User:Shijeru/cybernations/guide

CyberNations Guidebook

teal deer edition (though you should read it anyway)

Contents I. Hi, I'm New II. Nation Building III. Resources and Trades IV. Military and Technology V. Government and Religion

I. Hi, I'm New confused.gif

i) Getting Started

Once you've registered and logged in for the first time, the first thing you want to do is set up a few aspects of your nation. Don't collect taxes, and don't buy anything.

Click on the "View My Nation" link. That's the page that gives you all the statistics for your nation.

Now click on the "Edit My Nation" link and do the following, if you haven't already (here's a screenshot if you want to see what my edit page looks like):

* Team: Black * Alliance: Specify Other, then type in HeroesOfGaming * Flag: Anything you want, though most of us have gone for Seychelles as a show of Gay[M]en unity. * Government: This takes a little more thought. Basically you want to go to your "View My Nation" page, find out what it says next to "Government Type", then compare that to the list of government hints in the government section of this guide. If your preferred government type is Capitalist, Republic, or Revolutionary, you can pick those. Otherwise you should pick Monarchy. You can only change government types every few days, so you might have to wait a bit until you're able to do this. * Defcon: You want this at defcon 5, unless you're at war, in which case you want it at defcon 1. For now, keep it at defcon 5. * Tax Rate: Set this to 28%, then go to your "View My Nation" page and find the number next to "Avg. Individual Income Taxes Paid Per Day" (near the bottom). Then set this to 16%, then 20%, then 23%, then 25%, checking that number each time. Whichever tax rate gives you a higher amount of taxes, use that. In most cases this will be 28%. Ignore your citizen's complaints, and ignore your population happiness. Just pick whatever gives you the most income taxes. * Religion: Similar to your preferred government, your people have a preferred religion. Go to your "View My Nation" page, look at what it says next to "National Religion", and compare that with the desired religions list in the religion section of this guide. Whatever religion they want, give to them. Like with governments, you might need to wait a few days to make the change. * War/Peace: You want war as an option. Not that you want to be at war just yet, but peace mode cripples your economy and slows your nation's growth. SO STAY OUT OF PEACE MODE. If you do get attacked, ask for help in the War Room forum. That's what it's there for.

Now that that's set up, click on the "My Government Position" link and do the following:

* If you have uranium as one of your resources, pick "Our government will not sign the treaty because our nation believes in the use of nuclear technology to build power plants [...]" under the nuclear non-proliferation option (gives you bonus income). Otherwise, sign the treaty (improves your environment). * Do not say your leaders are addicted to drugs. This lowers your environment. * Do not welcome all immigrants. This will also lower your environment.

Other than those options you can basically pick whatever. You can also change these options whenever you want, as often as you want, unlike your gov/religion choices. So don't sweat it. Feel free to experiment with the choices and see which give you the best results, though other than the items above, I don't believe any of the choices actually do anything substantial.

Now make trade agreements that allow you to get your max population growth trade set. This step might take you a few days (or perhaps longer). It is the most annoying part of the game, unfortunately. Don't collect taxes until your trade setup is close to how you want it, though, since a poor trade setup will hurt your income considerably. (Every day you don't collect taxes, the taxes will just pile up, and when you do finally collect it will use your income at that time to calculate the taxes for all days. This game has no memory. Whatever your income is when you click the collect tax button, that's the income the game uses.) Trade information and more links to helpful trade threads are in section IV, below.

ii) Basic Tips

Once you've got your trades setup (or at least kind of setup), it's time to actually buy some stuff. A few tips:

