Plutocracy News

[h2]Main features:[/h2]

1. Added banking companies.
   
2. The credit system has been redesigned to bring banking companies into the game:
   - Companies will now take loans from banks, banks - from the Central Bank.
   - The payment per quarter now decreases over time according to the decrease in the balance of the loan.
   - Early repayment of part of the loan reduces further payments on it.
   
3. Added a new agent: Provoker.
   
4. Added a new agent: Headhunter.
   
5. Improved CEOs of companies:
   - Added specialization of CEOs in certain technologies.
   - The CEO is now putting forward proposals for voting on changes in the company.
   
6. The “Strike” and “Accident” events have been redesigned:
   - CEOs are now dealing with strikes and accidents on their own.
   - The “Strike” and “Accident" events now require your participation only if you are the CEO of the company.
   

[h3]Minor features:[/h3]

• Agents | Agent Board and Dossier have been redesigned to accommodate the increased number of agents.
  
• Agents | The icons of the journalist, pianist and financier have been changed to more suitable ones.
  
• Stock exchange | Now, instead of an abstract estimated value, the portfolio displays the real average value at which the currently available block of shares was purchased.
  
• Stock exchange | Added explanatory hints for unavailable “Buy” and “Sell" buttons indicating the reason for blocking.
  
• Company statistics | Added a separate description for each technology.
  
• Events | Animation of the appearance and hiding of random events has been improved.
  
• Tutorials | Updated for changed game features.
  

[h3]Balance:[/h3]

• Economy | The balance of resource prices has been adjusted taking into account the introduction of banks into the economic system of the game.
  
• Economy | The quantitative distribution of companies of all types by state has been changed.
  
• Economy | The total number of companies of each type for all sizes of the world has been preserved.
  
• Management of companies | The impact of turnover on the risk of a strike and the volume of production has been changed, now it is impossible to make a profit with an increase in workers' wages.
  
• Management of companies | The average CEO salary has been reduced. The CEO will no longer receive a bonus from the company's profits.
  
• Management of companies | Powers of CEOs and shareholders have been revised:
  - All shareholders of the company can now again receive and repay loans to the company ahead of schedule, previously only CEOs.
  - Voting is not required to change any company parameters, only if you own 100% of the company's shares, previously >50% of the shares were required.
  
• Voting conditions | Conditions of success and the consequences of voting have been changed:
  - To succeed the vote, it is now required to get more votes FOR than AGAINST, previously >50% of the votes FOR were required.
  - The loyalty of all shareholders who voted the opposite way relative to your vote is reduced by 1.
  
• Skills | The skill “Personnel" now affects the salary of CEOs in companies where you own > 50% of the shares.
  
• Event “The Abode of the Plutocrat" | Temporarily removed from the game.
  
• Events | Random events have been rebalanced
  

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

• Elections | Fixed an error calculating the date of the next US Congressional elections.
  
• Stock exchange | Eliminated the possibility of cross-buyback of shares of two companies and the crash of the game, which this led to.
  
• Companies | Fixed a bug that sometimes caused company dividends to exceed 100%.
  

[h3]Other fixes:[/h3]

• Achievements | Fixed errors in getting progress in the achievements of “Local Monopolist”, “USA Monopolist”, “Great Raider”, “Door-to-Door” and “Shadow Ruler".
  
• Ambitions | Fixed errors when generating “Buy shares” and “Sell shares” ambitions for characters.
  
• Skill Books | Added missing sound when clicking on any book.
  
• Character | Eliminated the ability to change the parameters of their companies while under the influence of the “Suspended from business" effect.
  
• Character | Fixed a bug that caused the “Suspended” effect not to be displayed in the company's CEO character.
  
• Moving | Fixed a bug where the character instantly moved between states when appointed to the post of director of the company.
  
• Companies | Fixed the disappearance of a pie chart in finance when switching between companies.
  
• Companies | Fixed an error due to which the share of shares in circulation of the exchange was not displayed after the merger.
  
• Kompromat | Fixed a bug due to which kompromat could be used on a character located in an inaccessible state.
  
• Kompromat | Fixed a bug due to which the kompromat on the character did not disappear immediately after use.
  
• Event "State Law/Federal Law" | If the law in question is rejected, an empty event should no longer be displayed.
  
• Laws | Fixed a bug that made it impossible to put forward the same bill in 2 or more states at the same time.
  
• Politics | Fixed a bug that caused the character not to appear in the list of politicians after winning the election.
  
• Mail, newspapers | Added different images for different products to newspapers about falling/increasing demand.
  
• Company Statistics | All arrows have been replaced with static red ones to avoid confusion.
  
• Minor cosmetic changes and text edits.
  

Please note that saved games created before the update may behave in unpredictable ways. We recommend you to start a new game.

Greetings, Plutocrats!

It's time to talk about how we are improving the game and what you will see in the upcoming update.
We focused on the following vectors for the new update - these are banks, increasing the CEO’s role in the game world and new agents as well

So let's get started.


[h2]1. Banks and the new credit system.[/h2]



As it was announced earlier, banks will appear in game, and in the upcoming update they will enrich the gaming capabilities. It’s rather difficult to imagine a financial empire without the participation of banks.

The main difficulty in developing a banking system for us was to preserve the continuity of the economic model of companies development, but at the same time, to distinguish the bank from the general background of manufacturing companies, because it is a rather unique structure and is very different from factories and resource companies.

[h3]What is the purpose of a bank?[/h3]
First of all, for lending to your manufacturing companies that require cash investments to expand and quickly capture the market. Having your own bank, you will be able to credit companies easily, without worrying about the defaults and the interest rate - it will be significantly lower than in other banks!



