the downloads section for LU only goes back 30 days now. That's convenient. Thanks a lot. /sarcasm

I don't care if you make it so my country only pulls in 100B income a month, but my costs should fall to around 19-20B as well. Overall numbers are meaningless, as you say, but the proportions and the margins are being cut into.

Not any of my countries Kevin!
Some are even running in the red now when they never have in the past.

it's interesting that W3C is now trying to tweek c3's to fix some of the problems we're all concerned. for some time on KB which is the world i operate, i've thought that the number of active countries was in decline. not only are active countries in decline but, i can show you several large empires where the owners have been long gone and in spite of large debts,continually get periodic infusions of cash from somewhere. also, without constant tweeking, those inactives' corps can only deteriorate, which creates lower production and massive low wage overhangs. i understand that if they've paid 9 months in advance they'll be with us a long time, but it would stand to reason that if the bankruptcy feature is in tact some of these countries should cease to exist. i further submit that the scroll numbers showing countries with presidents/without presidents is grossly inaccurate. wheather this is a new phenomenon or not i don't know but it seems that as more and more seasoned players leave the game there are fewer newer players to pick up the slack. when you lose a seasoned player with an empire of 5 countries with an average of 120 corps, what does it take to replace the cash, weaponry, consumption and production of that players empire.
also, it would seem that instead of trying to tweek the ever increasing number of c3's that gm would want to address the concerns of the actives. otherwise the system/game will continue to deteriorate.

I not actually trying to prove a point anymore...anyone who is competent gets that vets, in general, are losing money.

I actually would just like ONE example of a vet who is defying the odds, and whose countries are MORE profitable now than they were a month ago. If you are that player, PLEASE post here or message me! Don't be afraid, I don't bite (don't say it, LG)!

Thanks!

100+ million country here on LU, was making 400-500b a month, which still only got around 130 FI. Since the "changes" I make 65b a month on the good ones, lose on the bad ones. FI in the 90's now.

"I would like all veteran players who have been doing better financially to post here! Thanks!

Well, it's hard to tell, I'm "making money" however the graphs bounce up and down. I do know if they ever hit 5T for financial services I'll be royally screwed since I can spend 5T in a game month.

This is one of my largest problems, when game changes and market instability send everything into the toilet, historically I "needed" large amounts of cash to keep from waking up with 1-3T in loans.

Kevin, I aint no Vet but I've seen my FI go from 154 to 174 in the last month but still making the same profit at around 250B,


And that is after reducing weapons

Ceteris paribus.

I have some nations that got better as well, but that was more due to my action than of W3C's. I had severe hiring issues that I have now fixed.

Nations that have remained all things the same are suffering losses or diminute profit.

Point being proven here, is that the artificial price % cap in place (every veteran or seasoned player I have talked to agrees there is definitely one in place), has hurt profits!


Tom, I see exactly what you refer to with regard to profit/cost in EVERY other way. In the last month, my "relative" profit has not changed much, its actually improved some due to my own actions. But, its still nowhere near what it was in mid-December. Your price cap has crippled corporations and profits. And don't give me that "average" crap, I will email you with a hundred examples of how AVERAGING is NOT occuring one bit.

You know the BEST indicator of this? Finance Index.

How many people's finance indexes went down between November/December, and now? Everyone right? (without tweaking things in your favor)

Q

Yep, mine went from the mid 150s (empire average) to 119 before I started squeezing out low-salary CEO corps by inducing workers shortages and replacing them with state corps and IPOing them into true publics.

In November it would've been unthinkable that I would've had to go through such a pain in the ass to get to level 6, but here I am, knowing I have to do another round of IPOs so that now-122 FI can support another 10 or 15 points of defense index.

But the whole point of decreasing income is to decrease the amount of money in game right? Before all the pricing of items are slashed we have to have less money, or else if they did items first with our trillions of dollars we would be able to by endless supplies of whatever we want.

It looks like there wont be much change for good until everything is fixed. The one step at a time deal hurts the economy.

I've been through this before, it's one thing to get nailed by a flakey market or adjustments to the game when you have several hundred billion in a country to absorb the shock.

It's quite another when you've been forced down to 10-20B and they are wanting 5B.

I have 3 new slaves I recently took. They were all losing about 100B/month or more. They had about 25T in debt combined. They now eek out small profits and this continues to increase. If one were to look at these countries 3 weeks ago and compare them to today, it would appear that they have increased their incomes by over 100B/month. Could these represent some of the countries where income has "increased" over the past month?
I can say several of my slaves appear to have stabilized in their incomes and do quite well. It is hard to compare them to Dec or earlier since they were so new then. My main's profits have plummeted though and it is now one my least profitable countries. Some of this is due to gov't costs form having more than 10 countries but it cannot all be explained by this.

For countries that were large with rich economies back in November, profits have roughly followed an L-shape.

There was a steep decline of about 20% in country revenues shortly after GM's "Deflation" announcement, with only a 2% or so decline in costs. Of course players immediately noticed the large decline in revenue and started investigating why, until they discovered the price cap (or "averaging," as Tom wishes to call it).

