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Your wish is my command
Howdy!
Oh gods, some of us need to be able to manage our own stacks - without that, people wouldn't be able to create "not a single man lost" AARs they did for SR2020.
Heh, I hear you! Dont tell anyone but I enjoy managing the stacks as well. But for the most part there is just to much to do as the two superpowers.
The thing about the colonies is as you will no doubt learn as you play the game, is that they have a knack of being able to be demand independence if the circumstances are right - as historically what happened during this time period.
Just a word of warning, my knowledge of the engine isnt as great as it should be, so Ive written some of my future posts with (CONJECTURE) placed after a paragraph Im not 100% sure. Therefore feel free to discuss and debate whether Im right or not.
Onwards, comrades!
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SUPREME RULER - COLD WAR: THE EAGLE & THE BEAR
Money Talks: The Economy Part I
Money Talks: The Economy Part I
In real-life running an economy is a complex affair. The same can be said of this in Supreme Ruler – Cold War, despite rather less factors to take into account. As in all matters in life, balance is the key to success. You cannot spend what you do not have. (Tell that to the bankers.) And money is the key to most performing most actions in the game. Research, fabrication, espionage, even diplomacy takes money in order to accomplish. Lots of it.
To get an idea of how well you are doing economically select the second button from the operations panel (bottom left). The one that has a red trend arrow next to the gold bars. This brings up the Economy Overview screen as see below.
From this panel (on the left side, not the one with the minister portrait) we can see several indicators. Basically we want to increase the GDP/c ($1893), Credit Rating (96.1%), Income, Trade and especially Treasury – where possible. We would also prefer to reduce the other factors, but that isn't going to be easy. At this early stage Manage would be a better term to use. What this means is that, expenses will inevitably rise as we plan an execute espionage missions, perform R&D, build military units and expand our economy by building facilities that will increase productivity.
You may have noticed that the annual expenses are lower than what you will probably start off with. That's because I've already decreased spending in some areas of my economy. More on that in a brief while. First though I increase the Overall Tax Rate to 55% to give me a little more income to play with. I also decrease (Social) Spending using the – buttons. I also lock the minister out from auto-adjusting taxation and social spending with the button under 'LOCKS.' The button with the open padlock allows the minister to use bonds when they need to. I've left this open because believe you me for most of the game you will need to borrow money to achieve your objectives. Don't be afraid of this. Managing the deficit and debt is what all governments do in real-life. Only private citizens are really ever in the black. Notice too that I have not assigned any auto-polices for my minister to focus on. I will soon, but not for now. Lets see how the economy runs without taking any particular slant.
Now lets take a look at the two main factors of the economy that affect the population and which we can manipulate in effect immediately. Is is because you can automatically see the combined effect of changing these factors by looking at the income/expenses counters and seeing the Domestic Approval Rating (DAR – which can be found in the first screen of this panel – the button with the handshake over the globe.)
As you can see from the screenshot above, click on the button second from the bottom to access the Taxation Overview screen. Here we seen the different types of taxation that can be level against different sectors of the population (i.e. low income, Property Tax, etc.) The level of taxation can be levied overall, but using the slider at top of this screen, or against each individual sector by clicking on the corresponding button across the top of the panel, below the orange like horizontal bars. Click on these buttons drills down to detail as shown in the screen below.
Lowering tax level makes the population happier but also makes the annual income for that sector lower. The reverse happens if you increase taxes.
Similarly for Social Spending, the opposite happens. Increasing the amount of revenue spent on Social sectors makes the population happier, but increases the amount of expense towards your deficit. Clicking on the bottom screen of the left-side panel brings up the Social Spending overview screen as seen below.
It works essentially as the Taxation screen, but shows costs incurred by your economy.
