What a small nation cant do is sell resuorces and use the money to buy weapons at some other time like so many did in real life. Money is just soo much more flexable than CIV trading, it would open up more possibilties for this game.
Avoiding money has made more problems
- Thread starter Syuzeren
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If flexibility is the issue why not use 0.1 CIC ( or 0.125 CIC = 1 resource ) as the base for trades instead then?
Thats getting close to as good as money but doesnt allow you to sell something now and then buy something later when you need it. You can only do immediate trades with CIVs
+1
So much this, but the amount of threads and posts that want to remove difficult strategic elements of choice makes me scratch my head in disbelief. For example there's a thread at the moment where some guy wants a button to set the exact amount of resources he keeps, so they don't go to waste. Press it and you're done. Fortunately the devs won't take a blind bit of notice of anything which goes against the Meier principle - it's clear from their wishlist and upcoming dlc that they intend to add interesting choices, not remove them.
You guys just have a fundamental misunderstanding of what money is. In a game of total war, money is pointless. Money is created from dept. If a country takes loans and loses a war, they won't have to worry about paying it back anyway.
Well, we can't buy equipment at all in HOI4 right now.
But considering that you can pay CIC for license production, I see no reason we can't set up CIC sales for equipment.
I know it's not "Store currency now, buy stuff later," but who will take money for equipment in HOI4 anyway? Sell me oil in exchange for my tanks. Or pay me CIC for planes. But cash? What good is cash to the Reich as Barbarossa starts?
I was looking at the various economic agreements between Germany and the Soviets before and after the M-R Pact was signed. In many cases, when "cash" was exchanged, it was just credit lines at German banks so that both countries could purchase actual goods they needed. While there were technically currency exchanges taking place, in macro terms, it was goods for goods.
If gold reserves were included in the game, I might be willing to see what you can do with that mechanic, but I'd still be skeptical. After all, you can't defend Moscow or Berlin with gold bars, MEFO bills, or pounds sterling.
People thinking about debt need to remember that it's no gameplay or real life problem if it is never repaid or at least never repaid within the timeframe of the game. There is interest attached to it, a running cost. As long as that interest is being paid, you can extend a loan forever.
When fighting WW2, debt exploded - the money was spent on non-productive things (fighting), and interests had to be paid to the holders of war-bonds. Hypothetically, a nation fighting without adding on debt will expand their economy more and be much healthier in the aftermath.
How money works for governments and big corporations is different from you and I. Nearly all spending and expenditure are running streams. Even purchasing military equipment - you would never pay 1 billion for fighters and then have them all delivered at the same time. You pay gradually as it's gradually delivered. Then you pay another running stream for maintenance and operating costs.
How the war was funded in different nations is interesting - this is an simplified overview:
Germany - Germany's public works programes and militarization made them run a large deficit almost as soon as Hitler took power. Funding from abroad was critical, with Germany securing loans from US and other European countries. These were continually increased and refinanced up until WW2 started. (Hitler had no intention of paying it back. Shocker...) Looting the treasuries of Austria, Czechoslovakia and later conquest was critical for them. Yeah, basically they stole what they could.
USA - It was funded by issuing war-bonds to it's own population. By increasing state control over the economy most people had not much else big-money items to spend savings on then these war-bonds. (So artificially depressing consumption and non-military investment to fund extremely increased government spending)
UK - Same story as the US, however - it's own population was not enough. The US government stepped in to give them loans. This was necessary as US private citizens would have been unlikely to give good rates to the UK as the outcome (UK winning) was far from certain.
Soviets - They did not have private wealth so in their desperate situation they cut back on all production of non-military supplies to below the bare minimum. Hard times. Lend lease helped out somewhat. Once they started winning the situation got a bit better.
When fighting WW2, debt exploded - the money was spent on non-productive things (fighting), and interests had to be paid to the holders of war-bonds. Hypothetically, a nation fighting without adding on debt will expand their economy more and be much healthier in the aftermath.
How money works for governments and big corporations is different from you and I. Nearly all spending and expenditure are running streams. Even purchasing military equipment - you would never pay 1 billion for fighters and then have them all delivered at the same time. You pay gradually as it's gradually delivered. Then you pay another running stream for maintenance and operating costs.
