Cybernations

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Envy. Cold, green envy.

I've got to find someone willing to trade, and then, when I do, the sod erm...wanders off to a better offer after a mere week. With no warning.

muttermuttermuttermutter. If I can find someone else, that'd be useful...

[Suwako]

Aiyno... please go to your Foreign Aid tab and click on the "Yes, I do want Tez's free money!" button.

Durr,  I do...

now you got trade agreement request 

[Arcalane]

Speaking of Nation States... has anyone read Jennifer Government, the book upon which it's based? I saw it in the bookstore the other day and bought it on a lark. It was quite an entertaining read.

Aye, it was an interesting (if a little confusing if you can't manage to follow all the storylines at once) read.

[Tezkat]

Wooo... I wasn't kidding about that harbour paying for itself. Accepting Aiyno's trade boosted my shattered income by over $50k. If the last guy ever wakes up and accepts my trade, I'll have another $50k or so. Good trades make a huge difference...

Envy. Cold, green envy.

I've got to find someone willing to trade, and then, when I do, the sod erm...wanders off to a better offer after a mere week. With no warning.

muttermuttermuttermutter. If I can find someone else, that'd be useful...

My coal/fish guy bailed on me without warning after only a few weeks, too. Interestingly enough, the stuff he replaced me with probably decreased his productivity. It's possible that he dumped me to trade with members of his new alliance. Or maybe he's just an idiot...

The advanced trade finder makes it pretty easy to find the resources you're looking for. However, I find that one of the keys to keeping trades is to contact people in advance rather than just pulling names off a list and tossing out trade proposals. If they have a trade slot free, ask them to send you the proposal if they're interested. Then you'll have built up a bit of a rapport and the trade will feel like it was their idea. They'll be much less likely to cancel on you then. It'll take longer to find trades in the first place, since you'll miss out on the folks who are just accepting trades to keep their slots full until something better comes along, but it's more likely to result in a long-term relationship.

Bribery works, too. If you catch a smaller nation with open slots and replace the old "Improved Foreign Relations" with "$100k in aid for accepting" or somesuch, they'll have a constant reminder that canceling that trade means reneging on a business deal with you. At your size, even a $200k aid for trade offer should pay for itself within days.


(Now... if you want to turn really green...  Some guy twice my size just offered me cash to trade with him for a few days. Given how complicated my trade swapping operation already was, I declined. )

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

A few days would likely pay him back. Long enough to save up, pay for a wodge of tech, or something, and then get free again...

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

eek!

-another- event.

Another nations container ship carrying valuable items has crashed on your shores.
- Option 1: Keep the ship wreck a secret and disperse the items throughout your country. Population happiness +2
- Option 2: Return the items to the owners and receive a finders reward. Citizen income +$5.00.    
- No Response. Population happiness -1

sweet. :-]

[Suwako]

Triple .... arggg

Option 1: Take action and build dams and levy's in the areas prone to flooding. Citizen income -$5.00
Option 2: Refuse to take action. They should not have built their homes in flood prone areas. Population happiness -3

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

after tax at 28%, that's $1.40 for option 1 and $1.50 for option two, in terms of takings. Or so I gather.

Not really much in it...

[Tezkat]

1 happiness = $2 of gross income before adjustments from income multipliers. The first option is still better.

By the way, you might want to consider demolishing that Barracks and replacing it with a Bank or something else that will help your economy.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

$2 of gross income, not tax. Right?

So 3 happiness is $6 for each person, which works out at $1.68 in taxes. At 28%, of course.

Hmm. I think my calculations may have been a bit out with some of my choices. Bugger.

[Jim Halisstrad]

Ah.... Back to fourth place
I'm now pulling 200k in a day and pretty soon I'm going to by my 3rd stadium.

And war at this point is definitely the cheapest (and the most fun) way for me to get tech.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I beg to differ. It's much cheaper to wander off and persuade someone to buy a stack for you.

Works for me.

Val, you ready for the next slice?

[Valynth]

I'm ready and waitn' llearch.  Just give me the signal.

[Tezkat]

So... what's the going rate for farmed tech these days? 

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

well, little old Valynth is giving me 30 levels for 900k. I expect that rate should step up somewhat as his tech increases dramatically as a result of the cash he's picking up now.

Of course, I'm also chipping 100k to Aiyno for being a middleman, and I'm hoping to get my gold trader to trade, briefly, with Val and make his costs much lower. If my gold trader wakes up and does that, I'll be chipping 200k in his direction as well - not a big loss, since he increased my take by ~65k/day or so... :-]

[Jim Halisstrad]

Thats so much more complicated then simply rolling a nation for its goods

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

true, but I get 30 levels of tech for, as it turned out, 1.1 million, which is close enough to going rate that I'm not complaining. Given buying it outright would cost me well over 1.3...

Rolling a nation is all well and good, but -I- feel it generates a bad rep. :-]

[Tezkat]

Okay... so I followed llearch's advice in LW and brought my AI up to 299 to prepare for the jump. After saving up, I went to collect taxes, and...

A Random Event Has Occurred!

Solar Flare - Recent solar activity has encouraged your engineers to upgrade the colonys defense shields. You have gained 2 AI.

My AI costs doubled instantly. Even positive events are out to get me!

