The Big Issues that need to be resolved

[montgomeryjlion]

IMHO what you have here is a nearly great game.
But it is hampered, again IMHO, by three major flaws:

1. Diplomatic.
The diplomatic system, frankly, sucks.
The players and AI need to have a much wider range of options, including alliances, defensive alliances, guarantees, threats, opportunities for diplomatic trades (i.e. trade land for money, etc.), much easier peace treaties (If I legitimately DOW a country and legitimately defeat them utterly, I shouldn't have to sit in their country for 6 years to get the desired result. That's just not the way it was IRL.).
2. Economic.
The economic system needs to be heavily tweaked.
At this point, any player with skill can completely build his country up to the maximum including rail in every area and all factories and sites by 1860. This is just not accurate. The poorer countries, especially, like Austria, Russia and Japan should have a VERY tough time doing this. Even the richer countries. like the USA should have immense difficulty and really have to work at it. There were very good economic reasons why the Transcontinental railroad wasn't finished until after the Civil War.
Also, there are far too many resources out there, with not enough demand.
IMHO this is the one area where the patches have regressed dramatically.
In the original release, there was a nice balance of resources versus demand.
Right now, virtually every resource is basically worthless, as the market is totally flooded. I've got to the point where I shut down half my factories and Resource sites by 1865 since they're losing money. This is just not right and needs badly to be tweaked. Yes, I realize that upgrading the technology will restore demand, etc., but only to a certain extent.
3. Military. It is far too easy to build up and maintain a huge military. Again, this is totally unhistoric. Financially and socially, no country wanted to maintain a large standing Army. The costs of maintenance should be far higher.

I believe most players would agree on the basics of the above while, as always, there will be debate on the particulars.

MJL

[Sir Garnet]

The players and AI need to have a much wider range of options, including alliances, defensive alliances, guarantees, threats, opportunities for diplomatic trades (i.e. trade land for money, etc.), much easier peace treaties (If I legitimately DOW a country and legitimately defeat them utterly, I shouldn't have to sit in their country for 6 years to get the desired result. That's just not the way it was IRL.).

DIPLOMACY: I think a lot can be said in diplomacy for separating love and fear - V2 does this by having relations (love/hate) and an extensive system of influence (fear/intimidation) - some think the influence side is too complicated and becomes routine, but it does provide an active diplomatic game. In PON setting up things more favorably for a crisis should be a substantial part of the game, and some fear dynamic ("intimidation points" maybe) for leverage on specific countries could make other countries do what you want but they'll backstab or weasel out as soon as they can. Can't effectively threaten everyone - can threaten and build up tension with a particular target.

Guarantees are good, but don't forget a right of intervention for great powers that creates uncertainty for the player aggressor. I think land for money in this kind of game is ultimately a bad idea, unless for rather worthless-looking territories and tied in with a crisis or an unpredictable negotiation process where you don't know what you are going to pay or get exactly before starting - or maybe tied to trigger events that the player can try to encourage.

As for peace - the one thing this does well is encourage a generous peace rather than an occupation - though occupation isn't so bad since you can exploit the territory.

2. Economic.
The economic system needs to be heavily tweaked.

ECONOMY:
I'm not as far along due to a large war. For RP reasons I have tried not to overdo railroads - one thought on those is that railroads are easier to build in areas ready for them - having roads for one thing. The less developed, the more the railroad should cost because you are building other infrastructure as well and incurring more transportation issues to get men and material to the site. I should be able to build a RR across the wilderness, but it should cost more. Also, structures don't pay for the benefit of transportation services as a cost - maybe that is too much of a detail, but if they don't that drives up what the appropriate initial building cost should be for transportation infrastructure.

I've not played the Ottomans or other second-rate economies but I'd think it would be slow going for them. Is it easy?

I don't see the driving force of comparative advantage behind trade strongly represented - I don't think there are any inherent resource production advantages of various regions, just number of spots.

I didn't play before patch "h" so I don't know how it was, but already in the 1850s I see the domestic market saturated except in luxuries while smallerr countries lack the private capital to import goods to meet domestic demand, as well as to produce more of what is demanded for export. International trade in crude terms was basically barter with money as a lubricant - some kind of automatic private commercial credit (other than the inflation mechanism) may be in order to bridge the gap between a small country paying to buy from abroad and recovering the cost by selling domestically as well as longer term credit to build collection points if needed as well as productive facilities. Whether this will create too much contentment overall is I suppose a question. Increasing domestic demands will soak up more goods, but does that make the economy as a whole grow too fast?

