10 year in game: problems/critique

[Hyjinx]

I do incredibly love this game and hope it gets better, In these hopes, here are some problems and areas of interest I've encountered. Sorry for the long post

The scenario I'm doing is Russia and I am Anzabagastan or some stan thing (right next to Armenia). I've just entered year 2020 and am seeing some serious game problems.

1. Did you know that Inflation is really your friend? This is because my inflation has no effect on other economies and we all use the same money. I was able to just buy all of my materials from the WM at a much lower rate than my homeland could ever hope to match. For example, it costs $368,000 for me to make industry supplies per unit, but the WM supplies are only $50,000. Can anyone say profit? I have over 40 Billion to spend on nothing. My inflation rate has been hovering around 46% for about 7 years, ever since I got my production rolling. The profit margin is just increasing every day. The minister can only slow inflation but is powerless to bring it down, im not even really sure how he's doing that. Without interest control (which strangely is always at 6%) I cannot fight inflation. My unemployment is at 1.0%, I am unable to take away more jobs, everything is gone! This economy is ....um....interesting. I have nothing but cities and military and yet have a positive economy.

2. There is an arbitrary limit to the amount you can spend on research. I can expand my budget in research until I have about 8 research labs, and then my efficiency goes down. I can increase my projects just not my efficiency. This is probably for game balance but still pretty gamey.

3. Although there is a unit filter, i cannot set unit favorites. I have this neat filter to make my life easier when choosing my units to build but I am unable to actually use it. I looked all over the manual but cant see where I can set any of the perameters?

4. Why is my balance sheet seperated into parts? I have to switch back and forth adding and subtracting to actually see what my balance is in the budget sheet. Why not put both pages right next to each other with a column on the bottom that says total? Or maybe it's a different sheet other than budget that does that.

5.TRADE BUDGET!!!! Why does my trade history only have today and yesterday on it? How the heck am i gonna figure out my trend if I cant at least see a month of tradeing? Real hard to fix an economy if you dont even know what your good at.

6. Guess how much research got done in 10 years I think i've finished about 15 projects. This may be becasuse I started real slow being an Eastern Bloc country and all, but still, research is pointless unless you are in the game for the looooooong haul. It's a waste of precious money otherwise. I mean a complete waste as in it angers me greatly that I just won as Washington and still had 5 days left on my first project.

7.Diplomacy sucks. But this horse has been beaten raw.

8.My saved games look awfully similar. Hey, why not time stamp them on the actual saved games page. Just a suggestion.

I'm going to stop now because this list is starting to piss me off. The only real functional part of the game is the combat, good job there. But the box says the game does other stuff too.

I hope your next patch is a work of devine inspiration becuse this is the best premise for a game in years. And in conclusion, I feel cheated that I learned the inner workings of this game and saw an empty space.

[Decimatus]

Build about 30 reseach centers, put max money into research funding and you can easily see your efficiency reach 400-800%.

The entire tech tree can be completed in about 1-2 years, including build time on the facilities. Population is a factor in how much you can spend though, so either get a lot of people or conquer someone to add to your pop. No new techs after tech level 124.(I have tech lvl 145 in one scenario)

[ridge]

1. Did you know that Inflation is really your friend? This is because my inflation has no effect on other economies and we all use the same money. I was able to just buy all of my materials from the WM at a much lower rate than my homeland could ever hope to match. For example, it costs $368,000 for me to make industry supplies per unit, but the WM supplies are only $50,000. Can anyone say profit? I have over 40 Billion to spend on nothing. My inflation rate has been hovering around 46% for about 7 years, ever since I got my production rolling. The profit margin is just increasing every day. The minister can only slow inflation but is powerless to bring it down, im not even really sure how he's doing that. Without interest control (which strangely is always at 6%) I cannot fight inflation. My unemployment is at 1.0%, I am unable to take away more jobs, everything is gone! This economy is ....um....interesting. I have nothing but cities and military and yet have a positive economy.

The problems with the economic model begin with the intro about "petro dollars". The system needs to be torn out and something simple implemented. The mix of expenses and inflation and social spending and immigration don't work right. Resource gathering of RTS games makes more sense.