How the war was funded in different nations is interesting - this is an simplified overview:
Germany - Germany's public works programes and militarization made them run a large deficit almost as soon as Hitler took power. Funding from abroad was critical, with Germany securing loans from US and other European countries. These were continually increased and refinanced up until WW2 started. (Hitler had no intention of paying it back. Shocker...) Looting the treasuries of Austria, Czechoslovakia and later conquest was critical for them. Yeah, basically they stole what they could.
USA - It was funded by issuing war-bonds to it's own population. By increasing state control over the economy most people had not much else big-money items to spend savings on then these war-bonds. (So artificially depressing consumption and non-military investment to fund extremely increased government spending)
UK - Same story as the US, however - it's own population was not enough. The US government stepped in to give them loans. This was necessary as US private citizens would have been unlikely to give good rates to the UK as the outcome (UK winning) was far from certain.
Soviets - They did not have private wealth so in their desperate situation they cut back on all production of non-military supplies to below the bare minimum. Hard times. Lend lease helped out somewhat. Once they started winning the situation got a bit better.
If money was put into the game, it would have to be done correctly. The use of CIC is better than the "money" we had in HOI2 and HOI3.
An good money system that isn't overly complicated would have:
- Money is produced by CIC, at an rate controlled by the country (taxation). The more taxation, the less CIC available for construction.
- Running a deficit would rack up debt, which costs money to maintain - deficits increase the amount of CIC available for construction. Looting a different country's treasury would reduce debt / increase reserves. Debt have an total cap, an proportion to CIC. Having good relations and treaties with major nations increases the cap. (Negative debt = net reserves and is possible)
- Equipment, even our own produced, cost money in addition to resources to build. The price for foreign purchases are higher than our own. Both are a running stream.
- Equipment also have a money cost to maintainance. This balances the size of armies that can be afforded in different situations.
- Buying and selling resources are done in money, a running stream
- You have to spend money on welfare/education/health (one big category) to keep stability up, the amount is proportional to amount of CIC
- War support reduces the need to spend money on welfare
- You can still have "war economy" "civilian economy" laws, however they would control money gained per CIC vs MIC production efficiency or something like that.
This way, money is proportional to country size and are still good for trading. Balance is key. Expansion of war economy and huge spending is possible, but can't go on forever and has long-time penalties. Borrowing from others are abstracted and depend on relations in general. You can hoard money if you want to - but honestly it is probably better to reduce taxes if you get a lot of revenue from abroad selling - that would allow to build more industries.
Just adding money without doing something similar will not improve the game at all, then it would only be another type of PP-like "mana" that can be used to purchase a few things from abroad.
An good money system that isn't overly complicated would have:
- Money is produced by CIC, at an rate controlled by the country (taxation). The more taxation, the less CIC available for construction.
- Running a deficit would rack up debt, which costs money to maintain - deficits increase the amount of CIC available for construction. Looting a different country's treasury would reduce debt / increase reserves. Debt have an total cap, an proportion to CIC. Having good relations and treaties with major nations increases the cap. (Negative debt = net reserves and is possible)
- Equipment, even our own produced, cost money in addition to resources to build. The price for foreign purchases are higher than our own. Both are a running stream.
- Equipment also have a money cost to maintainance. This balances the size of armies that can be afforded in different situations.
- Buying and selling resources are done in money, a running stream
- You have to spend money on welfare/education/health (one big category) to keep stability up, the amount is proportional to amount of CIC
- War support reduces the need to spend money on welfare
- You can still have "war economy" "civilian economy" laws, however they would control money gained per CIC vs MIC production efficiency or something like that.
This way, money is proportional to country size and are still good for trading. Balance is key. Expansion of war economy and huge spending is possible, but can't go on forever and has long-time penalties. Borrowing from others are abstracted and depend on relations in general. You can hoard money if you want to - but honestly it is probably better to reduce taxes if you get a lot of revenue from abroad selling - that would allow to build more industries.
Just adding money without doing something similar will not improve the game at all, then it would only be another type of PP-like "mana" that can be used to purchase a few things from abroad.
I would advocate a money system for HOI4 that doesnt include printing or borrowing all we need is a better means of exchange than CIVs. A means of exchange that would allow us to sell or buy resources when it suits and buy equipment or build factories when we want.
