eRepublik can be very confusing, especially for new players.
The game is split into fairly distinct "modules". This guide will give you a brief introduction to them:
Economic Module
There are two currencies: local (which for us is USD) and gold. Local currencies are often referred to in shorthand as "cc". You can buy and sell each of them in the monetary market. There are various ways to increase your USD or gold, which include missions, leveling up, gaining medals on your profile page, working, and referring the site to your friends. You can also spend RL money and buy gold from admin if you wish.
--Companies
Companies are the basic economic unit. You begin the game with a few companies, and you can buy more as you get richer. As you begin, you will likely be working at your own companies, referred to as "work as manager" or WAM. You can WAM each of your own companies once per day, at a cost of 10 energy per company.
Companies come in 4 different forms.
Food Raw material
Weapons Raw Material
Food Factory
Weapons Factory
Each of them comes in different qualities: Raw Materials go from q1 to q5 and factories from q1 to q7. The higher the quality, the more raw materials it will produce. For factories, the better quality of product is produced. Factories can be upgraded, whereas raw materials cannot--you must buy your raw material companies at the quality you want. Higher quality factories though require additional raw materials to produce.
The output of the companies depend on the bonuses your country holds. If you look at the map, you'll see each region has its own "resource". For each distinct resource (of which there are 5 food and 5 weapons), the country gets a bonus which allows for greater production. Currently, the USA has all the resources, so we have max bonus.
You can dissolve your company (or downgrade factories) at any time and receive half the cost back. Additionally, you should try to time your purchases such that it lines up with 44% off sales. Admin makes these sales every so often (every few months), and you can save quite a bit of gold that way.
--Working
You can also work for another player and receive a salary. You can view offers in the job market. Often times, if you join a military unit (discussed later), you will have the option to join that unit's commune. Communes will pay you minimum wage in USD, but then also supply you with food and/or weapons (depending on your unit), and most of the time the value of the food/weapons is more than what you could get as a salary on the open market. If you are interested in joining your MU's commune, you should contact the commander of that MU. Workign also costs you 10 energy.
--Storage
You begin with a limited amount of storage. You can buy more storage by clicking the "+". At current monetary market prices, it is better to buy more of the small storage than to spend gold on the large storage. Storage includes all your raw materials, finished products, and energy bars in your inventory.
--Marketplace
Here is where you can buy raw materials and products of all qualities. Don't worry about the other tabs, those are remnants from an earlier time and completely unnecessary. To post an offer, you do so at the bottom of your storage screen. It is often advisable to check what the prices are before you sell your goods--if you need to sell it quickly you should price it at the market price. If you can afford to wait, price it a few cents higher. Remember goods on the market still count against your storage limit until they are sold.
Military Module
So, now you know how to work the economy...you want to know how to fight. Let's go over some basics.
--Training
There are 4 different types of training centers, and each requires a certain amount of gold to use. They are free, .19 gold, 1.49 gold, and 1.79 gold. It is best to stick with the free one so you can save your gold for companies purchases. Each training center has 3 qualities (q1-q3), that provide additional strength for using it. You can only train at each facility once per day, at a cost of 10 energy per facility. Training improves your strength, which makes you a stronger fighter.
--Military Unit (MU)
There are several different MUs, including 2 that are affiliated with the Bastards of Liberty. These are the Sons of Liberty and the Pickle's Patriots. There are also other MUs, including the US Military, the civilian MU, and other various MUs. Some of them run communes (including the two party affiliated ones) though not all. Some MUs may have activity requirements, kill requirements, or other requirements, so you should check out the description before joining.
--Fighting
So now you're looking to fight. If you're in a MU, you will see a "daily order" (once you have made enough kills to become a full-fledged member), you should fight in that battle as it has been picked as an important battle. Otherwise, you can pick battles from the wars screen--you can fight for the campaign of the day, USA battles, or allied battles.
So now you see the fight screen. It can be a bit confusing, so let's break down how battles work. Each campaign is waged between an attacker and a defender through a series of battles (aka minis). Each mini awards a certain number of points to the winner (based on divisions, which will be explained shortly), and the side that gets to 83 points wins. Each mini is won by holding the "wall" (the bar showing who is ahead) over 50% for a certain amount of time. Every minute the wall is over 50%, your side gets domination points (the big number on the ends of the bar). First side to get to 1800 domination points wins the mini. Domination points are earned based on the time of the battle: in the first 30 minutes, each minute awards 10 points. The next 30 is worth 20 points. Between 1 hour and 1:30 is 30 points, and the final 30 minutes in worth 60 points per minute (no battle goes beyond 2 hours).
So how do you help push the wall in our favor? Click the fight button. You will lose an amount of health depending on how many hits it takes to kill the opponent. You will also deal a certain amount of damage (aka influence) to the wall. This is based on a formula taking into account your strength, weapon, and your military rank. Because fighting takes health, you will want to make sure you have food on hand to replenish your health. Keep an eye on how much energy you can add--upgrading your residence will increase your max cap. The amount of energy you can add can be found by hovering your mouse over the eat food button. Each quality of food will add a different amount of health--the game will automatically consume your highest quality food when you eat. If you are out of food, or have no available energy to recover, you can eat an energy bar, which will automatically add 100 energy to your bar. You get bars through missions, ranking up, completing your daily order, or buying them from erep with gold (don't do that, it's usually a waste).