A closer inspection of the individual detail screen for each Social Spending sector shows a slight difference between these screens and those of taxation. With a quality rating, current expenditure value against a recommended expenditure value. For your spending in a particular area to have any effect it need to be very near, on or above the recommended level. The lower it is, the less happy your DAR will be. The Quality Rating (%) also has a bearing as to how effective your overall tech. level is in this area. R&D of specific technologies such as Societal and Medical will increase this value, making the amount you have to spend in an area less that it would otherwise need to be. The lower the quality level the more spending will need to be made. (CONJECTURE)
Basically, the more population you have in your nation, the more taxation you receive, but the more you have to spend in social needs. Population is also required to be employed in your facilities and also to be conscripted into the armed forces. So making sure value this rises in critical if you want to take your nation forwards. Otherwise you may have to decommission facilities – to increase your military, or decommission your armed forces to man vital facilities (CONJECTURE).
One final piece of advice, don't try to actually make money if you can't – try to manage the treasury deficit so that you are not haemorrhaging money so fast that you cannot repay the interest on the loans. That would be bad, very bad. In the next post I will go on to describe how we will set-up our nations trade and resource management programmes.
[ Next post: ] Resources Make the World Go Round: The Economy Part II
NOTE: If you haven't downloaded and installed the latest patch for SR:CW, I suggestion you do that now. See here: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?549554-Update-0-posted
SUPREME RULER - COLD WAR: THE EAGLE & THE BEAR
Resources Make the World Go Round: The Economy Part II
Resources Make the World Go Round: The Economy Part II
We've touched upon the basics of the economy in taxation and social spending. The next most important aspect of the economy is trading. In SR:CW this is done by importing and exporting natural and manufactured resources. To aspect the Resource Management screen, click on the third button from the left, on the bottom left panel. See screenshot below.
There are eleven resources that can be traded for including agriculture, water, timber, petroleum, coal, metal ore, uranium, electricity, consumer goods, industrial goods and military good. The Resource Management on the left side panel (bottom left of window), is the same for each of resource types. It shows how much PRODUCTION is made by the facilities you have littered around the country, its USE – by those facilities & population in order to run those facilities (+ other uses from military units for example). The relative size of the bar shows the percentage of PRODUCTION being made. While the lighter shade colour shows the UNMET DEMAND of your nations population. Unmet demand will result in a less than 100% ratio of output. After-all if you can meet the needs of facilities producing a resource, then you should not expect to receive what expect.
Below the open padlock icon, two important factors are shown on this panel. They are the COST to make (production line icon) and the SELLING PRICE (bar graph icon). Its a good thing to realise here that if COSTS are high and the SELLING PRICE is low, it is a good idea to reduce production and rely on imports. (We will look more closely at this later, but it will involve decommissioning some facilities and up imports for that particular resource.) Conversely, if production COSTS are low and the SELLING PRICE is high, it would be a good idea to reduce imports and gear the economy to producing a surplus. That way you can meet domestic need (from your facilities and population) and also export the surplus and make a good profit. In this respect, knowing when to trade is the key to making money. Just make sure that you periodically check each the value of producing and selling each of the resource types.
Being able to control the balance the volume of resources you have to acquire through production and/or imports with domestic demand is an important aspect to. Together with the number of working facilities requiring a particular resource type, demand will be high. You can of course lower output for a resource (especially manufactured resources military, industrial, consumer goods) by going to the INDUSTRIAL CONTROLS side panel as seen in the first screenshot (second button down, with the scales.) Or you if you want to reduce the cost of having too many facilities, decommission them permanently. For the first option a maintenance cost remains to be paid, adding to the expenditure total, while removing the facilities in question frees up more capital to be spent elsewhere. (I hope to supply more detail in a later post).
Increasing the domestic cost of a resource may also reduce demand, meaning lower amounts of the resource being produced, but higher tax revenue. However, if you have the stock of materials needed to run your facilities you may wish to reduce the DOMESTIC COST so that all your facilities will be able to receive what they need. (See the top screenshot)
Acquiring amounts of a particular resource is done navigating to the fourth button down, (icon of red crates with the red arrow). See screenshot above. Here you can acquire a one off trade of a resources or set-up a continuous stream of supply using the appropriate slider. Remember it may be cheaper to buy resources rather than producing them. This is where you do it. Note to that importing volumes of a particular type only occurs if there is enough availability. If there is then whatever price you set the sliders to purchase it at, will be paid over. Setting these slider values too low, in a market where availability of the resource type is not good will probably mean you miss out on acquiring any or at least enough of it, to run your facilities and meet domestic need.
