Plutocracy News

Hello, everyone!

The patch #3 is ready. Go to update, guys!



What's new?

It's partially implemented the political system:

1. It's released one of three branches of the US government - Legislative (at the level of a state legislature)
2. Divide into two chambers, the upper chamber headed by the Lieutenant Governor and the lower chamber headed by the Speaker of the majority party
3. Divide politicians into two factions (Republicans and Democrats)
4. Politicians stick to the faction views but, now and then, they can vote against that or abstain.
5. Added a few laws (taxes, working conditions, etc.)
6. Lobby a law through politicians
7. Governor's veto (the full functionality will be available in the next update)
8. Run your assistant for any post
9. Election campaign
10. The player can select the election campaign strategy
11. The player gets influence points, votes (during the voting for a law) for a politician puppet.

During this month, we're fully planning to implement the legislative branch of the US government

What else?

1.Added the hotkey 'Space' to skip a turn
2. Fixed the logic of rising property prices
3. Added new luxuries
4. The player gets influence points by purchasing a item at auction
5. The salary of an assistant matches his skills.

Game balance:

We have a request to check the influence balance the player gets from his politicians puppets, the stake in a company, luxuries. We're waiting for your feedback.

Next update:

1. Implement an economic model for running a company after purchasing a controlling interest.
2. Implement the judicial branch of the US government
3. Implement the executive branch of the US government
4. 'Plutocratopedia' (guide)

Hello, there!

We're gonna release a patch #3 at the end of this week.

So, what's new?

- modified the auction gameplay
- Election campaign
- Lobbying laws
- and much more

We'll post the details on the patch release day. Now we feel like telling you about the details of the political system: the structure of the legislative power, individual differences in political ideology as well as a political campaign.

In the mentioned patch, you'll be coming across with state politicians - members of a state legislature. As you know, every state legislature is divided into two chambers, the upper chamber headed by the Lieutenant Governor and the lower chamber headed by the Speaker of the majority party.

We've started developing the system at the bottom of the political hierarchy; in future updates, we'll be releasing the next executives - the US President, the Supreme Court, etc. - so that the player climbs from the bottom to the top of the political ladder.

There are 2 factions - the Democrats and Republicans - in which all politicians have different ideological views in the game world:

- Democrats are aiming at lobbying for a law that reduces individual income tax but increases corporate tax;

- Republicans are supporters of an open market with low export duties. At the same time, they support protectionist economic policy that erects tariff and other barriers to trade with other nations.

To get max benefit, you should be flexible in the confrontation of two ideologies.

The election process: select a candidate and run him for the opponent post. Most influential politicians, also having an impeccable reputation, have a good rating among voters so it'll be hard to win.



To win, you need to get more votes than your opponent. You can choose a right track - finance a campaign, participate in debates, give promises to feed the electorate - or bribe voters, get dirt on your opponent (so that the rating is low) or even, eliminate him...



Watch the opponent's behavior and, as a result of that, the dynamics of change in the electorate's mood. Control the mass consciousness, take a look at the number of voters so that your opponent does not to get more voters than you.

Then you'll have your puppet in a state legislature to spread the influence and make more money!



What further differences in the political ideologies do you think we should incorporate? Actually, only you can run for your assistants at different political posts. Would you like to run openly or as a secret ruler in the shadows?

While we're preparing an update, leave your thoughts about that.

'Plutocracy' is based on politics and lobbying laws. We're planning to integrate it with the economics before at the end of March.

What's scheduled for the EA?

- Run a company: you'll have more than 30 economics indicators which effect a company's income - use that to make more money! (it'll be available in 2 weeks)



- Bonds/shares issue

- Company technologies

- Director's orders and strategies (these are automatic settings to get rid of routine micromanagement)

- AI (your opponent)

- Game balance (to be happy playing the game, it's necessary to fix different inconsistencies because the game has a lots of figures and data. Your feedback will help us a lot!)

- Fix bugs and the game optimization. It takes much time, guys! We don't want to release the raw game because we know it's always irritating! So we want to meet you halfway by giving the opportunity to get the alpha before the early access run. The game will be up for grabs after we are all set to start. Thanks for your understanding!

We are an indie studio and, in some sense, we have one attempt to get ahead. You need to understand us - not be disappointed - if we pull off the release date. We do want you to like the game otherwise 2,5 years will be wasted.

We have good news, we're gonna hire a few programmers to speed up! We see you're looking forward to the early access release, it's like a breath of fresh air!