Profits have in fact stabilized at the LOWER level and may have increased slightly in countries that took corrective action to offset GM's changes. However profit margins still have not stabilized at levels before the deflation announcement.

Moreover, the fact that the price caps ("averaging" by Tom's definition) were withheld from the announcement concerning deflation, and the players had to throw empirical evidence at GM until the cows came home for SIX WEEKS before GM finally admitted any changes to profitability was in fact EXTREMELY DISRESPECTFUL to the customer base.

A change of such magnitude as to nerf high quality and the entire concept of trade strategies should have been announced WELL BEFORE implementation. The Deflation announcement that the GM no doubt considered notice of such change until his recent pillory on the forum only announced a very gradual decline in both revenue and costs.

CEOs have been able to recover some of their profits by adjusting supplies quality downward to adjust for the cap. However, this has left countries holding the bag--and countries are the entities that need to maintain certain financial index requirements to gain levels, a task that has become increasingly more difficult since the change.

WOOT!! My main, The Union of Lucarnia made a WHOOPING $1B in profit last month!!


Annie, Peggy, Lorraine, Phyllis, Billy and Ensemble:
- I got it!
- Well, what is it?
- A penny, a nickel...
- You got hold yo' horses and let me get the dough off!
A dime!

We're in the money,
We're in the money;
We've got a lot of what it takes to get along!
We're in the money,
The sky is sunny;
Old Man Depression, you are through,
You done us wrong!

We never see a headline
'Bout breadline, today,
And when we see the landlord,
We can look that guy right in the eye .

We're in the money
Come on, my honey
Let's spend it, lend it,
Send it rolling around!

All:
We're in the money,
We're in the money;
We've got a lot of what it takes to get along!
We're in the money,
The sky is sunny;
Old Man Depression, you are through,
You done us wrong!

We never see a headline
'Bout breadline, today,
And when we see the landlord,
We can look that guy right in the eye.
Look that guy right in the eye-
Look that guy right in the eye-

We're in the money
Come on, my honey
Let's spend it, lend it, send it-
Let's spend it, lend it, send it
Rolling, rolling-
Rolling around!

Additional Verse
Gone are my blues,
And gone are my tears;
I've got good news
To shout in your ears.
The silver dollar has returned to the fold,
With silver you can turn your dreams to gold.

would just like to remind people i didnt start to play this game until after i graduated from college and became unemployed which was the end of december so i am probably among those whose income has risen as my empire has grown. but all the growth was ofcourse due to paying real life cash for gc to start and then getting the gcs for lving up to lv 5 on all worlds as quickly and cheaply as possible and only continuing to play on LU and recently kb. i am however pretty much broke gc wise so i have spent figure 500 gc x 4 worlds equals 2k gc plus i won first on LU another 170 gc and all i have left is less gc than i originaly paid for. you to can make more money now than you did 2 or 3 months ago it will just cost you 2k gcs investment ;) although i must say at one point in my main i had achieved FI over 300 and number 1 finance status but that was only for a week and i dont know how i did it or how i messed myself up

Feeling your anguish Bro

I haven't crunched the numbers. However, my impression is that countries that have low indexes are doing better. If you look at the countries of some top players you find over half the work force in the government sector.

well statisticly speaking your looking at a lopsided parabola with the peak profit potential at around 60m pop. after that you have a need of way to many hospitals and schools and that is wat eats up all those extra potential workers right?

and on top of that by this point your country is kind of older and probably has a lot more retired people. nice thing about a lower pop of 30-60m and its hard to understand this logic is you can do better with a lower health index as younger people have more babies than older people and keeping pop down keeps birth rates up its weird but ya sometimes less is more remember the parabolas of business calculus and statistics!
newer countries just have a higher percent of population that can be actualy working.

disregard. figured it.

doing about the same, but have increased defense costs and manpower,so doing a little better.
Have noticed that my electricity companies are not doing better, but need subsidies to not take out loans.

zero increase in man power in the army.

Any increase in the past two years is due to either increase in the number of weapons in the country or a move of weapons from the reserves.

The cost of the army fluctuates with the market cost of ammunition, military services and military supplies.

Also HT services, gasoline and electric power can cause changes but much smaller ones.

The salaries of man power in the army are a large factor and they declined in the past months.

these are ALL the factors in the cost of the army.

The fluctuations depend on the price your country actually pays for the products.

If you purchase high quality, the cost will be higher.

To be fair, since I was vocal early in this thread, I want to say that I've seen my FI's rebound, due to no action of my own.

I do maintain there was a period of over a month were the deflation was not balanced. However, recently the army maintenance cost has declined drastically. This seems to have balanced my bottom lines.

Kevin,

the logic was changed in a balanced way from the start and through each and every stage.

The game behaviour depends not only on the game logic but mainly on the current data in the countries and markets.

It can take time, but at the end, data is starting to move and the direction, determined by the logic will always prevail.

We can never give exact figures but we can decide to reduce or increase by a percentage.

how it happens and how long it takes depends on what players do, the situation in their countries and market prices.

after some time, all variations remain but averages will reduce or increase by the percentage we have changed.