Bug report on Pride of Nations

[Lew]

Version stamp: 1.02


Critical bugs:

1. As time passes, contentment in minor nations falls uncontrollably. Eventually, starting a few years into the game and becoming nearly universal 15 years or more in, one sees province after province producing nothing because the strikes and rebellions go on continuously.

Once a province gets to this point, it's difficult - perhaps impossible - to restore average contentment. As Prussia, all of the German provinces I inherited had almost zero contentment, and the expenditure of my entire arsenal of political, social, and provincial decisions didn't recover them from rioting and uselessness.

2. Diplomatic options are terribly stunted, an important part of this game's tendancy to force the player to play according to very restrictive rules. As an extreme example of this gone wrong, my attempt to unify Germany hit a stone wall in 1866 when I could not use the Causus Belli events gave on Austria to start a war because I was alied with that nation, and the game didn't allow me to break that alliance. Or cancel mutual supply, or diplomatic support, or mutual passage, or indeed much of anything. Similar issues arise with the allowable gains from war, even a war won as absolutely as a war can be won.

3. The economy is very poorly modeled. In simple terms, luxury goods (the class of trade items as a whole) are far, far too lucrative, and industry and mining demand and supply are poorly balanced enough that profit-maximization after about 1852 usually involves shutting down much of entire industries.




Other issues:

Depots are built in 1 turn if done by a military unit. They take half a year if built using the construction sub-command. When built by a military unit, they use 4, not 2, supply elements.

Prospectors happily spend your money to investigate places, and then fail repeatedly. See Wisconsin as an example. (USA) I have spent literally thousands of Capital on prospectors in colonial areas (UT, OK, WS, NV, OR, WS) and never once seen an unambiguous new appearance of a resource because of prospecting. The fact that, even should the resources appear, I either won't be allowed to build structures on them (my limit having been used up on more profitable locations) or be required to pay through the nose (having built "too many" of a type already) does not help matters one bit.

Prestige-gaining expeditions can be used on the same region over and over again.

Shipbuilding structures and the military and navy academies are extremely expensive for what the in-game interface claims they produce. These white elephants are a serious drag on the State finances.

Wood should be a more important resource. Fishing boats, cattle fences, and a great many other things use wood in quantity. If these are made to, than there will have to be more provinces with at least 1 wood and more structures actively exploiting wood resources.

Contrary to the manual, the same amount (not value) of food is used to create preserved food. At least, as far as I can tell from the F4 screen. This means that your valuable tropical fruit that you worked so hard to get a reliable supply of get turned into canned apricots with one-third the value. Happily, the AIs seem more than willing to sell all you can possibly want to buy at 2$, and buy fresh food at 3$, 4$, and even 6$.

The USA discovered Smokeless Powder in 1851.

On the prestige indicator info box, we're given a prestige needed to win the game. Because this rises every turn, seeing the number shown doesn't actually tell us much.

The first four resource quantity indicators on the top of the screen are misleading; because structure and production expenses are at least partially applied before production sale and trade, you have to keep a positive balance to avoid a crunch. Figuring out what that balance is, so you know when to stop spending or cancel the last thing you asked for, is left as an exercise for the player. I personally just ballpark it, which rather defeats the intention of giving me exact numbers for resources.

This problem can get worse than this. If you build a railroad in a province with no existing city or farm/mine, misjudge the actual cost (it varies complexily), you'll realize to your cost that you can't cancel it. You'd better go to the F4 screen and shut down your economy for a turn, or you're looking at a lot of inflation.






=================

Pussia game:

This is an incredibly boring game. It's 250 turns, each taking >10 minutes, between campaign start and the beginning of the first allowable war of unification. I'm aware that European-designed games tend more towards the delayed gratification and strict historicity side of the spectrum, but surely there has to be a limit somewhere?

It's far too easy for countries such as Prussia to raise enormous armies. Upkeep cost is too low, build time is too low.

It's far too easy to build up the economy. Railroads built or in construction in every Prussian province by January, 1851. Maxxed out farms and resource-gathering operations other than coal by 1852. Maxxed out ports, forts and garrisons galore, foreign investment where possible, and even a little colonization - all by 1857, at which point there was almost nothing I could profitably spend capital on.

Except to turn it into money, and spend the money on more army corps! Jawohl! But, since the AI wasn't building troops nearly as quickly as I was, a little voice told me that "If you go into the wars of unification with 50 corps, you might not see any challenge.". So I heroicially limited myself to 20.

