Plutocracy News

Hello, experienced and novice Plutocrats!

In this article, we will share an overview of what will be included in the new update of the game in June, and our future plans for improving the Plutocracy.

So, first of all, about new features that will affect the gameplay.

[h3]1. Shadow financier.[/h3]
A new agent has been added - a shadow financier is someome who will take on the task of avoiding taxes in your corporation. The bigger your company is, the more significant the effect will be! The risks of being caught in tax evasion and getting a fine from the tax service have not been canceled, however..



[h3]2. Using agents is worth the influence.[/h3]
We reworked the payment model for the work of agents. We decided that it is more realistic to demand influence for their use, because we receive agents as a gratitude for the fulfilled ambition of other characters. And gratitude should be free, in our opinion 😉



[h3]3. The opportunity to become a CEO.[/h3]
You will be able to become the head of one of your companies, successfully nominating your candidacy at the shareholders' vote, and receiving a salary depending on the company's profits. As CEO, it will be possible to invest the accumulated funds of the managed company in shares of other companies.

[h3]4. Purchase of shares on behalf of the CEO.[/h3]
Transactions on behalf of the company will be available both through the stock exchange and directly through negotiations. In this case, you can acquire any company directly and turn it into a subsidiary.



[h3]5. An opportunity to become a politician.[/h3]
Initially, we didn't want to go this path, we believed that the real plutocrat is always in the shadows. But now we decided that anyone can choose for himself which way he will go - publicly, through politics, earning fame and influence or remaining in the shadows.
In the future, we plan to expand the abilities of the character who was successfully elected to the post.



[h3]6. Elections.[/h3]
Now, if you are elected, the current mechanics of participation in the elections will be available to you. If you promote another politician, then he will decide his own fate and you will be able to influence only by financing the election campaign, assessing his chances against his opponent. However, no one has canceled your impact on the opponent, as before…



In this way, your candidates for political posts will become more autonomous and will no longer require significant manual control. Now your puppets will run independently during the elections and even move up the career ladder, periodically applying for higher political posts. You only need to periodically sponsor the most promising ones, increasing their chances of winning.

[h3]7. Coal companies.[/h3]
We've added a new type of company. It's difficult to deny the influence of coal industry in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the Plutocracy, transport companies will buy coal for their steam locomotives as raw materials.



[h3]8. Offices instead of assistants.[/h3]
The essence of the “assistants" of the characters has been removed. To be more precise, we moved them to the so-called office. Now, to study the state and conduct business in it, without a personal visit, you will need to open your representative office in this state. This will require money and influence. This also creates a regular cost, as in the case of the assistant before, so you should plan well in which states you want to maintain your presence.



In addition, according to your numerous requests, the possibility of pinning the companies in the list on the stock exchange has been added, many agents have been redesigned, the balance sheet has been completed, and various kinds of errors that you report to us in the Discord and Steam were corrected.

You will be able to see a detailed list of changes at the time of the release of the update, which is scheduled for the next 1-2 weeks.
We work daily to deliver it to you as quickly as possible.

[h3]Plans after the release of the game update.[/h3]
As I wrote earlier, now the main task for us is the story campaign, as well as the addition of a holding structure and various kinds of random events.

Partially, we have already implemented the holding structure, and it is already possible to form parent-subsidiary relations by buying shares of the parent company. But what exactly the holding is needed for, and what new opportunities it will open up to the owner of the holding - we will tell you in more detail in the next diary when the work on the holding is completed.

As you can see, the development of the game is in full swing, and we are constantly striving to improve it. Sometimes this turns into an unpredictable loss of energy and time, when after testing a new feature, we realize that it doesn't work as we would like and we have to redo it again. Unfortunately, this is a part of the game development process that can't be skipped.

Thank you for your patience and support of our project!
We read all your comments and reviews, and find inspiration and strength in them for the release of Plutocracy from early access to full release.

Until the next news!

[h2]New features:[/h2]

• Added a new agent - broker.
  
