Dear community,
It has been quite some time since I last commented on the updates. The reason is simple: there wasn't any major change until today. However, while waiting for updated rules, a revised moderation system, and fixes for broken mechanics, we are struck by a destructive update that completely changes the purpose of playing.
But rather than starting with the absolute worst, let's first analyze a few smaller updates that came before.
Vatou is no longer hiding behind secret accounts. Instead, we have https://app.warera.io/user/6813b758efecdf9bab195068.
The updates no longer indicate that the game is still in beta.
Civil war mechanic have finally been changed. After plenty of unsuccessful civil wars, thousands of wasted energy and health, and an enormous drain on players wealth, bunkers, bounties, and country orders can no longer be used by the government to suppress resistance. A minor update for WarEra and Vatou, but an important change for players and overall game balance.
At this point, I would like to commemorate all the players who pointed this issue out for more than five months. Raising awareness costed them mutes, bans, ignored tickets, removed articles, and hate from those who abused the system. :candle:
To complete the picture, the mechanic was called broken the moment it was implemented without discussion, and even after this rework, it still retains one major flaw.
Regarding the v0.26 Movement Update: When it dropped, I wondered whether it was even worth commenting on. It turned out the update wasn't major, and its impact on gameplay remained minimal besides complicating the gameplay.
Changes to writing articles, new options are great fit, If there is something vatou is good at it is making the UI work.
Update v0.27 fundamentally shifts the nature of the game. WarEra is abandoning its primary strategic path: warfare. From now on, your government's decisions will matter even less, and a single number, the population will decide whether you win or lose. The update devalues most regions to the point where wars become pointless. The dynamic nature of the game will vanish, leaving current players with NPC company management simulator.
To be fair, there is one unexpected positive outcome: proxies no longer make sense.
Now let's dive deeper and analyze each change in detail.
⚠️ Update will happen tomorrow (26/10) around 14:00 UTC and will require downtime from 30min to ~1h.
I appreciate that the update was announced in advance, but once again, we are left with less than 24 hours to prepare and adapt. It ruins ongoing battle and buff management while giving regular players no realistic window to study what is coming. The community has repeatedly emphasized that players need an opportunity to provide feedback before patches hit the live server to avoid flawed designs.
The necessity of community involvement was proven during update v0.25 when alliances were introduced: the initial version was inaccurate, resulting in complete chaos at launch. The developers provided contradictory information and had to issue fixes based on our feedback throughout the night, leading in Vatou's breakdown (https://app.warera.io/article/6a2ac9677f0384adadd13909)
The job market is gone. Your companies now run on employees you hire, each with their own stats and personality.
The job market isn't entirely gone, the current market will just shift into a manager market, where players are hired as managers instead of employees.
How it works
Hiring: each company gets 3 new candidates every day at 00:00 UTC. Each card shows one hint about the candidate. Hiring costs 10 energy. A new set of candidates costs 10 energy the first time, then doubles each time.
New upgrade: Break Room sets how many employees a company can have. Every company starts at level 1 with 1 employee, level 2 allows 2 (20 steel), level 3 allows 3 (80 steel).
Wages are automatic and paid every hour. If you can't pay the full hour, nobody works that hour.
Self-work still works in your own companies, for 10 energy.
Every employee is unique: a name, an age, stats and traits that change how they work.
3 stats: Production (how much they make), Luck (what they find) and Responsibility (how well they handle bad news).
Starting rolls: each stat is 1 to 4, all equally likely. 50% chance of 1 trait, otherwise none. Training Potential is 3 to 10, and starting age is 18 to 45.
Hidden until hired: a candidate shows only one thing, either one stat, one trait or their Training Potential. You see everything once you hire them.
Wages are set by the employee, not you. We now give 1 production point a money value, based on raw material trades on the market over the last 7 days. A wage is one hour of the employee's base output (Production ÷ 4) at that value, times their own expectation (70% to 130%). Training Production raises it, Greedy asks 20% more, Modest 15% less.
Traits: 53 in total, for example Loner (+100% when working alone) or Sociable (+25% per coworker).
They age 1 year per day.
Retirement: every employee asks to retire at 65, then again every 10 days if you keep them. Each year past 65 makes keeping them 5% harder.
