Cybernations Guide (How to Build Your Nation Optimally)

[Ethereum]

First Join Knights of Ni!

Here is a general nation building guide on how to efficiently grow your nation, do infra jumps & maximize collections.

 

Link: http://limitlessnexus.com/_exhibitions/682_Cyber_Nations_Guide_Complete.pdf

*** General Timeline of how to build your Nation Part I ***

0-3999 infra

As a brand new or young nation, your primary focus is buying infra, lots and lots of buying infra. Due to

tech deals and other aid, you should grow relatively quickly (in CN terms, it will still be a couple of

months). Here are the things you should do to maximize your growth:

• Sell Tech. You should be using all your foreign aid slots for active tech deals. Selling tech is still a must

if your slots would otherwise be empty. A guide to tech dealing can be found here. The market-rate tech

deal is 3 million for 100 tech, with a net profit of about 1.4-1.6 million per deal. If you use 5 slots for

deals, that's $7-8 million a month. While it requires you to stay at 100 tech or below, it is worth doing

until you pass 4k infra.

Sort your trades out. If you aren't already in a trade circle, find a Trade Circle. You can change your

resources. Don't change them unless you're instructed to as part of joining a circle.

• Buying infra and improvements. See the subsection in this guide for both. You should always

buy as many economic improvements as you can get.

• Infra Jumps. At 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000, 8000 and 15000 infra you will hit what are called infra

jumps. At these points, your bills for infrastructure upkeep cost will jump up. At these points, you will

make less after bills right after crossing those barriers. To avoid that loss in income, you should wait at

just below the limit (for example at 1000 infra, camp out at 999.99) and collect enough money to make a

big jump of infra buying that will increase your collections enough to make up for the jump in bills. You

can use the infrastructure cost calculator spreadsheet posted in the link provided at the top of this guide

to determine how much you should save; input all your values and use the net-income column to see

your net income before the jump, and then see how much infra you will need to get to that net income

again.

• Improvement swapping (sledding). See the subsection in this guide below. You should start doing this

around 2500 infra. As a military measure, you should also incorporate Defcon swapping into your sleds.

Common myths:

• Tech selling isn't worth it, it's too complicated and I'm better off having more tech. Wrong. Selling tech

isn't that hard once you get the hang of it, and is well worth the limitation of 50 tech until you jump past

4k infra. For new nations, selling tech is a great source of funding.

• Improvement swapping isn't worth it. Wrong. Everyone above 2500 infra should be improvement

swapping, as it cuts your infra bills in HALF.

• I should buy lots of land. No, you should buy enough land to keep your population happy (under 70

citizens/mile), but otherwise it isn't particularly worth the cost to buy it. You are better off buying infra.

• I should start buying wonders. Wonders are very expensive and only for big nations. You shouldn't

worry about them quite yet.

Sleds and Improvement Swapping

Sledding is a crucial part of good nation building.

The basics:

• What is a Sled?

A Sled is a short way of saying an Improvement swapping cycle. The basic idea behind a Sled is that you

wait several days without collecting taxes, switch around your improvements, and end up buying more

Infrastructure and collecting more taxes than you would if you collected taxes every day.

• Is my nation suitable for Sledding?

Sleds are not beneficial for small nations unless they know that they will be receiving a large amount of

financial aid a few days in the future and can back-collect on them. Once you get close to 2499.99 Infra,

sledding for the purpose of swapping improvements start to become more beneficial.

• How is not collecting taxes every day a good idea?

 

Tax collection amount is based on your nation's current state, irrespective of how many days of taxes

you collect. This is best illustrated by an example:

1. Five days ago, you had good trades and your nation was making $1M in taxes per day.

2. Then you lost a couple of trades that were very important to your income.

3. This meant that your tax collection would only be 60% of what it had been, i.e. 600K per day.

4. You decided to stop collecting taxes while you fixed your trades.

5. Today, you got your trades back in order and collected 5 days' worth of taxes at $1M per day.

6. You made $5M instead of the $3M (5 x $600k) you would have received if you had collected them

while your trades were messed up.

This is known as back-collecting: Collecting so that the benefits (fixing your trades, getting out of

anarchy, buying new infra, improvements, and wonders, etc.) you have on the day of your collection

apply to all the days where you didn't collect where your collections would have been worse.

•And how does this apply to Sledding?

When you Sled, you pay your bills when your bills are lowest, you buy Infra when the purchase cost is

lowest, and you collect taxes when your tax income is at its highest. Win-Win-Win.

•How long should a Sled be?

Anything from 5 to 20 days depending on your nation. Note that your nation will be automatically

deleted if you don't collect taxes for 25 days. More on timing your sleds below.

•Should I end a sled during war?

Not unless you have to, as your income levels will be reduced during a war. Always end your sleds

before going to war. If you know when a war is going to end, try to time your sled so you can do a big

back collect after the war once you're out of anarchy and can rebuild. Also note that once your nation is

13 days inactive, enemies no longer get loot from you when they successfully GA you.

• I've heard that Sledding is complicated. What will happen if I make a mistake?

