Michaelis said:
Ernst: I daresay the sudden drop in cash reserves was caused by a steep rise in WM prices. These do happen from time to time when industrial demand increases sharply. When you see that happening again, please glance at the WM prices and at the POP need satisfaction levels; I frequently see poor POP cash reserves shrink when they increase consumption. Every need item counts as a certain percentage towards fulfilment of needs; for instance, given eight items, need satisfaction jumps in increments of around 12.5%. A POP might have surplus cash purchasing 5 items, begins purchasing a sixth item, and automatically his cash reserve starts to disappear. Remember also to chack on the crime - poor POPs in a province that's affected by corruption will be even poorer. I understand that the effects of the corruption buildings vary, I haven't watched this closely enough to identify the ones that cause the most harm to cash reserves.
The one thing I'm truly happy about is that the AI has really grown hair on its chest, economically speaking. In my current game Austria has over 70 factories in 1905! However I might have made Prussia a little too strong through economic tweaks; twice now they've utterly annihilated the French, taking everything but Paris and a handful of colonies (the AI seems deficient in attacking colonial targets).
At this point, changes in the next update are going to include some financial srew tightening (increased crime fighting costs are pretty certain - if you keep your country crime-fre, they fall to ridiulously low levels). I'll also be looking for ways to cripple Russia's colonization; I was completely taken aback by this, because in the first few test games the Russians were pretty subdued as far as colonisation goes. But now, for four games in a row, they're up to their old tricks again, although at least it now takes them a while to get a foothold in Africa (from what I've seen, not until the 1860s).
As usual your comments are greatly appreciated, thanks for taking the time to post them.
Hello all! I'm a newcomer to the board, but not to EU, HOI nor Victoria. I have also been dumbfounded by the lack of cash reserves for various pop segments in 1.02. I have spent ten or more hours looking directly into this myself. I have loaded various scenarios and examined the pop-needs of primarily Capitalists fluxuate for different reasons.
At this point, I am inclinded to believe this problem may be TWO fold. Based on my observations, it looks like the accumulation of pop-needs (and cash reserves) is based both on market value AND market availability.
I have a game as the Russians where I am easily getting over 7000 / day income with modest to no taxes on the rich segment. I feel like I am really in the money and could afford 0% taxes on the rich AND subsidize to the max. But changing the tax rate nor subsidizing the trade income made ANY different to the % of pop needs met.
But, what I did was save the gave, open of the save file and I could see that there was NO fruit being traded on the world market. I adjusted the production multiplier for Russia for fruit so that she would produce enough to meet her internal needs. This did NOT hardly impact the value of fruit on the world market at all. But now the % pop needs for the segment increased.
The makes me tend to believe it is also a World Market supply issue for SOME of the goods, but not all. Coffee, Tea and some others seem to be unaffected by this and this need seems to be easily met.
But I am tending to believe that certain items run in short supply in various scenarious. For example, glass, wine, liquor, furniture, clothing. And yes, this short supply could impact the price to a degree, but I feel like I can over compensate for demand with no taxes and subsidies.
In regards to the AI and economic development with 1.02, it still has some ways to go and I feel that may be the reason why the system falls apart (for me at least) in the mid to late game. The problem is that, as you pointed out, the AI builds plenty of factories, but it fails to specialize and increase the factory effeciency appropriately to sustain supply/demand needs of the market. For example, Austria may have 70+ factories, but they are repetitious and scattered throughout her cities. The way to maximize production and maximize efficiency is to upgrade existing factories instead of building new ones all over the place. You also get the Capitalist bonus better utilized. So instead of scattering 1-2 capitalists in 20 different provinces, you can put 40 in Moscow.
So, as the Russians, I am outproducing and exporting the world significantly with the same or less number of factories. I am rolling in cash, but my popneeds still fail to be met.
I have also played a scenario as the US and played with the tax rate and seen it behave as you described, but I tend to believe that the market could also supply the popneeds too. With my Russian experiment, it seems to point out that it doesn't matter how much money you have if the good is simply not available.
Also, one more thing I have noticed is that the only thing I can see cash reserves directly impacting is BONDS and not taxes. My Bonds will only increase in all the popneeds are met and thus have cash reserves. But the amount to taxes a garnered from them did not seem to be influenced by their having cash reserves or not.
Anyway, these are just my observations.
- Dutchman