Move them between your companies. With premium you can also rename them.
Up to this point, it might not seem completely absurd. It's just an unnecessary mechanic introducing extra noise, but fine: you recruit employees, replace them at retirement, and move on.
What follows, however, turns the game into The Sims revival: daily random events, office romance, forgotten meetings, paperwork, Nigerian prince spam emails, poisoned lunch food, or changing diapers.
Training is how employees improve: you draw cards and pick the upgrade you want.
One draw per day per employee, for 10 energy. Each draw uses 1 of the employee's Potential.
Pick 1 of 3 cards: a stat boost, a lower wage, a new or removed trait, or more Potential.
Leadership (new skill) and Luck make rare cards more likely.
Your employees now have small stories: a stray cat, an office romance, a rival's job offer. You decide how they react.
78 events to discover, some with follow-ups.
About 1 per day with 3 employees, never more than 3 per day.
Pick an option and see your odds before you choose. Leadership, happiness and Luck improve them.
Ignore an event for 36h and the default option is chosen for you.
Who gets them: employees hired at least 48h ago, at most one event each per day, and only while you log in at least every 3 days.
Results include happiness, bonuses, stats, traits, toolboxes, or the employee leaving.
Tools are equipment for your employees: give one to an employee to boost their production.
6 tool types, each for its own set of goods. They boost production by +3% (Common) up to +65% (Mythic).
Found in toolboxes: each worked hour, an employee has a 0.1% chance per Luck point to find one (max 2%). Some events give them too.
Toolbox odds: Common 35%, Uncommon 37%, Rare 20%, Epic 6.5%, Legendary 1.3%, Mythic 0.2%.
They last about 500 worked hours. A worn-out tool gives no bonus until you replace it.
Tools can be dismantled for scrap, but tools and toolboxes can't be traded or sold directly.
More loot boxes, because opening crates is addictive, and the game apparently lacks other engaging retention loops.
Why the change
Workers for everyone: 70% of players had no workers. Now everyone can have employees.
Thats true, 70% of players willingly had no workers, but it shouldnt be necessarily considered as bad, many players had no time to compete in the market, focused on wars, or were used to different concept of playing. This argument is invalid, same as saying that there is a bunch of players who never fought wars, because it wasnt necessary. Now everyone not only can have employees, it will be MUST HAVE unless you want to stay behind and ignore the mechanic completely.
Yes, 70% of players chose not to employ workers, but that wasn't inherently bad. Many players lacked the time to compete on the market, chose to focus purely on warfare, or preferred a different playstyle. This argument is as flawed as claiming everyone must fight in wars.
Now, running employees isn't just an option, it becomes a mandatory chore unless you want to fall behind.
Hiring actually pays: most players who hired workers lost money.
This was a genuine issue, but other solutions existed, such as starting bonus production to prevent instant bankruptcy. Scrapping the mechanic entirely is simply lazier option than balancing it. I am not convinced this update fixes profitability either. The market will reach plateau, and running NPCs may become unviable anyway, especially with self-work demanding extra energy.
Room for fun mechanics: with players as workers, every new bonus risked breaking the market and concentrating companies in fewer hands even more.
Less routine, more reward: less of the same daily work, and more reward for the time you spend playing.
For fans of RNG card games, like Johnny, this might be entertaining. Less of the old daily routine, perhaps, but replaced by far more RNG-driven, annoying micromanagement for strategically oriented players without community interactions.
The Break Room finally gains utility, steel prices will rise, and speculators will cash in (some clearly already did, as steel jumped ~10% over the last two days).
A manager is a player hired to run another player's company. Managing is now the only way to work for another player.
The job market transforms into this. The key difference is that managers do not produce goods directly, but they boost your NPCs.
The argument that "hiring actually pays" does not hold up here either.
Nor does "workers for everyone": hiring managers will only appeal to players dedicated to min-maxing NPCs, offering little to casual players.
Most absurd of all is the manager tax. Because nobody wants to bleed funds to taxes, players will migrate their companies to zero-tax regions. No player will voluntarily pay income taxes to their own country when they can simply donate funds directly without limits.