When you have a surplus of STOCK (shown by a green bar when you have some) you can begin/continue to sell it by setting up bulk one off trades or organise a continuous set of shipments. AI controlled nations will automatically come calling if they need the resources put on sale and have the money. As with setting a price for buying that is too low, if you set a price that is too high, or at least a price that is higher than other sells – and market availability is good, then your supplies probably will not be purchased unless demand outstrips supply. So be careful what prices you set to buy and sell at.
The game helpfully prods you when the possibility to take advantage of the fluctuations in prices and strong demand vs low availability takes place. A blue icon with an exclamation mark appears next to the resource icon in question. When you see it, take a closer look at the state of the market to see what the opportunity maybe to acquire a good volume of cheap resources or sell some of your expensive stockpile to nations urgently needing to buy.
Attachments
Furthermore, during those times when you are unable to acquire enough of a particular resource type, one that is needed to produce manufactured resources for instance. When this occurs you will be alerted to the problem with a yellowish icon appearing next to the resource. See the screenshot below.
Move the pointer over the resource icon in question to get the pop-up messages as seen in both the screenshots above.
If there is a problem you should go directly to the CONSUMPTION screen of the panel. This is accessed by clicking on the MATERIALS button, second button from the bottom (with the bar-charts and gauge icon.) See below.
This screen will show you exactly what the problem is. On this occasion we don't have enough raw materials of the type INDUSTRY GOODS. So we should either increase production of this resource or import more than we are doing.
[ Next post: ] Military and R&D Budgets: The Economy Part III
Move the pointer over the resource icon in question to get the pop-up messages as seen in both the screenshots above.
If there is a problem you should go directly to the CONSUMPTION screen of the panel. This is accessed by clicking on the MATERIALS button, second button from the bottom (with the bar-charts and gauge icon.) See below.
This screen will show you exactly what the problem is. On this occasion we don't have enough raw materials of the type INDUSTRY GOODS. So we should either increase production of this resource or import more than we are doing.
[ Next post: ] Military and R&D Budgets: The Economy Part III
Thank you. This last 2 postw were especially helpful. I didn't realize that the top part was for a one-off buy or sell, and the bottom part was to set up continuous deals.
What is the relationship between doing diplomatic deals for trade, or using the bottom part of the sell/buy under resource management to trade? It seems that you suggested the bottom part puts the AI on notice of your nation's resource buy/sell needs, and the AI then initiates trades that are automatically accepted?
What is the relationship between doing diplomatic deals for trade, or using the bottom part of the sell/buy under resource management to trade? It seems that you suggested the bottom part puts the AI on notice of your nation's resource buy/sell needs, and the AI then initiates trades that are automatically accepted?
Firstly Id say take everything I say with a pinch of salt. I believe I have a fair grip on the game's mechanics, but you never know. Would be nice to have some sort of summary showing what trades actually go on.
That aside - to answer as best I know: the diplomatic deals are specific trade deals between two parties: yours and the target nation. Using the bottom part is akin to having putting your trade assets onto a free market (as such) and the engine takes care of the nitty gritty.
Using the slider leaves you open to the lowerst/highest bidders and you nominally will get around the market rate depending on the availability of the resources in question and the demand by the worlds nations.
For diplo trade - depending on your diplomatic relations with the target country, you will be able to negotiate the trade. Better relations maybe get more money or less depending on the deal negotiated. However, you are not dependent on the free market workings of the engine this way. I SUSPECT that these deals have priority over those made through the free market. Though Im not sure. Perhaps they should do, esp. if your government is dictatorship.
As for your reply, glad it helped - I was about 2secs away from writing the whole post to just iterate how the game was playing out and what options Id taken - rather than explain stuff.
If anyone knows any better than me - please correct me! Im going on gut feel here!
