Justin’s Brief Economy Guide

Justin Warren

August 11, 2009

1 Introduction and Personal History

Since I am slightly bored at work, I guess I could start on the economy, as I see it, in
erepublik. Before I get to that, I will let you know what I do in RL, what I have done in
game, and give some general guidelines.
In RL, I work as a researcher while pursuing my PhD in Mechanical Engineering. I
have never taken, and probably never will take, any economy based classes. With that in
mind, let’s start with my history.
I started the game with several friends and I soon developed about 3 companies. Most
of them failed due to my inexperience, but I took it in stride, gathered mine and my friends
resources to start in a different direction. I built up and maintained a Q4 iron company in
Podolia and the money was rolling in. That has all changed, but I will save that for the
history lesson.

2 Economy
There are 12 things that can be purchased in erepublik (Epub). These 12 things are iron,
wood, diamonds, grain, oil, weapons, houses, defense systems (DS), hospitals (H), gifts,
food, and moving tickets. The resources iron through oil are called raw materials (RM). Of
these 12, new players do not need to concern themselves with DSs and Hs. These are for
the goverment. In my opinion, new people do not need to concern themselves with houses
either, but I will get into that later.

3 Raw Materials
Basic rule of raw materials, if you do not put it on a high region, the company is worthless.
People will argue me on this, but mark my words (I owned two of them), it will fail.
The reason being that a high region will produce double what a regular region will. So, no
matter what, they are always producing goods better than you. If you have more questions

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about this topic, I actually spent lots of time in Congress and as a player working with
this.
Anytime during this article, I will talk about 5 units of iron to make 1 weapon. If you
want to talk about higher quality weapons, you need to multiply the base units of RM (say
5 for the iron and weapons) and multiple it by the quality you are wanting to produce.
Also, if you are talking about higher quality RM (say Q4 iron), that just means that a QX
where X is the quality contains X units of RM. In formula form for RM consumption:

N = Q ∗ Iindustry (1)
where N is the number of units of RM consumed to produce one unit of product (e.g. units
of wood to make a house), Q is the quality of the product you are making, and Iindustry
is the base number of units your industry consumes. Table 1 shows what the base number
of units consumed for each product is. I would also like to note here that the base number
of units consumed is the productivity points required to make that product as well.

Table 1: Base number of units consumed, Iindustry in Equation 1

Industry Product Consumed Number of Units Consumed

Food Grain 1
Gifts Diamonds 2
Weapons Iron 5
Moving Tickets Oil 10
House Wood 200

If one studies the productivity formulas (or I write up another guide soon), you will
find that you can produce more RMs cheaper at higher Q, but in manufacturing you are
actually paying even more for higher quality (a lot more). Keep this in mind.

3.1 Iron
Iron is probably the single most important resource in the game. Why? Since war is the
easiest way to increase wellness, everyone loves war. Since weapons (even a Q1) will more
than double how much damage you do and it takes 5 iron to make a Q1 weapon, the need
for iron is always there (especially in the US since we lack a high iron field).

3.2 Wood
Wood is used to make houses, DS, and H. It has it uses and it usually a pretty good
industry (way flooded most of the time, but hey, what isn’t). The reason that wood stays

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pretty good is the fact that it takes 200 units to produce one house and 2000 units for a
single DS or H.

3.3 Grain
Grain is used to make food. Refer to Equation 2

3.4 Diamonds
Diamonds are used to make gifts. This is an interesting company that booms during war
time since people buy gifts so that they can fight one more time.

3.5 Oil
Used to make moving tickets.

3.6 Weapons
Add to the amount of damage you do when you fight.

3.7 Food
Man gotta eat.

3.8 Gifts
Allows you to give a gift to another person healing their wellness equal to the quality of
the gift you gave them. The maximum that one person can be healed in one day is 10
wellness. For this reason, there should never be any gift company higher than 1. If you
want me to explain this, I will show you in a different paper.

3.9 Moving Tickets

Allow you to move to a different region. Really nice industry that I made a killing in before
I left for the Federalist party. You have to be patience though, cause the only time tickets
are needed is when you have Congress elections.

3.10 House
Gives an additional boost to wellness everyday. Refer to Equation 2

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4 Justin’s Economy Ideas
The in game economy runs as almost a perfect supply and demand system. That should be
most peoples primary focus. If you have questions about set topics, look into the companies
above.

A Formulas You Should Learn and Love

A.1 Wellness Increase Formula
W24
W = (1.5 − )·B (2)
100
where W is your wellness increase at the end of the day, W24 is your wellness at 24:00
hour of Epub time, and B is the wellness bonus, described by Equation 3.

B =H +F (3)
where H and F are the quality of your house and food, respectively.

A.2 Productivity Formula

I am going to reference you to a really nice webpage on the wiki about this topic.