* Buy as much infrastructure as you can. Infrastructure increases your citizen population (and slightly increases your base income). It's what makes you money. If nothing is in the red and you're wondering what to spend money on, spend it on infra. * Soldiers are necessary for defense, but also increase your bill payments. A rule of thumb is to keep around 30% of your citizen count as soldiers when you are first starting out. Tanks are more expensive than soldiers, so don't buy any unless you are at war (in which case, all bets are off, and your bill payments aren't your primary concern anyway). Same goes for cruise missiles and aircraft. Aircraft will be very important once you get larger (as will tanks and CMs), but for now you shouldn't need them during peace-time. * Only buy land if it is shown as red on your nation page. You get an environment bonus if your land is greater than half your infra, but this bonus is too small to make buying land worth it in the vast majority of cases. * Technology is necessary to unlock a number of bonus resources. Therefore it is worth getting your technology to 5 (for construction) or 10 (if you want to sell tech, and need microchips). Don't do this right away, but once you get a little larger (the infra cost reduction provided by construction becomes more important the larger you get). Technology also gives you happiness bonuses up to level 200, though the most significant happiness bonuses are reached as soon as your technology gets larger than 10. So a level of 10 is good to shoot for if you are starting out. As you get larger, technology becomes more important. A simple rule of thumb is 1 tech for every 10 infra. After the first 50 tech, though, you will not want to buy any more of it yourself. You will either want to buy tech from a tech trader (safe), or you will want to raid it from an enemy nation (more fun, usually). If you tech raid, follow the guidelines. * If you're planning on buying infrastructure, improvements, or military, pay your bills first. Otherwise you'll have to pay upkeep on whatever you buy. * If you're planning on buying infrastructure or improvements (i.e., anything that increases your income), buy those before collecting tax if possible. * The cost of infrastructure increases the more infrastructure you have. However the cost increase isn't applied until after your current purchase goes through. So it's usually best to buy infra in blocks of 10 (the largest amount you can buy at one time), since all 10 of that infrastructure will be purchased at your current infra costs. If you can't afford to buy that much infra at once, just buy as much as you can. So if you can buy 27.57 infra per day (just an example) buy two blocks of 10 and then the last 7.57 afterward. Some people only buy blocks of 10, and save their money for the next day if they can't afford a full block. In most cases this is not as efficient as just buying the incomplete block, since the extra taxes from the infra will offset the extremely marginal infra price increase that comes from buying less than ten infra at once.

So basically, once your nation is set up and things are running smoothly, a typical CyberNations session will look like:

1. Collect Taxes 2. Pay Bills 3. Buy infrastructure in blocks of 10 (or largest group you can purchase at once).

Not much to it at all. (Don't worry, it becomes a lot more interesting when you're at war. Think of peace-time as just your preparation for kicking more ass the next time you fight.) If you happen to get an event after collecting taxes, read the Events section of this guide before doing anything. Now and then you will want to double-check your soldier/population counts, and buy more soldiers if needed. Whenever you get 1000 citizens, you will want to look at buying an improvement (there's a section of this guide for that as well, and it happens to be next).

II. Nation Building affluent.GIF

i) Infrastructure, Happiness, Environment, etc.

Success at CyberNations revolves around increasing your daily populatoin growth. The more people you have the higher your income and the more things you can buy, including infrastructure and improvements, which in turn increase your population, which increases your income even more, and so on.

Whenever you collect taxes, the taxes are calculated by the following simple formula:

Avg. Individual Income Taxes Paid Per Day * Number of Citizens * Days Since Last Tax Collection

where your Avg. Individual Income Taxes Paid Per Day is simply the Avg. Gross Income Per Individual Per Day multiplied by your Tax Rate.

Your average gross income (AGI) is altered by a number of factors. Your "base AGI" is simply your AGI before including any of your current percentage bonuses (like those from improvements such as banks). Buying more infrastructure will increase your base AGI by a very small amount. Increasing your happiness will increase your base AGI at a rate of $2.00 per point of happiness. Being in peace mode for longer than 5 days will begin to lower your base AGI by a large amount, in addition to happiness penalties (which further decrease your base AGI). Various random events can also change your AGI, positively or negatively.

Your technology can affect your AGI indirectly, since up to tech level 200, technology gives you happiness bonuses. The most significant happiness bonuses happen up to tech level 10.