Eventually, the ennui (and my raving warlust) got too much to bear and Holstein got a Prussian DOW. The war went like this:
1. Prussian troops invade and occupy without resistance.
2. Denmark does nothing. Austria does nothing. Great Britain, Russia, France - none of them give a rat's patooie.
3. Which is perfectly justified, because 15 turns of complete occupation, total absence of any Holstein resisting power, and a maxxed-out warscore (100) wasn't enough to obtain the transfer of a single inch of territory. Despite Prussia having national claims.
4. I end the war, asking nothing.
5. From then on, the province of Holstein were included in my F6 screen list, despite Holstein owning them. What angry people those Holsteiners are, to be sure.


==========================

The savefiles should be *much* easier to edit. At present, I can't edit my way around balance problems in the game, like AI-controlled France desperately trying to sell 235 steel, at min price and a whopping loss, 50 turns into the game because the AI files made it build too many steel mills.

The savefiles can be given a sufficiently sensitive set of checksums; if the checksums of all relevant files don't match, all involved players can get a warning on their turn and the option to continue or not. (obviously not a feature for this game, but a thought for continued development of the engine).


Trade boxes should have the same order of resources as does the balance window. In fact, the order ought to be standardized everywhere.

Paraguay is isolated from the world market. This may be intentional, despite the fact that the Parana is a navigable river, but if so, it should not be offering stuff for sale. I want those nitrates, and you wouldn't believe the frustration I feel because I can't find a way to buy them. As time passes, the fact that Paraguay wants to sell <<an ever-rising # of>> cattle against a request stuck at 0 depresses the world market for this commodity everywhere. This becomes a bigger and bigger problem for more and more commodities as time passes, contributing to the general tendancy of prices for non-luxury products to go to minimum.


Because prices of staple foods (as opposed to tropical and specialty crops) and manufactured non-luxury products generally go to the minimum, factories like Steel, Chemicals, Textiles, Mechanical Parts, and Goods become major loss-makers, crippling national economies. The same thing goes for farms and, to a lesser extent mines; in fact, the way to maximize profit from a national economy 10 years into the game is to shut a third to half of it off.

Luxury items (without exception) are, in contrast, extremely lucrative. In 1860, half the net profit (earnings of money+capital, minus expenses) generated by the US economy came from Luxury goods and California gold.

As diplomatic actions are requested, the number of available diplomats shown at the top-left corner of the main screen is not updated.

The event Drake's Oil Discovery (1859) creates a oil well that produces 13 to 15 petroleum (with a railroad added to the province). There is nothing at that date that uses petroleum, and none of the AI players want to buy it. So it accumulates.

Cotton plantations appear in Egypt and India in 1860. But the world market is already massively oversupplied with cotton (and wool), and the price had long since dropped to 2 in a test game.


Rivers in central Europe should be more navigable. The major river in Burma might also be made navigable, and either small ocean-going ships (like corvettes and monitors) should be allowed to enter rivers or river gunboats should be able to be built to cross oceans, so that the Brits can use paddle gunboats against the Burmese, and the Belgians can import gunboats to control the Congo.

Militancy in the USA was puzzling. In the late 1850s, militancy south of the Mason-Dixon line rose steadily, leading to strikes and then riots. This wasn't at all the historical pattern; historically, there was growing seperatism, but it had no effect on production or caused any significant rioting until a President displeasing to the slave interest was elected.

Dye is too scarce globally in the first 100-150 turns of the game. Within a decade, however, it follows the general rule: supply greatly exceeds demand, and prices drop to minimum.

Every so often, my nation automatically makes trade requests that I know I didn't ask for, and that aren't needed to supply anything. It's enough micro taking care of my own trade - stopping the AI from interfering shouldn't be the problem that it is.


Various changes you make to the stock of goods or their production, like manually opening and closing factories or farms, aren't reflected in the Assets Balance window until it is manually refreshed.

Waste of private capital happens at too low a level. It's difficult to avoid the penalty when it happens at less than the cost of a single railroad in even modestly difficult terrain. Many's the time I've needed to accumulate Capital for several turns, seeing it attrited by waste all the while.

You should not be allowed to build structures in countries with which you don't have an adequate relationship. I should not have my investments confiscated and burned without warning or notice.