Job market: one manager job per company. The owner sets the pay per Management point. Applying hires you at once.
Effect: +2% employee production per Management point, up to +22%. It stacks with the owner's own Management, up to +44% together.
Daily care: once a day the manager picks one employee and gives them +5 happiness for 48h.
Paid every hour: the manager clicks Collect and the country takes its manager tax. Pay stays within 80% to 120% of the average manager pay.
24h lock after hiring: neither side can end the contract.
Skills follow the new company system: Entrepreneurship is gone and Leadership arrives.
This is crucial for optimization of the energy use and skills investments. Since Production will only boost your self work now by 10 % per each level, it will be very unlikely that self work will be comparable to the new NPC system. While Leadership and Management will give value to all your NPCs, this will likely be much better investment.
This completely changes energy optimization and skill points allocation. Because Production will now only buff self-work by 10% (of the base) per level, self-work is unlikely to compete with the new NPC meta. Investing into Leadership and Management, which boosts all your NPCs simultaneousl, will almost certainly be the superior choice.
1 free skill reset for everyone, with no cooldown, to rebuild for the new system.
Entrepreneurship removed: its points are refunded.
Energy: 30 → 100 + 10 per level. It pays for self-work, hiring and training.
Production: self-work gives 10 → 30 + 3 per level.
Management no longer caps how many people you hire. It gives +2% employee production per point.
Leadership: new skill, unlocks at level 10.
The second worst change of this patch. The idea makes sense : ethics belong to the country itself instead of Political parties. However, because some ethics were removed and the costs to enact decreased (Parties are no longer required), bonuses were heavily nerfed. Combined with long cooldowns, the feature lots its sense and the game loses its strategic depth too, again. On top of that everyone who invested and paid the costs for party creation is now scammed.
Party ethics are gone. Each country now picks a type of government instead, which shapes how the country fights and earns.
Every country starts as Provisional. After the first pick, changing it by law has a 30-day cooldown. A new type's limits apply right away: the country leaves its alliance, drops pacts or its sworn enemy, or fires its ministers if the type requires it.
Republic: x2 development income from your own regions, none from conquered ones. Orders cost 25% more.
Nationalist State: patriotic bonus 20% → 30%, sworn enemy bonus starts at 1% → 5% and grows 1% → 5% a day, up to 10% → 15%. Orders 25% cheaper. Development income x0.7, no alliance.
Homeland Front: +5% bunker, free orders to defend or retake your own regions, x2 resistance in your occupied regions. Attack orders outside your regions cost x2, no military bases.
Federation: half alliance and pact upkeep, half-price orders on allies' battles, +5% when fighting for an ally, pact bonus grows 1% → 2% a day. Patriotic bonus 20% → 15%, no sworn enemy.
Plutocracy: x1.4 payroll and manager taxes (the extra comes from the game, not from players), x1.5 strategic resource income. Patriotic bonus 20% → 10%, can't send money to another country.
Autocracy: no congress and no ministers, so the president and VP vote laws. x1.25 development income, unrest builds x2 as fast.
Mercenary State: x2 order damage (normal while your capital is occupied), x2 order cost, no alliance, pacts or sworn enemy. An occupied capital at full resistance revolts on its own.
Rather than receiving the needed election rework, parties are reduced to cosmetic money sinks.
Parties lose two of their roles in this update.
Ethics removed: party ethics are replaced by the country's government type.
No more resistance from parties: a party can no longer start a resistance. Motions to do it that are still pending fail, at no cost.
We know this leaves parties with little to do for now. They will be reworked in the next patches.
THIS IS THE CORE DISASTER OF THE PATCH.
The stated goal is to kill the meta of moving companies to optimal regions and encourage players to produce at home. In practice, this completely removes value of regions. Conquering land becomes pointless: countries can simply bunker in their cores, sip coffee with their newly hired NPCs, and let larger nations claim empty land if they even care to. Back to eco and welcome to NPCera.
Country specialization removed.
Deposits are turned off.
Strategic resources no longer boost production or development. Each one pays whoever holds it a daily income equal to the development of the country it originally belonged to. A resource from a big country pays far more than one from a tiny country.
