AGEOD Forums

Hello all,

I have run into some troubles with my economy. Basicly the problem is I get very little state funds and capital every turn. My expenses are huge, as you can see from the screenshot. I generaly lack machine parts so I need to import them.

My goal is to have a big flow of state funds, capital and manufactured good, but also satisfy all my population demands. As you can see from the pic, I'm not satisfying all their needs. To satisfy them, I need to build more which means more farms, mines, factories which require capital... It's a vicious circle.

Can anyone help me to get a stable economy? How to get a big cash flow and satisfy all population needs? I tried to satisfy them but at huge costs

ok,

maybe it sounds crazy but i would try to experiment with the taxes.

tariff stays to the max, as you did

corporate tax set to the max

excise tax down to zero (or as low as possible)

maritime tax down to zero (IT HARMS THE IMPORT a bit and you could only really exploit it if you would trade hundreds of goods)

you have 200 disposal private capital, since you lack the goods for building up economy, you shall use at least 100 PC for more imports to keep the population happy
thereby import as many luxury goods as possible. it will lower the private capital, but you shall be grateful for the inflation and thus higher private capital in the economy, for the opportunity costs of having need to rebuild forces will be higher.
once you get even very few luxury goods, you can exploit it with higher excise tax (the relative gain from taxing luxury goods is pretty high)

anyway, how much resources do you have in the second screen of F4, to help people who know more than me about the special strategy of Austria in PON

Hi,

thanks for your reply.

What about the income tax? With tariffs set to max I get 0 state funds Unfortunately luxury goods are not available on the market. Maybe I shall build a new factory of these goods.

Screenshot shows F4 before tax changes.

when I had problems with france this is what fixed ( had not enough coal, nor mechanical parts which were closing each other)
destroy all buildings using mechanical parts you think you can survive without. luxuries are very important though expensive, so make many of these.

here is where I mostly disagree with yellow ribbon: excise is always high for me when )I need state funds. unless you got near no luxuries production I keep it high ( I know gain about 2000~3000 per turn on luxuries tax, amazingly profitable)

then of course build mechanical factories to support the rest.
( dont forget to close oil wells you might have)

Btw I like your "real" logo Yellow ribbon XD

income tax can only be used in case of war and then it gives you only money once all three month...

EDIT:

"excise is always high for me when "

makes only sense once you have high rate of selling, look at his balance he barely satisfies half of the need i guess...

but we both agree Jamitar, once luxury goods are available the formentioned relative high "EXCISE" tax on luxury goods, does one a great deal...

one thing more, if you are not in war, you dont have to produce ammunition unless you sell it.

so first you should deactivate the transformation of ammunition to supply goods on the map, if you dont plan a war, then either shut the industry down or sell the whole production.

EDIT:

thx Jamitar, hope you are among the few who realize that this are the letters for interest rate and inflation
thought, that close to the generals rank i needed an avatar

First drop tariffs - high tariffs mean that you are damaging relations with other nations at the expense of increasing what you can sell to your population - but you aren't selling that excess so there is no benefit. Also as you lower tariffs you will get some tax on the reduction in your market size due to other nations selling into it.

Second raise census tax - I don't think you get any benefit for it being lower than 1/3, I generally set it to max.

If you population isn't sufficiently content then buy in goods and sell to the internal market - you will gain some tax on this and break even on the buy and sell. This more important for luxury and common goods as these have a higher contentment factor.

A would drop the corporate and excise to 0 - these taxes reduce your capital income to produce money income.

Maritime tax I set to max - the main disadvantage is to reduce you chance of buying goods when markets have excess demand.

Don't convert Supply or Ammunition - it isn't necessary. I generally don't convert food to preserved food - better to buy it in.

do you want to kill his game ?

he´s in the red with state funds and you are advising to pull back and set him on a diet for three months based income only

maybe after he stabilized it...before he gets the first money his army has rotten away.
And, you know for sure, transport fees (maritime tax) are related to transport expressed as a share on exported and imported goods in oversea trade, which he still cant do much in this kind of economy, neither are there many partners he has access to that early in game.
true, they are better than tariffs, but no shipping around, no money gained and extremely high fluctuations if PC lacks in between.

well, everyone has his strategy, but if you are barely able to import, you should not lower the chance for it, at least not if you seek MFG and mechanical parts in the 1850s... not if you depend on that little numbers like three mechanical parts...

for the diplomatic damage, dont know how it effects people within the diversified Austria itself, but the loss due to high tariffs is far lower then the gain from local support.
playing US and Russia i saw losses based on tariff highly irregular and on a 1-diplomatic-point scale
Since local support runs that long, adding 3,4 even 5 points regularly, i never had any trouble with the diplomatic "insult" of tariffs.
anyway, i see the picture, with that high level of tariff i suppose Austria to be a closed economy set as historical in PON for the time he is in

EDIT:

[color="Red"]rule of thumb: with that few goods sold to the population you simply should avoid to set more than two taxes to the maximum and leave the rest untouched.
i think this will agreed upon without any personal preferences ^^ [/color]

Interesting.

How do I know I'm not converting ammo? If I have a negative value (-60) under "constructions and various", I'm I converting or not?

upper right corner of F4

one button is for transforming supply to supply on the map, with that large army better leave it untouched.

other button is for transforming ammo to supply on the map. (the very right)

that shall save you the 17 units of ammo you have disappearing in the picture above.

