Arizona Economy

[medic911]

As shattered world arizona I am facing a petrol deficit that is literally crippling.

I will soon rack up a total debt of 200,000 million and have a credit rating below the teens.

I also have (this is the part i cant figure out) several research facilities under construction that have not even started to be built, its been 6 months or more. Why is this?


I am more than resource sufficient in everything but industry goods, military goods, uranium, and petrol.

What can i do, and who can i attept to trade with to resolve my petrol problem?

Social spending, only at the recomended levels, is at best, 50% of my budget, 80% on days where i cant buy petrol. what can i do to be more efficient in my budget.

i did not have any of these problems with south africa, i was an economic powerhouse in less than 2 years going around and conquering my enemies. Military conquest, even self defense, is impossible due to my lack of petrol, i am meeting <15% of demand.

Am i too far gone, should i just start over with the soviet union?

[el_slapper]

Most things require petrol in this game, including(but not limited to) building things. So, if you can't buy petrol, you're screwed up.

Even worse, R&D facilities are horribly costly to run, so if you could manage to build them, you'd be even more in trouble.

[tkobo]

Make a strong ally with any region that sells oil on a regular basis in the amount you require, and go into the commodities market.
Buy the oil you need from them (and more) at the discount you get for being their steadfast ally (thru the diplo trade window),than sell the extra to some other ally youve made who requires oil itself (preferably a rich one like India usually is)at a large markup thru diplomacy also.
You'll be rich in no time at all.

[medic911]

Ok. I know what you mean by RnD costing a fortune... heres the new situation.

My closest "allies" are not allies, i have none, but i get good trades selling my excess materials that the AI does not get rid of to Texas, Nevada, California, and Mexico. The reunited Korea is also a good place to dump some of my resources.

One thing that i found was not helping my economy was that i was the largest exporter of fresh water in the world (as arizona, wtf?) and that i was losing over 200 per unit of water and had a low domestic mark-up.

By drastically scaling back ore, water, and electric production, sometimes only 10% of capacity, I was able to achieve a marginal trade balance and lower my domestic costs.

I took the oportunity, after my stabilization, to risk further economic ruin on thre coal to oil plants, but i am unable to use them, as oil will cost 33% more to make than to buy.

Same for my Industrial goods capacity, i cannot manufacture any industry goods as they are almost 40% more expensive to make than to buy.

With these industries shut down, production scaled back in other sectors, military unit production cancled, and research numbers in the low ninties, i have been able to accomplish the following...

Nearly eliminated all income tax.
Maintain a small gain / small loss fluctuation on the budget.
and have automated daily trades between 4mil and 400mil on a regular basis, with the occasional -50mil on days where i buy more oil and industry goods and sell less agriculture.

MY CURRENT QUESTION.
I am working on paying down my debt, but my income levels are lower than i can use to build new military fabrications, it is too expensive to synthetically produce oil, and i cant get cheap oil without war.

Cant win a war without oil or more military units, have no money to buy military fabrication plants or make oil, I'm sort of stuck.

How can i get more money if producing more tradeable goods is more expensive than the money i get for selling them?
Can i influence global market price?
and is having an 80 some percent un subsidy rate bad? what does that do?

[tkobo]

I already told you how to get all the money you want.

As for synthetics, be they oil or ore,they are expensive.

As for kicking a neighbors butt who has oil,dont over think it.You can beat small regions like states with VERY few units.

80% subsidy is good.It means when the U.N. makes you offers, you will get a large discount on the price they ask, and even possibly get some stuff from them for free on occassion.

You can influence the global market price, but you wont be the only one doing so.So expect success to be fleeting as the AIs actions though maybe not specifically meant to,will also be influencing it.Richer you are, and more cash you use to do so, the better your results also.
Corning a market takes loads of cash.

[medic911]

Just thought I'd post a bit of closure to the thread. 6 years into my 8 year test, I figured out alot of things, and have gotten alot of help from this thread, thanks specifically to you tkobo, thanks for the advice and explaining things.

After 4 years, and about 1 trillion dollars of free money from texas over 2 of them, i was able to eliminated the income tax (done in year two) eliminate social assistance spending, and spend much lower than the recommended amount on many things and still stay over 100% in effectiveness ratings.

What hurt my economy alot was my origonal insistance on a large research complex and my insistance on exporting fresh water and military goods despite costs being 2x greater than income. once production was streamlined and the world price of electricity grew i was able to continuously build f35s and beagle bombers (5 at a time) and a land force of m1s, korean tanks, m113s, and bradleys (4 at a time) research at 90% in 5 of 7 facilities and still break even with a few construction projects underway.

After war with new mexico and capturing thier gas reserves and factories, i was able to turn on all facilities, research 120% in all 7 facilites, and build 100% more military fabrication plants and break even (due to extra construction costs did not make a profit.

Mexico declared war on me and struck me at my land fabrication centers. despite being outnumbered on the whole 5 to 1, i captured the top third of mexico and all of baja in 3 months. flanked both sides of mexico city in a year. encircled mexico city and stole the gas reserves in 1.5 years, leaving a pocket the size of oklahoma for mexico city, and the peninsuela including cancun was all that remained after 2 years of war. i peaced the war (only after creating a small navy of stolen mexican fabrication plants and taking all the offshore rigs)

i am now making hundreds of billions in the budget and over a trillion in trade.

SO ECONOMICALLY i have come to the conclusion that capturing oil or gas fields is vital to quick economic growth and proffit, as other forms of oil generation are expensive and in larger land masses it is impossible to effectivly replace all petrol power plants without first building thier replacement and thus needing large reserves and profits to pay for new construction.

Are there any other lessons that i should have learned from this experience? was it a really bad idea to insist on 6 research centers right off the bat even though they kept my social services cost down?

once again thanks for all the support, i know it was only a few messages but they really helped me see other options, wether i took them or not this time around.

[tkobo]

Are there any other lessons that i should have learned from this experience?
Id say yes. I played sr2010 for years ,and now sr2020 since it came out and im still learning things about the game.Take your time and enjoy.

was it a really bad idea to insist on 6 research centers right off the bat even though they kept my social services cost down?
Depends on your other actions.If you follow the trade with rich allies route,research costs are not a problem at all til about the 170s in tech level .

once again thanks for all the support, i know it was only a few messages but they really helped me see other options, wether i took them or not this time around.
Np, you'll find for the most part the community is very helpful here.And we ourselves are still asking questions about the game