Important Notice
This guide is under construction and review.
Starting Guide
Many people want to know how to build their cities big, namely newer players. This guide will teach you how to quickly get started and start earning profit.
When you first start off, you will need to build up your first city as much as possible. Be sure to complete the tutorial to get some extra money, and become familiar with the layout of the game. After you complete it, you are free to do as you please, however it is highly recommended you complete the objectives before moving on, as you will get an additional wad of cash, and be fairly well prepared against a would-be attacker. Keep in mind sometimes the objectives can break if you don't do them right, so be careful to follow the instructions given in an objective carefully.
Starting Quick Tips
- Be sure to buy land in quantities of at least 500 and infrastructure in quantities of at least 100. Do not let your infrastructure count exceed your land area.
- 50 infrastructure gets you one improvement, or one building in your nation.
- Do not buy infrastructure at random, odd numbers, like 212. It's useless. Either round down to 200, or get up to 300. Same for land, keep it nice and even.
- Join the Discord for some amazing guides, and helpful people. It's a surefire way to get you involved in the community, and meet some new people.
- Try to join an alliance! Many alliances look for new, cheerful, and active players to help build up. It never hurts to try to join an alliance early on, the worst they can do is say "No." They will provide you with some brilliant insights to the game, and might even monetarily assist you. If an alliance is tempting you with some very generous grants, keep in mind that they will often (not always) have higher taxes. The higher the benefits, the higher the taxes tend to be, however if you think an alliance is right for you, go for it!
- When you start the game, you are beiged (your trade color is beige). You cannot have war declared on you for two weeks, which gives you ample time to get your nation built up, and have a simple, but effective, army. It is strongly recommended that you keep your two weeks, and do not declare war on anyone, as you lose your neutrality.
- Start off the game by buying a few hundred infrastructure and land, if you can afford it. Be sure, as mentioned in tip one, not to let infrastructure exceed your land! For more info on city building, see the City page.
- Treat the trade market like a stock market. Prices fluctuate, either harming your profit, or benefiting it. Before creating a trade offer, head to the global trade offers, and narrow your search to whatever you're selling. Find the lowest price, (at the top), and either match it, or go a few bucks down. It's sure to sell!
- Finish the Objectives! They extend the tutorial, and give you huge amounts of starting money, and they're easy!
- Do not touch commerce/farms early on! It will not get you much profit. Farms should be bought around 1500-2000+ land, and commerce until you have around 100,000+ population in the city. Simply buy food from the market early on in bulk, it's nice and cheap, unless if radiation is high. Once you have a stable nation, make sure to get a stockpile of food!
- Do not buy services early on, there is no need. Once you start going down a commercial route, then be sure to build police stations (crime should always be under 1%), and then you could work on pollution.
- Consistently check your revenue page! It is very helpful, and shows you exactly where money is flowing to and where it's coming from!
Power & Manufacturing
Resource chart per Continent - An X means you have it!
First things first, if you're not powered yet, be sure to do so. Using this chart, figure out if you either have oil or coal. In your flourishing city, navigate to the resources tab, and build yourself a coal mine or an oil well, depending on which you have. The more of each you have, the bigger your bonus, which gains you bonus resources, so the more, the merrier! Coal Mines and Oil Wells both produces 3 tons of their respective resource per day, or 0.25 per turn, (every 2 hours). However, Oil Wells cost more, as their power plant is cleaner. Now that you are producing some fuel, head over to the power tab. Both the coal power plant and the oil power plant cost some money to buy and upkeep. They both use 0.1 tons of their needed fuel per turn, or 1.2 tons per day. Assuming you have a single mine, and under 250 infrastructure, your city is powered! Keep in mind that these mines use 0.1 tons per turn per 100 infrastructure. So, if you have 500 infrastructure, the mine will use 6 tons per day, so you will need at least 2 mines to keep it powered. Also, mines can only power up to 500 infrastructure each, so if you have 501 infrastructure, you're going to need a new mine. Keep that in mind!
