Economy Suggestions

[warsmith17]

First I'd like to say that AI needs improvement right away, so these suggestions are more for the future.

As I said in another thread building a nation up economically seems a bit too easy.  I was able to get Egypt to #15 economically (at least according to the resign screen) by mid 1949.

1.  Infrastructure builds too fast, it should be more expensive, take longer to build, or both.  I think it should also cost heavy industry to build infra if this is possible.

2.  There are many profitable factories that don't hire more people, I have no idea what the cause of this is.

3.  Heavy industry seems pointless to build, it makes little money and they seem to be the factories that are most often not employing people.  This is why I believe infrastructure as well as the other building project (universities, air bases, naval bases etc) should require it as an input.  Plus it seems like arms manufacturing should require a bit as well.  It could also be justified if factories needed some level (repairs, new machines etc).

4.  The placement of industry is quite likely messed up at the moment but I think that was already known.

5.  If I go into debt it seems like I'm forced to use all of my money paying that debt and all of my budget sliders hit zero.

6.  Prices of buildings may need to go up.

7.  Military upkeep is way too low, I had around 160,000 soldiers (2 armored divisions, 2 motorised, the rest infantry divisions), 3 multiroles and 2 transports and it only costed like 60 or so.  There may need to be a bit more trade off here.

8.  I can't say much about tech pricing, I think that may be the biggest devil to balance (once all the tech is working anyways)

9.  Many have reported huge market fluctuations, I didn't experience this, I experienced fluctuations but not much worse than Victoria 2.

A final suggestion is that it seems a little too easy to change policies at the moment, but I don't have any ideas about how to address that.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

[jetblackissp]

i had a massive market fluctuation was going from making 15k a day as the uk to 200 almost overnight my economy never managed to climbed back after that , i dont think its a good idea to change military upkeep until the economy is a bit more stable

[nguyenthepatriot]

Heavy Industry factories are both some of my lucrative and some of my worst performing. I think the cause is a lack of Iron to supply all the Heavy Industry factories.

In my experience Power Plants seem to never make a profit, because the Coal they use as an input is at least as expensive as the Electricity they output. At least the Electricity they produce keeps the rest of the economy running.

[warsmith17]

Do we have a way to check global supply/demand? That would really clear things up?

Any comments on the rest of my ideas?

[nguyenthepatriot]

Jan 20, 2015 14:35:45 GMT warsmith17 said:

Do we have a way to check global supply/demand? That would really clear things up?

Any comments on the rest of my ideas?

Pages 14 and 16 of the ledger (ledger button is next to the flag in the top left). Unfortunately it does not elaborate on what precisely is contributing to the numbers.

[nguyenthepatriot]

Jan 17, 2015 15:54:15 GMT warsmith17 said:

First I'd like to say that AI needs improvement right away, so these suggestions are more for the future.

As I said in another thread building a nation up economically seems a bit too easy.  I was able to get Egypt to #15 economically (at least according to the resign screen) by mid 1949.

1.  Infrastructure builds too fast, it should be more expensive, take longer to build, or both.  I think it should also cost heavy industry to build infra if this is possible.

    I agree. As well as it perhaps being too cheap, the AI spends massive amounts of money on infrastructure and isn't selective about where to do so; so we end up with absurd situation of high-level infrastructure blanketing Siberia. 
    We'll need to be cautious though of the wider economic effects of drastically scaling down what is at the moment a massive money sink.

2.  There are many profitable factories that don't hire more people, I have no idea what the cause of this is.

    I've seen the same, but I'm not sure of the cause(s) yet. Some of it will just be that other factories or service production are more profitable.

3.  Heavy industry seems pointless to build, it makes little money and they seem to be the factories that are most often not employing people.  This is why I believe infrastructure as well as the other building project (universities, air bases, naval bases etc) should require it as an input.  Plus it seems like arms manufacturing should require a bit as well.  It could also be justified if factories needed some level (repairs, new machines etc).

4.  The placement of industry is quite likely messed up at the moment but I think that was already known.

5.  If I go into debt it seems like I'm forced to use all of my money paying that debt and all of my budget sliders hit zero.

    Could you elaborate on what exactly you mean by this. I haven't investigated debt in the game yet. If your income cannot match your debt repayments (if the game works like that), then doesn't that make sense, or is it something else?
Perhaps we should add an IMF bailout event chain .

7.  Military upkeep is way too low, I had around 160,000 soldiers (2 armored divisions, 2 motorised, the rest infantry divisions), 3 multiroles and 2 transports and it only costed like 60 or so.  There may need to be a bit more trade off here.
    
    For advanced countries, agreed. However, if we are to raise military upkeep we will need to find some way to compensate it for populous but less developed countries. Nationalist and Communist China can barely support their starting military upkeep costs (although that may be partially to do with incorrect factory placement). Perhaps have military technologies also increase military upkeep costs, as in Victoria 2, if that is possible.

[warsmith17]

Perhaps infrastructure could be a tech cap (like Victoria 2) For example all countries could build to level 3 or 5, but every level after that is capped to a tech like "interstate highways" "modern mass transit" "autobahn" or something of that nature. Of course this may involve rebalancing supply.

Debt: I took a decision that dragged me 100,000 into debt (the decision said it would be 10,000). I was able to pay it off less than a year so it clearly wasn't crippling however because I was in debt I couldn't spend on anything else. I'll see if I have that save and perhaps upload some screens. Is there anyway to end this, but have debt retain negative consequences? Further would it be possible to have these consequences scale to GDP, like if GDP is greater than X, then Y debt will have effect Z?

Military Upkeep? For some reason I recall from the dev diaries that more advanced tech already did cost more upkeep, if this isn't the case than it certainly should, if nothing else it could offer a trade-off for the player and serve to make militaries more diverse.

As for China, are resources static in terms of production, or are they tied to population in some way?  For tax purposes in China, shouldn't the many poor in China = in taxes what a few rich would (if the game is written in that manner)?  I can certainly think of a few historical decisions that could impact it, regardless Nat Chi was historically unable to support that many troops without destroying the economy (hyper inflation etc).  I haven't checked the OOB but shouldn't most of the troops on either side be militia, aside from elite formations like the New 1st Army and other nationalist units that were American equipped and trained?

[warsmith17]

Is it possible to change population resource consumption based on GDP per capita? This would make sense and would show the growth of consumption over time. After looking at the files perhaps it could be something like IF pop > 10 million and GDP is greater than or equal to x, then resource consumption is Y. This would probably take awhile to write but could certainly increase realism. It could also be the basis for events if one's neighbors have higher consumption it could encourage dissent in the borders of the poorer country.