So we're working on the ingame tutorial system and we want your help!

There are so many things to consider when making a good country, way more than we could think of by ourselves, so we want to open it up to the community to help us out thinking about some of this.
We're looking to figure out what are things that a new player should be told about how to properly run their country and what is the criteria for this?

For example -> if a player has a lot of unbuilt land, we want to alert the player that they need to build their land. If the player is playing as a monarchy, we want to alert the player that there are other government options.

So think back to when you were new to the game or think about what you feel would be beneficial to help new players get into the game and we'll see if we can get a pretty complete list of things that would good for the user to be given advice about!

Here are some categories and a few ideas to get started:
(I'll update the list as we go)

When taking a turn:
-Running out of food/cash
-Getting close to running out of food/cash
-Land being unbuilt
-Tax rate

Manage:
-Government advice
-Tax advice

Purchases:
-Let the player know if they are vulnerable

Build:
-Unused land
-Letting people know "rainbow strats" don't work well
-How many CS's a player has

Market:
??

Research:
-Which tech to research (maybe based on market prices?)
-Lab ratio

Military/War:
-Alert about attack types
-Let you know reasons why you may have bounced attacks (if you bounced)

Relations:
??

Spy:
??

Scores:
??

Clans:
??

We're also going to have some congratulatory messages as well, so if you have thoughts on those, that'll be good as well. :) once we get a list of things we want to advise about setup, we can work out the logic for it

Thanks to everyone in advance for their input!

-Dave

A hot or cold system for their tax rate:P

tax rates, good one!

for getting close to running out of food remember that if you get droughts you lose half your production

id love to see better tax rate advice, to make cash starts better, showing the max pci and pop and how much either will grow or shrink each turn

for vulnerable would probably need to have stats about absolute military levels of countries on the server as well as comparable countries

combine recommendations to buy tech with what building types a player has

for example if they are indy with 102% indy tech suggest buying more indy tech

end of set suggest buying military tech

perhaps suggest buying mil strat tech if they grabbed on the previous turn or grabbed a lot

would be interisting to have a general $/acre comparison for differant strats so that people know what is going well at various points, can either make it pure income or effective income, for example if food is 50 then farmers still usually have to count it as 32-34 but cashers have to count it as 32to34/50 * income

lab ratio is good, say "your labs are functioning at 90% of peak efficiency" and so on, then suggest if its below a certain amount to either increase or get rid of

when considering tech ASP's take volume into account, if only 100 medical tech sold for 10k in a day you dont want all the newbies to produce only medical

for bouncing would be interisting to know "if you had been at full readiness you would have suceeded" "the targets defensive allies have foiled your attack"

relations, why not provide a summary of what you get from them, "this d ally is contributing 500k turret units to your defence" "this research alliance has given you 100k tech at an average of 10k tech per day" "this intel alliance provides you with 20k extra spies to help your intelligence agenicies" "summary of sent and received from trade pacts"

spies, would be nice to have a tip of "if someone spies you your spies can destroy up to 5000 enemy spies"

also general "your success rate this reset is xx%" could be amusing and easily be a pointless facebook achievement

scores, biggest tip would be your nw/acre compared to your scores list, too high suggest grabbing/explore too low suggest buy more stuff

clans, obviously being clanless on a clan server should provide a warning


some things i liked learning:

block csites beating gradual csite starts except cash
theo almost always best for destocking
perhaps a warning that purchasing food and running turns would be a net loss (could be interisting to change base food purchase price on private from 360 even down to 240ish)
warning that you purchased something more expensive on public than it would have been on private
warning about crazy high expenses, and crazy high spals
warning about silly high tech levels
warning about psing too high a proportion of your tanks
warning that building a building with x turns remaining is almost certainly a net loss
your missiles are at max, and you cant create anymore (would be nice to be able to turn off EM production or destroy them)
suggested bpt's for a server for certain playing styles (ie an allx rep cash should have no more than x bpt on express assuming no mbr, theo is something like 60bpt on express from memory)
a big warning if you run turns with too much food or cash on hand
real income per turn advice, counting food expenses mil and tech
let people know that they undersold market averages by a large amount
exploring at this point of the reset would be counterproductive (simple calc about cashing income)
cashing this early is a waste of a turn, consider building a csite instead
"you didnt build/research a full turn last turn"
"your ally didnt receive full benefit from your research"
your production isnt fully alocated (can be below 100)

Manage:
-Government advice
This would be extremely helpful when you change government for it to say "You are about to change government to Republic. Republic countries have high populations and produce lots of cash each turn. Typical Republics have high percentages of Business and Residence buildings. Change government to Republic? Yes/No" Customized for each government.

Market:
Perhaps a warning about selling bushels below a certain price and a note about using the market to stock goods.

Research:
-Which tech to research (maybe based on market prices?)
I don't know if that is necessary
-Lab ratio
Absolutely necessary :)


Military/War:
-Let you know reasons why you may have bounced attacks (if you bounced)
This would be VERY helpful for new players
-A note about readiness/attacking with 1/3 of forces?
-A note about attacking and that you may be retaliated against for harmful attacks.

Relations:
Didn't the old earth warn about too many relations (expenses) and too few?

Spy:
-A note that you may be retaliated against for performing harmful ops

Foreign Aid:
Just remembered that when i first started out, i randomly sent an FA package to one of my allies who was completely bewildered by it, haha. Perhaps a note about what FA is commonly used for (in war, to pay reps, help out a friend that needs it, whatever)

for readiness its actually 7/18 not 1/3