Related to this is the central commercial role of the player in making a market to facilitate growth in the world economy. Actively buying and reselling things provides more access to products to countries around the world and even modest purchases make a big difference to the 3-digit or even 2-digit private capital totals in the small countries.

Oversupply of goods should be cleared by a mix of price adjustment and scaling back of production and shifting to something else and of someone exploiting the opportunity provided by a cheaper input. There is some of this in the game already.

I like the overall economic flow model as a representation of economics in the period. Going in the direction of simulation gets hideously complicated, but it would be useful to learn enough about the details to do a mathematical analysis of the mechanisms of growth and market clearing, including the effect of technology.

There were very good economic reasons why the Transcontinental railroad wasn't finished until after the Civil War.

High on my list would be that it was a very risky and speculative (sorry, I meant "bold and visionary" ) ) investment. If the United States were a Prussian type of country, the government would have built it for military reasons.

I like the overall economic flow model as a playable representation of economics in the period - going in the direction of simulation can get hideously complicated.

. Military. It is far too easy to build up and maintain a huge military. Again, this is totally unhistoric. Financially and socially, no country wanted to maintain a large standing Army. The costs of maintenance should be far higher.

MILITARY COSTS:
Russia had a terrifyingly large army, at least in gross numbers, but yes, I agree that military maintenance right now has to be watched and budgeted for, but is not terribly burdensome if the economy is booming -- although war eats up a lot more wealth than peace in a variety of ways, especially mfg goods and coal, and taxes are higher than I'd prefer.

For some of the smaller countries, though, peacetime military maintenance already consumes most of the tax revenues, so it may be proportionate at the low end of the power spectrum. Some ramp up of relative costs for armies based on absolute size, sophistication, and proportion of the population in arms is conceptually probably appropriate.

I think it is important that the reserve/mobilization conscript system work well to represent a financially attractive compromise vs. maintaining a professional army. I haven't gotten there yet, so I don't know.

[yellow ribbon]

well, since INFLATION works now and some additional remarks given from Pocus at PARADOX

******************************************

"Pocus
AGEOD Lead Dev


Join Date:
Mar 2001
Location:
France
Posts:
1,937
It seems we forget this patch note in version i... A slightly important note!

Economic structures after the fifth cost +20% cumulative in capital funds, when being built. This represents the bigger difficulty in convincing investors to fund structures that don’t represent brand new opportunities (and is also there to slow down the bigger economy, admittedly!)"

**************************

I PONDERED IF THIS WOULD BE HAPPEN, OR JUST IS A BUG WITH ADDED INFLATION-RELATED COST NOT DECREASING

i would not change much in economy.

agree, some investment should be bound to development, as it is already to population.

just one point more...

inflation would have lead to higher private capital too!

for market is really flooded with agricultural products, even for USA its hard to stockpile some private cash without inflation over long time

high customs makes it possible (boosting domestic sells), meanwhile low taxes.

unfortunately you have invested lot of time in inflation, but failed to see that (hope so) supply-demand-caused jumps in prices on international markets are given in game with sometimes 30% and even much more...

these major jumps make it, lets say very interesting, to "plan" economy.

I am a studied economist, i am in project management (thus i should be able to make decisions) and i tried to have a 300 PrivCap (in game this means selling at least 20-25 MFG or 12 mechanical parts for what you need to build up excess capacity ) buffer between stockpile of and planed costs, but within six years, the effects of jumps in prices for three to four main export goods of my economy lead to net inflation (summed up after using import subsidies and economic sunrise effects) of nearly 37%

so, yes, the effect of inflation is too fast compared to the effects of price jumps in market at all.
damage due inflation is ok, well done in definition, but inflation in generally is mounting numbers far too fast...

PS:

my stile, for knowing inflation will decrease over time. i deliberately accepted a rate higher than 30% for getting even the chance to boost economy so far, that mentioned up-and-downs in economy burden me no more.
now, in 1858 i have a buffer of 1300 in Private capital, while a factory of MFG needs nearly 2000 PC in normal ground and 30% more in rough ground

[beuckelssen]

For me the big issue of the game is the diplomatic system. It seems too simple and even poor when you make a comparison with the economy, the colonization or the warfare systems.

Right now I stopped to play the game to betas ago because I couldn´t enjoy the experience of a game settled in the XIX century with a diplomatic system so "basic".

