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[Neyvn]

I could oversee the second forest if you're still looking for someone. I've got scientist to find new trees and hunter to find food that'll turn into fertilizer that I could have someone else use to keep fertility up.

That would be perfect, but if those that own the Forest could hand over control of the sawmills you could run them and sell to them.

[Sappho]

It is quite a wonder to me that this community can be so mature, intelligent, and respectful to one another on the forums in general, but every time we try to start a group in an MMO, it's only a matter of days (or even hours) before everyone starts trying to kill each other.

My theory is that we're all so used to playing DF and being overlords of a group of drones that the ideas of compromise, group planning, or even taking advice are more or less alien. Everyone is used to being in charge and making the whole plan, start to finish, and everyone is used to having little digital workers carry out our orders more or less without question. But imagine if each of our dwarfs had a vote in the game - those plans would never work, because nothing would get done. Urist would be too busy making the perfect wood stockpile, Urist II would never leave the ale stockpiles, and Urist III would be fighting with Urist IV about the proper way to keep the books and which paper should be used in the process. In other words, the types of plans we're all used to making only work when we're dealing with slaves. But none of us are slaves. Everyone has their own ideas about what will be best, and instead of brainstorming ideas together, compiling lists of pros and cons, taking into consideration people's real-life schedules and how much time they want or need to invest, and making all major decisions based on what works best for everyone, all the players just start complaining about how the other players' actions don't fit in with their overall vision of how the group should be working.

But really, I don't think any of this would matter so much if people didn't take these games so seriously. That's the thing that really bothers me a lot about playing MMOs with you guys. When someone disagrees with a point, the person who made it takes it as a personal insult. If someone makes a mistake, everyone denounces them as the seed of our future downfall. And I almost never see anyone saying "I'm really having a great time playing this game." Instead it's "we'll never make it! we're ruined! now I'll have to invest weeks of my life in order to fix the catastrophe that you guys caused!" Everyone seems to treat it like a job rather than a game.

Well, to wrap up this little monologue of mine, it's just a game to me. If I can contribute to other people's enjoyment of the game and help our little imaginary country thrive, cool. That sounds fun. But I'm having less fun every time I log in and see how angry everyone is getting ALREADY. Dudes. It's a GAME. A BROWSER game. Nothing that happens in here matters. And we don't have to be the best in order to have a good time. And if people don't start having fun soon, then good luck to you all, I'll go find a country to live in where people aren't so uptight.

[Necro910]

It is quite a wonder to me that this community can be so mature, intelligent, and respectful to one another on the forums in general, but every time we try to start a group in an MMO, it's only a matter of days (or even hours) before everyone starts trying to kill each other.

My theory is that we're all so used to playing DF and being overlords of a group of drones that the ideas of compromise, group planning, or even taking advice are more or less alien. Everyone is used to being in charge and making the whole plan, start to finish, and everyone is used to having little digital workers carry out our orders more or less without question. But imagine if each of our dwarfs had a vote in the game - those plans would never work, because nothing would get done. Urist would be too busy making the perfect wood stockpile, Urist II would never leave the ale stockpiles, and Urist III would be fighting with Urist IV about the proper way to keep the books and which paper should be used in the process. In other words, the types of plans we're all used to making only work when we're dealing with slaves. But none of us are slaves. Everyone has their own ideas about what will be best, and instead of brainstorming ideas together, compiling lists of pros and cons, taking into consideration people's real-life schedules and how much time they want or need to invest, and making all major decisions based on what works best for everyone, all the players just start complaining about how the other players' actions don't fit in with their overall vision of how the group should be working.

But really, I don't think any of this would matter so much if people didn't take these games so seriously. That's the thing that really bothers me a lot about playing MMOs with you guys. When someone disagrees with a point, the person who made it takes it as a personal insult. If someone makes a mistake, everyone denounces them as the seed of our future downfall. And I almost never see anyone saying "I'm really having a great time playing this game." Instead it's "we'll never make it! we're ruined! now I'll have to invest weeks of my life in order to fix the catastrophe that you guys caused!" Everyone seems to treat it like a job rather than a game.

