Market update + 2 new bonuses

In the last 5 weeks, the players number grew from 900 to 10.233 ....yesterday. 
Today we are talking about 11.000 players and the number is growing every hour. 
The nice graphics and the addictive gameplay payed off. 
The game is growing fast but we have a problem!!!

This huge number of new players that started to produce tons of raws collapsed the markets in the wrong way. From an average of 50 wood / gold we have reached an average of 1500 wood / gold. 

The never ending stream of free players that sell raw materials for gold and never sell gold to buy raws are affecting players that invested time and money to build their towns.

In our initial design notes, the market was NOT build to bring profit to players. 
It was a nice and easy way to EXCHANGE STONE FOR WOOD. But in the same time we need to protect the investments of our paying members.

We have received a big number of requests from those members to limit the access of free-players on the market. This is the full list of measures to stabilize the raws prices: 

1. Only players with a happiness of 100% can sell raws for gold

2. The players that sell raws for gold are limited to an ammount of n=Pop*10 raws / day, where Pop means population. 
A town with a population of 1000 citizens will allow you to sell up to 10.000 resources / day (combined !!!). So, its not enough just to have an 100% happy town. You also need a balance between the population and the number of factories. 

3. On level up there is a bonus of 0.1 gold (for beginers up to level 5 the bonus is bigger). 

Also introduced 2 new bonuses:

-The population bonus (0.001 gold / citizen / day) 
-The occupied towns bonus. 

Those 3 measures will push the market down on the long run.

4. All production increase advantages (+25%, +50%, +75% and +100%) are suspended.

5. Energy is growing with 1 point / hour for everyone. This will also limit the production output.

On the left we have a large mass of players with small quantity of gold that can only SELL the gold. On the other hand we have a smaller group of big towns that will sell raws. 
On our simulations, those measures will stabilize the markets in the next 2 months.

The most important aspect is that actual free players have a GOAL and a real REASON to have a "happy town"....

School

Starting today, frebruary 02,2013, specialists can be trained only in schools. 

They have made this change because a lot of new players don't have 2 gold for buying an initial specialist.

From now, You can't train specialists in services buildings, anymore. 

Devteam said that It was a game design error from the start, but in the last weeks, we have received a big number of complaints regarding this issue. 

A school can train 1 specialist / 24 hours. In case of all your doctors or firefighters die, you can train others using only resources (not gold). Get ready to build 4/5 schools.

Building requirements to upgrade the school:

Level 2 - Police
Level 3 - Firehall
Level 4 - Hospital
Level 5 - Restaurant

Schools use unskilled workers as employees. 

Buy or sell gold for REAL CASH

                          
In order to buy / sell gold you need to get in touch with one of our resellers : 

1. killam (Romania)
email : killam_anno@yahoo.com, 
yahoo msg : killam_anno 
direct payment page : http://howtoct.com/?page_id=120

2. sirdiman (Greece)
email : lordnamid@yahoo.gr
yahoo msg : lordnamid
direct payment page : http://anno1777-sirdiman-reseller.blogspot.gr

3. olddeath (Romania) - email : olddeath78@yahoo.com, yahoo msg : olddeath78
4. kwsnni (Canada) - email : kwsnni@gmail.com, yahoo msg : kwsnni

They offer a wide selection of payment methods (PayPal, Moneybookers ...)

Rules when you buy gold with real cash
--------------------------------------------
1. Accounts will be loaded with the ammount that reaches resellers paypal/moneybookers/alertpay accounts. 
Please send as good purchase not as a gift.
2. Before sending money, please contact one of the resellers on messenger or skype or pm on the forum to let them know u sent money. 
3. You will receive 9 gold for 1 euro

Rules when you sell gold for real cash
--------------------------------------------
1. You will pay 21 gold for 1 euro
2. If resellers cant pay you (run out of cash or other reasons), you can anytime request a payment from ANNO1777 Labs by sending an email to payments@cashtowns.com. All the gold in our games is backed 100% by cash deposits so you can be sure we have always money.
3. If you use the resellers the minimum withdraw ammount is 5 euro. If you request a payment from ANNO1777 Labs, the minimum ammount is 50 euro (WesternUninon) or 100 euro (International Bank Transfer). We dont use other payment methods.4. If you use resellers you will be paid in the same day. ANNO1777 Labs make payments 2 times / week.

Do you want to become a president??

Hello guys, today I want to talk to you about presidents in Cashtowns!!