Providing you read carefully and follow the steps exactly, you'll be fine. In the end, if you do make a

serious mistake, you may irritate a few people but the person who'll be hurt most is you. Sledding is a

crucial part of good nation building.

 

*** General Timeline of how to build your nation part II ***

 

3999-5999 infra and before nukes

At 3999.99 infra you will take many first steps. You will be camped out for a while as you collect money

and first start spending money on several knew things. At this point you'll generally split your money

between bills, buying tech, wonders, and infra.

• Make the 4K infra jump. 4k is by far the biggest jump (relatively) in terms of infra upkeep costs. Use

the calculator to find an exact amount, but it's going to be several hundred infra costing tens of millions.

Buy your first wonder. At 3999.99 infra is when you should first start buying wonders. Your first wonder

should be a stock market, as it is the cheapest that still provides a good boost. A social security system is

more beneficial but costs more; you are better off buying the stock market first and getting your wonder

clock started.

• Concentrate on economic wonders at first. These will help serve as your economic base. Always buy

wonders every 30 days, don't delay on buying one (always make sure you are going to have the money

on that day). During the end of this period, you should have a Stock Market, Social Security System and a

Disaster Relief Agency at the very bare minimum.

• Switch to buying tech. At this point you've made millions selling tech as a tech seller, it is now time to

start buying tech. Finish all your tech deals. After all your tech payments are done, manually buy up a

nice stockpile of tech. How much depends on what you can afford, but it should be somewhere in the

range of 250-500 tech. Then find some sellers and start buying. Remember that you'll need about 15 mill

to pay to sellers, several million to buy up your tech stockpile, and enough to continue with whatever

sleds you have in progress. Once you've started buying tech, never stop. You can never have too much

tech as the military benefits are endless, every level of tech increases your damage output.

 

• A decent Airforce. Once you have 500 tech, buy a standing Airforce of level 9 planes (1 or 2 bombers,

the rest fighters). Upkeep is minor, it's a 2700 NS boost, and its protection in the air if you're ever

attacked.

• Acquire Spies. Have a goal to acquire at least 50 spies. When you can afford it, buy 50-100 spies after

every sled

Make the 5k infra jump. This one is much smaller than the 4000 infra jump. You will only need to buy a

few dozen or at most 100-200 infra to make this jump.

Common myths:

• I now have plenty of tech - 2000 tech at 4k infra. Any more will surely needlessly bloat my NS? No,

never stop buying tech. Its military benefits are endless.

• I should buy military wonders first. Wrong. The one wonder you should absolutely not buy at 3999

infra is the Manhattan Project. Your economy is not developed enough to support the $100M purchase

or the nuke upkeep. FAC should be your first wonder, since it is cheap and allows you take in 50% more

income from tech deals.

• I should always buy a wonder before the end of a sled. Economic wonders generally don't have as

much of an immediate return as infra, before 5K infra at least. Sometimes you may want to buy infra

before ending a sled, collect, and then buy the wonder right after your collection. However if you're not

going to buy infra, always buy the eco wonder before your collection if you can. If you're wondering why

you’re buying wonders if they don't have as much of an immediate return on investment, eventually

they will.

During this period, you will spend most of your money buying tech, wonders, and infra.

 

*** General Timeline of how to build your nation part III ***

4999/5999-7999.99/8500 infra and acquiring nukes.

• Buy nukes. You should not get nukes before 4999 infra at minimum, and 5999 infra in an ideal world.

You should also have 3-5 economic wonders first. Once you're ready, buy a Manhattan Project and get

nukes. Note that MK nations at 5999 are required to have or be working towards full spies, an MP, full

nukes, and a SDI.

• Build a HUGE warchest. Once you have your Manhattan Project or hit 6000 infra, emphasis is put on

maintaining a full warchest. Nuclear war is expensive and the larger warchest you have the better. You

should build it up in line with Codex requirements.

Continue buying wonders. Continue buying wonders as suggested in the section below. Keep buying

economic wonders as well. If you are going beyond 6000 infra at a quick pace (putting large portions of

your income into infra), you need to have an interstate system to make your infra purchases cheaper. It

is often good to alternate economic with military wonders. Whether you focus on economic or military

wonders will often depend on how likely war is in the new few months.

• Buy a navy. Military guides should be consulted on the exact nature and make-up of your navy, but

you shouldn't buy navy until you're at least 8k infra and your warchest is up to par, unless war is

imminent

• Buy a WRC. Work towards 8500 infra, so that you fulfill the minimum requirement needed for a

Weapons Research Complex. The WRC is crucial because it doubles the tech damage modifier and

allows you to buy 2 nukes every day. How much we are pushing for WRCs (instead of just focusing on

warchests) will depend on how likely war is in the next few months... ask around if you are unsure.

• After all this, congratulations! You have done pretty much everything this $%&*ing game has to offer.

Just continue to buy wonders, tech, and possibly infra (if your warchest is good).

 

*** General Timeline of how to build your nation part IV ***

7999-8500 infra+

This is mostly the same as before but there are a few changes.