It would be really nice that in the future some of the ideas from the first post become available in the game. Personally I´ll wait to the future news about patches because I really want to enjoy the game but without a elaborated diplomatic system I can´t.

[Sir Garnet]

Inflation may occasionally be useful if private capital is extremely low, but it is also readily avoidable. My draft FAQ description and explanation of PON inflation is as follows:

The economic system in the game focuses on the role of money as a medium of exchange that lubricates the trading of goods and services in an economy and a means of providing the short-term working capital of businesses to finance cycle of production and trade as well as providing capital to commit to major long-term investments such as farms, mines, factories railroads, and merchant fleets. If you don’t want your industries to shut down, they need to have their inputs available in stockpile waiting for purchase and they also need to have access to the private capital needed to buy those inputs. So leave enough private capital and input commodities at the end of your turn to meet these needs – which are shown as structures costs in the tooltips on line 2 of the Industry and Commerce Ledger (key F4). (What you leave available is shown for key items in the display at the top of your screen and in the Ledger stockpile) for others.

You also don’t want the State to run short of funds to pay the troops and costs of government, which are listed in the Ledger tooltips as Structures Expenses on line 2 of State Funds and Various Expenses on line 4. On line 2 you can also see how much private capital is expected to be used up during turn processing. The wild card is line 3 because it is only an estimate of the result of international trade if you buy and sell exactly as you plan–your end-turn private capital needs to fund production as well as any trade deficit [I am not sure in what order buying and selling happen– in the order listed in the Message Log? – or if all of it is treated as simultaneous] if buying or selling or your purchases are cut short.

What happens if you don’t make this provision? If a factory or resource site can’t obtain a needed input resource or Industrial Good, it deactivates and produces nothing until you reactivate it (either on the spot on the map or through the line 2 ledger tooltip for the product it provides). If you don’t have enough State Funds for military and colonial maintenance, technology development, and other programs, they are not funded and you don’t get their benefits.

With a shortage of private capital, however, your economy has a way to avoid deactivation – the missing private capital is raised (in increments of up to £100 each) by the creation of credit or issuance of currency through the financial system. This inflates the effective money supply and results in price Inflation = 1% of Inflation for each increment of Private Capital raised and used in this way. This happens abstractly behind the scenes – what you will see is a message informing you of the private capital shortage and an increase in Inflation. This means the prices you pay for structures, units, and replacements increase by the total Inflation percentage – if you somehow manage to get Inflation to 100%, you will pay twice the normal price. A little inflation might be useful for a minor power to get it through a financial crisis, but generally it is an easily avoidable bad thing.

Inflation can be reduced by occasional “economic sunrise” events if National Morale is high, or at a price through choosing the subsidy options for imported Manufactured Goods, Steel or Coal that become available over time.

[jimwinsor]

I agree with everything in the original post (although it seems S-P would be an exception to the large army point, their manpower is very low), plus some additions:

4. An 1870 campaign game is sorely needed. It would be fun to actually have a 7 nation scramble for colonies w/o having to wade through 480 turns of unification wars first.

5. The game should be recalibrated for monthly turns. Or, at least give players the ability to toggle that option.

[Generalisimo]

5. The game should be recalibrated for monthly turns. Or, at least give players the ability to toggle that option.

Sorry, that's not posible.

[Generalisimo]

2. Economic.
The economic system needs to be heavily tweaked.
At this point, any player with skill can completely build his country up to the maximum including rail in every area and all factories and sites by 1860. This is just not accurate. The poorer countries, especially, like Austria, Russia and Japan should have a VERY tough time doing this. Even the richer countries. like the USA should have immense difficulty and really have to work at it. There were very good economic reasons why the Transcontinental railroad wasn't finished until after the Civil War.
Also, there are far too many resources out there, with not enough demand.
IMHO this is the one area where the patches have regressed dramatically.
In the original release, there was a nice balance of resources versus demand.
Right now, virtually every resource is basically worthless, as the market is totally flooded. I've got to the point where I shut down half my factories and Resource sites by 1865 since they're losing money. This is just not right and needs badly to be tweaked. Yes, I realize that upgrading the technology will restore demand, etc., but only to a certain extent.

We agree that the "economic system" is way too easy right now... so, we are reworking many aspects of it to try to make it more challenging for the next verison...

[tux]

Please don't make economy more difficult in the future. Let the player decide this by the difficult level.

[montgomeryjlion]

I don't want the economy more complicated either.
I think what he meant by "easy" was that he agreed with what I said that it is too "easy" to max out the economy too soon.