  
  
  The agent can only be applied to the company.
  If successfully applied, it causes a rise / fall in the share price of any company for a limited period.
  
  
  
  When a company is under the influence of a broker, the corresponding icon is displayed in the company's effects.
  
  
  
  
  
• Added A new “Influence" tab for each character, where you can see the amount of influence received from different sources, as well as its growth.
  Tab contains graphs “Influence” and “Dynamics”.
  
  
  
  The “Influence" graph shows the distribution of influence by categories of its sources.
  The "Dynamics" graph shows the influence curve for the current quarter and 3 previous years.
  
  
  
• Added the “Status” and “Financial Forecast" graphs to the “Assets” tab of the character.
  
  
  
  The “Status" graph shows the distribution of the character's material assets by asset categories.
  The “Financial Forecast" graph shows the income curve for the current quarter and 3 previous years.
  
  
  
• Added a quick transition to the company's shares on the stock exchange from the card of any company. To go, just click on the line "Stock exchange price" in the “Information" card of the desired company.
  
  

[h2]Fixes:[/h2]
[h3]Critical fixes:[/h3]

• Negotiations: The opponent's starting price modifier "Not interested in the deal" has been worked incorrectly. Now, by default, the character does not want to sell shares if he does not have this ambition or the “Alarmist" trait.
  
• The Stock exchange: Fixed a bug where the filter GUI would spontaneously appear when time was speeding up.
  
• Character creation: Fixed missing text on appearance selectors.
  
• Elections: Fixed a bug where more than one economy/diplomacy star could be spent on finding a new solution at a time.
  

[h3]Misc fixes:[/h3]

• Tutorial: Added a missing button to re-call tutorial during elections.
  
• Tutorial: Fixed a graphical bug that occurred while watching training during the election.
  
• Tutorial: Fixed text going out of bounds for some languages.
  
• Companies: The unused filter button has been removed.
  
• Local/Federal Laws: Added missing law type button hints.
  
• Connections: Fixed incorrect display of character loyalty boost when selecting this reward for fulfilling an ambition.
  
• The law of the state:: The displayed characteristics in the Governor's map are reorganized to match other characters.
  
• Mail: The unused tabs “Transactions” and “Persons” of the “Newspapers" section have been removed.
  
• Fixed incorrect confirmation button text when applying officials for some languages.
  
• Character Portrait: Removed unused а favor icons.
  
• Various minor cosmetic changes.
  

[h2]Work in progress:[/h2]

• Holding
  
• Extended module of in-game events
  
• Campaign and scenarios
  

Hello Plutocrats!

New Year's holidays are just around the corner. Thence, on behalf of the Redwood developers, we wish everyone a Happy New Year and Merry Christmas!

Today's blog will be devoted to how this year went for us, and what events we are preparing in the new 2022.

In 2021, many new features have appeared in Plutocracy - politics, elections, lobbying for laws, stock exchange , updated negotiations, more tutorials and much more.



Of course, you always want to do more, and faster.
But you, dear friends, can be sure - we are working at the limit of our current capabilities, with our small team of enthusiastic developers.

[h3]So what is left for us to take Plutocracy from Early Access to a full release?[/h3]

1. The main thing is a full-fledged story campaign, on which we have already begun work. The story we want to tell will tie all the game processes together and give the maximum understanding of the game and immersion in it.



This story was inspired by the great trilogy of the American writer Theodore Dreiser "The Financier", biographies of the greatest tycoons of the 19th and 20th centuries, including the world's first billionaire John Davis Rockefeller, the king of the conveyor belt Henry Ford, the steel mogul Carnegie, and also films such as “There Will Be Blood” (starring Oscar-winning Daniel Day-Lewis).



The storyline campaign now takes up most of our time, so the introduction of new features is slower than usual, however, work on bugs is still going on non-stop, thanks to your bug reports.

2. Also, we are engaged in introducing various events into the game, which will lead to additional challenges, so that the game is even more unpredictable and gives more immersion in the era.