I had a trade agreement and positive relations with Japan, so thought it safe to invest in Silk and Rice farms there. The Japanese retained their positive relations with me, but nationalized everything I built without compensation in less than two years. The Chinese did the same, despite also having a trade agreement, but at least they had negative relations.

In 1859-60, the USA, seeking sources of Gems, peaceably established a protectorate over Dubai and the Trucial coast. This opened up those two provinces to construction; Gem Mines, a Coaling Station, an Anchorage, and an Exploitation and COllection center were built. However, transportation efficiency stayed stuck at zero. The problem was eventually resolved...?


The F11 interface is really handy. It's so handy that it allows you to turn on structures before they finish building. Now, that's what I call a magic button!

I used a decision that gave -1% inflation. I had an inflation of 0%. I now have one of -1%. This seems abusable.

The quarterly Census and Maritime taxes yield very little money per turn compared to the Excise, Tarrifs, and Corporate taxes. In fact, they yield in the ballpark of as per per quarter as bimonthly taxes yield per turn. As far as I can tell, anyway.

The interior provices of Washington and Oregon Territories have low loyalty, which means that immigrants won't settle there (most ahistorical). Unhappily, their colonial penetration is too high for bribing chiefs, so options to raise loyalty are scarce. I tried repeatedly building and destroying schools, which did no good, and finally gave up once Oregon got statehood anyway.

Getting an administrative area to go from colony to dominion or statehood involves an excessive amount of tedious colonial penetration increases, doled out in tiny increments. A historically plausible time delay should be maintained, and perhaps costs also maintained, but less babysitting should be required of the player. I really do have more interesting things to do than develop <<colony-to-state #4>> a few % at a time.

Ocean-restricted ships can be built in harbors, etc. with no outlet to the sea.

It takes less than 15 days for a Corps to travel from California to Ohio by rail; how about rail movement in Mountain and Alpine provinces take 3 days early on, and 2 days with higher tech? Forested Hills might take 2 days early on.

It is much cheaper to expand a port then convert to a naval base than it is to convert, then expand.















The American Civil War (aka the War of the Rebellion, aka the War Between the States, aka the War of Northern Aggression, aka the Revolt of the Slave Power):

I do not know how to switch to the Confederate side. The player ought to have this choice.

The war started in early March, 1860. The surprise was good, but starting hostilities off before a Republican gets elected to the Presidency is ahistorical.

Lots of previously locked Southern fortress units are teleported to northern cities. This is not at all realistic, and gives the North some attractive (and also ahistorical) options, like a bolstering of forts along the coast of the South.

At war start, the USA got a lot of new units, but its officer and conscript pools were set to zero, which meant that unit maintainance checks were failed, which meant that *every single unit in the country lost strength every turn*.

National morale was set to 1, from the 100 it had been the previous turn. If deliberate, this really did need some more explanation than I got ... which was nothing. My first guess (and it's not very good) is that my existing leaders were suddenly considered to be assigned to unimportant commands. But I got no messages about this. My second, perhaps better, guess is that this is WAD, intended to keep the USA player from overruning the CSA too quickly. The problem with that is that such a mechanic would absolutely require some explanation. National morale slowly recovered over time.

All the new units the USA received had Rifles, despite the fact that the USA hadn't researched them yet.

The CSA got no forts. Nothing in Island No. 10 or Donelson, nothing in Richmond.

The militant citizens that were trashing production immediately pre-war kept rioting after the CSA formed, significantly reducing the production of the infant nation. A surprisingly low national attribute value also hurt them (I hope that it was a national attribute problem, and not missing techs...).

Richmond was taken in nine months, in November 1860.





Military units:
Are early batteries of smoothbores really as weak as they appear to be?

USA: All the allowable small garrison units are on the map and locked. Is there any good reason for this? I need something with hitpoints and zero command - that doesn't cost me 128 conscripts! - to keep my fortress guns in the fight a bit longer. Even one more garrison infantry element of 3200 men would make my critical coastal defence forts much harder to take.

I don't see the merit of mixed brigades. They give me heavy, supply-gulping cavalry that moves at infantry speed.

An infantry unit at the same tech level should give me a roughly consistant ration of men (conscripts) to HPs. Instead, Expeditionary infantry have 10 HPs for 500 men, twice the ratio of standard infantry. However, conscripts to HPs are equal, so this isn't a big problem. It just makes for weird battle casualties.

