Economy & GDP/c

[mrgenie]

Yeah, I wish I knew it too!

I usually play the USA but am doing a Japan game now. Oddly, Japan is much easier to manage economically than the USA. I wonder if the USA has been somewhat nerfed to prevent the USA AI from overrunning the planet.

Italy is easier then Germany I found out.

Generally, and I think I mentioned it above, it seems like expanding and annexing, thus increasing your country, leads to less and less revenue.
Which is actually weird, a larger country should have more capacities to uphold a large army..

But when I look at the AI, no way I could maintain armies as large as the AI does! And my minister.. well.. He's really not as good for me as he is for the computer players..
that's for sure

I simply think the "Easiest" setting on economy is too difficult!

I think what currently is the "Easiest" setting should be "normal"
Easiest should be a setting in which one would have:
taxes 40%
social spending everything half of the ruler,
domestic sales everything at 10%
and still making a large amount of cash..

that's what should be the easiest..

Or BG finally telling us the secret formulas

I could run some convergence math on them to evaluate the optimal settings on t=infinite.

[mikeownage]

Playing as china

I've noticed that social spending costs increase far greater then said income boosts from increased GDP. For instance as china I was making 75+M a day and had saved up over 250,000M in my treasury. forget what my GDP was but it was pretty low maybe like 200. I forgot to pause when I walked away from my computer and roughly 10 years (now 1961) had passed and my GDP is now 478. I was now losing money each day even with a positive trade balance and my treasury is now 145,670M i had to cut over 90M in social spending to return to even. As stated above same tax levels as i manually control pretty much all aspects of my economy. The only changes in trade were I now imported oil rather then exported and I am still importing rubber. I still have a daily positive income from trade even with the need to import oil and rubber.

Now to put to use my saved 13,000,000 industrial goods to produce more oil then I require again. I'd produce rubber locally as well but synthetic rubber plants are just to costly they need to be adjusted.

America has spent itself into huge negative numbers yet again -197,564M
UK is at only 28M in it's treasury.
Germany and Italy are defeated
USSR is at 805M and is still researching so managed to get a few more modern unit designs to build from them seeing as china doesn't get any good tech until much later years around tech level 100 or year 2000
Japan still exists I let them live

[mrgenie]

Playing as china

I've noticed that social spending costs increase far greater then said income boosts from increased GDP. For instance as china I was making 75+M a day and had saved up over 250,000M in my treasury. forget what my GDP was but it was pretty low maybe like 200. I forgot to pause when I walked away from my computer and roughly 10 years (now 1961) had passed and my GDP is now 478. I was now losing money each day even with a positive trade balance and my treasury is now 145,670M i had to cut over 90M in social spending to return to even. As stated above same tax levels as i manually control pretty much all aspects of my economy. The only changes in trade were I now imported oil rather then exported and I am still importing rubber. I still have a daily positive income from trade even with the need to import oil and rubber.

Now to put to use my saved 13,000,000 industrial goods to produce more oil then I require again. I'd produce rubber locally as well but synthetic rubber plants are just to costly they need to be adjusted.

America has spent itself into huge negative numbers yet again -197,564M
UK is at only 28M in it's treasury.
Germany and Italy are defeated
USSR is at 805M and is still researching so managed to get a few more modern unit designs to build from them seeing as china doesn't get any good tech until much later years around tech level 100 or year 2000

Yep, after doing some more test runs.. the greater the GDP, the more trouble to run the country..

to play this game, get the GDP down and a self-sufficient country can run positive..
Of course, you can overproduce and sell on the international market.. but what if I want to conquer half of the world?
There's not enough to sell to, so I need to be self sufficient in both resources and economy... which is only possible
with a low GDP

[georgios]

Playing sr2020 I experience that my people have a lot of money to spend on domestic goods. There is a constant equilibrium of 1600M income, 800M expends and the rest 800M come from domestic sales. I let the game to run a whole night expecting that people's savings will after some years empty. But they still are buying. Where is their money coming from?

Note that my exports-imports balance of payments is usually negative.

Inflation and unemployment remain constant and GDP/c rises slightly. It started from 20.000$ and after 3 years is 26.000$. Now it seems constant. I have not built anything yet.

I think that something happens with WM. WM buys all worlds exports and sells all imports with a markup. It is also the interest of bonds. Where goes all this money? Perhaps it is distributed to the population, analogically to their GDP/c. The richer a country the most active in trading and investing in global economy.

But is still needs explanation..

Other odd thing is that I never have seen unemployment rising. Even If I scrap all factories, unemployment remains where it was.

[georgios]

if you sign a free trade agreement with a big country or a small country in terms of economics, it does not affect the country's economies. I always thought that signing free trade agreement allows the both side to purchase goods from each other. For example as Turkey i have a free trade agreement with UK and UK can buy cheaper products from me ! or you may consider the reverse case. But what i can see free trade agreement has no effect on game mechanics.

Trade agreements, like most agreements improve relations between two sides, so trade goes with better prices and two countries become favored trade partners.

It is not a real trade union, this could mean that two or more countries would share their products at a common price.

[georgios]

Or BG finally telling us the secret formulas

I could run some convergence math on them to evaluate the optimal settings on t=infinite.

The biggest mystery for me is how is generated the game's money... Who generates it and at what rates?