Overall the game is not worth fighting the clunky interface and blobs of units on the map and wacko socio-economic system.

[Fordson]

To each there own. good luck finding another game.

[Ironhand]

Play with an AoE type economy may be simple. However, I never, ever, had my economy collapse while fighting.

Having read Larry Bond's Vortex, I thought I would try the RSA. I saw all those nice oil fields in Namibia and thought "Ah, a nice short war." Wrong was I. Oh I took the fields, and most of the Federation. However, they held me off at two cities. Then the messages, oil shortage, electric shortage, agra shortage, units running out of fuel, resource and money shortfalls force the halt on building new facilities. And the guys would not make peace.

I felt like Germany in WW1. My troops everywhere on foreign soil, and the home front grinding to a halt. If I depended on a DAR instead of a MAR, I swear they would offer me a blindfold.

Nope, never had that happen in a RTS. I *love* it.

[Hyjinx]

the point is: the economic model is less realistic the longer you play the game, i'm not sure how to fix it except by giving each region a different currency and making it possible to adjust interest rates. Being non-dependant on the rest of the world destroys the system they have in place.

Yet another problem (my current gripe as of 7:00 p.m.), Georgia, the land next to me, has so many units that they overflow into North Caucus, i mean like 100 units of em'. How is it possible for a land that produces nothing and has such a low population support such a huge army (estimated at about 400 units). I dont feel like Im in control of a nation but instead a computer land that has rules that only i have to follow.

[Antares]

Its not so much that the comp doesn't play by the rules, its that the comp knows the rules like the back of its virtual hand and thus is able to use every rule to its advantage where as us humans don't.

[The_Lightning_Count]

1. Did you know that Inflation is really your friend? This is because my inflation has no effect on other economies and we all use the same money. I was able to just buy all of my materials from the WM at a much lower rate than my homeland could ever hope to match. For example, it costs $368,000 for me to make industry supplies per unit, but the WM supplies are only $50,000. Can anyone say profit? I have over 40 Billion to spend on nothing. My inflation rate has been hovering around 46% for about 7 years, ever since I got my production rolling. The profit margin is just increasing every day. The minister can only slow inflation but is powerless to bring it down, im not even really sure how he's doing that. Without interest control (which strangely is always at 6%) I cannot fight inflation. My unemployment is at 1.0%, I am unable to take away more jobs, everything is gone! This economy is ....um....interesting. I have nothing but cities and military and yet have a positive economy.

What? A -little- inflation is good. Rampant inflation will hurt you... If it costs you $368,000 for you to make industrial supplies, then you are exporting it for an even higher cost than that. Chances are, other nations aren't going to buy from you unless they are retarded or extremely desperate when the world market probably sells industrial goods at probably 1/10th your price. Your domestic sales should be dropping too because you would have to mark down your price lower than your production cost just to make it affordable. I highly doubt your citizens can afford those goods. This is a bit harder to explain... your GDP/c would have to increase at a rate faster than your inflation in order for them to be able to buy and since your inflation is 46% I doubt they are able to. I don't understand how your profit margin could be rising at all if inflation is going up that high. I just got done playing Portugal. I had a lot of production as well except I kept inflation down so I could compete in the export market aggressively and make a large profit. I was able to mark up product exports to 50% higher than the cost and my price could still beat the WM's price.

If what you say is true and you ARE making money then you will be making more than you ever imagined if you put inflation down to a normal 3-6% (the range I try to keep my inflation).

2. There is an arbitrary limit to the amount you can spend on research. I can expand my budget in research until I have about 8 research labs, and then my efficiency goes down. I can increase my projects just not my efficiency. This is probably for game balance but still pretty gamey.

Do what Decimatus said :p

4. Why is my balance sheet seperated into parts? I have to switch back and forth adding and subtracting to actually see what my balance is in the budget sheet. Why not put both pages right next to each other with a column on the bottom that says total? Or maybe it's a different sheet other than budget that does that.

Balance sheet? ... Trade Balance? Total Surplus/Deficit? Not sure by which you mean. Total Surplus/Deficit and Trade Balance is listed directly onto treasurey panel. The different sheets are just the detailed information for expenses and income.