Is it possible to put all this trade business to AUTO and just concentrate on diplomacy and war?
Yep - you want the Economy & Trade buttons (2nd and 3rd horizontal buttons) on panel at the bottom left of the screen.
SUPREME RULER - COLD WAR: THE EAGLE & THE BEAR
Military and R&D Budgets, and the rest of it: The Economy Part III
Military and R&D Budgets, and the rest of it: The Economy Part III
As well as setting up export trades, lowering the reliance on imports, raising taxes, lowering social spending, decommissioning facilities, we can also lower spending on R&D, military training and salaries and what we spend on espionage and foreign aid.
Though it will obviously affect our efficiency in those areas if we do. So another important point to realise here is that sometimes you may have to dump all or most of whatever budget you wish to spend on just one of these sectors. If you're going for a Space Race victory for instance, you may wish to push most of your money into R&D and hope your military will be able to defend against any incursion. Similarly, if you are looking to employ overwhelming numbers in attack, forget R&D and just crank up your spending on military fabrication. Of course you can always trade for techs from your allies or friendly nations. The options can be tailored to suit your plans.
As the U.S.A however, I wish to lower spending on research until I can get my budget under some sort of control. So going to the R&D screen (yep the one with the blue filled vial) I bring up the list of possible technologies that can be researched (on the left hand-side). I decide to leave the minister in limbo for the moment and lock out all of the minister controls. I then decide to reduce amount of funds allocated to the research budget using the minus button. Out nations research efficiency is not great and its about to get worst. But for now I am happy to save on cost, until I have the funds to play with.
By reducing the amount spent on research efficiency, projects will take a lot longer than the minimum stated in the tech. detail info screen (tooltip). The amount spent on PROJECT DEVELOPMENT depends on what projects are actually being researched. A reduction here also increases the time a tech takes to be fully discovered. Once I release the pause button my efficiency in research will plummet.
However, I still need to set-up what it is I wish to research. I want to research a combination of population friendly techs which are mostly arrayed in the MEDICAL and SOCIETY technology classes. But I also want to increase my nuclear deterrent, so I also want to focus on some WARFARE and TRANSPORTATION techs to build up my knowledge of nuclear launch capable platforms and weapons.
Another tip I offer here is to spread the number of techs being researched by the estimated completion length they need. So for instance; I try to research one or two tech that take a year or more, two or three more that take between three to six months and two or three that take less than two months. This way there is a good mix of techs being researched, where those discovered quickly can then be used in diplomatic negotiations and attract potential friends and allies to our cause. What's more I stay away from military designs for now. Though I will look to research one or two unit designs of each type when the time comes, so that I can at least build more modern units when I choose to beef up my offensive options. Missiles being the most important, followed by naval, air-force and then army. After all our greatest threat is an entire ocean away. The likelihood they will be able to befriend Mexico or Canada will not be great once my diplomatic initiative gets going.
Here is a run-down of the techs I have chosen to discover.
Research queued: MEDICAL: Polio Vaccines, SOCIETY: Environmental Recognition, TRANSPORTATION: Adv. Ballast Tanks, WARFARE: Adv. Aircraft Engines, Improved Missile Guidance, Nuclear Missile Warheads and the most important - Aerospace Fabrication,
A good tip here is to have a least one or more techs queued, over the research limit. Mine is currently seven. I have queued up eight. Do this to ensure the efficiency of your programme, so as to waste as little time as possible between when one tech is researched and the next begins. You could miss a week, month or more if you fail to spot that you have researched one or more of your tech and leave your scientists twiddling their thumbs while they wait for more instructions. It is possible to increase research capacity by building Research Facilities.
I now put my focus on military matters. That's the icon of the tank and yellow exclamation mark (fifth button from the left in the panel. I bring up the minister sub-panel (that's the top vertical button) and select to put my forces on DEFENSIVE MILITARY setting. As can be seen in the screenshot above. Just below this button are the budget controls for military maintenance and training, plus the control for military salaries. I set these right down to ½ bn dollars each. This is a temporary measure while I see how the treasury deficit fares. I want to grow my economy and build a large surplus of money in these early years, so that I can begin to spend it on R&D and the military. Hopefully, I will be able to outspend my opponent in the mid and long-term. Its a gamble though. I just hope that hell does not break lose in any part of the world. At least were it matters to me.