This would give the Devs the ability to introduce the sale of big ticket items like used warships. And it would give the player more flexability to buy and sell what they are able to when they need too.
I never said printing it should be there.
Resources are a static thing that simulates a running stream. What is the cost in your money for maintaining it per day? Or should money be static too?
How are your money earned? And please no "trading" as answer, because unless there is an initial way to get it, no trading can ever be undertaken.
All you are proposing can be done with CIC. Simply add x cost for y days to buy that warship.
Only some of what Im saying could be done through CIVs. CIV trading doesnt allow you to sell something you have a surplus of now and buy something else later which you dont need yet.
You could start the game with every country having some money after that it would circulate through trade. There could be a mechanism to introduce or take out money from the game but it would need to be carefully ballanced to avoid inflation/deflation.
Would work very well, but would have to be based on some formula on population, not the currently free manpower since the conscription system would mess with that.
Games are 100% about choices. If there is no choice there is no game. And the more meaningful of them are there, the better the game. (as long as it manages to make you care about the choices) However, one has to work within the limits of the AI and think about the situation for all nations.
If a nation has less than 8 resources available it essentially will never be able to find an buyer. And the AI will always want to import to avoid the production penalty. This makes it so that most of it's CIC will be wasted. Honestly, trading should be a non-brainer. What should be the choices are: Who to trade from? Are trade convoys defensible? And you still have the metagame where you need to make available an equal portion of all your resources for export and how big that percentage should be.
This may sound like an cop-out, but I would argue that more meaningful interaction between countries, like trading, the better, as if you have no interaction between an country you are kinda meh about them overall.
That is true, however, I would still question the value such an currency would have. CIC is powerful, as it is the only way to ever build anything. You don't really get enough of it. If you have plenty resources traded away, you use that CIC to build Mil IC and gradually you export less as you gain more equipment.
Trading-only money is useful as an balanced medium of exchange if you sell 40 oil and buy 40 rubber. It's not that useful if there are large imbalances. This may not be intuitive so lets make an example:
- You have plenty resources, and since the only thing you can do with excess resources is to try to trade them, you try to do it, earn money. With this money, you try to buy equipment. (if we have equipment sales added to the game)
- For the equipment-producing country, if they too have plenty resources - the money is not useful - result is that they won't sell, no trade is being done.
- If they lack resources - they want money to purchase it. However - what do they want the resources for? Producing equipment. So they are kinda indifferent between purchasing resources to make more equipment and then trade away part of that equipment and just not trading since they end up with an similar number of equipment for themselves. This can partly be remedied by having very severe penalties for resource lacks. So that the optimal strategy in cases like that is to trade away enough equipment so that they can afford resources.
- Additional case where trading isn't that useful; country has poor tech and shortage of resources. Few countries would wanna buy their equipment, hence they don't get money. THus they can't really buy resources and will have a chronic shortage unless they conquer it.
The result no matter how you look at it is less overall trade. And under no circumstances is the money as useful as getting CIC even if you can stockpile it.
If you use either the more advanced money I proposed, or keep the CIC as the currency, and have an abstracted debt/reserves (I made that for our mod) you can do everything you wanted without the drawbacks I outlined above.
Ok, I like writing about this stuff, and thought my previous post could be explained better.
An allegory:
An fisherman wants a bread, promises to pay the baker with a fish from his next catch, and will write a IOU for one. (this is like money).
The baker does not like fish, rejects deal.
However, there is another customer there, a grain-farmer. He likes fish.
So the farmer arranges with the baker to trade extra grain for the bread.
Then the fisherman gives the IOU to the farmer in exchange for the bakers bread.
The baker then realizes he could have accepted the IOU in the first place, as other will want to trade for it even if he does not like fish himself.
However, in the money = currency-for-trading-only economy that some have outlined, there is essentially no grain. Just fish (resources) and bread (equipment). So the IOU will never be useful to that particular baker. He'll just make and consume more bread instead. The fisherman has to look until he finds an person with an extra bread that likes fish.
In the same vein - if you expand the trade-only-model of money to make it so that money is also used to increase stability, increase production speed... does not matter exactly what, just that it is something all nations find very useful to spend money on. - then all will want to trade. The currency is useful.