Also, if you're just building mines in cities, and nothing that actually requires power, don't power it yet. Wait until you need it, and then power it, so as to not waste money and improvement slots.
Starting Strategy
Revenue is the sixth button here.
It is now time to choose a path down which you want to follow, such as piracy or a manufacturing nation. The choice is yours. However, many, if not all, new nations choose to go down a particular route at first before branching off to piracy, or whatnot: raw resource production. Refer to the chart above to see what resources you have. These resources are called raw resources, and are the lowest tier of resources. You already know if you have oil or coal, but now be sure to keep in mind what else you have. If you have coal, a simple, yet quite profitable early game strategy is to spam coal mines. Once you hit 12 in a city, (the maximum), you will get a whopping 50% bonus to coal production there! Coal sells for a good price, and with all your mines, you can make serious money. You can also do this method with oil!
Alternatively, you can produce, iron, bauxite, or lead. However, I do not recommend this for new players. While these are raw resources, they aren't useful on their own, like coal and oil, and thus sell for significantly lower.
Revenue Tab
Now, you can navigate your Revenue tab, located below the Nation header on the left side of your screen. This page is crucial to your growth, as it shows where all you money is. At the top, you will see your Gross Income, per turn, and per day. This is how much you are making overall, without any expenses. The next header is your Expenses. This shows exactly how much money you are spending, per turn/per day, as well as showing how much goes into what, like Power Plant Upkeep, or Military Upkeep. Your Military Upkeep will likely be low for now, but will rise as you grow, as all other expenses will. The next tab is Resource Production/Usage. This shows how many raw resources you are producing/how much you are using. For instance, you coal mined tab may show 3.00/3.00. What this likely means is that you have a mine, and are using all of that mine's production to power your city. If the first number (3.5/3.0) is higher, that means you are profiting. The next tab is Resource Manufacturing. This will likely be 0.00/0.00 across the board for now, but it simply shows how much of a higher-tier resource you are making. The final tab is Net Revenues. This shows how much you are making overall. Looking at this tab every now and then is very important, to make sure you are profiting. If any number in this section is negative, you will be losing it per turn. Your Food Grown tab likely be negative right now, but don't fret, just buy some food on the market! However, you hopefully have something that you're producing a lot of per day, which will be your main profit per day! At the very bottom of this page shows your Net Income, per turn, and per day. This shows how much money is added to your account during said time. This might not be very high, for now.
Hooray, you now are earning a sizable profit! So, what next?
Showing Your Might
Now that you have some money in your pockets, it's time to spend some of it. If you have enough money, go ahead and make some new cities. Cities are no small feat to build, requiring large sums of money to build. However, they are greatly profitable for your nation. Your first new city will cost you $225,000, ($213,750 with the Manifest Destiny policy, which lowers city costs). Just like your first starting city, start off by getting some mines, and powering it, if needed.
Now, it's time to defend yourself from warmongers and *shudders* raiders. Navigate to the Military tab on a city. Be sure you are powered! The first thing you want to build is a barracks. These train soldiers, up to 3,000 each. However, you can only train 1,000 per barrack, per day. For instance, if you had 3 barracks, you could have 9,000 soldiers, but only make 3,000 per day. You are also limited to 15% of your population in soldiers. Furthermore, troops will use munitions if they are available during wartime, which increases their combat value by 75% (1 combat point to 1.75 each!). You can buy munitions for fairly cheap on the market. Train some soldiers, and watch your military score rise! Congrats, you now have a small defense. If you decide to go down a piracy route, you could build some factories, hangars, or drydocks, which produce tanks, aircraft, and naval ships, respectively. Aircraft is arguably the strongest military unit in the game, but the cost to to build hangars is high early on, and the upkeep/build cost for them is also noticeable.