If you want to become a president for Europe, North America and some Asian countries, there are 3 conditions to be met:

- Live in that country in the real world
- Pay the annual maintaining tax (between 100-4500 euros)
- Pay the montly tax (1 gold / verified user)

For Africa and rest of the world :
- Pay the annual maintaining tax (100 euros)
- Pay the montly tax (1 gold / verified user)

Annual maintaining taxes are paid in cash. Montly taxes are paid in gold to game fund. After becoming a final president, you get access to state budget (you can deposit / withdraw money, set taxes and so on).

Actual presidents are interim presidents. Their mandate will expire on 1 february. They are able to start war but they are not able to set taxes / bonuses and withdraw gold from state budget.
let's take a look at the prices for each country...
Europe :
Romania: 4500 euro / year (rented)
Italy : 1700 euro / year (rented)
Portugal, Spain (rented) , U.K. : 1200 euro /year
Germany, Greece, Bulgaria, Ungaria, Russia, Ucraina : 600 euro / year
The rest : 300 euro / year

In North America :
USA : 3000 euro / year
Canada : 1200 euro /year
Brazil, Argentina : 600 euro /year
The rest : 120 euro / year

Asia:
Malaesya, Indonesia, Philipine, India, China : 600 euro / Year
The rest : 120 euro / Year
Australia : 600 euro / year
Any Island : 120 euro / year
How a president can earn money???
A president gets access to the state budget that brings together taxes and bonuses. So a president will receive: - 10% of ALL productions,
- 15% from all loads of the accounts in his country
- 10% of all withdrawals goes to the state budget
- 5% Tax on dividents
- 10% tax from share game selling
- 0.25 gold for each worker/ specialist/soldier sold/bought form market
- 25 gold for bombs/special troops/cannon
you can change all resources in the budget to gold and get the gold in your pocket. You do not pay taxes for withrawals from the budget.
Also you can change the taxation level.

So as country president u get 15% of all loads in that country plus a whole lot of resources that can be sold for gold!
After the launch most european countries will have over 1000 accounts from anno banner, ads by admin, ads by other players, etc so there will be a huge amount of resources to sell.

Let's make an example: - you pay 600 euros for Greece so u must take at least 600 euros back! this means that you need, in order to withdraw it, 600*21gold = 12600 gold from your country budget! Considering only loads, those 12600 gold are the 10% of loads so you need that your citizens load 126k gold in 1 year; in euros they are: 126k gold / 9 = 14k euro in 1 year or 1166 euro per month. This is not your only means of income, don’t forget the taxes!!!

International Wars Contest - epic final or epic fail?

On 23 december, after the first war contest, countries presidents has received a prize depending of the number of countries that their country has conquered.

Number 1 : 500 gold plus and 50 gold / country 
Number 2 : 300 gold plus and 40 gold / country 

Number 3 : 100 gold plus and 30 gold / country

The winners were:

- Hungary, 12 occupied countries, +1100 gold for shaoko
- Greece, 10 occupied countries, +700 gold for SirDiman 

devteam said: "Congrats to all fighters. The war module is 5 days old, and we had a lot of bugs to solve. We are sorry for that, but this is the only way to a solid software. Testing." 

This is a small review of the first Europen War : 

- Russia conquered over 10 countries in the first 4 days. but...

- 12 hours before contest end, Russia was conquered by Portugal and we were sure that we have a winner.

- 4 hours before the end, Portugal was conquered by Italy and lost all occupied countries in Italy's favor. We again had a winner with 15 occupied countries.

- 2 hours before end, in a smart move, Greece occupied Spain, which was a key country. Without Spain, Italy lost the link to ALL conquered countries. Not one, not 5 but all of them, because they were ALL linked with Spain, by sea. Spain was the only link between Italy and Atlantic Ocean. All 15 countries became FREE countries. 

2 hours before the end, Italy lost everything, while Hungary and Greece presidents received a much bigger prize.

EPIC FINAL.
After the success of the Europen contest for countries presidents, they have decided to make it a permanent weekly worldwide contest. The contest will begin every monday. It will end every saturday, at 24:00 (Bucharest hour, GMT +2). The strategic rules are unchanged from the European contest. The contest is won by the top 5 countries by the number of conquered countries. The prizes are :

1 st place - 1000 gold and 25 gold / occupied country. 
2 st place - 750 gold and 20 gold / occupied country. 
3 st place - 500 gold and 15 gold / occupied country. 
4 st place - 250 gold and 10 gold / occupied country. 
5 st place - 100 gold and 5 gold / occupied country. 

The prizes are received by country presidents and it can further split the prizes. The first contest began on 7 january, 2013.
You can attack any country in the world.

Cashtowns Resources

In Cashtowns you have six different resources or raw materials: Vegetables, Meat, Iron, Wood, Stone and Clay.