Well, to wrap up this little monologue of mine, it's just a game to me. If I can contribute to other people's enjoyment of the game and help our little imaginary country thrive, cool. That sounds fun. But I'm having less fun every time I log in and see how angry everyone is getting ALREADY. Dudes. It's a GAME. A BROWSER game. Nothing that happens in here matters. And we don't have to be the best in order to have a good time. And if people don't start having fun soon, then good luck to you all, I'll go find a country to live in where people aren't so uptight.

TL;DR Version:
Slavery is fun, but is Fun with your social skills.

[gimlet]

OK I have thrown my hat in the ring last minute to run for leader for this week.  My wall of text platform/suggestions:

At least a few days with minimal/no research to get cash back into the system and see what our budget really is like.

Government uses cash to get the buildings going and unclog the production chain.

Export surplus for cash - but we need to know what IS surplus - see Planning.
 - for a day or 2 we can just eyeball it, but for the future looking at the plan should guide it.

Offer other countries to mine their plots
  This moves some of leader's search bottleneck to OTHER countries
  - many small countries would be glad to do it for a cut of the resources, allowing them to move effort elsewhere

Appoint sub leaders to make sure we have coverage as close to 24/7 as we can.

First Equipment Bank/equipment loans
  - rather than each individual be stuck until they accumulate the big $$ for equipment, people who want equipment put money in the bank and the bank funds equipment in priority order of skill and needed function
  This will get us maximally productive in the quickest time

Planning doc - estimate of builder time, cash, research, and materials needed
 For starters lets just try some goals for the day, and eyeball what that will take.
 If we can do more, great, if worse we'll learn what the problems are.

export/import guy
 To keep track of who's producing surpluses of various materials
 The go-to guy to check with when considering an export, to make sure it's not something we're about to need a lot of

Redundancy of production
 - with all these active workers, we will shortly be swimming in material.  The cost of military is HUGE and the cost of production buildings is trivial compared to that.  Building a few new production buildings to prevent bottlenecks or be ready for a capacity increase is small change and shouldn't be stressed over.

This lets us expand ownership to those who want to try running a building or 2. 
Area coordinators
 Production - listen to all the building managers, keep an eye for problems, estimate capacity and expansion, list priorites for operators
 Building - keep track of the builders,  give them the priorities, keep track of pending building repair
 Mining - keep track of the mining operations, prioritize the miners to clear out plots in order so they can be deleted asap
 Equipment manager - need-to-repair equipment dropped off, manage priority of repairs - this would be for xp only as it will be more efficient to build replacement
 Farming - monitor allocation between grain for cash, and fruit/meat for military and food, and production especially grain for cash.
 Budget - we need to know the cash inputs and sinks
 Military - what to build, how to use it.
 Foreign - keep track of other countries and what they're up to,

I'd like to see short but interesting reports we could put up, I for one would be interested in seeing "steel production increased from 10,000 yesterday to 14,000 today" and all kinds of geeky stats.

COMMUNICATE to people what the priorities are, how we're doing, how they can help.  A web page/wiki or something quick to get started.
 
These things should all start out as hints/guidance, I really think that's all most people need.  If there really is problems then we could lock down critical things more and more, but still leave SOME space for people to do their own thing.  And for real deviants, there's always the Banish...

Medium Term:
- see how other countries are doing things, experiment, see if that will work for us
- start to get SOME defenses up quick, this peace might not last forever
- should we go full commie and not even worry about money?  More capitalist and let the market decide?  Let's discuss and decide.

My other qualifications:
 I have a ton of free time this week and can be on a lot - amazing how important this is
 

[Sappho]

That sounds like a legitimate plan, at least in theory. I think it's important to consider what everyone's goals in the game are. Do most people want the country to simply be the most powerful? Successful? Rich? In which case people should be willing to work on the barter system and forget about paying each other for work. Or do people want to earn as much money/power as possible for themselves? In which case I guess it'll have to be capitalism.

I'm fine with socialism for now. I don't see any point to having loads of money for myself. I'm willing to do whatever I'm capable of that needs doing, as long as people are willing to lend me a hand if I need something important.