As you know, cheap and “long money” is a huge boost for development.
And now, instead of ephemeral loans “out of nowhere”, loans will need to be taken from banks in the state where the borrower company is located.

[h3]The structure of the banking system.[/h3]
The banking system itself in the Plutocracy is built in a following way:
The Central Bank lends to all private banks at a rate influenced by the economy, and they already possess these money, giving it to the population and companies at a higher rate, which is influenced by the level of development of a particular bank.
Also, banks attract money from the population in the form of deposits.
The number of bank employees and their productivity affect the amount of funds raised.



The higher the bank's goodwill and the quality of services, the higher the rate at which it can lend and earn more. Certain technologies can reduce the loan rate from the population. Therefore, if you follow the key parameters, including the productivity of bank clerks, your bank will be able to attract more money from the population and give more loans, turning the bank into a stable profit stream.


[h2]2. Increasing the role of CEOs in companies.[/h2]



We have fundamentally revamped the role of company managers in Plutocracy.
First of all, we have given more freedom to hired managers. Taking into account your feedback and wishes, microcontrol in the field of decision-making during strikes and accidents has been reduced.

[h3]More independence means less microcontrol.[/h3]
Now CEOs will independently deal with the emergency in the managed company, without distracting the members of the board of directors to resolve these issues. The chance of a successful solution depends on the CEO's Economics skill.

Thus, if a strike starts in the company, the director will try to stop it, but he will have to increase the workers wages.
If an accident occurs, he will try to hide the incident so that the company avoids a fine for violating safety regulations.



Thanks to greater independence of hired CEOs, the owners of companies will be able to be less distracted by emergencies. When the owner himself is the CEO of a company, the decisions will be needed, and it won’t be possible to shift responsibility to managers. Events in the managed company have been reworked and improved, so there are more ways to resolve the problem and probable consequences.

[h3]Specialization.[/h3]

An important addition will be the fact that each CEO will receive his specialization by default, which will make it possible to improve the relevant technologies twice faster than others. After all, there are no managers who are equally well versed in all areas of the company. In the upcoming update, we have settled this injustice.


[h2]3. New agents - new opportunities.[/h2]


[h3]Recruiting managers with the help of Headhunter.[/h3]
Previously, it was possible to hire only an unemployed CEO.
But by strengthening the role of managers, we also added such an agent as the Headhunter.
With his help, you can lure away any experienced CEO of any company, thereby killing two birds with one stone: weaken a competitor, and strengthen your corporation.

Despite his gift of persuasion, the Headhunter won’t be able to lure away a CEO that is hostile to you. After all, loyalty has not been canceled.


[h3]Provocation of strikes.[/h3]
Another tool against competitors in the upcoming update will be an agent that is called Provoker who can organize a strike and ignite the righteous anger of all workers against their employers, no matter how good a company they work in is. After all, there is always something that irritates ordinary hard workers - for example, low wages or awful working conditions.

Of course, the use of agents, in case of failure, as before, will entail unpleasant consequences. Therefore, whether to use them or not is always at your discretion.


[h2]4. The vector of development.[/h2]
After the release of the upcoming update, we want to focus on improving the mechanics of agents, and also add such an important thing as selling shares to other characters using negotiations, which we have been asked about more than once in our active community.
We will tell you more about this in the next diary.

In addition to that, in the next diary, we will publish a roadmap for the development of the project before its full release, which, we hope, is not far off. This will help to better understand where we are going and what to expect from the Plutocracy.

Thank you for reading and believing in us!
You will find out the info about the upcoming update with the announced changes in the news in the coming days.
You can also receive information and share your thoughts on our Discord server: https://discord.com/invite/tsy8juk .

Until next time, friends!

List of changes:

• Fixed a critical error during the election when one of the candidates was not found.
  
• Fixed a critical error during loading when the controlling shareholder is not found.
  
• Fixed a critical bug due to missing relationships between characters related to the use of old saves where relationships were broken.
  
• Fixed a critical error that occurred during an attempt to display a hint for the "Get Sponsored" ambition when, for some reason, the opponent of the character with the ambition was not found.
  
• Fixed a critical error that occurred while viewing the list of politicians of any chamber.
  
• Fixed a critical bug that occurred while receiving a reward for sponsoring a politician.
  

List of changes:

• Fixed a common crash when CEO of certain companies went bankrupt.
  
• A new save system has been improved to support old saves made on earlier versions of the game.
  
• Now the market share occupied by the company is counted in the progress of the task during the challenge mode only if you own >50% of the shares of this company.
  

See you next year, Plutocrats!

List of changes:

• Fixed a common crash when trying to save, if the heir of a politician who ran for a higher post went bankrupt.
  
• Fixed a common crash related to the generation of an invalid relationships of the heir of a bankrupt politician.
  
• Fixed a bug where politicians tried to run for higher post much less often than they should.
  
• Fixed missing state names and flags when selecting the starting state at the beginning of the game.
  
• The stock exchange purchase price of shares in the list of shareholders of companies should now be updated automatically in accordance with the price change on the stock exchange.
  
• Added previously missing sound of coins when buying or selling shares on the stock exchange from the portfolio of the headed company.
  
• Fixed the highlighted areas in the tutorial of the personal account.
  
• The texts of effects of some events are unified to a more standart format for easier perception.
  

We remind you that the outdated saves may doesn't work correctly or doesn't work at all, if they was made before the introduction of the new, more compact savesystem in 0.223.1. We advise you to stop using them completely.

Have a great Christmas weekends and a Happy New Year!