Addictive, but will you ever gain? (cashwars)

Member Name: buchanan17

Product:	cashwars
Date:	28/11/00 (136 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free, different, addictive

Disadvantages: Addictive, unfair (read why!)

This is a get paid scheme with a big difference. You - theoretically - get paid by fighting others and stealing their money. It costs nothing yourself - the "money" is provided for from advertising revenues.

This revenue comes from banner ad impressions when you are playing the game, and fees that Cashwars receive for you signing up for programs to get yourself extra fuel cells.

Let me explain. You have a base on a 700 x 700 square world (almost half a million locations). YOu can move N/S/E/W around the world, one space at a time. YOu will find oil fields, mountains, trading bases and other peoples bases. Oil is the base material that allows you to do anything. YOu use this to buy improved attack and defence weapons, spying and counterspying tools, and also oil digging and mining equipment. YOu can also use it eventualy in auctions to move your base should you be picked on.

You get 200 basic moves a day (10am UK time to 10am Uk time) - to get extra fuel cells, which provide 50 moves a day extra, you sign up to various free on line schemes - games sites, poetry.com etc.

When you reach another base, you can spy to see what the opponent has got, but if his counter spying works out better than your efforts (all done on a randomiser with relative abilities taken into account), then you cannot attack. I rarely spy, and it may be worth saving a few oil barrels to not bother with this to start with.

Attack a base, and again the relative strengths are taken into account, but with a heavy degree of randomisation (which ALWAYDS seems to work against you!) You can win a percentage of the money stored in the base, or lose a percentage of yours. This system is near fatally flawed however, more of that later.

To improve drilling efficiency in oil fields you can buy better driling kit. YOu can also buy digging equipment to dig in mountains where you can win more moves, more game cash, or entries into a mont
hly $1000 sweepstake.

To improve your defensive capabilities you can also join a mutual defence network (MDN) the strength of which (determined by the pooled OFFENSIVE strengh as a proportion of the top groups strength is added to your strength. This is a must. The MDNs also have message boards to discuss what bases to hit, etc.

This all sounds very complicated, but the beauty of this game is that it is very simple in reality, and highly addictive.

But, the big problem. Because you lose a % of your money if you fail in attack or lose in defence, the more money you have, the more you lose. YOu will tend to reach a plateau, of around A30 (A is Akzar cash, the currency of the system), unless you are really clever, and lucky. Attack a base with little money in it and you win paltry amounts, yet you can lose loads. If someone attacks you who has managed to cash out (trade in his Akzar cash at the rate of A3 = $1) then he stands to lose little on the attack. early in the month if you have reasonable cash, you will lose a lot to these predators.

The only way I have seen of getting enough money is by building a very large referral network. YOu gain a figure equal to 10% of those winnings in your direct referrals, and 5% below that, 2% below that. I have built such a network - it takes time. I have 110 direct referrasl, many who wonm't be playing of course, but who seem to bring me in around A10 to A15 per day. the question is then whether I lose less than this to predators. The problem again, the more I have the more I lose to each attack - over A 5 sometimes. I had to buy a moving compnay to move away from the heavily occupied central zoen to ply a very quiet existence on the edge of this world. As a result, i should be cashing out shortly, for around $30 to $40, and hopefully similar amounts monthly. It is not really fair though - for ages i tried to gain cash just by fighting.

the other problem with this g
ame is that you have to use a rather strange programme to play enough without too much tedium. This si strange in that it may be considered a cheat in other Get Paid programs, but this one has been implicitly endorsed by Cashwars themselves - they found that people were using it, but instead of bannign them, it told the designers that there was a bug! As most income will come from the sign up revenue, this probably mattered little to Cashwars.

There are many such programs that have been created, plus loads of web sites giving useful information on strategy - http://www.cashwarsmdn.com, for example.

The problem with these programs is the unscrupulous. Some use mutliple versions on presaved routes, and if someone targets your base, you lose loads. I had to move becasue of this, but told cashwars about what I considered to be real cheating. I don't know what happened to this person, but I am a little sceptical about whether Cashwars were too worried about him as he was a source of income.

The slight moral issues concerned with this program, and the plainly unfair system whereby you HAVE to get referrals to get money, and if not, you are solely playign for your referres, only allows me to give a 3 star to this review. It needs sorting. But of course if any of my referrals are reading this - just keep on playing guys!

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