3. And finally, we would like to introduce the Online Challenges mode into the full version, where all players will be given the same game session settings, and after successfully completing the challenge tasks, the result will be shown relative to other players who completed the same challenge. This will help our community share successes, and develop their economic and other skills in competition with real players, not bots.

This is the main vector that we are working on right now.

Of course, the full release will also include the establishment of holdings, and other types of companies, and 3 new agents that we have not announced yet, and so on, from what is not listed here.

It would be great if you yourself in the comments told us what you expect most and what you would like to see in the game before other functionality. This will help us prioritize correctly.
Also, we remain open to new ideas, although the window for their implementation into the game is getting smaller.

We do not promise that it will be possible to fulfill absolutely all your wishes, because we are not Santa Claus, and not even his assistants, elves ... but just developers from the indie studio. But you can be sure that your voice will be heard!

2022 will be the release year for the full version of Plutocracy.

Therefore, if you like what we do and you see the potential of this project - support us - write your review about the game on Steam, participate in improving translations into your language by joining our discord server, or just wish us luck! We will definitely need it in the new year…

See you in the next Dev Diary!

• Negotiations. Updated version.
  
• Added tutorial on updated negotiations.
  
• Politicians can now abstain when voting on laws.
  
• Added hover hints for the "Workers" item in the "Statistics" window during a strike.
  
• Added different icons and tips for active and ended strikes and accidents in companies in the “Statistics” window of the company, the list of companies and the company card.
  

• Rebalancing the economy of the game.
  
• Now the required influence for negotiations is also affected by the reputation of the player and the character.
  

[h2]Critical errors:[/h2]

• Fixed crash when loading a quarter if the player was in the "Statistics" window during the bankruptcy of the company.
  

[h2]Other fixes:[/h2]

• Companies automatically repay the borrowed loan upon receipt of net profit.
  
• Fixed a bug leading to too strong influence of phantom production on the price.
  
• Fixed a bug where during the quarter change, when companies are created and bankrupt, the economy was calculated once.
  
• Fixed a bug where production was used instead of demand to calculate phantom demand when a new state was enabled.
  
• Fixed a bug in which the non-partisan governor did not pass or reject laws.
  
• Fixed different valuation of the company on the stock exchange and in assets.
  
• Fixed a bug with incorrect display of the company's market share in the state.
  
• Fixed a bug where elections in Texas did not take place.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused an empty window to appear after the bankruptcy of a company.
  
• Fixed missing GUI text for changing shareholder vote in the company voting window.
  
• Fixed the position of the character selection menu that opens while being in the same state with an opponent.
  
• Fixed display of state in letters to Gwen Spacey about strikes or accidents.
  
• Changed the displayed icons of the preliminary assessment of the votes of parties when declaring an impeachment to a non-partisan governor.
  
• Updated portrayal of Gwen Spacey in training
  

• Updated negotiation for a loan and lobbying the politician.
  
• Extended module of in-game events
  
• Campaign and scenarios
  

• Fixed a bug which caused NaNs to appear after a certain date.
  
  
• Fixed a bug which caused an incorrect window to be shown in case of a company bankruptcy.
  
  
• Fixed a crash after a new state getting included into the USA.
  
  
• The increment value for Dividends in the “Statistics” window is returned to 5%.
  
  
• Fixed a mistake regarding the date of Officials elections being calculated incorrectly.
  
  
• Added more detailed tutorials for Stock exchange, Personal office and Assistants windows, corrected grammatical mistakes.
  
  
• Fixed animation issues when changing the current focus of technological improvement in the “Statistics” window.
  
  
• Fixed a bug which caused the sounds of the Stock exchange to continue playing after opening the Pause menu, saving and loading games.
  
  
• Fixed issues with News not appearing correctly in “Letters” and “Newspapers” sections.
  

P.s.
Thank you for your positive feedback and your bug reports - it helps us make the game better every day!
Special thanks for your understanding that the game is in Early Access and bugs may occur after every major update.