An interesting mix between game and social network
eRepublik is not exactly a game in the usual meaning of this word. For me, it's more like a social network with game elements. It is said to be a strategy game, but as a regular eCitizen, I don't find any strategic element. May be for the ePresident there is some.
I joined eRepublik around 2 and a half years ago. The game went through many many transformations and that's a little irritating:
- Version 1.0 was very simple and basic
- With 2.0 the developers tried to make it more complicated, but this way the new players were giving up too quickly, and also many older players stopped playing because the rules the developers implemented were too lame and not really balanced.
- Finally with v 1.5 they made the game simple again, in some aspects, even more simple than the initial version.
eRepublik is a simulation of the real world. Of course a very basic simulation - the world is too complicated to be simulated :). I'm going to say a few words for each of the (what the game developers call) "modules".
1. Economy module.
1.1. Production
Every player owns companies, and can work once per day in them. This produces certain goods - weapons or food, or resources for weapons and food (depends on the type of companies the player built). Food is used to recover energy, which is consumed when working, training and fighting. Weapons are used to increase damage in battles. The production can be sold on the market. See the next modules for more details about each of these places.
Food and weapons have 7 quality levels. From the quality level depends how much energy or damage they give when used.
The player can work once per day in a company of another player. This is not really useful in the last version because every player produces same value - no matter what level he is. That makes the salaries too high and recruiting other players is only profitable if you have a highest level weapon company. And building a highest level company costs something like 600-700 gold (only in days of promotion), which is around 200 euro.
So producing goods is generally farming in your low-level companies, and working for some of the rich players. There used to be working skills in v1.0, and in v2.0 there were even several different skills. But now there's no working skill at all - so sad.
1.2. Money and Market
There are 2 types of currencies - gold and country currency (the world is divided into countries according to the real-world political map, but about this - later). Gold is purchased with real money, also the players earn some free gold if they play regularly, invite other players, etc. Country currency is what the economy works with - the production is sold for it on the market. Currency is also used to build some types of resource factories. Due to producing goods is too easy - costs just one click per day - the goods become so cheap that they reach the minimal decimal precision of the currency (which is only 2 digits after the decimal delimiter - really inconvenient). So to increase the value of production, the admins are unofficially (but obviously) buying the production with a bot. But this way they insert more money in the economy, and this makes the gold too expensive. As a result, in the later versions it is almost impossible to earn gold by producing goods. Finally the goal of the game is to generate profit for its developers, so this is natural - yes.
2. Military module.
As I said, the eWorld is divided according to the real-world political map. The countries, in turn, are divided into regions. Each country can attack another country and conquer its regions one by one.
The battles are again very basic. Each fighter presses a "fight button" and this adds certain damage for his country. The damage depends on the strength of the player and on what weapon is used. The fighter can fight until his health is over. Of course, there is a variant to fight more by spending some gold.
The player can gain strength by training every day. If he trains with gold, he becomes stronger a lot faster.
The player who made the highest damage in the battle is awarded with a battle hero medal. A good thing in the latest version is the possibility to collect energy bars. This way even if you are not spending real money, you can be a hero for your country say once per 2 months by collecting energy bars.
This is the general idea of the War module, there are some details that I skipped.
Patriotism is the main feeling driving the game. It is clearly written on the login page - "Your country needs YOU!". This unavoidably leads to conflicts based on real-life issues between players from different nations. For example, nations that have historical issues between each other are in a war all the time.
There are speculations that the admins are manipulating the battle wall. I can't say whether this is true or not. But with the current mechanics, we can never know - the damage is summed and there is no way to know whether it was done by real players or not.
3. Politics.
Each country has a president, and a congress. The president and the congress members are elected once per month. The president decides which region to attack and when. The congress accepts laws for declaring war and alliances, but they usually vote for what the president needs. The congress also determines the taxes that the country collects from job salaries and marketplace. But due to the economy module is generally simple, there are certain values with which the economy works best - not much for discussion again. So being a congress member is not a big deal. On the other hand, the president must be really responsible because from his actions depends whether the country will prosper or be wiped out. Sometimes the president must be available like 24 hours per day - not a job for everyone.
Democracy is the only political system available. I've heard complains about that but can't figure out how the developers of the game could implement something else.
4. Media.
The players can own a newspaper and write articles in it. Other players read the articles, comment and vote them if they find something interesting. The 5 top voted articles are displayed in the main page.
Sounds simple, but this is what actually still keeps me in the game - the articles of all the crazy people, and the even more funny comments below the articles.
While other people open Facebook to distract from work, I open eRepublik. A few minutes per day are enough to manage the companies, to train and fight, the rest of the time is for the news if I'm not too occupied in the real life. There's always something interesting to read - whether someone is complaining, trolling, arguing, joking, or just posting funny pics. The community is what makes the game interesting - that's why I say it's more a social network than a game.
So the review appeared longer than I expected (whew). Congratulations if still reading :). In conclusion: the idea is good, the community is cool. The developers are constantly trying to improve the game, but, in my humble opinion, still many rules need balancing. The game provokes conflicts from real-life, so be warned.