Your environment rating also affects your base AGI, as each environment point equals 0.4 happiness, which equals $0.80 in base AGI. The number next to your environment star rating is a bit confusing ... the lower it is, the better your environment. An environment rating of 1 equals 5 stars, 2 equals 4.5 stars, and 11 equals 0 stars. So gaining an environment point will decrease your environment star rating by a 1/2 star, decrease your base AGI by $0.80, and will also decrease your citizen population by a small amount (generally 40 people or less, making this effect negligible in most cases compared to the effect on happiness).

ii) Improvements

Percentage income bonuses from improvements (such as banks) are multiplied by your base AGI to produce the number you actually see on your nation page. However, happiness bonuses from improvements (such as stadiums) are added to your base AGI at the usual rate of 1 happiness = $2.00. Because of this, both happiness bonuses (to improve your base AGI) and percentage bonuses (to improve your actual AGI) work together. This will help to explain the reasoning behind the following typical improvement order:

1 harbor 5 factories 10 banks/stadiums 3 schools 2 universities 2 clinics 1 hospital 1 foreign ministry 2 schools 3 clinics 5 police headquarters 5 labor camps 5 intelligence agencies 5 churches 5 missile defenses (if you don't have them already) 5 satellites (if you don't have them already) 5 border walls (although they hardly give you anything) 5 barracks (although they hardly give you anything)

This is the order in which you should buy improvements in most cases. If you send/receive a lot of aid you might want to build a foreign ministry earlier. If you're in a lot of wars, you might want to bump up the missile defenses and/or satellites. If it doesn't look like you'll get harbor aid, you might want to build a factory as your first improvement and then build a harbor as your second, since it will take a long time to afford a harbor with only 1000 citizens.

As for the banks/stadiums, if you're lazy you can alternate between them, and in many cases this will work just fine. If you'd like to actually know how to calculate which one will give you the most income each time, then read the quote box below. Otherwise, skip it. Feel free to ask on IRC if you're not sure whether to buy a bank or a stadium. The GOONS calculator can do this as well (which all council members have access to, so feel free to ask us).

QUOTE Banks or Stadiums?

Basically, stadiums give you +3 happiness, which translates into a gain of $6.00 base AGI * your percentage bonuses. Banks increase your percentage bonus by 7%. A harbor gives you a 1% bonus, so if you have, for example, a harbor and a bank, your total percentage bonus would be 8%, so that your base AGI is multiplied by 1.08 to produce the actual AGI shown on your nation page. Two banks and a harbor would give you a multiplier of 1.15. Three banks gives 1.22, and so on.

So to find out whether a bank or a stadium will give you more income, first find your percentage bonus. .07 added by each bank, .01 from your harbor. Add 1 to get your multiplier.

Multiply that by $6.00. This is how much a stadium will give you. So if you had 1 bank and 1 harbor, $6.00 * 1.08 = $6.48.

Take the actual AGI from your Nation page and divide it by your percentage multiplier, to find your base AGI. Multiply this base AGI by 0.07. This is how much a bank will give you. So if your actual AGI was $97.20, your base AGI would be $97.20 / 1.08 = $90.00, and a bank would give you $90.00 * 0.07 = $6.30. So you'd want to buy a stadium in this example.

Obviously, you want to buy whichever gives more money. In many cases the difference between a bank and a stadium will work out to be under $0.50, so it is fine to stagger banks and stadiums if you're lazy. But if you don't mind micromanaging, calculating your bank/stadium bonuses is a way to squeeze a bit more money out of your nation.

iii) Events

They happen after collecting taxes, sometimes. They're completely random. If you get notified that you have a new event, check it out on your events page and decide what to do about it. If you get a good event, pick the one that increases your income the most (remember 1 happiness = $2.00, 1 environment = 0.4 happiness). If it's a bad event, do the following (stolen from GOONS bootcamp guide):

QUOTE · Do any of the options reduce your land area? If so, pick the option that does. If not, move on. · Do any of the options reduce your military? If so, choose the option that does. If not, move on. · Do any of the options raise your infra upkeep costs? If so, pick the option that does. If not, move on. · Do any of the options do anything other than decreasing your income (remember that losing a percentage of your citizens loses the same percentage of your income). If so, pick that option. If not, move on. · If all of the options reduce your income (by reducing happiness, citizen income, or citizen count), calculate which option reduces income the least (once again, 1 happiness point = $2 income).