Eventually, we should make game footage to cheer you up!

All the best,
Redwood games team!

Hello there!

It’s high time to share the development and EA launch news with you.

Right now we have 2 directions:

Firstly, the alpha testers and we find a plenty of bugs (around 200), the game logic breaks and so on in every patch. It takes extra time to fix.

Secondly, it’s scheduled to add important game stuff into the game, and it makes no sense to release the EA without that. We’re talking about the US political system that made up of three branches: legislative, executive and judicial. We do want to implement the political system at the level of the states level though so that the player is able to appoint his assistants as a judge, governor, legislature congressman and so on. After the EA launch, we'll add the federal government (the president, the US Congress and over) into the game.

Furthermore, we’re trying to combine the US economics and politics in order to manipulate tax rates, strikes, the rights of African Americans and women, and working conditions, respectively, in a sense, plutocrats do the same things to make big money and gain influence.

In addition, to launch the EA on Steam, we need to get the verification of the game build - it’s gonna take something around a week - hence the range of the EA release dates is February, 27 - March, 28

We cannot be sure of the exact date because new game things make new bugs even in places where we fixed them. Therefore, some games have a lots of bugs because devs try to release their game as soon as possible. We’ll be taking into consideration the opinion of the alpha testers - if they tell us the game is ok, we’ll run the EA on Steam.

At the moment, we’re grinding pretty hard because we’re aiming to add all the planned stuff into the game before the EA.

Stay tuned, follow us on the Discord thread: https://discord.gg/puWw7N

Thanks for your support!

Hello, there!

The patch #2 is ready. Go to update, guys!

What’s new?

1. Updated influence logics

- The player gets influence points by buying companies’ shares. The larger a company, the more influence points you have;
- The player spends influence points to negotiate;
- In negotiations, you can only decrease the failure risk by spending influence points.

2. Updated loyalty logics

- At the beginning of the game, characters’ loyalty to the player is up to his political views, religion and marital status;
- The higher a character’s loyalty to the player, the less influence points you need to negotiate;
- New modifiers of loyalty have been added into the game.

3. Updated assistants stuff

- Hire an assistant without power points;
- Your assistants won’t be able to move between states.

4. Auction

- Added ‘Quit’ button;
- Fixed bidding logics;
- Fixed the price balance of property;
- Fixed the process of generation of lots (it depends on the player wealth - of 0 to 10%;
- Fixed the bug ‘zero ask of lots’;
- Added new types of property;
- Fixed the mechanics of lots selling at auction;

5. Fixed save/load.

6. Added the opportunity to hire a director through shareholders vote.

7. Fixed some critical bugs:

- Economics;
- Negotiations;
- Fixed news bugs;
- Other bugs - music, texts, images and so on.

8. Updated the logics and gameplay of some agents:

- Agents can fail their missions avoiding arrest;
- Use the agent ‘Courtesan’ to improve a character’s loyalty to the player.

9. Updated ‘time’ button:
- Right-click to speed up game time or go to the next event.

10. Board of Directors

- Being a board member, the player gets influence points.

11. Director’s skill ‘economics’ . It increases a company’s profitability.

Hello, friends!

The patch is ready! Go to update!:)

Added:

• If you hold down the button ‘End turn’, the time will speed up 3 times
  
• To hire an assistant you need to spend power points
  

Fixed (the game balance):

• Hiring assistants, influence agents
  
• Price of property
  
• Achievements, power points
  
• Starting influence of the player is decreased
  
• Skills of influence agents
  
• The frequency of the pop-ups (Increase salary, strikes/accidents, auction, character invitations) is decreased
  

Fixed (bugs):

• Some crashes (we’ve not managed to fix all the ones)
  
• Events: horse race, dinner invitation, charity event
  
• Purchase of shares, sale shares to a brokerage
  
• Information in the tips
  
• Sound settings in the game menu
  
• News
  
• Companies’ economic indicators
  
• Player’s financial indicators: income, wealth level, etc.
  
• Other
  

We read your feedback on the Discord channel and take a lot of ideas\comments into consideration concerning the gameplay, balance and bugs.

Thanks so much for your great feedback again! You guys are awesome! By seeing a host of the comments, bugs, we need some time in order to fix them and implement your ideas.

The first patch is quite large due to different added changes. After January 7, we’re gonna update the alpha 1-2 times a week.

In addition, we are currently working on an update that will be released in January, including much more game stuff. So the most interesting is ahead!

Waiting for your feedback!
Have a great one!