Afterlife (video Game) - Economy and Workforce

Economy and Workforce

The currency used in the game is "Pennies From Heaven", or simply pennies. As Demiurge, the player receives a yearly paycheque from The Powers That Be. The amount received is based on a number of factors. You receive a certain number of pennies for each SOUL that passes through the gates of the afterlife in that year. The amount received per SOUL is known as the SOUL rate. The SOUL rate is calculated based on the average population of all the tiles in the afterlife. Therefore, having many small, spread-out buildings will yield a lower SOUL rate than having a few large ones. Your SOUL rate is also dependent on the current year that the game is in—Heaven and Hell are expected to show increases in average population over time, so more SOULs per tile will be needed to sustain a particular SOUL rate.

Your afterlife is staffed by angels (in Heaven) and demons (in Hell). At first, all workers are imported and must commute from other afterlives, which quickly becomes expensive. The costs can be lowered by building Topias to house workers in the player's afterlife, meaning that the commute is no longer necessary. Employment costs can be further reduced by building training centers, which train processed SOULs to become angels and demons. These homegrown workers are cheaper than imported ones, but attention must be paid to the acceptance rates of the training centers. If the centers are set to accept anyone who applies, then the workers produced will be of low quality and will not be as effective as imported workers. If the training centers are told to be very selective, however, then they will only take the best of the best and the resulting workers will be of higher quality than imported workers, though not as many will be produced.

Care must be taken when training angels and demons, because the training centers will continue to produce new workers at a steady rate unless specifically told otherwise. If the player winds up with more workers than are needed, then the excess angels and demons will have nothing to do. If they sit around being bored for long enough, then they will start launching raids on the opposite realm—that is, demons will begin demolishing buildings in Heaven, and angels will start destroying structures in Hell. This may lead to unemployment in the attacked realm, and return raids by those unemployed. If these raids get out of hand, the entire afterlife could be destroyed.