Vegetables were used for meat production only. In this moment vetetables are the most important raw in cashtowns. They don't required other raw materials in the production process.

Meat is used to recruit new citizens or to train specialists . Meat is produced by farms and requires large amounts of vegetables in the process.

Iron is one of the four resources used in any Construction. 
It is also used for weapons production and soldiers recruitment/training.

Iron production requires Vegetables, Meat, Wood and Stone to be produced.

Wood is the main resource used in construction. Every buildings need wood in order to be built. Wood production requires meat and vegetables.

  

Stone is used extensively in the costruction of roads and buildings. Stone is produced by stone quarries and require Meat, Iron, Wood and Vegetables in the process.

Clay is used in the costruction of road and buildings over q4. It is produced by claypits and require wood, iron and stone in the process.

Vegetables Farm, Farm, Stone Quarry, ClayPit, BlackSmith, Wood Factory are the buildings that you use to generate raws. All these buildings can have 5 different levels, from Q1 to Q5.

For example, Level 1 Wood factory produces 6 Wood in 3 Hours, the Q2 Wood factory produces 24 wood in 6 hours.

If you want to upgrade your buildings, you have to keep in mind this 2 things:

• road connection, between city hall and that building, must be upgraded at the new level of that building
• you need one free unskilled workers

For example if you want to upgrade a building from level 2 (Q2) to level 3 (Q3) you must have upgraded the roads to Q3, between that building and city hall.

Houses

Houses are the only buildings that can be upgraded to level 10. Without free houses, you cant recruit new citizens. Every citizen needs a house to live in. The houses accomodate up to 20 citizens at a time, depending on the level. If you want to find the house capacity multiply the level with 2. 

The houses are very important for an other indicator called happiness.

The happiness is calculated with formula:  H=(Houses sum of levels)*10/(House Number)

Let's say you have one Q3 houses, one Q4 houses and one Q10 house. The sum of houses levels is 3+4+10=17. The house number is 3. 

H=17*10/3=56

Why is happiness important ? Let's SUPPOSE, you have a 56 happiness

- When you attack and conquer a city, the city will pay you a tax equal to 56% of 25% from all production, which is around 14%

- If the owner of a city buys gold for real cash, you will receive 56% from 25% of the ammount bought.

- When you withdraw a governamental bonus you will receive a NET of 56% of that bonus.

- When you fight in a war and receive tax money from the defeated country, you will withdraw 56% of your share.
The rest goes to government.

Houses needs access to utilities from hospitals to banks or schools : 

Q1 House - Nothing
Q2 House - Access to a market and a Q2 road to the city hall
Q3 House - Access to a police station and a Q3 road to the city hall
Q4 House - Access to a firehouse and a Q4 road to the city hall
Q5 House - Access to a hospital and a Q5 road to the city hall
Q6 House - Access to a church and a Q5 road to the city hall
Q7 House - Access to a restaurant and a Q5 road to the city hall
Q8 House - Access to a casino and a Q5 road to the city hall
Q9 House - Access to a bank and a Q5 road to the city hall
Q10 House - Access to a brothel and a Q5 road to the city hall

This is a Q9 house, that can accomodate up to 18 citizens : 

from house small tutorial:

http://forum.cashtowns.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=783

International press

You can now write articles for International Press section. In order to have an article published, you need to send an email to articles@cashtowns.com, containing the username, server and the article content. Its not for free, of course. Each APROVED article will bring you 5 gold. After each APROVED article, you will receive 0.1 gold more per article. After the first 10 aproved articles, you will be paid 6 gold / article and so on. 

There are 4 simple rule you need to follow : 

- All articles are written in english. Don't write if your english is bad or you are using google translate !!! 

- You can only talk about cashtowns. Any other subject will be rejected. You can adress any topic as long a you write about cashtowns.

- You can integrate images or change the fonts using bbcode. For details check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBCode

- You can post links ONLY to APROVED partner sites. A partner site is a site DEDICATED to cashtowns.
You can also advertise partner sites in any article. If you have a site and want it to be a partner site, send a request to articles@cashtowns.com

We aprove only 10 International Articles every day. We are looking for high quality stuff. Nothing less.

Follow this steps : 

- Find a good topic about cashtowns (tutorials, political or military debates, ....)
- Send the article to articles@cashtowns.com and specify the username / server
- You will receive an answer in 48 hours.
- If your article is rejected DON'T ASK WHY. We will never reject good articles.
- If your article is approved, you will receive minimum 5 gold, depending on the number of aproved articles you have wrote in the past.