USA: At grand campaign start, the USA's starting militia are of 1850 tech and have a firing range of 6. Its line, light, and marine infantry, as well as any new militia units, have a firing range of 2. This is, of course, due recognition of the awesomesauce that was the Arkansas militia.

The slow movement of early and medium tech signals and field hospitals strongly militates against their inclusion in field forces.

USA: The early USA collects almost as many officers in its pool as soldiers. This should be (best guess) about 1/3rd as many. This reduces the value of West Point and Annapolis - almost to zero, actually, unless keeping them open has a hidden benefit. It should be the case that keeping open military academies makes the difference between always being short enough on officers that militia and reserve units form the bulk of the army, and having enough officers to build flexibly.

USA: Coastal artillery and Fortress Artillery are permanently fixed in place. This would be reasonable if Coastal Artillery didn't also cost a hellacious amount of VP to disband, and both weren't teleported when the Civil War starts.

May unit names be allowed to be longer?

The VP cost for disbanding units gets crazy high at times. Disbanding 6 Fortress infantry elements: 6 VP (reasonable). An infantry and a cavalry element: 8 VP (reasonable). 6 expeditionary infantry elements: 318 VP (what!?). 4 Fortress Artillery elements: 8 VP. 4 Coastal Artillery elements: 212 VP.

The range of musketmen (level 1 unit) is 2. The range of riflemen (level 2 infantry) is 6. This is too great a disparity.

The difference in money cost, and therefore money maintainance, is too great between Wooden Corvettes and Screw Corvettes, and between Wooden Frigates and Screw Frigates.

When a military unit is given a move to and a Enter Building in destination province, it is possible for it to end up inside a port. After I placed the unit outside, I was not able to put it back into the harbor (Memphis), which was more expected behavior.

Military land units probably don't cost enough gold to maintain. Consider increasing the Money cost to build of some elements too.

Elite and specialized infantry units, such as Guards or Marines, don't take long enough to organize. Indeed, build times for regular (non-militia) land units might profitably be increased a bit overall.

PRU: When Prussia took over the Hesse-Cassel and Hesse-Darnstadt units, the commander Alexander, despite his German-Confederation ability, caused all Hesse units serving under him to require double command points.

PRU: Heinrich von Hake's German-Saxon commander trait doesn't work; Saxon troops still require double command points.

Unit cards show a stack size of XXX and XXXXX, but not XXXX.

Independent divisions and brigades suffer substantial command penalties when not commanded by a leader, but there aren't nearly enough generals available. Perhaps either supply more generals, or allow separate divisions, etc. to be more effective?



Gold, overly-glorious gold:
The 2nd California gold rush is excessively powerful. After this event, and with just a little player encouragement, the population of 73 could run 4 gold mines without penalty. I doubled the labor requirement and dropped the base price of gold to $9, which toned things down, but still not by enough.

Sacramento's gold production is collected, not by San Francisco, but by the Cascades. When railroads were built in both Sac and San, this didn't change; the miners prefered to hump ore over the Tracks of the high Cascades instead of relaxing on the rails to those naughty ladies of gay 'Fransico. I attempted to destroy the Harbour at the Cascades - not allowed.

I convert a lot of California gold to money every turn as the USA. I have seen almost no effect on inflation (+2% in five years), despite it earning me multiples of the money earned from all taxes put together.

(USA) Gold rises to far too high a price on the international market in the early game, because I offer a small amount per turn, get a much higher request, and nobody else is selling gold at all. The same comments apply to Austria: Develop gems, sell 1/turn, see the price rise, profit.

A lot of this also applies to all other luxury goods.





The domestic market:
- The domestic market is a so poor a simulation of historical economies as to directly contribute to the need for things like structure limits.


Limits on structures:
This is one of the least satisfactory parts of the game. While I understand that we need to prevent players (and AIs) from multiplying their power too quickly (always a problem in a game with as many turns as this one), we need to smarten up about how we do this. These comments apply even if the domestic market is unchanged, but fixes to that will make fixes here much easier to balance.

A hard cap on structures isn't in any way historical. Having the same cap on countries with very different economies is absurd. Absurd! Production can be controlled by population, available resources, and technology. Excess production of any particular good will drop the world price, get no buyers at home or abroad, and finally be lost to pure waste. There's no earthly reason to cap Iron mines when a sufficiently excessive production of iron (or steel) drops the marginal value to exactly zero.