I thought the game was set to stockpile ammo&supplies by default :-/

Thanks guys for your replies. My economy runs a bit better now. I lowered the import tariffs quite a bit because I was getting nothing from this setting.

One more thing, is it normal that i havent got into a war with prussia so far as 1860? isnt prussia supposed to declare war on me over the bohemian thingy for unification purposes?

The war may happen arounf 1866, not much earlier...and it also depends on the overall situation...first, there should be the Duchies crises

The game defaults to converting supply and ammo - I suspect this is because they intended this to be necessary, but in practice once you have the infrastructure to get the supplies to where you need them you also have enough free production to not need the conversion.
Having stopped conversion the next thing to do is to sell your production on the world market.

Tariffs is a combination of two opposed factors, as you raise the rate you get more tax per foreign good sold but the number of such goods goes down. The result is that at high tariffs you get little revenue - the main benefit being a larger national market to sell to.

You currently have plenty of money, so I would lower corporate tax - this and excise tax convert capital into money, and I find that they tend to slow the commercial growth. Once I get to a point where there is little useful to build, then I raise them.

PhilThib wrote:The war may happen arounf 1866, not much earlier...and it also depends on the overall situation...first, there should be the Duchies crises

I got scared for a brief moment that something got wrong in the chain of events

just while were at it, its 1890 and theres absolutely no italian nor german reunification ( poor sardinia piedmont, I got alpes maritimes piedmont and the higher up one. it now looks like a smutch in middle of europe plus a island bigger than mainland

sagji wrote:The game defaults to converting supply and ammo - I suspect this is because they intended this to be necessary, but in practice once you have the infrastructure to get the supplies to where you need them you also have enough free production to not need the conversion.
Having stopped conversion the next thing to do is to sell your production on the world market.

Can you explain me what is the difference between converting supply and ammo and not converting? I have looked in the manual and havent found an explanation. I've figured out that not converting does stockpile supp/ammo, and if converting i lose these stockpiles

you need to understand that some buildings and cities create asmall amount of supply each turn on their own.
if nothing breaks the line of supply, ot the army is extraordinary large, you dont get problems and a well developed and populated land will refill the stocks of military units.

second, ammo is only used up in battles.

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

just roughly explained:

if you have additionally the conversion of goods activated the stocks from F4 will be delivered from the "warehouse" to units and depots on the map, leading to the point that stock in F4 does not grow, while you have thounsands of unused supply in depots (depending on their size).

as an extreme example:

it makes no sense to have a flooded depot in the desert of Africa, while you dont have any units there and coastal provinces are supplied from maritime trade boxes.

so in generally it makes no sense to keep this converting "on".

the problem is, that now you need to monitor the supply line. without RRs depots will not deliver supply over any infinite number of provinces and if the wrong depot is empty, the large armies can suffer hits from lack of supply.

Ammo is another question and totally save to disable the conversion, and as he advised either, valuable for selling it internationally.

If we asume that i have a good web of depots that keep supplied my army, I would never need to turn conversion on?

theone1 wrote:If we asume that i have a good web of depots that keep supplied my army, I would never need to turn conversion on?

As long as you are at peace, that would be correct.
And remember colonies and colonial war.

I thing it really depends on the country and period.
I always leave it on for Prussia and France, because I can make money by selling the excess.

I don't think Austria will ever probably need it on until they go to war.
Just make sure you have good stockpiles built up so the delay doesn't kill you.

yellow ribbon wrote:just roughly explained:

if you have additionally the conversion of goods activated the stocks from F4 will be delivered from the "warehouse" to units and depots on the map, leading to the point that stock in F4 does not grow, while you have thounsands of unused supply in depots (depending on their size).

I still dont get the logic of the "conversion". What is actually converted? Let's say I have have a factory that manufactures 75mm cannon balls and a factory that produces rifles, uniforms, boots etc. So if i "convert" them, they are distributed to units and depots, if not "converted" they stockpile in some warehouse? Maybe the word "convert" is not very apropriate

theone1 wrote:I still dont get the logic of the "conversion". What is actually converted? Let's say I have have a factory that manufactures 75mm cannon balls and a factory that produces rifles, uniforms, boots etc. So if i "convert" them, they are distributed to units and depots, if not "converted" they stockpile in some warehouse? Maybe the word "convert" is not very apropriate

The problem is not with "convert" but the rest of it. What conversion does is convert supply into supply - specifically it converts the merchandise "supply" which is what factories produce and you can trade with other nations into map "supply" which is what forts, depots and cities produce, and what is consumed by your units. Map supply has location and needs to be distributed to where it is needed - this is what depots do. When you convert supply the map supply that it is converted into is placed in your capital.

Supply problems come in two forms.
The most common is difficulty in getting supply to a specific location, or unit. Conversion doesn't help here as it gives you more supply to send, but the problem is in the sending. The solution is usually to build depot(s) or ports to create a chain from the problem location towards the capital.
The other problem is a general lack of supply for many units. Conversion can solve this, but you may also want to increase the size of your depots so that you generate more supply - as generated supply is free, and conversion will convert a large amount even if you only need a small amount.

sagji wrote:What conversion does is convert supply into supply - specifically it converts the merchandise "supply" which is what factories produce and you can trade with other nations into map "supply" which is what forts, depots and cities produce, and what is consumed by your units.

That was the missing puzzle. Thanks