10 billion treasury treshhold, Do not pass it!

[Atraphoenix]

After the last update on steam, around 14 MB; no idea if hotfix or not, I tested 2020 modern world map that is one of my favourite ones( I quit testing 1936 because USSR does not dissolve and you have no chance to create Russia without modding).
Here is my wierd result with Turkey after I year (stable around 10kGDP, 65 % taxes on first 4, 25% sales, 1% the last 3. Social spending recommended except education to boost my population) :
If I have less than 5b I get a loss 300m that is bearable,
If I have around 10b I get I loss around 500m the difference added to social services,
If I have more than 20b I get a loss a bit more than 1b again the social spending is to blame.

So after a year of testing this I think it is advisable not to pass 10 billion on treasury. Social spending cost doubles if you pass 10b and it triples if you pass 20b treshold. I am quite happy with the latest 14 MB thing although main version number did not change but it looks it doubled my domestic sales income I have production cost around 400m but my domestic sales are more than 800m even sometimes passes 900m.

I really have no idea what the 14Mb steam update changed but modern 2020 (not GC) is playable at least in comparison to last weekend that I quit after getting insane problems on economy.

I will keep testing this but this limit gives me headache and demotivates me to increase my treasure. I have no idea it is a bug or an intended design but I cannot understand why this insane social spending cost increases in parallel to increase in treasury. Currently it looks a better idea to keep treasury between 10b - 15b if you can afford 500m export daily. I began to stockpile my productions which I hate. I used to save at least 2-4 trillions of dollars before a major war together with petrol and MG. Now it is not an option.

Other than military and industry goods, the market price of the rest of the goods never dropped below the production cost. I never sell MG and IG but the world market price are lower for them. IG thing is good for me as I am a fast and impatient builder. MG is not a problem as well because there is no war yet. On my last test during last weekend it began to increase slowly after China DOWed central asian nations.

All in all I am quite happy with the situation bar for this treshold or limit. I overcome this by selling my stocks mostly petrol (still production cost is less than market price after a year) when my treasury drops below 10b but it is annoying to find a sweet place but I favour 8b-12b for now till I can export enough to pass daily 1b loss to save my money above 1trillion before war.

Wish me good luck and any comment is appreciated!

PS: Here is my screenshots :

I have 33b after I exported my stocks. I have around 1b loss and have 2284m social service cost.



And this is after I paid some of my debt. I have around 10b 361m loss and 1549m social service cost.



Edited: I have just tested on above 100b. At least it is good news to see that the loss is same so finally I have a reason to keep on playing on modern map.

[PalSnuke]

Very interesting, I've also noticed huge periodic spikes in my social spending. I didn't think to make a connection between it and the treasury though. I'll see if can get a couple screenshots too.

[nicholas70]

I've also noticed issues with social services becoming almost impossible to fund in certain situations. It seems almost impossible to properly fund smaller undeveloped countries social services in the 1936 timeline without relying on trade income. You can do it but it leaves almost nothing left over for research or economic expansion. On the other side of the coin I've noticed that with advanced economies, or economies that have become advanced, you can end up in a situation similar to what you describe. A good example would be a game where I'm playing Turkey that started in 36 and is now in like 1945. I have about 20 billion in the bank and social services costs are 'almost' crushing. Even if I max my taxes I can't cover basic social services and I am forced to make up the difference with trade income. I think the max I can make via taxes is like 90 million per day and social services maxed costs over 250 million per day. I personally tried to figure out what was causing this problem doing some of my own tests, but was unable to pin down a cause. I will say I think that there's more to it then simply how much money you have in the bank. I suspect this because if you start a game as Russia 2020 they have this problem with social services spending ( as do some other countries to varying degrees) If you start a game as the USA 2020 you'll notice they don't have this problem nearly as bad as Russia does but they do have more money in the bank. The same is true of some other countries which is why I think that there's more to this then meets the eye. I'm glad that someone has managed to identify at least one of the elements that seems to definitively contribute to the problem, but clearly some elements of the problem remain unknown.

[Aragos]

I've also noticed issues with social services becoming almost impossible to fund in certain situations. It seems almost impossible to properly fund smaller undeveloped countries social services in the 1936 timeline without relying on trade income. You can do it but it leaves almost nothing left over for research or economic expansion...