5.TRADE BUDGET!!!! Why does my trade history only have today and yesterday on it? How the heck am i gonna figure out my trend if I cant at least see a month of tradeing? Real hard to fix an economy if you dont even know what your good at.

It calculates the total anual/daily trade budget under the treasury panel for you. Don't know why you want to see anything else but ok.

6. Guess how much research got done in 10 years I think i've finished about 15 projects. This may be becasuse I started real slow being an Eastern Bloc country and all, but still, research is pointless unless you are in the game for the looooooong haul. It's a waste of precious money otherwise. I mean a complete waste as in it angers me greatly that I just won as Washington and still had 5 days left on my first project.

Incredible... I finish technology research all the time... just increase the funding, lower the tech level spending, and increase tech + efficiency. You should get more than 15 projects done in 10 years, I assure you.

7.Diplomacy sucks. But this horse has been beaten raw.

We know, Battlegoat knows, it should be fixxed by this week end.

I'm going to stop now because this list is starting to piss me off. The only real functional part of the game is the combat, good job there. But the box says the game does other stuff too.

I hope your next patch is a work of devine inspiration becuse this is the best premise for a game in years. And in conclusion, I feel cheated that I learned the inner workings of this game and saw an empty space.

Should have waited and tried the demo first if you didn't like this game. That's why I don't feel cheated, a demo is a game, a web site isn't. Going by a demo instead of a web site or other advertising really helps you better decide if the game is right for you.

In my experience as a gamer I find that game anticipation... never really works well. I just ignore it untill the game comes out instead of getting my hopes up in the first place. Because with anticipation, you build up in your mind a set expectation of what you want to see out of the game. Then when the game doesn't exactly go your way you get really pissed for waiting for it for 2-3 years.

I had no set expectations of the game and I love it.

Just my 2 cents :p

[Hyjinx]

Hey thanks a lot there lightning for not really reading the post and answering my pseudo-questions with your own input that weeves itself around my problems and addresses nothing. In your critique of my critique you blame me for my own short-comings and assume I never did a number of things. It's always nice to see the internet is never a surprise.

-me

(still mad at my economic abnormalities)

[The_Lightning_Count]

oh please -_-

[Bluesman]

Yeah I think Lightning explained it well enough. What was wrong with giving explanations to your problems?

BM

[november]

In my experience as a gamer I find that game anticipation... never really works well. I just ignore it untill the game comes out instead of getting my hopes up in the first place. Because with anticipation, you build up in your mind a set expectation of what you want to see out of the game. Then when the game doesn't exactly go your way you get really pissed for waiting for it for 2-3 years.

I had no set expectations of the game and I love it.

Just my 2 cents :p

Yep, that’s how I do it. I’m a Paradox fan, for example, but I’ve never followed any of their games during development. I’ve also noticed that a game’s most bitter critics are often people who followed every detail during development and were subsequently disappointed with the game upon release.

[tboy21]

this game is good!!
if all the irretating bugs will be fixed - it will be a GREAT game!

[JXai]

Lets avoid making this a fanboi forum guys. His point about inflation is interesting and well received by me. I'm interested in if his unit production costs have increased along with his material production costs. If they have, then he isn't really making money. If they have NOT, then this IS an exploit. A country with monstrous inflation shouldn't be able to purchase goods on the cheap - their currency should be valueless on the world market. What he indicates is that you can run up the VALUE of your currency through inflation...and that is in fact the opposite of how it works. It does sound like a problem to me.

The devs, who spent 5 years on this game don't get defensive at those kinds of posts, so it makes little sense that fans should. Looking forward to the further development of the game.

[CptBritish]

You only get 15 Projects done in 10 years

Man your doing something wrong...

I'm playing Marsaille (Or I will start my game again when I can make peace with the AI) and i've researched over 100 things (Techs and Units)
and they really help (though when all the Research Items do something it will be better) 10% of Population Petrol use!!! whenever I see anything that lowers my Petrol use...

But really put efficiency on 50% and 50% in The other one (Not tech level increase) and I'm getting techs about every 30 days and units every 5-10...