It’s a Tuesday and I know what you are thinking; did I write one Dev Diary or Two? The answer is one. However, having had a bit of a break I can give you the Developer Diary a day early this week. However, it will be a bit of a short one. Today we are going to talk about the budget. Or, more exactly, I am going to talk a bit about some of the changes we have made to the budget process.
First up - for those of you who were not familiar with Victoria - there were two main sources of income; Taxation and Tariffs. Taxation is income tax and is paid as a percentage of POP income. POPs are divided into three income tiers and you set tax rates for each separately. Tariffs are indirect taxes and paid on goods imported to the country, adding a percentage cost to the value of imports. Tariffs can be set negative and represent export subsidies you pay to help sell your goods onto the world market. So with income determined let’s talk a little about how we are changing how it is spent.
First up, the military spending slider. In previous developer diaries we told you that bureaucrats were paid out of administration and clergy out of education. Military spending pays the salaries of your soldiers and officers. So the higher you set this spending, the more money they will have and thus the happier they will be. Also, keeping your military spending high makes soldiering a much more attractive career for people, meaning more soldiers. Similarly, if your spending is low and your soldiers are finding it hard to make ends meet, they will probably go look for work elsewhere.
The second change is how armies are maintained. They no longer consume cash. The salaries of your soldiers and officers are paid out of the military spending. Armies and navies, however, consume goods. In particular, small arms (rifles wear out and have to be replaced.) This has one very neat consequence of providing constant demand for things like rifles, allowing the world market to function better.
We’ve also added a couple of cool interface improvements to the Budget screen. We’ve added pie charts next to income groups. These show you how much of their needs they are getting, allowing you to quickly judge if you are taxing people too much without having to cycle through hundreds of POPs to see what your taxation policy is doing.
Now, if you look at the handy screenshot you will see two very new things in the screen; Gold and the National Bank. These will be topics for future developer diaries so please feel free to speculate.
First up - for those of you who were not familiar with Victoria - there were two main sources of income; Taxation and Tariffs. Taxation is income tax and is paid as a percentage of POP income. POPs are divided into three income tiers and you set tax rates for each separately. Tariffs are indirect taxes and paid on goods imported to the country, adding a percentage cost to the value of imports. Tariffs can be set negative and represent export subsidies you pay to help sell your goods onto the world market. So with income determined let’s talk a little about how we are changing how it is spent.
First up, the military spending slider. In previous developer diaries we told you that bureaucrats were paid out of administration and clergy out of education. Military spending pays the salaries of your soldiers and officers. So the higher you set this spending, the more money they will have and thus the happier they will be. Also, keeping your military spending high makes soldiering a much more attractive career for people, meaning more soldiers. Similarly, if your spending is low and your soldiers are finding it hard to make ends meet, they will probably go look for work elsewhere.
The second change is how armies are maintained. They no longer consume cash. The salaries of your soldiers and officers are paid out of the military spending. Armies and navies, however, consume goods. In particular, small arms (rifles wear out and have to be replaced.) This has one very neat consequence of providing constant demand for things like rifles, allowing the world market to function better.
We’ve also added a couple of cool interface improvements to the Budget screen. We’ve added pie charts next to income groups. These show you how much of their needs they are getting, allowing you to quickly judge if you are taxing people too much without having to cycle through hundreds of POPs to see what your taxation policy is doing.
Now, if you look at the handy screenshot you will see two very new things in the screen; Gold and the National Bank. These will be topics for future developer diaries so please feel free to speculate.