Two taxes: the income tax is taken on employee wages, and a new manager tax on manager pay. Congress votes both, and the manager tax starts at your country's current income tax. The self-work tax is gone.
Taxes cost happiness: each 1% of income tax costs employees 1 happiness.
Conquered regions: the original owner gets 10% of the income tax.
Unlinked regions now pay their full development income, no more -50% when cut off from the capital.
Daily income estimate for every region, plus a new Daily revenue map mode.
1 free company move for everyone, to bring your companies home and support your country's finances.
Employee wages are a new, large money sink: the money they are paid leaves the game. Besides draining player capital, it will create a market flooded with inflated production where nobody wants to spend resources.
It grows over time: it only becomes a big drain once employees are trained and companies are fully staffed.
We are watching: we will follow the market closely and adjust how much new money enters the game over the next weeks, to avoid deflation.
Scaling the tutorial to player level is a welcome change, though it arrives long after the initial player boom. Its current impact will be minimal, the community had already filled that void.
Now we can officially voice our disappointment in polls! Alongside several minor changes:
Polls in articles: add a question with 2 to 10 answers, open from 1h to 7 days. You can limit voting by level or country. Who voted for what is public.
Employee milestones: 5 new lifetime ladders for production banked by your employees, trainings, events answered, toolboxes found and employees cared for (managers).
Skill presets: save 3 builds (10 with premium) and load one when you want it.
Save articles and find them in a new Saved tab.
Pumpkin Head helmet, until Nov 1.
Equip a whole skin pack in one click.
New missions: train an employee, resolve an event, and care for an employee (managers). Self-work counts for the work mission, "Find a job" means taking a manager job, and the move company mission is gone.
Daily rewards: day 7 gives 35 → 50 money.
Premium: open 10 → 50 cases at once.
Pinned articles at the top of News, and a live viewer count on battles.
Battles: the ground bar is now a landscape, and shots fly across it as damage rises.
Map: region upgrades show with their level, links across the sea are drawn as lines, and one click collects every wooden case in a region.
Wooden cases: rarer cases now hold more. Every case was worth 20-80 production points, now Common 20-40, Uncommon 40-70, Rare 80-130, Epic 160-260. Odds: Common 65% → 60%, Uncommon 20% → 25%, Rare 13% → 12%, Epic 2% → 3%.
MU help also gives the helper +1 health.
Item offers: each item you list gets its own price, and similar offers on the market are shown to help you price it.
Changing what a company produces no longer needs an empty storage.
Loading screen shows game tips. Inventory is split into sections.
Eating works again when you're only 1 hunger point away from full.
Battle orders: drag and drop reordering works reliably and feels smoother, on mobile too.
Case opening: the totals of what you opened no longer count twice or go out of date when you reopen the window.
Chat on mobile: scrolling no longer jumps when older messages load, and a chat you reopen stays where you left it.
Mercenary contracts that reach their target near the end of a round now pay out.
Elections with no candidates keep the current president.
Mozambique's flag displays correctly.
The map grows to 742 regions (726 → 742), with a new country, new borders and clearer region names. Regions that are only renamed keep their owner, development and companies.
36 new links
71 removed links with 10 days delay
8 countries with renamed regions
1 new country
4 capitals moved
It is always positive to see the world map expand with more regions, countries, and corrected naming (Czechia is still waiting two years after alpha). However, reducing overall border links underlines the shift away from active warfare. The 10-day buffer to let nations adjust is at least a reasonable courtesy, which should be standard.
The developers update approach remains unchanged: they force massive updates on us without giving the community any time to review them or share feedback before it gets implemented. We have less than 24 hours to adapt while they remove or replace core mechanics based on bad ideas and false reasoning.
The most important part of the game, the War, is being pushed aside. WarEra is turning from a team-based war strategy game into a company manager simulator with even less player interaction.
If you haven't considered packing your bags already yet, this might be the time. The things the community actually cared about, like fixing the rules and balancing the game mechanics, are not important anymore.
Yours,
Kysely
Previous Issue of Basic Hater Diary:
https://app.warera.io/article/6a6cd0ff866443783c9565b7
https://app.warera.io/article/6a7632febd3293d60da8ea37
https://app.warera.io/article/6a2ac9677f0384adadd13909