This sounds like a cool idea. As an organization, would we be able to own multiple companies and turn ourselves into an international conglomerate?
I think that we need to stick to primary manufacturing (wheat, oil, wood, iron) since it will take away having to worry about our buy prices fluctuating and we can focus on labor costs and selling price. The other thing we should think about is what quality we want to produce. I don’t have an opinion on it but I figure it would be an important question.
On a side note I just quit my job and started a new one for $5.50. Unfortunately, it’s for a Q2 company so I’ll be losing more wellness each day but at least I can afford food now.
I haven’t run the numbers but I think we’d do best to stick to a place with a lot of people. Romania, Indonesia, and the US. Hungary seems to have cheap goods too.
Then again, there’s always the cursed Moldavia. Perhaps we could make food there? I haven’t really looked at their economy though.
Link to a resource’s map (hoping it’s up to date) which is necessary for a raw material company, but also useful for a manufacturing company (you want the raw materials to be abundant and cheap for your manufacturing company)
Several areas look like they have high levels in several resources, California for one. One of them would be the best place since it would leave our options open.
Regarding Moldova, I looked into it once (which get me a free moving ticket from a generous soul, just for having enquired), and there was at the time almost no food, and at a ludicrous price, but since it seems to have changed, and besides, there’s almost nobody living there.
I thought about Hungary too because I noticed salaries seemed low, it has a large population and still, might be less well known and attract less investors than Romania or Indonesia. However, in all these countries, we should check if English (or whatever other language one of us would understand) is widely spoken or not. I believe it’s very important to be able to communicate with the workers, in order to negotiate with them and keep them. If the local language is the de facto working language (like it is in France), it might be an issue.
The advantage of the USA would be that American dopers could work there. In which case, looking into everybody’s skill would be important. Salaries are quite low too. But I suspect there must be zillions of American players trying to open a company there every day.
Though it doesn’t appear on the ereptool list of low salaries, when I spent time trying to understand how to run the house company yesterday, and more specifically tried to figure out how companies selling at low cost were operating, I noticed rather low salaries being paid in Mexico. Maybe it’s worth looking into.
It also occurred to me that someone I’m in contact with in France owns an Iron company in Spain, and isn’t adverse to smuggling. Maybe a deal with him could be a possibility (not sure since France try to siphon in as much iron as possible, so he might sell easily all his production and not need any deal), in order to open a weapon company? Though even in this case, it should be backed by a local supply of iron.
Finally, I suspect I would tend to look into medium to large sized country, those who have a still large population, but perhaps might be overlooked by foreign investors, not being prominent enough.
Maybe each of us could try to come up with his own project, and we could compare? Or maybe we should leave the decision to Raza, since it appears he’s going to be the main investor?
End of my random thoughts on the topic.
ETA : last random thought. I remember having read a thread about Philippines a couple days ago stating that there was 50 level 0 workers or so unemployed. But I don’t know anything about this country.
Whatever you think of, use this map
I already gave the link before, but I just noticed it has been massively improved. Everything is on it (countries, productions, population, etc…, even current wars) and apparently kept updated, and the zoom-in with the mouse and the click and drag seems to finally works. That’s an incredibly good job.
One thing again : the “salaries list” on erep tools either isn’t reliable or I don’t know how it works/ what it’s supposed to show. For instance, I looked into skill 4 manufacturing jobs in Indonesia, there were 7 pages of them, but only one appeared on the rep tool table, and not even the best paid.
So, except if someone understand this table better than me, I suppose we should look directly in the “job offers” of the country to figure out what are the local salaries.
Maybe you caught them between an update. I stopped counting on eRepTools at 25 level 4 Indonesia manufacturing jobs, and the top paying Indonesian one, at 14 IDR, was also what I saw at eRepublik.com.
Just looking over the resource map and it looks like Western Australia might be a good bet. It has several high resource levels and has a decent population but is not one of the major spots. Also the country is partially taken over so there should be good opportunities to fight.
Reading a post giving advices to newbies intending to create a company on the French forum, amongst some more obvious ones, I noticed a stern :
“Don’t create a Q1 raw material company, the current proctivity rules make them non profitable” , and advised to create instead at least a Q2 company, which means investing 20 gold more.
I asked for confirmation, and though I don’t understand the reasons (left unexplained,maybe someone playing with the “productivity calculator” could figure out why), it was confirmed in the answers I got.
Furthermore, I was told that creating a Q1 company was only reasonable for :
- MT (actually only Q1 companies are profitable in this sector)
-Gifts (higher Q grants no productivity gain, it just takes less room in the inventory)
-Weapons (it’s pointless to use better weapons before reaching the rank of Captain)
-Food (in time of war, hospitals give free wellness, so no need to buy better quality food)
-Houses (for newbies, getting a Q1 house after a week of play is appreciated)
The commentaries aren’t mine. I’m inclined to take the words of the “oldies”, even if I don’t understand clearly the reasons. I also noticed that a thread asking for advices about creating a company had been opened yesterday in the general forum, but I didn’t read the answers (if there are any) yet.
