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I bought PON 1.04 a few years ago and didn't get too far. Started again with 1.04. My state money keeps falling even though I have de-activated industries that lose money. You can only increase money by taxes. When I sell more products from my national stockpile I increase private capital which should increase census taxes and my taxes from tariffs should also increase from expanded trade, but they don't seem to increase taxes! What am I doing wrong? I'm getting low on state money and it's only 3 months into the game! Do I just need to build railroads with private capital and hold out for a year until more industries become profitable? Otherwise I love this game!

Welcome to this forum, and to PON!

Raising state money for the US is tough early on, but it is doable. I have found that the key is to build as many luxury resources as you can, like gold mines, luxury factories, etc. Make sure your excise taxes are from 25-30%. Set the domestic market sliders in the F4 screen to 80%.

What will eventually happen is that your upper classes will spend a lot of money to purchase these luxuries, and a high excise tax level will create a lot of state money as they do so. Keeping the domestic market slider at 80% for luxury goods, gold, etc, will ensure the maximum possible purchases by the rich classes.

Luxury factories are expensive, and take time to build, and require supporting inputs such as common goods to function, but if you stick with it and get a few of these operational, you will see a significant increase in your state money.

The high excise taxes will only will upset your upper classes, and they are unlikely to cause domestic disturbances such as riots, strikes, etc.

Also, keep the tariffs up there, maybe twenty percent, or even more, so your rich buy luxury goods from you, rather than foreign suppliers.

I use a variation of this strategy with every nation I play, and all of them wind up with enough state money, sometimes a lot of state money, after after a few years to build up the luxury factories and develop any domestic luxury resources such as , gold, jewels, silk, opium, etc.

Hope this helps.

As the US, you have early access to gold mines, and these are cheap and quick to build, though getting enough labor can be a problem.

Hi

this post may help you to see how the economy fits together in PoN and what you can do to improve things. But at the start there is not too much you can to avoid shortages, but one good trick is to put your cash into merchant ships, not only does that increase trade (=taxes), other nations will use your ships (=commercial taxes), can build up to a nice little money earner.

this little table sets out the key parts:



Should also add the US is quite a challenge in the early game, there is a lot of scripted unrest and expansion is slow. If you can manage your way around this then post-civil war, it will become the world's industrial powerhouse.

vaalen wrote:Welcome to this forum, and to PON!

Raising state money for the US is tough early on, but it is doable. I have found that the key is to build as many luxury resources as you can, like gold mines, luxury factories, etc. Make sure your excise taxes are from 25-30%. Set the domestic market sliders in the F4 screen to 80%.

What will eventually happen is that your upper classes will spend a lot of money to purchase these luxuries, and a high excise tax level will create a lot of state money as they do so. Keeping the domestic market slider at 80% for luxury goods, gold, etc, will ensure the maximum possible purchases by the rich classes.

Luxury factories are expensive, and take time to build, and require supporting inputs such as common goods to function, but if you stick with it and get a few of these operational, you will see a significant increase in your state money.

The high excise taxes will only will upset your upper classes, and they are unlikely to cause domestic disturbances such as riots, strikes, etc.

Also, keep the tariffs up there, maybe twenty percent, or even more, so your rich buy luxury goods from you, rather than foreign suppliers.

I use a variation of this strategy with every nation I play, and all of them wind up with enough state money, sometimes a lot of state money, after after a few years to build up the luxury factories and develop any domestic luxury resources such as , gold, jewels, silk, opium, etc.

Hope this helps.

As the US, you have early access to gold mines, and these are cheap and quick to build, though getting enough labor can be a problem.

Thanks for the tips. I'll definitely try them and then I'll be patient. Taxes receipts seem to vary a bit so hopefully I'll get enough to crush the Indian uprisings.

Merchant ships are a great idea - didn't even think about that route. I'll be patient too, guess my natural jingoist attitude just assumed the US economy would be built up easily (a la Vicky 2). Absolutely looking forward to a difficult Civil War (again, a very nice change from Vicky 2!).

I have played US up to 1880. Early game, the easiest way to get state funds is to build a few gold mines in California. Not only can you sell the gold to your population as luxury and export. You monetize your gold stockpile once a while to get loads of state funds. There is a button in the F4 screen that does this. It's next to the canned food and convert supply/ ammo buttons. Just be careful don't do it too often as it causes inflation. Depending on your stockpile and price for gold, you gain between 1000 - 5000 state funds each time. I used to do it once every year, or if I really need to twice a year to get funds.

Be careful with this strategy early game as there isn’t enough population in Sacramento to work all the mines yet. You need to use diplomacy tab decisions like telegraph and roads to slowly grow the region’s population and build mines as the area grows. Otherwise you’ll spend a ton of money to build it all up and then have to turn off the mines lest you pay money each turn for mines that aren’t producing due to worker shortages.

But once you manage to get enough miners into the region, as mentioned above, Sacramento will guarantee you are never short of state funds again. The rest of the world is also more than happy to buy your excess gold production as well, so it’ll be a nice boost to your private economy funds too for the turns your aren’t converting the gold.

Jim

Some good tips were in this thread as well: http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?21865-Don-t-make-getting-money-too-hard

When I played the US, I mined the gold in California/Nevada, then I converted it into state funds every couple of turns (like 3 or 4). I kept my taxes low to avoid unrest. You can get a lot of state funds this way (but it takes a while to do that).

You get state funds in exchange for inflation if you run out anyway. From what I have seen, the negative impact of inflation is negligible (unless you get an economic crisis ).

Thanks alot for the thread. I couldn't for the life of me figure out that I needed to left click/right click line 4 (construction) for the national consumption rate. The only sliders I noticed were the buy/sell ones above it. Really helps alot, eventhough my population had been rising steadily in happiness.