The rules are fine, just need to tweak the production/consumption so that there is not a flood of resources like there is now.

IMHO there should always be a surplus of goods on the market, but it should only be about 10% above the demand. Those who can afford to buy, and have the merchant fleets to get the goods should be able to do so.

Those with more backward economies and limited merchant fleets should struggle, as it was IRL.

[Generalisimo]

I don't want the economy more complicated either.
I think what he meant by "easy" was that he agreed with what I said that it is too "easy" to max out the economy too soon.

The rules are fine, just need to tweak the production/consumption so that there is not a flood of resources like there is now.

Exactly...

[Pocus]

We don't want to make the economy harder at start, because this could mean that some nations never manage to stay afloat. What we want is to slow down things so that no country become an economic giant in 20 years. So this involve quite some tunings (and discussions on our side).

[H Gilmer3]

Please don't make economy more difficult in the future. Let the player decide this by the difficult level.

I agree. I don't want to get bogged down in I can't do things because the economy somehow has gotten off track. I'd really hate to lose a war because of this even if it may be realistic.

[Turbo823]

1) It would be nice if the AI for shutting down factories looked at the profitability of the factory. Those not connected to rail should be the first to be shutdown.

2) The current system of dumping everything into the log is horrible for events! Some events like factory shutdowns, trade agreements, rebellions, should be set up as message popups. It would be nice to be able to let the player configure how he wants the various messages to be displayed.

3) Improve the tool tips! The AI fails to take into account for production whether the province is connected to rail. Obviously those connected to rail should be developed first.

4) Fix the graphic bugs with not correctly displaying the rail lines in each province.

[Sir Garnet]

I've found the message filter buttons on the left work for me, though with a lot of purchases and sales I'd prefer those to follow rather than precede the totals and maintenance messages to avoid scrolling, even though the transactions happen first. Once the economy is going, I only occasionally check on who bought and sold particular products but I mainly want to see the balance of trade, domestic sales total, taxes, maintenance etc., when I look at that slice of the message pie.

[LooksLikeRain]

The original message is correct in my opinion.

The big problem I see with the economy is the balance of supply and demand for resources. Right now it seems very easy for almost any country to become self sufficient in resources. And to go even further and export those resources thus flooding the world markets with goods. Seems like there needs to be better balance here, and I'm happy to hear the developers are working on it.

IMHO, the players could use some UI help to. I'd really like not to have to manage multiple trade areas unless I really have to. Since all resources are compiled on the national level, it seems rather odd to have to manage multiple 'trade areas' for a nation. How about changing it so that for all trade areas connected to the capital by land routes, they are merged into one trade area. Maybe leave the trade areas on the map alone, but hitting the "T" button in any trade area connected to the capital results in the one combined national trade screen coming up (same as current trade area screen, but you just get the one common dialog no matter where you are in regions connected to your capital). Likewise, this national trade area would connect to all maritime trade areas adjacent to any of the merged national trade areas.

I like the fact that factories and other sites shut down automatically to reduce micro-management. Unfortunately, this seems to create a new micro-management task of later turning them back on. How about making a check each turn to see if any auto-shutdown industries will auto-restart if conditions are more favorable? Maybe you'd need to add a 'lock' checkbox that a player can set in the UI for industries they don't want restarted. But for the industries that are shut down by the AI, this isn't 'locked' so they can be restarted by the AI later without player micro-management.

[Sir Garnet]

The big problem I see with the economy is the balance of supply and demand for resources. Right now it seems very easy for almost any country to become self sufficient in resources. And to go even further and export those resources thus flooding the world markets with goods. Seems like there needs to be better balance here, and I'm happy to hear the developers are working on it.

Self-sufficiency in the sense of surviving on what your economy can generate, yes, but that won't exploit the domestic economy by providing it with a full and varied supply of products. Mercantilist autarky is shortsighted since the world economy in PON is not a zero sum game.

[Cohnman5]

Please update to patch 1.01i (August 1st) and lets see if some of the economic problems or diplomatic problems have been improved. If not, lets hear some more feedback. If yes, bravo to Paradox and Ageod for "improving" the game. I would like this game to be similar to Victoria 2.

[Pocus]

There will be another public beta patch at the end of the week also. More fixes, more additions (interface additions too).