I thought about it last night, and I made my mind about the product I would personally pick (actually I had thought of two, but eliminated one after reading the above advices). Note that’ it’s a rather intuitive pick, not a well thought of one. That would be weapons. My reasons would be :
-There are wars all the time, and plenty of people who like participating in them, just for the sake of it. I suspect that plenty of new players buy cheap one even if it’s relatively pointless just for the sake of it.
-It’s easily “smugglable” and sellable by exchange (that was by opposition to raw materials, but since raw materials seem a bad idea anyway…)
-Some dopers might be attracted to a military career, and might want weapons for themselves
-I’ve absolutely no clue about who buys tickets or gifts, or when they do so, and I find the food sector a bit too ordinary and common, and I’m affraid of the concurrence.
Final reason : it was easier to pick a country for weapons, and I was at a complete loss about what country to pick.
My idea was a country that fights a lot, or at least send people fighting elsewhere quite often and owns “high” iron-producing regions, because on the French forum, I had read comments to the effect that weapon manufacturers had a hard time getting iron. It restricted considerably the number of countries to pick from. Still, I find “minuses” in every country I looked into. Iran has its iron producing regions in Siberia (:eek:) and it seems a lot of big countries are fighting there, and I’m afraid they might change hands. Indonesia seemed promising but there are plenty of manufacturing companies seeking workers, so I assume there’s a worker shortage. Brazil had very high salaries when I looked. Some other country had high price for iron, and so on. No country seemed ideal, for some reason or another. So, I don’t know about the country.
So, I threw in my idea. Anybody else?
Oh! And I read also another comment on the French forums stating that the only companies that worked were those created long ago by “oldies” and those created by groups of new players pooling their resources (money, ideas, time, connections…) by opposition to individual “young entrepreneurs”. That’s rather encouraging.
Deleted (double post)
While we’re pondering industry, a war question: my wellness is dipping to the low-40s, and Indonesia has a few active battles. The forum and Wiki say that one of the requirements for using a hospital is that “the region has a hospital”, but doesn’t say WHICH region: the one where I live, or the one where the battle takes place.
Can someone clarify? My current region (Sindh) has no hospital.
Regarding fighting, we don’t need to live in the country to create/manage the company (except if we want to work for it, which could help if we have a hard time finding workers, but we have developed different skills). The Organization has to buy a plane ticket and move to the place where the company is to be created. I don’t know if it applies to buying companies.
I too had noticed Australia, but rather the northern region, IIRC (a part that was still Australian, anyway). But this was before I gave up trying the “which country?” angle, and switched to the “what product?” angle. I was at a complete loss picking a country (What to choose : high unemployment? Low salaries? Big population? Not too much existing companies? Plenty of resources? Something else?)
It’s the one where you live. I just had to move to another region to fight today (since France is invaded by the evil, warmongering Canadians and Spaniards). Fortunately, a benefactor had given me a plane ticket some days ago.
Maybe you could negotiate for a free plane ticket with your employer, since you having a high wellness makes you more productive. Mine was offering such a deal, in exchange for a promise to stay in the company for some time (10 days for a one way ticket, IIRC).
ETA : after you fight, if you live in a region with an hospital, there should be a “hospital” button appearing on the battle screen (the one that says how poorly you performed). Alternatively, I’ve been told that if you open the region detail screen there should be a button “heal” next to the hospital if you’re wounded.
Thanks; that helps. I did move to another region with a hospital, but still within my country, and fought one battle. Since the hospital is a Q5, I’m up to 81 wellness now. But I take it that your weapon is “used up” each battle, so unless I want to spend another 2-days pay on another Q1 gun, I should stop now…or is it worth fighting bare-handed?
How often do countries go to war with eachother?
Would it be possible to take some weak country and make them a world power?
The eAmerican announcement said that it was best to fight barehanded that way you gain wellness and experience but don’t spend money.
Even if we aren’t looking to live in the country our company is in we should look at how the wheat resource is. There look to be only a couple of areas that have high wheat production and high other production. The other production is limited to oil and wood. With good wheat production the food should be cheaper so we would be able to pay our employees less. I would guess that our best profit margin would end up in houses based on the article that clairobscur read.
I went to fight bare-handed. It’s not like we’re making any difference, anyway. I did what? A handful of damages? And I see the difference between defence and offence run into the tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, so I assume each side must be scoring at several hundreds of thousand points.
I didn’t think we were gaining anything by doing more damages. Do we? Actually I never looked into the rules for fighting.