Economy Issues

[Warmaster101]

So I've had this game for a few years now, but only recently got the patience for it, i've been playing as France the last few days and my economy was great!, making alot of money, paid off all my debt and became self sufficient in everything but i now i seem to have money problems, i looked up my expenses and i and im paying 1,580,050 M on my production do i reduce this by scraping production facilities? if so how do i keep my production of goods up? kinda stuck here if someone could help it would be much appreciated.

[Cutlass]

There are several different things to potentially look into.

One of them is to make sure that your spending on infrastructure is maxed out and that you are also researching technologies which will help improve your infrastructure rating. The better your infrastructure rating, the more effective your resource generation and production will be.

The second potential problem is that as one's economy improves, one's GDP/c also increases (the average person gets more money/higher wages). This has the side effect of making your employment costs higher and your labor less cost effective. Arguably one way around that is to *decrease* your GDP/C, probably by raising taxes. However, that has the side effect that your DAR (Domestic Approval Rating) will suffer. Personally I just try to max out infrastructure.

One thing I have also played around with which seems to help, take a look at your electrical generation facilities and phase out the ones which are less cost effective with others. Petrol power plants and Power, other facilities should be replaced with hydro power plants, nuclear power plants, advanced solar power plants, and or even coal power plants as soon as possible.

[Hundane]

i looked up my expenses and i and im paying 1,580,050 M on my production do i reduce this by scraping production facilities?

If your self sufficient and have all your debts paid off then reduce your production to demand or just slightly higher. As your demand goes up thru population increases then increase your productions to meet those demands.

[Warmaster101]

Ok Thanks to the both of you for replying ill try that for sure, could you also maybe give some examples of the techs i should research? theres so many its a little overwhelming tbh.

[Cutlass]

I'll just hit some of the highlights as far as technologies are concerned. In general, you want to see what technologies are available, and research those that give a boost to your infrastructure rating. You also want technologies that increase your electrical generating capability. Replace your Power-Petrol Plants and your Power-Other Plants with more efficient designs as soon as you are able. In the early game, the power plant types you want to build as arranged from most cost effective to least cost effective are:

1) Power-Hydro
2) Power-Advanced Solar
3) Power-Nuclear
4) Power-Coal

I would recommend building more Power-Coal plants than your region starts with only if you are facing a severe electrical power production shortfall and don't have the time/ability to build any of the more desirable types of plants. Note that Power-Nuclear is only a viable alternative if your region can produce the uranium you need.

Technologies for power production:

Advanced Stirling Engines [TL 109]
Stirling Solar Collectors [TL 111]

These two technologies will enable you to build Power-Advanced Solar plants. IMHO you should replace all of your fossil fuel power plants with advanced solar power plants as soon as you can make that happen. I don't normally waste the time researching the technologies that make Power-Other plants and Power-Petrol plants more effective because even with all the add on technologies those plants don't produce as much as Power-Advanced Solar plants.

Also note that the technologies of:

Biomass Incineration [TL 81]
Urban Heat Exchangers [TL 104]

taken together make any power plant that you build in an urban area approximately 21% more effective. Given that in the game you don't have to worry about the sort of problems encountered in Chernobyl and Fukushima then you have no reason NOT to build all of your new power plants in cities.

Prismatic Uranium Blocks [TL 105]
VHTR Nuclear Reactors [TL 106]
Refit to Nuclear VHTR [TL 107]

France has a lot of Power-Nuclear plants and these will make them more effective.

Technologies for Infrastructure:

High Speed Trains [TL 97]
High Speed Rail Infrastructure [TL 98]
Upgraded Rail System [TL 104]
Electromagnetic Lift Trains [TL 114]
Maglev Rail Infrastructure [TL 115]
Organic Road Materials [TL 116]*

Some of these technologies will boost your infrastructure rating while also increasing your infrastructure cost. Don't worry, the overall tradeoff is worth it. The Organic Road Materials Technology has an entire tech forest of prerequisite technologies, so it will actually take a while to develop. That's not a real problem as you will need all the various prerequisites for other things as well, and the infrastructure benefit that you get with this technology is linked to a significant infrastructure cost reduction.

[Warmaster101]

Sweet!, thanks for that! it's really helpful!!

[Red Dawn]

Hi All

Don't mean to hijack the thread but rather than starting a new one thought it best to post here. I currently have SR2020 GC v 6.8 playing the SR2020 Campaign from start again after my laptop crashed and wiped off my last saved game.

My economy is growing and my GDP has just hit $20,000. I have set the tax base at 0% and I am taxing production than anything else and have an economy worth $3 trillion. However I have a huge budget deficit of $3 trillion and the inflation rate is 68% which is not good. Furthermore, upon inspecting my expenditure I have noticed that my military expenditure is huge. Obviously I have looked at ways of reducing my military expenditure but what perplexes me is that in the previous version of SR2020 GC I was playing the exact same campaign, employed the exact same economic and social policies and have rebuilt the military exactly as I had it in the previous game. The only difference is that previously my military expenditure was $600 bln and now it is $2 trillion. As I have installed the 6.8 update (which I did not have in my previous game) is this a bug? I have also noticed that the cost of missiles in the new update is ridiculous. $15mln for a single missile? Surely this is a bug in the game?

If not then could my military expenditure be as large as it is due to the whopping 68% inflation rate? Or could it be that the GDP has increased to $20,000 so just as it costs more to produce products it costs more for the military to employ personnel? Is the economic model that advanced to have an impact on my military expenditure?