You can not submit more than 5 articles / day.

LOAD BONUS And WITHDRAWALS

This is the FINAL list of bonuses that the system generates every time a player BUYS gold with real cash :

- War bonus (if the country is under occupation the towns that have sent trups to fight for the winner will receive a bonus depending on their influence) : 25%
- Town bonus (if your town is under occupation, the "master town" will receive a bonus) : 20%
- State budget bonus (received by the state budget) : 15%
- Referrer (the user who brought you into the game) : 15%

This is the FINAL list of bonuses that the system generates every time a player SELL gold for real cash :

- Referrer bonus : 10%
- Town bonus (if your town is under occupation, the "master town" will receive a bonus) : 10%
- State budget bonus (received by the state budget) : 10%

WITHDRAWALS

there are 2 options:
a) admin: 100 euros minimum ammount, bank transfer and western union as payment options
b) resellers: 10 euros minimum ammount, any payment options u want (same as for loading)
exchange rates: a) 20 gold=1 euro; b) 21-22 gold=1 euro (not yet defined)
timeframe: a) max. 1 week; b) instant

Troops and Weapons

The whole military module is online now. Below you can find details regarding troops and weapons (cannons and bombs).

- There are 2 types of troops and artillery weapons. Regular and special.
- The regular troops and artillery can be trained / produced by any town. Special troops and weapons requires a license in order to be trained / produced. Special troops and weapons are "designed" by the licence buyer.

Normal troops
-----------------------------------------------------------------
- You can use troops to attack other towns or to send them to fight in international wars. Artillery can be used only in domestic attacks on the same server (town vs town or organisation vs town).

- Regular troops are trained by barracks, so you need to have barracks, before training troops.

- Troops have 3 indicators : attack, defences and speed.
If you want to conquer a town the total attack points of troops you send have to be bigger than the total defences points of the troops defending the target city.
Lets say town X send 3 fighters with a total attack of 312 (62 points, 50 points and 200 points). The defender towns has 5 fighters with a total defense points of 500 (100 defense points each). The attack will be rejected. In this attack town X will loose all the troops it sends. Town Y will lose only 3 fighters.

- Speed is calculated in squares / day. The towns have a specified position on the local map. The local server map is a grid of 250 x 250. Each town has its own square.

- There are 3 types of regular troops. Each barrack train from 1 to 5 soldiers / 24 hours depending on the level

Archers (higher attack)
attack points - 100
defense points - 25
speed points - 25
costs - meat (25), iron (25), stone (25), wood (50)

Infantry (higher defense)
attack points - 25
defense points - 100
speed points - 25
costs - meat (25), iron (50), stone (25), wood (25)

Cavalry (higher speed)
attack points - 25
defense points - 25
speed points - 100
costs - meat (50), iron (25), stone (25), wood (25)

Let's take an example. You send 10 archers, 5 infantry and 3 cavalry to attack a town. This small army will have 1200 attack points, 825 defense points and a speed of 37 squares / 24 hours. The average soldier's speed is the final group's speed. In this case we have divided the total speed of 675 to 18 fighters.


Regular artillery
-----------------------------------------------------------------
- Artillery can be use to launch instant domestic attacks (attacks against towns in your country). By "instant' we mean that the effects of an artillery attack will be instantly visible.

- Artillery weapons consists of cannons and bombs. In order to launch an artillery attack you need a cannon and a bomb. You choose the cannon, choose the bomb, select the target, click the fire button and the attack is instantly launched. Artillery attacks just like troops attacks have effects only on troops, not the buildings in the target cities.

- Bombs have one single indicator : damage (attack points). An "1000 points damage" will instantly kill 10 regular infantry soldiers in the target city.

- To launch bombs, you need cannons. Cannons have 3 indicators : range, accuracy and durability. Let's say you own a cannon with a durability of 10, 25 range and 10 accuracy. You can use this cannon to launch

maximum 10 artillery attacks (this is durability),
against cities located 25 squares around your town (this is range),
and the bomb's damage will be 10% bigger than usual (this is accuracy).

- Regular cannons and bombs are produced by artillery factories. Bombs are deposited in ammunition warehouses. An ammunition warehouse can store from 5 to 25 bombs depending on the level. Artillery factories can produce from 1 to 5 bombs or cannons / 24 hours depending on the level.

- Regular cannons have durability of 10, 0 accuracy, 5 squares range. They costs 50 iron, 25 wood, 25 stone and 10 meat.

- A regular bomb have 500 points damage and it costs 100 iron, 75 stone, 50 wood, 25 meat.