If in doubt, feel free to ask on IRC or on the forums, and someone should be around who will be able to assist you.

iv) Infra Jumps

Most of the time, infrastructure upkeep costs increase gradually with the amount of infra you have. However, at certain levels the upkeep cost makes a sudden "jump", which means that in these cases buying infra will actually decrease your income. These jumps occur at 100, 200, 300, 500, 700, 1000, then every thousand after that. The infra jumps before 1k are small enough that you can pretty much ignore them, though you might want to save a day of taxes for the 700 jump. Personally I never bothered.

For the 1k infra jump, the break even point is at about 1070 infrastructure. So you will want to buy infra until you have 999.99, then save up enough taxes to buy 70 infra. You can use Allnighte's infra cost calculator to figure out how much money you need (with a good trade set and 5 factories, it'll be about $750,000).

For the 2k infra jump, the break even point is around 2150 infrastructure. Again, you can use Allnighte's infra cost calculator to find out how much you need (with a good setup it should be about $3.5 million). You can do a labour camp cycle to raise the necessary money faster than you'd get by just collecting normally. There's some information on labour camp cycles here. Once your infrastructure bills get high enough (around $1.3M per day, apparently), it's good to do labour camp cycles all the time, even when you're not saving for an infra jump.

In summary, you want to increase your base AGI, your happiness and percent bonuses, and most importantly the number of citizens in your nation (by buying infra, and by having good trades), so that you can get more improvements. Because of this, resource sets with population increasing bonuses tend to be the best, which brings us to the next section.

III. Resources and Trades pigs.gif

You can find the best set of trades for growing your nation right here, along with some explanation of why you want certain resources.

Another good collection of trade info is located here.

In most cases the Fast Food/Beer/Construction block is ideal, since it gives you the most population, although this depends on your starting resources to a certain extent. In some cases the Steel/Asphalt/Autos block is superior, though it focuses on infra upkeep reduction rather than population bonuses, and is therefore best for nations who are sending out a lot of foreign aid (i.e., bank nations).

If your nation has bad resources that don't seem to form good trade pairings, you might want to consider deleting your nation and recreating it (you will have to wait a few days, unfortunately). You can certainly play the game with poor starting resources but your nation will produce less income, and you might have to bribe people to trade with you. If you have two of the following: lead.gif furs.gif uranium.gif gold.gif, I would consider restarting your nation. If you have one of these resources but another good resource, then it might be worth it to keep going. Before making any hasty decisions, post in the trade forums and get some experienced opinions.

If you have the resources for it, you might want to look into joining a trade group. Keep in mind that it can take a very long time to find a trade group, depending on your resources. You should always be looking for ways to get yourself an ideal set. Trade groups are just another way to do that when other methods aren't working. It is frustrating, but as long as you keep sending out PMs, keep nagging new players for trades, keeping sending out trade offers, etc., you will get the set you want eventually.

How do you search for trades? If you're looking for more than two resources and don't particularly care which combination they come in, use the advanced trade finder. The trade finder doesn't sort by activity, so make sure not to bother sending trade offers to nations that are more than a few days inactive ... they probably won't come back, especially if they're small. If you're looking for a specific combination of resources, you can search the all nations resources page. Change your search type to "team + resources" and then search for "black aluminum lumber", or whatever your resources are. You have a small number of outgoing trade offers, but the amount of trade offers you can receive is much greater. This means it's often a good idea to find a lot of people with the resources you need, and send them a mass PM asking them to send you a trade offer. It's often a good idea to tell them what benefits your resources would provide them. If they're small they likely don't know, and won't bother to check.