This is effectively what happened historically. Most small countries depended upon trade income and foreign investment, not internally generated income, to grow. If not, they didn't.

[Atraphoenix]

I still play this map as ı said earlier I need to get at least 1 b a day from trade and it is quite easy with lots of good and rich countries but this make SRU a trade simulator not a geopolitical simulator currently I spend 90% of my time on manual trades 10 % on research and modernizing my army but this is normal on fastest speed on peacetime as most do on any campaign as usual I will swap to slowest time setting when the war starts but even on fastest speed it takes around 2.5 hour per year on my old laptop! On war time it doubles on slow or normal speed.

[nicholas70]

Yea it's very much the same with Russia if you start a 2020 game. The social services costs are rough and can't be covered by taxes alone, and it isn't because you have too much in the bank as I remember Russia starts out below 10,000 and social services doesn't seem to get cheaper as you drain you treasury. It looks like Turkey doesn't have it as bad as Russia though as Russia also has to spend over 600m a day on building maintenance. Production is also very much in the red, and the fact you're stuck producing rubber at huge loss is a big part of the problem. It wouldn't be that hard if you had lots of rich trading partners, but you don't, instead it seems you're doomed to become more dependent on China to survive financially then the USA.After about a week of playing Russia 2020 I decided to call it quits and just start USSR cold war instead. USSR has many of the same problems but they are slightly less severe and of course building maintenance costs being so much lower means you are not totally dependent on huge amounts of trade income. Hopefully the buildings cost for 2020 games gets fixed next patch because I'd really like to be able to play a 2020 game and not see building costs almost overtaking the costs of social services.

I'm going to keep checking into the social services costs issue though as it is annoying and it would be nice to know more about all the causes of that problem. I'm thinking supply levels might be coming into play, but haven't had a chance to really test this yet. I'm really hoping it is supply levels just because it would be logical for lower avg supply levels to increase cost of delivering social services.

[GreenGoblin]

I've also noticed issues with social services becoming almost impossible to fund in certain situations. It seems almost impossible to properly fund smaller undeveloped countries social services in the 1936 timeline without relying on trade income. You can do it but it leaves almost nothing left over for research or economic expansion...

This is effectively what happened historically. Most small countries depended upon trade income and foreign investment, not internally generated income, to grow. If not, they didn't.

True story. For example, most of South America's historic development was the result of investment from the US, and back in the 19th century the UK.

[Atraphoenix]

Even no sales taxes and 10% domestic sales price did not help much. I think the problem depended on GDP calculation when you increase your GDP your social spending rises. Yes, it is normal but it triples it is not normal. My GDP did not increase from 10k into 30k. Currently I passed 100m population limit. I have no plan to increase it to 200m to reduce my GDP. Keeping GDP low or stable does not help costs. I am just investing on critical productions like electricity which never goes below world market price and trying to get 100% supply which is far away from reality at the moment because it costs time and a lot of money. I am pretty sure that after abandoning population increase policy your GDP will skyrocket my only hope to keep my domestic sales high to cover my loss a bit.

Unfortunately USA fell economically and per year she loses 20m population after she wiped out Cuba. I am selling my goods to Canada currently have more than 40p and 200k GDP and still has profit to buy my goods around 50b per month!

[nicholas70]

I've also noticed issues with social services becoming almost impossible to fund in certain situations. It seems almost impossible to properly fund smaller undeveloped countries social services in the 1936 timeline without relying on trade income. You can do it but it leaves almost nothing left over for research or economic expansion...

This is effectively what happened historically. Most small countries depended upon trade income and foreign investment, not internally generated income, to grow. If not, they didn't.

True story. For example, most of South America's historic development was the result of investment from the US, and back in the 19th century the UK.

True but in game this investment doesn't seem to happen. I mean true you can sell oil for profit, but you can't go to another rich country that needs oil and say hay, 'you give me the money to further exploit this resource and I'll sell you the oil 50% under market value for 10 years' or something to that effect. It does look like at some point that the game was going to be setup to allow you to sell bonds to other countries but for some reason it looks like it was never fully implemented.