If you have different weapons, you can scroll through them on the battle screen. Higher quality weapons last longer and deal more damage. If you don't have a weapon, don't worry--your fists can still do some damage.
There are two types of "speciality" weapons--bazookas and rockets. Bazookas are weapons you need to assemble. There are 5 different parts you need to collect--you can get them by clicking on the parts as they show up when you fight, by completing some missions, and by completing your daily order. You can store up as many of the different parts as you want. When you want to use them, go to your storage and assemble them. It will assemble the maximum amount possible when you do this. Now when you fight, set your weapon to bazooka, and fire. For the cost of 10 energy, you will instantly kill the opponent and deal exactly 10000 damage, regardless of strength or rank. Each bazooka can kill 3 enemies.
Rockets are for advanced users only, so if you are a beginner you will want to skip this paragraph. To build a rocket, you need to build a rocket factory. These come in different qualities as well. Depending on the quality, the requirements for building a rocket change--these require holding various different types of weapons at different quantities. You can build one rocket per day, and when you use it rockets deal a set amount of damage depending on the quality.
--Divisions
So, now you're wondering what these divisions are all about. Well, each battle is fought by four divisions, depending on your experience level. Division 1 is players level 24 and under. This division supplies 1 point per mini won. Division 2 is levels 25-29, and supplies 2 points per mini won. Division 3 is from levels 30-36, and supplies 3 points per mini. Division 4 is levels 37 and higher, and supplies 5 points per mini. You will automatically be moved from division to division as you level up.
--Resistance Wars
Resistance Wars are special kinds of campaigns. They occur when a region that is being occupied by a foreign power raises enough money and launches a rebellion. To fight in a RW (on either side), you need to be located anywhere in the occupying country. You will then be given an option to choose which side you wish to fight for. Unlike normal wars, both sides fight without allies. To begin an RW, you need to be located in the region wishing to rebel and pay 1000 cc to the cause. Once enough people have paid in, the RW will automatically start, and if the RW succeeds you will earn the Resistance Hero medal and 5 gold. The rebelling country can only have 1 resistance war against the same occupier at a time, so if they are trying to liberate multiple regions, they must do so one at a time.
--Battle and Campaign Hero
These are special medals for dealing the most amount of damage. A battle hero is won if you deal the most amount of damage for your side in your division in a single mini. A campaign hero is for dealing the highest amount of damage over a whole campaign including all divisions. They each award you gold (BH gold varies by division)
Political Module
Every nation has a Congress and a President. Presidents are elected on the 5th of every month by a popular vote election of all the country's citizens. A maximum of 5 candidates can run in the election, and they are determined based on the parties that endorse them. The top 5 parties in size automatically get their candidate on the ballot. If they endorse a candidate from another top 5 party, then their spot on the ballot goes to the next party, and so forth. Parties can endorse any candidate on the ballot.
Congress is elected on the 25th of every month, the size of which depends on the number of regions the country has. Congresspeople are elected from a given state by the voters in that state. The same rules regarding the candidates apply, however if the country has few regions multiple congresspeople can be elected from the same state to meet the minimum in Congress of 40. For a smaller party like us, we will often run our candidates under their parties to ensure a spot under the ballot. Our candidates then return to our party after the election is over.
The third type of elections are the Party President elections, held on the 15th of every month. These elections are voted on by the members of the party. Often parties (such as BoL) have their PP elections done in their forum, with members all voting for the primary winner.
Congress has the power in-game to do things such as raise/lower taxes, grant citizenship to other players, fund programs, make alliances, amongst others. However, Congress does most of their work in the meta-game--by discussing things in a separate forum prior to acting on it in-game.
The President can also engage in those activities, and in general sets the direction for the country. The President can also order attacks on a country, if war has been declared.
As you can imagine, success in the political module depends on the social aspect of the game.
Media Module
The last module is the media module. This is fairly optional, but often goes hand-in-hand with the political module.
There are two parts: shouts and newspapers. Shouts are those feeds you see on the right part of your screen, where you can say short messages to you friends, your MU, and your party (and facebook if you choose). You can also comment and vote up other people's shouts. Try not to spam it though.
Newspapers are the heart of the media module. For 2 gold, you can start your own newspaper and write pretty much whatever you want, although the best way to get an audience is to provide useful content. There is a timer on the page before it refreshes, so it is advised you write your article in word, notepad, etc and then copy it into the screen. You can edit and delete articles from your newspaper if you wish. At the bottom of every article is a comments section where you and other can comment on the article. People can also vote up your articles to make it seen more and they can subscribe to your paper--then when they select subscriptions, they'll see your article listed. And you can do the same to others.
BASTARDS: Please comment on improvements and stuff if you wish. Let's try to make this a helpful guide.