The escalating cost per structure after a certain number of that type - apparently, unaffected by economic conditions, population, or available resources - are built is an equally poor rendition of historical conditions. If game balance requires that cost per structure rise, then consider the following cost equation:

Cost = base cost * inflation ...
* (4 * (E/T + 0.2)) ... [when E = 0, cost * 0.8; when E = T, cost * 4.8; adjust as necessary]
* (2 * (W/(A+X) + 0.33)) ... [when W = 0, cost * 0.66; when W = A+X, cost * 3]

where
T = E+U = total workers of the type(s) desired by that structure in the country; perhaps consider conversion
E = employed workers, same
A = If a resource-gathering structure, total resources of that type in the country and areas having at least Protectorate status
W = worked resources of that type, same
X = An additional amount, dependent on the country's ability to set up foreign centers of production

Calculating the per-structure type modifier, per structure type, per turn, per country processed, and saving it to file /should/ not take very much time on a computer capable of running this game.



The world market:

The world market has a problem with booms (prices above normal, demand consistantly greater than supply) and busts (prices at or near floor, demand never equal to supply). There are at least four reasons for this.

Resource production and consumption by structures is imperfectly balanced. To be fair, this is really hard to get right.

There is no indicator of global supply (stuff offered last turn, in all markets) and demand (what actually got sold last turn). If nothing else, this would aid game rebalancing.

The AIs aren't cost-conscious enough. They eagerly buy stuff they don't need at above market cost. It'd also be worth having them be willing to mop up stuff that's being sold particularly cheaply, as long as they don't then lose it to waste and corruption. These comments may be off the mark because of the way the domestic economy currently works, but that ought to change, and then these comments applied.

They may (perhaps) not respond by building enough new structures. If the expected profit on something stays high long enough, and inputs can be gotten reliably enough, then it'd be worth bumping up the chance to build the structure that makes it.

In 1857, every Swiss province had a population satisfaction of zero. So did Baden and most provinces in Sweden. Uncontrollable militancy escalation's the only guess I have as to why.



Trade:
There should be a clear indication of how your available shipping relates to need to it. This is especially important for the trade zone serving your capital, as you need ships there to export to anyone that doesn't have their own fleet there.

Merchant ships consume large amounts of money to maintain; at game start, this can easily be the most important continuing drain on the public finances. One unit of 8 merchant ships costs more money to maintain than an army corps or twice as many ships of the line. As Prussia, I disbanded all my merchant ships in the first turn of the game (let others do the hauling for the first few years!) and dropped the $ needed for unit maintainance roughly in half.

Clipper ships share this problem and also have very small cargo hulls. Their faster speed doesn't appear to be reflected in superior haulage of any product (like tea), so the best thing to do is scrap them within the first few years.



Building structures and merchandise cost:
AIBuildCoeff was far too high for steel mills and mechanical parts centers, leading to crazy oversupply, prices that dropped to the floor and stayed there, and some seriously hurting AIs. Industrial minerals, except for coal, were also slightly too abundant. Pretty much everything that /didn't/ have an AIBuildCoeff was at least slightly undersupplied. I made the AI take 200% interest in gold and gems structures, because everyone wants more money, and reset interest in almost everything else to 100%.



Game interface and graphics:

The game interface is very sluggish. All interfaces suffer from this, but the F4 window is particularly lazy. My machine has a i5 750 (Win7, abundant free memory), which ought to be far, far more than fast enough to make buttons on a 2D interface and a 40-factory economy respond to clicks so quickly that I don't even notice a delay. I certainly should not, as I do on the F4 interface, have the problem of things simpy not happening the first time I click one of the buttons on the top-right corner (examples: turn on and off processing and conversion).

Colonial cities (see Cuba for examples) often have missing pie segments - there's no base.

The game should not scroll when not the active application.

There should be an option to play a sound when turn processing is complete and the player can issue orders again.



Game engine:
- Why don't AIs get calculated while the player is issuing orders, at least on multi-threaded systems? Giving this processing a lower priority than that assigned to the interface, graphics, or calculations consequent on player actions will naturally be helpful - don't want the game to lock up seemingly at random.

- When saving games, a warning should appear when trying to save over an existing save.