[Atraphoenix]

In the current situation it is vicious circle. If you grow your economy your GDP skyrocket, so are the prices. If you lower your growth your population will be upset and production and domestic sales will drop. You do not need to invade another country to get more population if you spend money on social spending, you get population boom. The game even do not allow you to lower your GDP. If you have low GDP your production costs will drop and you will gain a lot of money that will increase your GDP and you will arrive the point you started.

Currently I am fighting to keep both my population and GDP stable and my treasury around 10-12b. Thanks God the elections are once in 4 years but to fund full reccomended social spending for 5 month is a torture in election years.

With full taxes except the last 3 without any taxes and just funding health, education, infrastructure and law enough to stick around 100% quality (rest 10% I do not know but I still keep funding others 10% no logical explanation in fact) I can live happily for 3 and half years but during the election year I get 4 million newborns to feed. Although I hate it game forces me to get half GDP of world avarage to play my campaign. I finally have enough military for a war but other than Cuban fall by USA there has been no war. China please wake up and conquer some neighbours, there is no fun blowing up innocent merchant marines

[nicholas70]

If you're having trouble keeping your bank balance low because you're making too much money just start buying everything you can off the world markets. The game doesn't seem to limit how much of any resource you can have in reserve expect for cold hard cash. After about year or two you should have enough so that you can slam stop your economy to drive up unemployment and drive GDP/c down without having to do to much with social services or taxes. This is what I'm planning to do in a game I playing as Iran in 36 sandbox, because it seems to me relying on immigration and tons of births with few deaths just seem like a viable long term solution for really low unemployment and high inflation. I mean I sat at 2.3% unemployment for a year while having over 2x as many births as deaths and 12x as much immigration as emigration, and all that time no new buildings or notable increases in domestic spending. I even invaded Iraq gaining 3m pop in a month and unemployment has not moved and I'm scrapping almost all the buildings Iraq had except for oil production.

I'll probably slam stop my economy within the next year, but need to make the most of the timing because with WW2 going on getting enough resources saved up to do a 2nd slam stop isn't an option.

[Atraphoenix]

I have never stopped producing because I am heavily modernizing my army. I have granted my old units to my allies freely. After I have my ideal point (small but 10 elite corps each sustain a operation alone) I stop producing units then I can test your strategy. Currently I have just "2" daily recruits per day! I have around 150k reserve and that only man 3 of my corps I need 250k more before colonizing the world. In my previous experiences I have met daily 4k recruits but you get this when you have no reserves at all. I hope SRU has the same mechanic - low reserve more recruits.

[nicholas70]

Well I'm not sure that it will work well if you have large military expenditure relative to the size of your economy. The effectiveness of the tactic relies on temporary but drastic cutting of expenditures while almost maxing out taxes. Production is usually a nice chunk of my expenses as I like to hoard lots of resources while exporting a few very profitable resources. I also don't put as much money into research as others seem to like doing here. Not putting tons into research makes this tactic more effective for several reasons. If you are putting a lot into research you'll have to suspend doing so while you 're-adjust' your economy.(note if your funding tons of research via trade don't attempt this) Hopefully you've also been playing with a low avg tax rate say 30% or less, so you'll be able to raise taxes to aid you in your efforts of driving up unemployment and driving down inflation and gdp. I would also caution against doing this if you're running a debt based economy as it would seem credit rating doesn't take into account your wealth as far as stored resources are concerned.

Anyway if you do this and you do it right you should see your unemployment go up by .1% every 1-2 weeks, and inflation will go down even faster.

[Atraphoenix]

I tested your strategy but unfortunately for 10 40k corps my economy cannot handle it so I decided to cut my ideal corps size half namely 5 40k corps that needs 200k men that I lack 40k now. On war time I do not research that saves me around 400m, I do not produce that is your strategy that I could not fulfilled yet I have 10 years of supply for 2 goods yet and I do not use uranium other than roleplaying a nuclear world power that I keep nukes but never used them that may make it 3. So In my calculation I can easily handle 5 corps and I will try to make it 6 to get at least 3 field armies with 2 corps for roleplaying purposes. I plan to cover it by increasing my taxes.

Currently I am waiting for the election that's interrupted my plan for half year and I hope after this I will try to begin my offensive because AI makes no war even on Hard Volatility.

[Aragos]

...
because AI makes no war even on Hard Volatility.

I posted a way to increase AI aggressiveness on the Mod forum. Does not require a re-cache, just an addition to the Scenario file.