Economic hypergrowth (and a suggested solution)

[jimwinsor]

I'm now up to 1852 in my Austria CG. Yes, it's been slow going, due in part to 5-6 turn resolutions (this is down from 10 minute turns, after I unchecked that little box thingy in the settings everyone says to do).

I've also spent a lot of time on the economy (lets face it, not much else you can do with Austria), and I think I can safely say I got it down pat. I have railroads running through nearly all lowland provinces in Austria now, and some of the more important mountainous regions as well. With my current money and goods output, assuming I spent on nothing else, I calculate I can complete single rails throughout all remaining road provinces of Austria in one years time.

Based on that, I figure I can probably build every eligible farm, mine and another dozen factories in 2-3 years time. In other words, I should be able to max out the entire potential Austrian economy and infrastructure by 1856.

(And I haven't neglected my army up to this point, either. I've built about 6 new corps and supporting troops, forming them into two new armies since the game began. All 6 of my current 3-star generals lead a command-maxxed army of about 1200-1300 strength each, and I've even upgraded the forts in Milano and Venice, buying fort troops and guns to match. I probably didn't need to do the latter; two of my 6 armies rather handily overran Sardinia-Piedmont after they rather foolishly forged a CB on me, then declared war in late '51. The F10 screen had them at 12% of my army strength. But this another issue ...)

Anyways, you can see the point here, economic growth in this game is way too easy. It may seem hard, in that it took me several days of real time to play the game thus far, but when you step back and look at the game date ... 1856 is way to early to be maxxing out your economy.

Clearly, things need to be slowed down. One easy solution would be to simply increase the build cost and times of things. But then another solution occured to me: Maybe limit economic planning to once a year, rather than every turn?

In other words, instead to the game running an "economic phase" once every two week turn ... how about just once a year, in January? That would be the only time resources are collected and expended, armies and fleets built, economic structures contructed, trading planned, etc. The resources and costs would be adjusted, based on the fact they'd now only be coming in 1/24th the previous rate.

The rest of the turns of the year would be limited to army and fleet movement (which would of course be minimal during peace time), diplomacy, and colonization efforts. And since the latter requires resources, one would have to leave some amounts after the first turn of the year to meet these projected colonial needs.

There are a couple of huge additional side benefits to this solution: 1) With only one economic phase to micromanage per year, rather than 24, player game play in this 1600+ turn game will considerably speed up; and on a related not 2) I would think not having economic activity to consider would significantly improve turn resolution speed, in those 23 out of 24 turns where they no longer occured. Even after unchecking the box, 5-6 minutes is really close to intolerable for me.

I realize this is probabaly a big design change, beyond what "modding" could accomplish. But I thought I would throw the idea out there; if it's practical for a future patch, great! If not, oh well.

[wosung]

Well, with only one Eco phase per year and two-week-turns, in many cases there's not much to do apart clicking end turn.

Now, what about one or two Eco phases a year and monthly turns?

I could even imagine one Eco phases a year and monthly turn switching to two eco phases and two-week-turns around 1900.

The rationale behind this?

From our 21st century internet & realtime perspective the 19th century pace for economy, diplomacy and military nearly is a world apart.

I remember reading the memoirs of a mid 19th century ambassador, written around 1900, complaning that the speed of new communication tech made it no fun anymore to be an ambassador.

One of the most stunning characteristics of 19th century exactly was the acceleration of ... everything.

So, why not model into the game?

Besides:

I really do think this to-be-great game really would benefit from experimenting with & adjusting turn-lenght (two-weekly, monthly, bi-monthly) in relation to the different fields of play (military, diplo, economics, welfare...).

As it is now, it's global 4x strategy using the AGE standard operational game two-week turns.

Arguably, the "action", the turn lenght and the over-all time-span somehow just don't fit together in a perfect way.

Regards

[Eilean]

+1

Or, maybe, two (or four, one per season) economic phase in every year.

[Aragos]

Like I said on the P'dox forums--be careful in saying "It's 1852 and I've got the economy down pat! Game over!"

PON is not Victoria, Civ, etc. The economy will massively change as soon as coal-burning navies, expanded rails and larger factories show up.

The OP makes the baseline assumption that what works fine in 1852 will surely work fine for the rest of the game. Make a setting in January, come back in December.