[yellow ribbon]

wow... normally i am the one being famous fr writing essays instead of messages...

see, i dont speak for the company but your post is a bit unpractical and with a lot of redundancy regarding topic and anger.

step by step, like

"engine"...

"nation xyz"...

"economy"...

would have been useful.

[color="Red"]70% of your remarks have been known and discussed since last late summer. [/color]
Here and in the Paradox forum.

i am waiting for a project stakeholder, thus i am about to write some answers... of course only my point of view...

[Kensai]

Wow, huge rant there Lew, but much, I presume justified. I have to say, your mileage may vary regarding the AI. Sometimes it is pretty efficient, sometimes it is not. You simply should avoid rushing the game and perhaps mod in now and then contentment boosts to bring back AI mismanaged nations. It is not a shame to add custom events to stabilize the game.

If you are still not satisfied with the challenge, may I suggest you join our current MP game? We are already 14 unique players playing 14 nations, so don't expect to play a major one (no one left), but we are modding our game as it goes and perhaps Mexico or Argentina are nice countries to bring to glory. We are considering adding what is missing (colonial actions, national decrees, etc) so no worries.

More info in our PBEM thread in the respective forum subsection.

[yellow ribbon]

"contentment in minor nations falls uncontrollably"

known problem, but not only for the German minors:

see f.i. http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?t=24069

***

for diplomacy yeah, nasty that existing treaties overrule events. also it does appear to be a bug therein, as you described it.
HAS BEEN REPORTED similar for weeks now.

***
The economy is very poorly modeled.

here it comes to quite a redundancy in your further reports.

i wrote a lot about the weakness of the system which couldnt work with the long time horizon.
but i got a different impression/conclusion than you.

f.i. http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?t=22953 and further more.

***

Prospectors

right, quite useless UNLESS YOU HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO DO.

valuable resources are scripted, gold, gems, rubber... to ensure that no
one can steamroll they AI by claiming all resources in the 1850s.
as you said, there are far more profitable regions than colonies (even in the 1880s) so one shall build up major markets and foreign direct investment... NO NEED TO SPEND that much for prospection at all (but for slow learners?!)

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

"Prestige-gaining expeditions can be used on the same region over and over again."

right, but not in all cases. i had reported it in November 2011, were used up in USA, but ever repeating at the canadian border and in other places. thereby no systematical bug and hard to track it down

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

"These white elephants are a serious drag on the State finances."

WAD i guess, most people shut them down in the first days, even been discussed in general strategy forum. cant see a bug therein.

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

for WOOD i agree, even using it instead of coal if necessary.

for OIL, right, no need for it till 1880s, but on DOMESTIC MARKETS, three oil wells cover demand for 30 years... but no bug, whales still lived.
oil should be resource for mechanical parts factories level 2.... just an idea.

preserved food well, you can shut it down AND BUY IT to have a mixed market supply.
you can sell them the same time and notloosingmoney anyway, thus NO BUG NEITHER
it was already suggested to have implemented some method to set up WHICH food shall be converted ex ante.

Dye is too scarce globally WAD, later they can be manufactured artificially and you are over supplied, make foreign direct investment.

cotton true, far to low demand and to high production,never build plantations after my first games as USA anyway.
the need for scripted extension of world supply arises from the opportunity to run into the American Civil War in 1858.

they tried to simulate a possible export stp of the confederates but the high stock the AI keeps (to make life for players easy) niled this. no shortage, no need of additional resources

prestige indicator info box since you have to gain a multiple higher amount to win the game, its nice to know where the 2nd in rank stands. since you can STEAL prestige from them, by policy AND crisis. the system makes the utmost sense

The first four resource quantity indicators on the top of the screen are misleading
yes, has been discussed plenty of times. balance is more important: no one can predict how many you produce for no one knows what happens within turn calculation.
same is true for trade/inventories/net trade balance.

but in the same turn you pay structures maintenance, sell goods, earn money THAN sell goods internationally and buy internationally depending on market structure and political relations. (its no guarantee that you can buy, in the balance screen you have option to set the predicted probability of possible trade, but as you said, it doesnt matter)

also, yes, you get only the basis cost as pop up information, not the added costs for rough terrain. why? game cannot know were you actually drop the structure, thus it is only calculated in the very moment you just did it.

and NO, since inflation never really worked in game, i played it even with over 140%, and banks give you as more money a larger the gap is for a constant point of inflation, you really dont have to monitor it, as long you dont overheat the economy with structures you dont use.

