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So I just recently got the game and have tried a couple of different campaigns, finding them very enjoyable. However, I have a very limited understanding of economics and it is crippling me. While I have been able to find ways to get my economy up and running, I'm also having to micromanage it every single day, leaving me with very little time to build up my armed forces and acquire new terrority (which is annoying because I have a pretty good background in military history so I know where to invade and what tactics to use.)
So I'm just wondering if anybody has any tips that would be helpful on how to get my economy going and make it so it runs by itself.

(I'm playing as Texas in the Shattered World scenario if that helps.)

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The Golden Rule of Air Power- You can't win a war with just air power and you can't win a war without it.

It would be better if you post how you handle economy first. Give us a base to give you advice. If you are looking on how to effectively run economy in general, searching this forum will be a good idea.

Well as Texas I am already largely self-sufficient when it comes to commodities except for metal ore so that's the only thing I have to import. A majority of my income comes from selling my surplus of fresh water to Saudi Arabia and my petroleum reserves to Japan, China or South Korea. However, the idea of bulk sales and price markup I'm just starting to get my head around after hours of trial and extreme error. My greatest area of concern however is when it comes to my domestic sales as I'm having trouble finding a price at which my people can truely afford and help sustain my economy.
I've also started to understand whether I should produce commodities at demand or capacity but it sometimes seems that I'm wrong and I miss opportunities to make cash in bulk sales.
Combating inflation, (which is now at 5.3%) is also an objective but I've slightly solved that problem by raising taxes and lowering my social services.
At the same time, I've just realized how high my production costs are and am taking measures to lower them, such as scrapping all of my petrol power plants and adding supply depots and roads. Unfortunately I did not realize this problem until I read about it here on the economy forum, so I'm already a couple of years in and am getting screwed over by the production costs and how much it will cost to replace my petrol plants with nuclear ones.
Oh and I'm managing almost everything myself since I've locked my ministers out of everything.

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The Golden Rule of Air Power- You can't win a war with just air power and you can't win a war without it.

That is the first step towards managing the economy well. I think many players do that too.


Production costs increase when the inflation rate is high, which happens when your GDP/c increases too rapidly. The GDP growth can be slowed down by what you mentioned earlier, increasing taxes and decreasing social services. You will also have to be careful when building facilities, don't build too many at a time. The most radical method, is, of course, to invade other countries to rapidly increase your population.

I usually produce at capacity unless my production cost is equal to or higher than the market price. In that case I will produce at demand. It rarely ever happens though.

There are a few things you can do to get the bottom line up.

1. You're Texas. Oil oil oil. If you aren't the #1 producer and exporter, you need to build more gas fields. Even if you end up depressing the price you'll still be profitable. You make so much oil you can safely set your domestic margin low (30-40%) and find some other way to gouge your people, though with so much export cash coming in you really shouldn't need to. I have played Texas games with 0% taxes and AI control of commodities and had all the $ I could ask for.

2. Inflation. This game exists in a single-currency universe, the $. Thus inflation is almost totally irrelevent. If you want to roleplay a real ruler having to worry about it, fine, but you really can completely ignore it and play just fine. It can also help to look at it this way: If you have 40% inflation, but 100% GDP growth, your people are still massively better off than they were.

3. Self sufficiency. As Texas, you can be self sufficient on all commodities but metal. You should be able to float your whole war machine on $ from oil and modest exports of consumer goods. Just make sure you import as little as possible and move on.

4. Petrol power. When you're a major oil exporter, petrol power isn't so bad. Don't bother closing/scrapping these, just close any electricity gap you have via coal and nuclear power. Odds are you're going to make so much oil that you'll sink the price of a barrel anyway.

So first of all thanks for the advice. It has truely helped.
I've increased the number of oil-gas fields and water works to capitalize on selling my surplus and that's gotten my economy on the right track. I've also taken care of my need for metal ore by performing a blitzkrieg on New Mexico and seizing some of the more metal ore rich areas of that state so now I'm completely self-sufficient.
However I'm stilling having a little trouble understanding the domestic markups. I've been able to increase my GDP from 40K to 43K, so I was wondering whether to set my domestic markups at market price or higher. Or since I'm Texas and can make tons of cash on exports, should I just ignore domestic stuff and focus on world trade.
I've read a couple of different threads on this forum but am still unclear as to what course of action I should take.

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The Golden Rule of Air Power- You can't win a war with just air power and you can't win a war without it.

I've frequently noticed distrust of the AI ministers, but honest to God, if you have a large oil surplus, the AI can handle auto-selling it well enough for you to ignore it and go blitz things. Any nation in the world can finance a huge military on autosales of oil and/or consumer goods.

As for domestic markups, they're a %, so if your GDP increases, so do domestic sales prices. If you're really hard up for cash, set it to 200% and ignore it, no further tinkering required.

Though like I said, as Texas you can export all that oil and set domestic markups very, very low to keep people happy.

There is no need to maintain domestic markups on market price especially if you're able to sell the commodity for a profit in the world market. Most people maintain an upper limit of 75% or so, I maintain it to roughly 30% for most commodities except for oil which is at 90%. I compensate that by having food and water at 10% though (not to mention excellent social spending), so the people remain quite happy.

My reasoning:


1. Higher domestic prices = less domestic consumption.

2. Less domestic consumption = More things to export.

3. PROFIT.

yes but you need countries to buy it, as soon as you get kiked out of un you will be saving too much consumer goods in your "warehouse", that measure is a short term

The UN has no meaning in the game, just as in the real world. If you are kicked out of the UN you will still trade on the world markets. In fact you will be better off because now you will not have to pay the UN "fee".

As I've said before the UN should be removed from the game
If conflict on the scale imagined by the game were to ever happen IRL, the UN would have failed in its missions, and would most likely be dissolved

Concerning markups, I usually simply alter them to ensure my consumption is low enough for either my production or imports to handle

I'm following the stuff on the wiki newbie guide, does that still work?

BigWolf - I think the UN does serve one function in the game for smaller/poorer countries. They will give them the resources they lack. I have seen, playing as 1 hex countries, that the UN gives you whatever resource you are in need of. I think it is the programmers way of "getting around" having to program the AI to adequately run the country. We have all seen countries ran into the ground by the AI because they will not build resource facilities. Countries with tons of coal will run into the red buying coal from the market and never build a coal mine in their own country for example.

Having the UN give resources away is a band-aid to the AI incompetance. So, for now, I do not think it should be removed.

just fyi: low DAR = low demand. You want your people buy the stuff you produce, then make them happy first.

Wait, has the UN ever succeeded in anything apart from being a total waste of time?

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