Good planning also helps. If you have all but two of the resources you need, but those last two resources are very rarely seen in combination, you might have screwed yourself over. So try to plan ahead, and focus on trade agreements that will leave you needing resources in pairs that are common and easy to find. It's helpful to look for trades with people who have one common resource plus one rare resource. lumber.gif seems to be the rarest resource, whereas cattle.gif is one of the most common. pigs.gif and fish.gif are also fairly common. On the other hand, the resources in the construction block (aluminum.gif lumber.gif marble.gif iron.gif) are all typically harder to find. Keep this in mind when making your trade agreements.

IV. Military and Technology cool.gif

There are other guides full of good information on fighting effectively, so this section will just give a brief overview of technology and military and what you should do about them during peace time.

Since nation strength is the measure by which your nation is judged, it's useful to know how it's calculated:

3*infra + 1.5*land purchased + 20*tech + .1*soldiers + 1*tanks + 1.5*cruise missiles + 50*nukes

If you're interested in pumping your nation strength over the long-term, technology is the best way to do this, since infra and land costs scale with how much you already have, but by trading for technology with smaller nations (or by raiding it from others), you can obtain it at the same price forever.

Technology also increases the number of casualties you inflict in ground battles, and lets you buy higher levels of aircraft (100 tech levels will get you the best aircraft, though you'll need 1000 infra as well).

Speaking of tanks and cruise missiles: if you are just starting out you shouldn't need them in peace-time, especially since they increase your bill payments. However, once you get larger, it can be a good idea to keep some tanks on hand, so that if you're attacked you'll have a military already available without having to collect taxes. Keep in mind that any CMs you leave lying around can be destroyed by enemy CM strikes or bombing runs, which makes stockpiling CMs generally not worth it unless you know you won't be able to buy CMs for a while (like if you're in anarchy).

Once you get larger (and can buy level 9 aircraft), aircraft are something you will definitely want to keep around. If you have a weak airforce and fight an enemy that has a good airforce, you will get your ass handed to you. Bombing runs can destroy 40 infra per day (20 infra per strike * 2 strikes), and if they have air superiority they will have no trouble doing that much damage. So once you can buy level 9 aircraft, start building up an airforce. They will be quite expensive and it will take you a few days to buy all of them, but that's why you can't slack off and try buying them all at the last minute, because you won't be able to afford them. You can buy a few planes per day then spend the rest on infra, and slowly build up in this way.

How many fighters and bombers should you buy? If you have level 9 aircraft, you should buy a maximum of 6 bombers if you want an aggressive set up. If you want to play defensively, you need only two bombers. Four bombers is a decent medium. The rest of your aircraft should be fighters. This is because often even a few bombers will do maximum infra damage, but they'll get shot down if your enemy has more fighters than you.

Bombers do damage. Fighters defend your bombers, and defend your nation from enemy bombers. You want a lot more fighters than bombers, otherwise all your bombers will get shot down and you'll look like a tard.gif. So for a defensive setup, 58/2 fighters/bombers. For an offensive setup, 54/6. Or 56/4. It's a matter of personal preference. The NPO war guide recommends 54/6, so if you're unsure, give that a try and see how you like it.

As for actually fighting, that's best left to one of the other guides to explain. In the event you're attacked, however, you should make a thread in the War Room with the following information:

1. Your Nation Link 2. Enemy Nation Link 3. An explanation of what's happened, any PMs sent, and copies of your battle reports. Also include your current infra/tech costs per level, so we know how much damage has been caused and can request reparations from your attacker. If you're been put into anarchy by the attack, don't collect taxes (since anarchy decreases your taxes substantially). Ask for aid to build up your military, then defend yourself and wait for the anarchy to end. If you wait till you're more than a day out of anarchy to collect taxes, you can collect all those days at your pre-anarchy income level. A copy of our military protocol can be found here, and you should be familiar with it.

Finally, a little word on tech raiding. Yes, we allow tech raiding on inactive nations that are either unaligned or in small (under 15 member) alliances. The full guidelines may be found here. Follow them.