Special troops
--------------------------------------------------------------
- Special troops are troops "designed" by you. You need a licence in order to train special troops. The licence indicates what kind of troops you can train. A licence can be bought from the game fund for gold ( War / Research munu). It NEVER expires and it can NOT be sold.

- When you buy a licence for special troops, you indicate the name of the future soldiers, the speed (100 to 100.000), the attack points (100 to 100.000) and the defense points (100 to 100.000)
- Special troops are much cheaper to train. Lets get some examples

1. A soldier having a 1000 attack, 500 defense and 100 speed will cost 121 meat, 107 iron, 143 stone and 39 wood. Those are the training costs. The license will cost you 1600 gold.
2. A soldier having a 2500 attack, 5000 defense and 250 speed will cost 573 meat, 628 iron, 628 stone and 189 wood. Those are the training costs. The license will cost you 7750 gold.
3. A SUPER soldier having 75000 attack, 25000 defense, 1000 speed will cost 1900 meat, 1582 iron, 2363 stone and 631 wood. Those are the training costs. The license will cost you 100.000 gold (!!!).

You can play with those numbers in the War / Research section. This section will be updated in the next 2 weeks. Right now is outdated.

Special cannons and bombs
----------------------------------------------------------
- The same rules applies for special cannons and bombs.
- For special cannons you will specify the name, the accuracy (from 10 to 1000), the durability (from 10 to 100) and the range (from 10 to 150).
- For special bombs you will specify the name and the damage (from 1 to 100.000)

- Troops and artillery can be sold in the local markets only for gold. The buyers could be other towns, the government or the organisations. Special troops and cannons are ESSENTIAL in winning battles / wars. Keep in mind that markets are LOCAL. You can't train a soldier in Spain and sell it in Hungary. Countries (servers) interact ONLY by wars and war taxes they pay each other.

Military Module

Military module is online. Below you can find details regarding international wars.

- There are 2 types of international wars. Conquest wars and independence wars.

- Each country has its own server. International wars are disputed between countries (servers).

- The conquest wars are opened only by country presidents against other countries (servers). If the war is won, then the conquered country will pay a 25% war tax. This tax is distributed to the users that fought for the attacker, depending on their influence. The 25% tax is not a "generated bonus". Its a NEW tax that citizens, organisations and the government itself will have to pay if the country is conquered. Its the biggest tax a citizen will have to pay in cashtowns.

- A country can attack only border countries. For example Hungary can attack Romania, but it can't attack Bulgaria. In order for Hungary to attack Bulgaria, it needs to attack and conquer Romania.

- Oceans and seas are "linking areas". What that means. If Hungary conquer Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey, it gets access to the Mediterranean Sea. That means it can attack any country with access to Mediterranean Sea like Spain or Monaco. Same for oceans. Portugal can attack US, Canada, Brazil and so on.

- If a country looses the link with one of the conquered countries, that country will become free. Lets use the same example. Let's say Hungary conquest Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Spain. If Romania is conquered by another country or if Romania win the independence war, Bulgaria, Turkey and Spain will become free countries again, because Hungary have lost the "direct link" with those countries.

- After the war is launched, it lasts 24 hours. Any country can send troops to help the attacker or defender. There are no alliances. After 24 hours the total attack points of the attacker troops is compared to the total defense points of the defender troops. The attacker wins if it has a bigger total attack points.

- An independence war is started by a conquered country. If the war is won, the conquered country will be free again. The independence wars can be started by citizens, organisations or the government.

- Organizations or governments CAN'T train troops but they can buy troops only from the local markets. That means organisations or governments can send troops to fight in their own name. They can win gold and resources from war taxes paid by the conquest countries.
- In this war module, the more developed countries will be the biggest targets. If Romania attacks Bulgaria, nobody will want to send troops for helping Romania, because Bulgaria will pay small taxes. But if Bulgaria attacks Romania towns ALL OVER THE WORLD will help Bulgaria, because the war taxes paid by Romania will be huge.

The world map

The world map is activeted!!!

World map is one of the most important components. 
It allows you to get a big picture of the cashtowns eWorld. 

You can find anytime the product prices, towns number.... You can also see the distribution map of any of those parameters.

Lets say you want to know the iron price in Portugal. You can find it in 3 easy steps:

1. Go to the world map (third button on the main page) 

2. Choose Prices (third button at the bottom of the map bottom).

3. Select Iron Price. The distribution map apperas. Greener areas means bigger values.

4. Mouseover Portugal to check the iron price.

Simple as that. You can repeat the steps for game shares prices, game fund sold, average gold sold and other 30 indicators. World map is activated in Europe and the map is in preview mode.