Military Unit Costs
Soldiers
- $2.00 per soldier
- Daily upkeep of $1.25, and 1 ton of food per 750 soldiers in peacetime, and $1.88, and 1 ton per 500 soldiers in war time.
Tanks
- $60 and 1 steel per tank
- Daily upkeep of $50 in peacetime, and $75 in wartime. Must have munitions and gasoline to operate.
Aircraft
- $3,000 and 3 aluminum per plane.
- Daily upkeep of $500 during peacetime, and $750 during war. Must have munitions and gasoline to operate.
Naval Ships
- $50,000 and 25 steel per ship
- Daily upkeep of $3,750 in peace, and $5,625 in war. Must have munitions and gasoline for every ship.
Policies
Policies are an important aspect of the game, and they provide various bonuses. To pick either a Domestic Policy or a War Policy, navigate to your nation edit tab.
War Policies
There are a total of 10 different war policies you can choose from, and they are all listed in your nation's edit tab. You will start off the game with the Turtle policy, which reduces infrastructure damage taken from battle by 10%, but also causes you to lose 20% more loot! Some people decide to stick with this, especially later on when infrastructure gets mighty expensive. But, since you're in the early game, infrastructure is cheap, and Turtle may not be the favorable choice. If you are going more defensive, and are trying to ward off pirates and the such, an excellent option is Moneybags. You lose 40% less loot, and take only a measly 5% extra infrastructure damage. This completely counteracts the Pirate war policy that most pirates have, causing them to usually stay away. If you're more of a warmonger, Pirate, Blitzkrieg, and Attrition are the best for you! Be sure to experiment with these to find you enjoy, but be warned, you can only change this policy once every 5 days!
A thriving city
Domestic Policies
There are a total of 5 different domestic policies to pick from: Manifest Destiny, Urbanization, Technological Advancement, Open Markets, and Imperialism. For early game pacifists, Urbanization and Manifest Destiny are great choices. They decrease infrastructure by 5%, and new city costs by 5%, respectively. A good plan is to think in advance. Five days before you want a new city, switch to Manifest Destiny to get 5% off. Then, when you make it 5 days later, you're able to switch to Urbanization, letting you take advantage of 5% off all infrastructure! For pirates, Imperialism isn't a bad choice, as it reduces Military Upkeep by 5%. The tip mentioned above may still prove valuable for warmongers, however. Technological Advancement and Open Markets are for a little bit more into the game, so don't worry about them too much just yet!
Finding An Alliance
Alliance are the main backbone of this game. The community is where you will have the most fun! So be sure to join of your choice!
Alliances add great diversity to the game, and make for tons of fun. To search for an alliance, head over to the World header, and look for Alliances.
Here are some questions you should ask if you are going to join an alliance:
- Am I interested in the Alliance's theme/belief?
- Is the alliance suiting my nation needs (raiding/farming)?
- Is the community active?
- Am I compatible with the community? (which you can only know after joining)
Click on any alliance to read a brief description about their resolves, intents, taxes, and more. Some alliances tax heavily, some don't, it simply depends on the aim of the alliance. Certain alliances will only accept people who have the some beliefs in them. Some themes/beliefs are Communism, Monarchy, Democracy, Pirates, Harry Potter, Fiction Books, Sci Fi. Most of the alliances do not require you to have hard belief in the theme, but a large amount of player encourage it. There is always an alliance out there that will tend to your needs, so be sure to get out there, find an alliance, and start communicating! If you find an alliance you like, they are sure to help you build, and help you stay safe from wars...or cause them.
Nation RP
If you want to make your nation look more sophisticated, there are many things you can do. Firstly, if you haven't already done this from the objectives, you can edit your Factbook, under Nation - Edit. You can write out your nation's history, highest mountain, and more. Under edit, you can also change your cover picture, description, currency, religion, flag, names, and government type. None of this will actually affect your nation, it's purely role-play. You can also go to your individual cities, and change their pictures to different city pictures from around the globe.