Violation of the tech raiding guidelines, or unauthorized attacks on active nations, may result in punishment from the Ministry of Justice. Make sure your target is valid before you attack!

V. Government and Religion tard.gif

i) Governments

Information about government types can be found here. Here's a copy of the preferred government hints list:

* Capitalist - They desire a government that will invest heavily in business ventures. * Communist - They desire a government that supports common ownership of all national possessions. * Democracy - They desire a government that makes decisions based on fair elective processes. * Dictatorship - They desire a supreme ruler who is in charge of all national matters. * Federal Government - They desire a government of strong central powers that will reside over issues such as national defense, disaster relief, and foreign affairs. * Monarchy - They wish to be ruled by a royal family. * Republic - They do not wish to be ruled by a royal family but instead by the people themselves. * Revolutionary Government - They desire a government that is based on radical change. * Totalitarian State - They desire a government that exercises total control over its subjects. * Transitional - They do not desire a permanent government but instead prefer something more temporary.

And here are the bonuses and penalties of each government type:

CODE Government Type         Happiness     Land     Soldiers     Initial Infra     Environment Penalty Anarchy Capitalist                          +5% Area                  -5% Cost Communist                           +5% Area  +8% Count                                1 Democracy                  +1                 +8% Count Dictatorship                                  +8% Count       -5% Cost                 2 Federal Government                            +8% Count       -5% Cost                 1 Monarchy                   +1                                 -5% Cost Republic                            +5% Area                  -5% Cost Revolutionary Government   +1                                 -5% Cost                 2 Totalitarian State         +1       +5% Area                                           1 Transitional                        +5% Area  +8% Count                                1

Unless your preferred government is Capitalist, Republic, or Revolutionary, it is strongly recommended you choose Monarchy. (Why this is true is left as an exercise for the reader. Look at the government stats in the box above, and keep in mind that 1 environment = 0.4 happiness.)

The exception to this is during war-time, where most of the time Democracy is the best choice. (This is because Democracy gives you a bonus to your amount of troops, and since you won't be buying infrastructure during war, Monarchy's infra cost reduction is useless.)

ii) Religions

Information about religions can also be found on the CN wiki here. Here's a copy of the hints list:

* None - Perhaps they do not desire a religion. * Mixed - There is no dominant religion among your population at this time but instead a variety of various teachings and followings. * Baha'i faith - They desire a modern middle eastern religion that focuses on monotheism. * Buddhism - They desire a national religion but do not care to worship a supreme deity. OR They desire to follow a religion that seeks freedom from greed, hatred and delusion, and enlightenment through realizing the Four Noble Truths and following the Eightfold Path. * Christianity - The majority of your people desire a religion that worships a divine savior. * Confucianism - They desire a Far Eastern philosophical religion emphasizing love for humanity, high value given to learning and to devotion to family and ancestors, peace, justice, and respect for traditional culture. * Hinduism - They believe in reincarnation and karma and desire a religion that supports this philosophy. * Islam - They wish to worship a supreme being that they call Allah. * Jainism - They are primarily non-materialistic and wish for a national religion that supports atheism and that teaches that every single living thing is an individual and eternal soul, called Jîva, which is responsible for its own actions. * Judaism - They desire a religion that follows divine scriptures OR They desire a religion that follows divine scriptures with ethical principles embodied chiefly in the Torah and in the Talmud. * Norse - They wish to follow an ancient religion followed by Germanic tribes living in Nordic countries under pre-Christian period. * Shinto - They believe that god is present in all walks of life, both in living and non-living things. * Sikhism - They desire a belief system which blends Hindu traditions with Islamic monotheistic traditions, the belief in one God and the teachings of the Ten Gurus. * Taoism - They do not believe in a single god but instead believe in oneness and freedom from personal desires. * Voodoo - They believe in the conjuring of dead spirits and desire a national religion that supports this.

Give your people whatever religion they desire. It's an easy +1 happiness.