4.28.2009

Cyber Nations - Browser Based Game

Let me tell you about a game I got into over three years ago. This game is played online, without graphics and unlike regular PC games. It is a browser based game called Cyber Nations. In this fictional world players can make a type of "sim city" like nation. You pick a name for your nation, name your ruler, and place yourself somewhere on a real world map. As you increase your land the area of influence spreads. This really does not affect much, since so many people are playing it everyone would overlap and be lobbing bombs because you claim that their territory is your backyard.
The game allows you to edit your nation, make it your own by answering some questions, dealing with events and allowing you to choose to fight in wars or be purely peaceful. Like many of these games, the powerful can control much. There are vast alliances of countries throughout this fictional world that vie for most important of all, more members. The instant you create a nation you will be sought after by any number of alliances. They will offer you money, technology, treasure, riches, the right to smash enemies or be part of a nice friendly group of online gamers.

Many of these alliances have charters, codes, and stuff much like political entities. They try to govern based on the particular system of government the alliance chooses. Some are democratic, others dictatorship like or ruled by councils. Like everything people do, you will have those people who put much of their life and time into a game like this. They are the ones that shape the game politics and mold the alliances. Others who can put a moderate amount of time will be active on their alliance forums or military. Then the bulk of alliances, the members that just get on to check their taxes, manage their nation and are part of an alliance so they are not beaten up for being alliance-less. These members make up much of the rank and file of the alliances day to day numbers.

As each day passes you are allowed to collect taxes from your people. As you collect taxes you must first pay your bills like any good country out there would. You manage taxes, build infrastructure - the main way to increase your population, and purchase technology - used to purchase better weapons, military units and improvements. Lastly you must eventually purchase land for your people. They do not like overcrowding and will be very upset if they are forced to live in stacks upon stacks of cubbie-hole homes. As you make your people happy, they will be willing to make more and then you can make more revenue off your tax collections.

The game allows for you to grow substantially and make your nation unique with improvements at first, and then national wonders later in the game. My last nation I built over the course of two years and finally they updated the game with more national wonders and naval units. I then blundered and accidentally deleted my nation by not collecting taxes often enough. I was waiting so my collection would be large and I could save money using improvement swapping techniques. I left my nation inactive for over 20 days and it passed from existance. I was depressed about this for a few weeks, but tried to remember it was just a game.

After some time passed I decided to come back to the game and work at it over again. So I registered a new account and began playing Cyber Nations all over. Without a doubt I will be able to grow my nation much better than last time, and I even spent a week deleting and remaking my nation until I got natural resources that I wanted.

Here is a link to the game: http://www.cybernations.net/


Here is a link to IRON, my current alliance: http://www.iron-command.com/




There are many more details in this game than I can begin to talk about in a single posting. New nations will be solicited for selling technology to larger nations. These big nations must pay extrememly high prices for technology, because it rises as you gain more. Small nations pay trivial amounts and can get large amounts of money from big nations for such trades. Tech for money. There is much about the war system to talk about, guide written by many players throughout many alliances. There is also a tournament version that is reset every so often if you wish to play the game more aggressively. Cyber Nations is a fun game and if you read this, are interested, or need some help getting started, feel free to contact me and we can work on getting your nation started

2 comments:

Rysm said...

Do I run the risk of becoming addicted to this game? Like Galava?

Rafe said...

This game definitely does not go to war nearly as often as Galava. Unless you do the tournament edition. So, probably not, lol