[MarkCSA]

Self-sufficiency in the sense of surviving on what your economy can generate, yes, but that won't exploit the domestic economy by providing it with a full and varied supply of products. Mercantilist autarky is shortsighted since the world economy in PON is not a zero sum game.

Only until you run out of workers/peasants/guys to produce stuff, before that going full autarky (as far as possible) asap makes a lot of sense.

[Sir Garnet]

Only until you run out of workers/peasants/guys to produce stuff, before that going full autarky (as far as possible) asap makes a lot of sense.

Please tell me more.

[MarkCSA]

Every resource that you have to import takes away your private funds that you could use to expand your industrial base.

By import substituting (as long as you have the workers sitting around doing nothing) you save more private funds for future sites and you guarantee the sale (unlike normal export where you have to hope you make a sale) for these goods.

[Sir Garnet]

Every resource that you have to import takes away your private funds that you could use to expand your industrial base.

It ties up private capital if it accumulates unused in stockpile.

But your private capital is replenished when you resell it in the internal market, plus you get State Funds from tariffs and maritime taxes, and business enjoys profits on the transport of the goods. Private capital is not the entire wealth of the nation, just the working capital of business.

Which is not any disagreement with expanding the industrial base as well. Being the leading importer of preserved foods both for resale and canning into Mfg Goods served me well in both areas.

[Alexander the Average]

I don't see what the point would be of importing preserved food for canning. If you wanted mfg goods wouldn't building a mfg goods factory be the best way to go?

[Sir Garnet]

Looking at the cost of inputs and price of outputs, the Canned Goods factory with Canned Goods at £2 and Mfg Goods at over £10 is profitable, while the standard Mfg Goods factory is not while Minerals and other inputs are trading at a high prices.

[SonOfAGhost]

Playing as GBR I find manufactured goods are THE bottleneck. I don't care about the cost of inputs or profitability with consistently 12-15k capital funds (early '60s), anything I can do to increase the supply of goods is worth it.

[Sir Garnet]

Playing as GBR I find manufactured goods are THE bottleneck. I don't care about the cost of inputs or profitability with consistently 12-15k capital funds (early '60s), anything I can do to increase the supply of goods is worth it.

AI GBR agrees with you - they are the top importer of Mfg Goods - as France I had to madly increase production to meet domestic needs and have enough left to both meet British demand and that of the developing countries I want to encourage - there's just something about Egypt, Colombia and Mexico that strikes Napoleon's fancy.

[vaalen]

I agree with Montgomeryjlion, and his original post.

In particular, the diplomatic system needs much improvement. I also think It should be easier to see the effects of your actions. There should a way to worsen relations without declaring war, such as sending insults or rude demands.

As for the large standing armies, Some of the great powers such as France and Russia did maintain large standing armies in peacetime, with France and England maintaining huge fleets. The US, on the other hand, maintained a tiny force, while the British army was small(if you do not count the Indian army). But the armies in the game can get too large, except for the Russian.

[montgomeryjlion]

I agree with Montgomeryjlion, and his original post.

In particular, the diplomatic system needs much improvement. I also think It should be easier to see the effects of your actions. There should a way to worsen relations without declaring war, such as sending insults or rude demands.

As for the large standing armies, Some of the great powers such as France and Russia did maintain large standing armies in peacetime, with France and England maintaining huge fleets. The US, on the other hand, maintained a tiny force, while the British army was small(if you do not count the Indian army). But the armies in the game can get too large, except for the Russian.

As far as the armies are concerned, my point is that there should be both a political and economic cost for building up your army. The starting Armies seem to be about right, but adding to that massively should be punished.

Especially in the democracies, I just can't see the people of the UK or US in that period accepting a massive buildup of the military.

Just finished reading a book about the presidency of James K. Polk and the Mexican war, and he had immense trouble in the middle of the war in adding even a few regiments to the regular army.

Britain had similar issues.

The dictatorships would have less political issues. (Although there are always internal political issues that must be kept in mind.)

And I'm still waiting for firm word from the developers that the diplomatic system will be fixed.

This, in my mind, is the last major issue.

Everything else can be resolved by modding the game.

[yellow ribbon]

"As far as the armies are concerned, my point is that there should be both a political and economic cost for building up your army. The starting Armies seem to be about right, but adding to that massively should be punished."


this idea gets my fully support, but it must be completed by this further variable.

for a rational way, this cost HAS TO BE related to the political situation in the F1 ledger, for otherwise it will be not longer historical.

it must be punished to have enough troops to get colonies in nearly whole Africa, just by building up troops....