[Flying Dice]

Any chance of building in cities being allowed again/rent for foundries being reduced? Because I'm not able to build my own, and renting one to process what little iron ore I have would bankrupt me.

[Rilder]

Any chance of building in cities being allowed again/rent for foundries being reduced? Because I'm not able to build my own, and renting one to process what little iron ore I have would bankrupt me.

You could try Future's city, he owns that plot personally so might offer lower prices for building.

[Servant Corps]

It is quite a wonder to me that this community can be so mature, intelligent, and respectful to one another on the forums in general, but every time we try to start a group in an MMO, it's only a matter of days (or even hours) before everyone starts trying to kill each other.

...what? As a veteran of eRepublik, I can tell you that the Bay12Games community was united as a hivemind, worked together for the good of the Bay12Games clan, and most importantly, not kill each other. And a quick browsing through this thread indicated that you guys aren't killing each other either. I have a hard time thinking of any situation where the Bay12Games community started engaging in petty power struggles for control of the Bay12Games clan, mostly because we redirected all aggression outward to those other stupid clans.

Am I missing something?

[andrea]

you are missing economy.

[GreatJustice]

It is quite a wonder to me that this community can be so mature, intelligent, and respectful to one another on the forums in general, but every time we try to start a group in an MMO, it's only a matter of days (or even hours) before everyone starts trying to kill each other.

...what? As a veteran of eRepublik, I can tell you that the Bay12Games community was united as a hivemind, worked together for the good of the Bay12Games clan, and most importantly, not kill each other. And a quick browsing through this thread indicated that you guys aren't killing each other either. I have a hard time thinking of any situation where the Bay12Games community started engaging in petty power struggles for control of the Bay12Games clan, mostly because we redirected all aggression outward to those other stupid clans.

Am I missing something?

Personal issues cropped up, money, certain individuals driving others away, etc.

Since when did B12 have a presence in Erepublik?

[Servant Corps]

Read this thread, GreatJustice. Bay12Games had a presence in eThailand and eParaguay.

[GreatJustice]

Read this thread, GreatJustice. Bay12Games had a presence in eThailand and eParaguay.

Oh, you joined in V1-V2. I joined in Beta, grew dissatisfied with the Admin's blatant money farming (adding "gold bonuses" to more and more things in addition to selling gold), saw more and more stupid features being added, and ultimately quit.

[Neyvn]

Smithy91 wrote on 2011-09-15 17:07: Greetings from Ben and Smith Industries
Hello there Libyan Goverment!

Congratulations on reaching number one on the listing's for countries, a wonderful feat.

I'm the sales manager for our company, primarily we trade in resources, that can be hard to get hold of, and a little ****y bird has told me that Libya needs oil. We have oil...lot's of it in fact, i'm fairly open at prices, but i'll start by setting the opening price at $35 / oil.

If you are interested, please contact me as soon as possible, as I have 2 other clients interested in purchasing oil.

Thank you for your time and good luck with Libya.

- Sales Manager Smith
Ben and Smith Industries

[Sappho]

...what? As a veteran of eRepublik, I can tell you that the Bay12Games community was united as a hivemind, worked together for the good of the Bay12Games clan, and most importantly, not kill each other. And a quick browsing through this thread indicated that you guys aren't killing each other either. I have a hard time thinking of any situation where the Bay12Games community started engaging in petty power struggles for control of the Bay12Games clan, mostly because we redirected all aggression outward to those other stupid clans.

Am I missing something?

I didn't mean literally kill each other. I mean the whole thing boils down to petty squabbling very quickly. Everyone is just arguing and barking orders at each other and taking every disagreement personally. People can't even agree on how to deal with "those other stupid clans." Eventually most of the people get sick of it and quit. See Hazordhu II, Haven & Hearth, I'm sure I'll think of more later but I have to run to work now ahhhhh!

[andrea]

Nevyn, say smithy we refuse.
1) that oil is too expensive. Way to expensive

2) in chat he was selling it cheaper. he is probably trying to rip us off

I have a miner at the derrick again, so I can sell some oil if needed