• Stop buying infra. Infra above 8K takes a long time (it can be a year or more) to pay for itself. You

usually will get in a war before then. You should generally ONLY buy infra to get a WRC (at 8500 and

then stop) or for the high level wonders. After 14K infra, you should NEVER buy infra. There is no

economic benefit as increased bills cancel out collections. There is some military benefit to higher infra,

but it's not worth the cost and would be better put into warchest or tech.

• High infra wonders. The only general exception to the stop buying infra rule is to push to buy the high

level economic wonders that require 11-14K infra. You should only do this after asking gov and:

- You already have every other useful wonder.

- War is unlikely in the near future.

- You're complying with warchest requirements.

• Manually buy tech. Once you have a very massive warchest, at LEAST 3 billion, you can consider

dumping money into manually buying tech with your excess money. Make sure you temp for microchips

(requires gold, lead, and oil) when buying tech.

 

Timing your sled/Tax Collections

Timing your sled well is very important if you want to optimize the benefits of sledding. There are

several factors to consider when timing your sled. If you need help figuring out what to do, ask around.

In general you'll want to plan ahead about 30 days (sometimes more), figure out when your big purchases are going to be, and time your sleds around them.
 

• The longer the better. Don't let this override the factors listed below, but in general the longer the

better. Having longer sleds will decrease the amount of money on swapping out improvements.

However if you are new to sledding and/or very low on money, you may have to work up to longer sleds

rather than starting on a long sled immediately. If you're reliably active and log in every day, 19 or 20

day sleds are usually ideal. If not, slightly shorter sleds are better because if you go over 20 days inactive

you're wasting collections (they are capped at 20 days) as well as risking deletion if you get to 25 days

inactive.
 

• Buy infra at the end of your sled. Infra should only be bought right before a back-collect at the end of

the sled. By doing this, you can pay bills at the lower infra level for your sled, while collecting at the

higher infra level for all of those days you were sledding. Extra bills often eat up about half of the extra

collections from buying infra, when you back-collect you skip this extra bills for those days, saving

millions.
 

• Buy wonders before the end of the sled. Same principle as above, except that the bills are minor. The

more days you can back-collect on a new economic wonder, the better. The only general exceptions to

this rule is for those at who won't have the money on hand before collecting to buy a wonder, to start or

keep their wonder clock going. Or for 3-5K infra nations if they could use the pre-collection money to

buy infra instead, since buying infra boosts collections more than wonders in the short run at that level.

If you're basing your sled timing on your wonder cycle, you might end up alternating 10 and 20 (or 11

and 19) day cycles to keep them in sync so that you always buy your wonder at the end of a long sled.

• Foreign aid if you're a small nation without a Warchest, time your sleds around your aid slots. If you're

going to receive lots of money, time the end of a long sled so that it comes right afterward, and you can

put the money to use for a big back-collect.
 

• War ALWAYS end your sled before going to war. Anarchy and infra losses from war will severely hurt

your collections. Never tech raid more than 10 days into your sled in case your opponent fights back and

you won't have the time to recover before your collection.

 

Sleds and Improvement Swapping Part II

 

Phases of a sled

• Phase 0 - Preparation for Sledding: Decide how many days you will go without collecting taxes. This

need not be fixed but you must make sure that you have enough cash to pay your daily bills, buy

wonders, tech, improvements at the end of the sled, etc.

• Phase 1 - Minimize your daily bills: Buy 5 Labor Camps (5 x $150k) as this will reduce your daily Infra

upkeep bills by 50%. You'll probably need to destroy 5 other Improvements first. As a general rule,

destroy the 5 cheapest Improvements. In order to better protect yourself from attacks during Phase 1,

switch to DEFCON 1 and Severe Threat Level. However, do not even consider going into Peace Mode as

this would render your Sled worthless.

• Phase 2 - Wait - the boring part: Pay your bills every day and fix any broken Trades.

• Phase 3 - Buy Infra/Wonder/Improvements: Pay your daily bills. Swap your trades for income boosters,

if applicable. Purchase the wonder of your choice, if applicable. Destroy your 5 Labor Camps and build 5

Factories in their place. These Factories will reduce your Infra purchase cost by 40%. Buy Infra and

Improvements until most of your money has been spent, but keep enough cash to buy 5 more

improvements. When you've finished buying Infra, destroy your 5 Factories and replace them with 5

Improvements which increase your number of Citizens, your Happiness, or your Income/Citizen. Note

that you should consult the Improvement and Wonder Order Guides before you decide which

Improvements / Wonder to buy. Don't ever destroy factories if you have the improvement slots for

them after buying all the income boosting improvements.

• Phase 4 - Collect Taxes: Switch to Defcon 5 and Low Threat Level, then Collect Taxes. Reconnect to

your normal trade circle, if applicable. At this point, save your money so you can repeat the cycle from

step 0.

 

Join Knights of Ni for more assistance & tips on building your nation efficiently. Although I think this is basic enough knowledge, everyone should know it.