***************+
"Because prices of staple foods (as opposed to tropical and specialty crops) and manufactured non-luxury products generally go to the minimum, factories like Steel, Chemicals, Textiles, Mechanical Parts, and Goods become major loss-makers, crippling national economies. The same thing goes for farms and, to a lesser extent mines; in fact, the way to maximize profit from a national economy 10 years into the game is to shut a third to half of it off.

see my remarks last year and the work on a different pricing and trading system on private basis.
Which was tested but not made public for dangers rising from US American copyright law.

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

"Militancy in the USA was puzzling. In the late 1850s, militancy south of the Mason-Dixon line rose steadily"

see above, it is not only about militancy/contentment, roots go deeper.

also remember, you can have the civil war in PON even just after the house divided speech of Lincolns, thus pretty early. PON is not a textbook, its floating WITH EVENTS.

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

"Every so often, my nation automatically makes trade requests that I know I didn't ask for"

check the B-screen, campaigns start with existing requests

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

Waste of private capital happens at too low a level.

right, it is disproportional and becomes a real pest only then, when you have actually THAT MUCH PC in stock that you trigger a international economic crisis anyway.
i wrote about the to stable basis in 1850 a couple of times, would be a dramatical mod to change it, if you have too much time, do it

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

You should not be allowed to build structures in countries with which you don't have an adequate relationship. I should not have my investments confiscated and burned without warning or notice.

you mostly need the commercial treaty, thus good relations, once its gained, you dont loose construction right, the first major bug... OH YES, IT SHOULD BE BURNED DOWN without warning, we call it real life, could also be seized (a bug in case of military occupation by third nations)

oh, and if a nation figures, i would need it on their own, they will deny you access depite commercial agreement and / or seize them anyway. IT IS PRIVATE INVESTMEN, risky...

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

"The F11 interface is really handy. It's so handy that it allows you to turn on structures before they finish building. Now, that's what I call a magic button!"

dont worry, get shut down again automatically ^^

********

I used a decision that gave -1% inflation. I had an inflation of 0%. I now have one of -1%. This seems abusable.

subsidizing goods i guess?

problem was solved for reforms by strict need of high inflation before getting them.
for goods you need to have less than 30 i believe to remember, thus hard to exploitable or only if you lack goods instead of money.

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

I really do have more interesting things to do than develop <<colony-to-state #4>> a few % at a time.

sorry, than simply do it! other players said the same while taking this land with military and figuring out colonial cards are cheaper and more successfully!
no bug at all, only a point of view.

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I do not know how to switch to the Confederate side. The player ought to have this choice.

why, USA is WAD playable, CSA not. you can simply use the console, SO NO BUG NEITHER

for the rest AGAIN: PON IS NOT A TEXTBOOK, historical event float within certain parities.

wow, once you claim it being a bug not being able to move around fixed units, than you claim it a bug when they were evacuated to the north?

sorry i dont get it...

yeah, moral is a problem, have wrote it in August 2011. simply take feqw cities of them, regain the moral
since units are scripted, CSA units use the wrong techs right, but the techs were supposed to be researched during the ACW and some of them are scripted to be set free for USA in a certain year anyway... a conflict of the floating events.
but hey, you had 10 years to be prepared, AI cant outclass this advance

Richmond was taken in nine months, in November 1860.

so what, no bug neither. no historical general dared to move on the troops that long behind the rivers. in fact, even if not being defeated Union generals draw back behind the river for year, every time.

no bug neither...

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have to stop here, sorry...

[gunesunver]

Damn right.

This game, altough beautifully constructed, lacks many things. Like optimization.
I played for some three hundred turns with prussia, i had so many spare times while doing it i have written a novel. My novel sucks so I want my TIME back.
Thus i can tell you that, no one living on this world can simulate the economic situation of the 1800's by using this system. I mean, come on, how could the people produce so less in comparison to a factory? What did they lack, 750 capital i made within a couple of turns? Come on.
To make the events more realistical, i suggest that event scripts should include imperial collapses or counter-events. I mean, france collapsed when prussians were near paris, so, why prussia can not lose its ruhr provinces to the duchies, when berlin is invaded by french? Why not? I had wasted too much time already, so why not?

Time, time, time. There is a bug in this game eating my time.