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

*wince*

You have my sympathy.


But not very much, of course. ;-]

Incidentally, in LW, my costs for 25 housing units has just gone past 100k. :-/

[Arcalane]

:numbers: ITT

Pop count up 15% from the flu vaccine event... so I now have another Improvement slot!

Currently have;

Bank, Clinic, Harbour, Stadium, Stadium.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

As has been mentioned before, you get more bang for your buck out of a bank, just, than you do out of a stadium.

Provided you have enough happy, stick with banks. Otherwise, get happy with a stadium. Note that "enough" is around 24 or so, I think Tez said before, back about 4 pages...

[Arcalane]

Skipped a couple of days, broke 75 Tech, have a new trading partner who's giving me shiny diamonds and tasty beefs. \o/

[Arcalane]

We can has alliance?

Got this PM from "Mykelemagne";

Hi, my alliance is on a recruitment drive and I'd like to extend an offer to the entire Unamed Alliance, to join the Phoenix Federation, an up-and-coming organization fast on track for sanctioned status. We ourselves are a product of merged alliances, so we're well accustomed to working with new folks on Cyber Nations. We're active on IRC and on the forums and I think you'll find that we have more fun on CN than just about anyone else. We're not asking you to change your team color or lose your identity as a community, and, even if you decline our offer, we'd love to have you guys set up an embassy at our forum, www.phoenix-federation.net. Thanks for your time.

Looks fishy to me. Especially since I expect that's a copy-paste message and most of all they didn't have the decency to get the alliance name right.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Well, I got exactly the same message.

I also received a message from someone else asking if we wanted to form an alliance treaty. I enquired what sort of treaty, and suggested he talk to me outside the pm's, and he lay low and said nothing since then.

So I guess he doesn't really want a treaty that much.


Just in passing, his alliance was ~4 pages of members, and I think most of them were under what -we- have - I know our alliance strength was nearly what theirs was, as I recall... Yeah. We're at 42k, his is at 48k. We've got 7 nations, he's got 44.

http://www.cybernations.net/stats_alliance_stats_custom.asp?Alliance=Coalition%20of%20Armed%20Nations

Just in case anyone is interested.

Edit: hee. Only his top two nations are -higher- than our -bottom- nation. And his strength is lower than our -average- strength.

Yay for helping each other out.

[Valynth]

Great, now not only do we have to deal with spam of the real world, we have to deal with spam of the fictional world 

[Kryptic]

Oooh - I just stumbled across this thread...

I played NationStates at one point - it was pretty boring for me though... But I signed up on Cyber Nations - http://www.cybernations.net/nation_drill_display.asp?Nation_ID=146433

Yay for random Norse-Based nation-thing.

But it sucks as of right now. 

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

You should join our alliance. "Defensive Mutually-Friendly Alliance"

After that, you should read back on some of the advice here, get a whole bunch of trading partners, and, uh, ask us to help out.

After all, I get just over 400k/day in taxes, and pay 123k in bills. I can drop you 200k fairly easily, and that's gonna make a -big- difference.

If we organise, we can get each of us to drop you a days wages, as it were, on a rolling basis, every other day. That should get you up to speed pretty quick, and us dropping ~1 day out of every 10 is no real hardship.

Hmm. We should probably slow that down a bit - I think you're limited to 4 aids at a time, and they last for 10 days, so... Yeah. Anyway. Either that, or me and Tez can chip a pile at you. That'll at least get you in shouting distance of the rest of us...

[Tezkat]

Oooh - I just stumbled across this thread...

I played NationStates at one point - it was pretty boring for me though... But I signed up on Cyber Nations - http://www.cybernations.net/nation_drill_display.asp?Nation_ID=146433

Yay for random Norse-Based nation-thing.

But it sucks as of right now. 

Welcome aboard!

Yeah... we'll be able to foreign aid your net worth up into the thousands in very short order. Plus you might also have the opportunity to be a regular tech bitch supplier for us more developed nations.

You'll want to switch to the purple team where the rest of us live. Finding trades shouldn't be super difficult--Fur is not so good, but Wheat is far and away the most popular resource.

I'd suggest sitting on your nation and not building up until you sort out your trades and your first aid shipment(s) arrive. You'll get a much larger boost when you finally do build up and collect taxes that way.

[Kryptic]

Well, I'm in with you guys now - and drag down scores, for the time being. >,< Yay, us!

I'll go about seeing the trades - guess I must have lucked out with wheat. But I'll hit it hard. I'm interested in this game.

Well, now I'm trying to work out my trades - there was something on the board in a guide that could work for me...

[Aluminum] [Coal] [Fish] [Furs] [Gems] [Gold] [Iron] [Lumber] [Silver] [Wheat] [Wine] [Water]

Now I just need to work out the trades... If all works out with what I've offered, I have only Water and Lumber to get after I get the Harbor...

[Tezkat]

Well, your first improvement (Harbour) won't be that far off, but I'd highly recommend trying to bump up Water and Lumber on your priority list. They're among the harder ones to find as they're in greater demand.

You're also going to be receiving a lot of foreign aid, at least at the beginning. The best builds to optimize that scenario focus on reducing purchase costs rather than increasing income. But your proposed build isn't too bad. At least you're reading the guides.