Problem is, PON just doesn't work that way.

[montgomeryjlion]

While this may be true, and I'm sure it is, nevertheless the OPs point about too much economic growth holds true.
There is no way Russia and Austria, especially, should be essentially full railed and fully industrialized by 1860.
It's just not plausible.
Economic growth DOES need to be slowed down, whether it is the OPs method, or increasing costs, or something.

[Sans-Souci]

-

[montgomeryjlion]

Which is fine as long as the AI obeys your house rules

[James D Burns]

You're economy is nowhere near maxxed out yet. Don't forget almost every structure has 3 possible levels, and the higher level stuff is far more expensive to build and maintain than the low level stuff you’re building now.

When you factor in the need to expand all the free starting structures you get in 1850 along with all the new stuff you’ve now built, it could take you 20+ years potentially just to upgrade your economy to all level 2 buildings. Heck with the much higher maintenance costs it could take a lot longer than that, no one really knows yet.

So I’d be careful about making any pronouncements about the economy in game yet until a good chunk of the player community has actually played long enough to get to level 3 economies enough times to get a good feel for how it works out over the long haul.

Jim

[montgomeryjlion]

Again, the problems are, first,
The lulls:
I build everything up by 1855. Then wait 10 years, meanwhile my surplus is wasting away so can't make any big savings.
Invent level 2 buildings in 1865 (for example) Build up by 1870, etc.

Second,
The weaker countries, like Russia, Japan and Austria should be still struggling to build up level economies in 1870-1880.
As Russia, I finished the trans-siberian by 1860, mainly because I was bored with nothing else to do economically and had money had resources out the whazoo.

Having said that, I agree to a certain extent that we are jumping the gun a bit.

[jimwinsor]

I'm currently self-sufficient in coal, with many mines yet to be developed. Which means I'll be an exporter when the high demand comes (yay, even more money).

But in any case, I guess I should have been more specific: I'll probably max out my Level I economy by 1855-56. Along with 100% single-rail grid. That seems excessive.

When Level II structures come along, I guess that'll give me something else to do for a while ... but I can't escape the hunch that won't be for long, either.

Unfortunately, with 5-6 minute turns it'll be a while before that hunch gets proved/disproved.

[James D Burns]

I’m curious, are you playing with the most recent beta patch? I have noticed a big change in the economy in a game I started with the latest beta, and as the US I was averaging a new build about once every month and a half to two months at best. I could never have hoped to max anything out in just a few years, not even close. But perhaps it’s simply Austria’s economy (I haven’t played them yet) and the US is simply much tougher to grow then Austria is.

Jim

[jimwinsor]

1.02f, yep.

[StephenT]

Playing as the US in 1856, I'm wondering why I'd even need to bother expanding my factories to level 2. My internal market is already buying all the food and common goods it needs (and is therefore at 100% satisfaction), my army is expanding as quickly as my limited pool of conscripts will allow, and my stockpiles of just about every conceivable product are over 250 units each - partly because nobody else in the world wants to buy anything.

Building more factories at this stage would just mean even more goods piling up unsold in my stockpiles.

One idea I did have was to massively increase the amount of goods demanded by the internal market. At the moment, I have to supply around 70 units of food (and a proportionate amount of goods and luxuries) to be guaranteed 0.50% satisfaction increase per turn. Maybe that should be reduced to 0.05%, and to get the full 0.50% increase I'd have to supply 700 food per turn. To achieve that I'd have to either build ten times as many farms as I currently have, or start buying massive quantities of food on the open market... which will give every other country the incentive to expand their own farms.

(As for railroads, I suggest an easy solution to prevent double railways all over the Sahara by 1855 would be to leave the base cost the same, but increase the additional resources cost (steel, goods) of building in rough terrain by a ridiculously huge amount that almost nobody could afford, unless they save up for years.)

[montgomeryjlion]

Well, first they need to fix the bug that building road improvements in colonies gives you railroads....

Other than that, that's not bad, but need to find a way to make it more difficult for less industrialized countries to overdevelop.

Obvious answer is take away a lot of their starting technology so Russia CANT build any railways until 1860.

[Pocus]

We are reading what you say, just know that