I also set the A.I military control initiatives for army, navy and air-force to NONE. These are the three icons at the very bottom of the sub-panel, directly blow the minister portrait. Furthermore, I lock out the minister controls – for now at least.
Next I want to reduce my outlay on military units, but retain an element of military power in order to retaliate or if circumstances dictate – go on the offensive. With that in mind I draw a box over all my units in the U.S.A, not Japan or abroad, and send them to the reserve. As seen the screenshot above.
While I am not looking to build-up my conventional military forces, I do want to maintain my nuclear arsenal. Therefore I will continue to build the best quality missiles (and bombs) I have available. To do this I set-up the AUTO-BUILD options under the MILITARY FABRICATION panel (fifth horizontal button.) The AUTO-BUILD sub-panel can be accessed by clicking on the fourth horizontal button. I select MISSILES for auto-build (first button) and choose OFFENSIVE (second button) for the type. I choose QUALITY (third button) to ensure the best missiles I have available at the time are built. I then select the type of platform and missile capability by clicking on the blue icons (bottom of sub-panel).
I choose AIR LAUNCHED and BUILDING ATTACK, SATURATION and NUCLEAR types to be built.
Switching briefly to the matters of my nuclear arsenal to set-up my nuclear response, meagre as it is. I click on the STRATEGIC POOL (or Strategic Response Planning as I like to call it). That's the button to the right of the DEFCON panel. Now I set-up my delivery platforms together with the nuclear capability I currently have. See screenshot above.
I let the game run for about a month in game terms.
It seems I've been a bit to hasty in reducing my military budgets. By checking the DEFENSE CONDITION of my military (see screenshot above), I have managed to lower my MILITARY EFFICENCY BONUS to 5% and SPEED to 0%. I will have to re-examine the money allocated to Military spending I think. However, the MILITARY APPROVAL RATING hasn't budged from 55% (perhaps a bug?!!!!!)
Anyhow, looks like the settings I made in the Central European Theatre, for the W German Battle-zone have seen a portion of my army EMBARK automatically for that area. Embark is a unit order that can be given to any unit that can be transferred by sea to another destination. It doesn't have to be loaded into a ship, it effectly moves to a friendly naval base/pier/port and uses the Merchant Marine Service, to automatically move across water.
This is a useful mechanism because I) you don't have to load units onto transports and then onto their destination ii) your naval assets can be used elsewhere, iii) if you don't have any naval transports, you can still move units around. Just be aware though that they are essentially floating coffins if they are attacked. (CONJECTURE)
One final thing to do, is to automate my trading. Going back to the Resources Panel, I set my Trade Minister to focus on three things. Focus on:
a) Import Opportunities - as the price of Producing Resources I either level or more than selling
b) Conservation – lower demand and reduce costs for this demand
c) Maximise Profitable Opportunities – to focus on commodities that have a high sell value vs production cost.
See screenshot above. Hopefully all these measure will get my economy near or in the black.
One final thing – I managed to research my first tech – Polio vaccines around a month, so the research queue is now in parity 7/7.
Now its time to turn our attention to furthering diplomatic and espionage initiatives....
[ Next post: ] Two Pronged Attack: Diplomatic & Espionage Initiatives
Interesting, as someone who started a game as the USSR, it is good to know that the U.S.A has 7 research facilities... I've just caught up to that number in '52. With planning to make another one, if my economy keeps growing.
I'd almost advise to research a fair amount of computer techs to get to the Modern Industrial Infrastructure, which will provide your economy with a 10% output boost in both Industrial AND Commercial goods.
I'd almost advise to research a fair amount of computer techs to get to the Modern Industrial Infrastructure, which will provide your economy with a 10% output boost in both Industrial AND Commercial goods.