[georgios]

It seems like its unavoidable to get high GDP -

when someone's GDP rises, money is earned by someone else who loses the same amount.
So we must check if other regions are losing GDP.
Even bankrupt regions have increasing GDP.
If all world experiences GDP rise, then we have an increase in money supply.
But who creates this money?
I 'm starting to believe that game creates money continuously.
And this money goes directly to population who can spend in taxes and domestic sales more money than their region spends in production, defense and social spending..

I suppose that in reality world bank is the world population. And the capital of world bank is shared in shares analog to the GDP/c of every region. World bank does two functions:

1. lends money and receives the interest of the loans
2. buys exports and sells them to other regions with a markup.

These interests and markups mean that there is new money created and all these transactions are calculated in the GDP determination. So the rise of GDP is unavoidable.

If a player does invests and creates jobs, in fact gives money to the world market and accelerates this inflation, especially inside of his country.

the game depicts it as a good thing (bar fills up to the right and becomes green the higher it is). But having a high GDP kills your economy, as you no longer can produce at a profit. Tax dollars don't seem to make up the difference in lost production revenue. A bunch of negative aspects seem to be associated with high GDP, which leads me to think i should work at reducing its growth rate

Of course it is a good thing for people (who are voters) to earn more money. But remember that player's aim is to make people work and fight for him, not be wealthy. If the player leaves people to earn money instead of working and fighting for him, the game is lost. The player should act fast to prevent people be wealth before to do their duty.

This uncontrollable rise of GDP will push the players to do more wars. The conquest of new lands restarts the system from a better point.

[Bob]

Nice posts!!!

Low Income...these are most your buyers....15%
High Income...40%
Corp..............40%
small bus.......30%
Sales Tax.......young economy, small nation 10%....large economy 15%
Unemployment...3%
Property Tax......3%
Retirement........3%

I control goods like consumer, oil from the resource screen...move cost higher if I want less domestic sells, lower for more

On the cost side, a young country I put most my money into transportation, a developed country I try to keep my domestic happy rating over 30%, this requires increasing money to the poor

wife calls!!

[georgios]

Low Income...these are most your buyers....15%
High Income...40%
Corp..............40%
small bus.......30%
Sales Tax.......young economy, small nation 10%....large economy 15%
Unemployment...3%
Property Tax......3%
Retirement........3%

Another turbulent topic..
Why the game defines these categories?
Has any meaning to know these details?
And what job is doing each of them?
From where earn they this taxed money?
And from where get the unemployed the money to pay taxes?
And how is found the money for property taxes?

[Bob]

<<<Why the game defines these categories>>>

Good question, my guess is...

the Taxes that are direct to people like property, low, and high income should have an effect on spending....the buying of consumer goods, food, lumber and so on

The taxes on business would be an added cost to produce lumber, military good and so on....when you are in your resource screen there is a spot where it tells you market prices and the cost for you to make the item. Taxes should be part of that cost

Taxes should also have a role to play on how happy your people are, this is recorded as domestic approval. In the USA only a DEM likes to be taxed to death, so building an economy that allows you to lower taxes raises your approval and gets you re-elected.

How do they earn the tax money? Corporations are the structure that produces all your manufacturing goods (IG), Small business more often takes IG and turns it into a product like consumer goods.
Both of these are staffed by people you can tax into submission

where do unemployed get money? In the USA we have insurance we pay into so that when we lose our job, we still get some money until we can find another job.

In most cases you must be earning money to buy a house, In the USA counties use property tax to pay for police, fire dept, Jails, Gov schools.....In my part of the USA we are trying to get a utility tax so that everyone can pay....even those on food stamps ....

[georgios]

the Taxes that are direct to people like property, low, and high income should have an effect on spending....the buying of consumer goods, food, lumber and so on

The taxes on business would be an added cost to produce lumber, military good and so on....when you are in your resource screen there is a spot where it tells you market prices and the cost for you to make the item. Taxes should be part of that cost

Taxes should also have a role to play on how happy your people are, this is recorded as domestic approval. In the USA only a DEM likes to be taxed to death, so building an economy that allows you to lower taxes raises your approval and gets you re-elected.

How do they earn the tax money? Corporations are the structure that produces all your manufacturing goods (IG), Small business more often takes IG and turns it into a product like consumer goods.
Both of these are staffed by people you can tax into submission

where do unemployed get money? In the USA we have insurance we pay into so that when we lose our job, we still get some money until we can find another job.

In most cases you must be earning money to buy a house, In the USA counties use property tax to pay for police, fire dept, Jails, Gov schools.....In my part of the USA we are trying to get a utility tax so that everyone can pay....even those on food stamps ....

These explanations are reasonable in true life but are these details hardcoded in the game? How can we be sure for this?

Can we be sure that corporate tax is linked with industrial goods and small business tax with consumer?

And what about the row materials?

And what about high and low income? What expenditures are linked with them?

And what taxes are affecting research, Military, Espionage, Construction, Maintenance?, Social spending?

As for pension and unemployment taxes, are they linked with social assistance spending?

And what about the other social spending sectors?

[georgios]

For the moment I believe that taxes are balanced only with social spending, regardless of the type of tax and the sector of social spending.

Now, I am testing with several values of world bank prime rate, and product margin factors.

[georgios]

the Taxes that are direct to people like property, low, and high income should have an effect on spending....the buying of consumer goods, food, lumber and so on

but there is also the sales tax!

and as of the property, how is this property measured? People seem not to have any property! They own only fast moving goods! Everything else is state owned!