A newby's perspective

I recognize that my comments will seem naive to you experienced players. I just ran out of all beginner awards so I am a neophyte. Still when I joined the exchange rate for cash for gold coins was 520M per 10 gold coins. Now it is 450M. I do not know any way that I can earn GC except to grow. There seems to be a number of barriers to that.

Population increases naturally at an appallingly slow rate. Well, buy population you say.

My experience so far is make mistakes at your peril. If you make one you are going to get hammered. How to refine what you are doing. Try stuff but make certain you don't make an error cause if you do you are going to get hammered.

So my view is that the more expensive they make it to grow the less interested I am in continuing. It is no fun whatsoever to just sit and watch your countries increase in micro moves.

They want us to do more war. I can't support a girl scout troop on a picnic much less all these troops and equipment. Not even a consideration.

The more I read about how much it is going to cost to be successful at this game the more I think I will just stick to restoring old ancient artifacts.

Have you sought help from other players? The chat offered by the game is a very good place to find veteran players to answer questions and show you how to build your empire. There are also a number of feds looking for new members, particularly on LU, that will take you in and offer resources, forum access/guides, to help you get going.

And you can also increase population growth rate... ever think of that?

It seems that the countries are doing good and both profitable.
Profitability can grow with more private corporations and public ones, optimizing the work force and adding special clinics and back to work schools.

more population will help too.

not so bad in less than 3 months.

As to population growth rate. I did not think of that. thanks. More tips are always welcome. I have lots of questions. Not much dialog on world forums.

1) If you increase your welfare, production and other things increase, also your immigration will increase and provide some more pop. 2) Doing worker transfer of high paid workers for low paid workers with other player can also increase your pop. 3) increase health care is said to reduce death rate and allow for your population to live longer. 4) take a C3 and transfer pop over (and thing over 20M you can transfer) *Small empires are always in need of high level worker types because they may not be able to afford a stable high educational system* 5) buy pop: pay for membership and get bonus sign-up coins to spend or save so you can use later on.

These are 5 helpful pop tricks and known facts.

Without buying population, you can't hugely increase the natural growth rate. The suggestions above will help but don't expect a dramatic flood of people. This is not a 'quick' game, patience is required. The analogy I like is that it is like driving a huge oil tanker, responses to input will take some time to effect a change.

I've been driving my tanker for some 4 - 5 years now, and have reached my dock and am about to unload.

dont worry it gets worse as you learn more

Mute, wait until your population starts declining for no reason that you can see. Your welfare is good, migration is good, health and education are exceptional, and still you are losing 2,000 people per game month, for 6 RL months or more.

I still don't know why it happens, but I have seen it on a regular basis. 2 RL months of pop going up, and then it suddenly starts declining again, and does so, seemingly endlessly, until it turns around for a little while.

It only happens in larger, more established empires, though, so you don't have to worry about it for a while. Just be grateful if yours is still going up, however slowly!

Hugs and respect

Jo

the health index, does not work in such a way. it does increase pop, but it is not a "higher it goes, the higher the pop increase," thats not the way the health system works.

in fact, its kinda the opposite. that 2 high of a health index, can, (and will,) reduce your pop. seems like an oxymoron, but its true

the point this guys is making that with natural growth, it can litterally take RL years for an empire to reach a significant enough size to support a moderate military. with out having extra GC, a new player doesn't have much chance of ever reaching the higher levels, with out swiping their card a couple times

i got the 150 GC for a new account. like a couple of 5 GC bonuses. with out being high enough for monthly awards. i don't see enough resources to increase my pop high enough for Game levels, and still support a long term CEO for game levels, and score, and awards... i'm looking at probably a 6 months to a year of natural growth, with patiently saving GC to be able to start a CEO. but thats a mixed bag, because it can take a small fortune to build up a bran new CEO enough to support itself. and then thats only cash.

i plan to rebuild my space program, and hopefully sell shuttles for GC, that might get me over the hump. but i doubt a new player has much of a chance at seriously competing, with out going way up in WLs. but then where are they gonig to get all the defensive assets that would be apropo?

just adding some thoughts to this, from a vet that just reset, (i deleted my old account.)

Jo

Increasing the health index, increases the average age of your pop. you already know this. it results in more people retiring than entering the work force. which i'm pretty sure you also know.

how ever. compare your countries to countries with lower health indexes. and you'll notice a dramatic difference in the birth rate. the birth rate seems to be partially effected by the over all size. but not enough to cancel growth that countries can have over 100M. as the average age increases, the birth rate goes down.

so, as you increase your HI, your pop lives longer, and grows. how ever. the life expectancy will increase to the point that more sim citizens retire, than enter the work force. Buying pop as a band aid is only a temp fix. and as this goes on, the average age will increase, and births will decrease, so that as the older people are dying, the new born aren't making up the slack.

the best fix, is to just run a HI in the 110-130 range, (depending on your salaries,) for those that want the higher HI for game levels. temporarily, lowering the HI to like 90 for a week or 2, to burn out the older pop. then rebuild. further, it will make the process easier, if you state and gov sals are close to each other. as it'll make your education priorities more effective.

If you want "natural" population growth then run countries with HI of 125-130.

buying pop for a country with a long - standing high HI is bad move in any circumstance. This is a mistake I have made while chasing higher levels and my countries are still recovering from. This is because purchased population reflects the population distribution of the buying country.

Much better to buy the pop for a country with a low level (and therefore less pensioners) and transfer the population from that country to the one with the high index.

However, to gain level 15 there is no option but to run your countries with a high HI (200+). To maintain a high game level, the option of temporarily lowering the index for a week or two is not really an easy (or cheap) way out. To lower the index from 200 to 130 can take a couple of weeks alone if major imbalance of population age is to be avoided. After that another RL month of maintaining the HI at the lower level for the population to stop declining.

A lot of work. If anyone knows a quicker way that does not result in a broken country please let me know.

forgot to mention... crafty's analogy is spot on, especially when it comes to population and long term country stability.

arccuk, i did it with a 180M pop. and yes rebuilding the hospitals after was expensive. but cheaper than buying pop 2-3 times a week, considering the 6 months after that i only had to buy pop for it once. (and the country was #1 FI on WG,)

one of the difficulties, is all those nurses and such, will go away, if you close that many hospitals.

but then again, you can keep buying pop, if you have the GC to do it. or we can all relearn how to play this gave with out the GC addiction we've become accustomed to.

zzz ... I'm aware of that. Unfortunately, to maintain level 15 and get to level 16, which is my current project, I am obliged to have a HI of 200. So I have to live with the frequent population deterioration. Destroying hospitals is not a viable fix ... the game won't allow you to keep THAT many spare medical staff, it will re-allocate them for you over a period of time, so it takes too long (and too much money) to rebuild the hospitals.

I was simply pointing out to Mute that there are some things worse than slow population growth LOL.

Hugs and respect

Jo

@ zzz my observation of a "broken" population distribution stands.

BTW there is no need to close the hospitals, just convert them to war hospitals / special clinics. The cost of rebuilding the hospitals is not the expense I was referring to.