Additionally, it needs to be scale-able. More money put into it = better results. If not, some will reach a point due to high amount of money they have already compared to possible expenses, where more money isn't useful to them.
This was the problem of HOI2 and HOI3 money as well.
An allegory:
An fisherman wants a bread, promises to pay the baker with a fish from his next catch, and will write a IOU for one. (this is like money).
The baker does not like fish, rejects deal.
However, there is another customer there, a grain-farmer. He likes fish.
So the farmer arranges with the baker to trade extra grain for the bread.
Then the fisherman gives the IOU to the farmer in exchange for the bakers bread.
The baker then realizes he could have accepted the IOU in the first place, as other will want to trade for it even if he does not like fish himself.
However, in the money = currency-for-trading-only economy that some have outlined, there is essentially no grain. Just fish (resources) and bread (equipment). So the IOU will never be useful to that particular baker. He'll just make and consume more bread instead. The fisherman has to look until he finds an person with an extra bread that likes fish.
In the same vein - if you expand the trade-only-model of money to make it so that money is also used to increase stability, increase production speed... does not matter exactly what, just that it is something all nations find very useful to spend money on. - then all will want to trade. The currency is useful.
Additionally, it needs to be scale-able. More money put into it = better results. If not, some will reach a point due to high amount of money they have already compared to possible expenses, where more money isn't useful to them.
This was the problem of HOI2 and HOI3 money as well.
CIC are a powerful currency in HoI4.
If one accepts that a currency is something that allows the acquisition of other items, then HoI4 has many currencies ("currency", not "money")
In HoI4, there are several game mechanics that can exchanged for other items (not just CIC).
These might be considered "currencies" (not "money"):
Thoughts?
If one accepts that a currency is something that allows the acquisition of other items, then HoI4 has many currencies ("currency", not "money")
In HoI4, there are several game mechanics that can exchanged for other items (not just CIC).
These might be considered "currencies" (not "money"):
- Time
- Civilian Factories
- Military Factories
- Naval Dockyards
- Resources
- Manpower
- Political Power
- National Unity
- Lend Leased equipment
- Autonomy
- Land units
- Sea units
- Trade influence
- Opinion
- States (as in "give control of state")
- Party popularity
- Expeditionary Force
- Volunteers
- Party Ideology
- War participation
- Navy/Army/Air experience
Political Power buys opinion, Laws&Government, Research&Production, Military Staff, national focus
National Unity buys delayed capitulation
Lend Leased equipment buys increased autonomy (puppet to master with good equipment)
Lend Leased equipment buys increased dependency (master to puppet)
Autonomy buys freedom
Land units buy autonomy (puppet to master, opposite for master to puppet), trade influence
Sea units buy trade influence
Trade influence buys increased number of trade goods
Opinion buys states (as in "give control of state") and expeditionary forces
States (as in "give control of state") buys opinion (not sure...if a player gives a state to an AI nation, does that improve opinion?)
Party popularity buys coups
Expeditionary Force buys autonomy/dependency
Volunteers buys opinion (need to double check on this)
Party Ideology buys coups
War participation buys opinion (perhaps states, too)
Navy/Army/Air experience buys division templates and political power (with Old Guard)
Civilian Factories buy resources, and factories (of all sorts) and increased dependency (master building in puppet)
Military Factories buy equipment
Naval Dockyards buy naval units
Resources buy Civilian factories and production time
National Unity buys delayed capitulation
Lend Leased equipment buys increased autonomy (puppet to master with good equipment)
Lend Leased equipment buys increased dependency (master to puppet)
Autonomy buys freedom
Land units buy autonomy (puppet to master, opposite for master to puppet), trade influence
Sea units buy trade influence
Trade influence buys increased number of trade goods
Opinion buys states (as in "give control of state") and expeditionary forces
States (as in "give control of state") buys opinion (not sure...if a player gives a state to an AI nation, does that improve opinion?)
Party popularity buys coups
Expeditionary Force buys autonomy/dependency
Volunteers buys opinion (need to double check on this)
Party Ideology buys coups
War participation buys opinion (perhaps states, too)
Navy/Army/Air experience buys division templates and political power (with Old Guard)
Civilian Factories buy resources, and factories (of all sorts) and increased dependency (master building in puppet)
Military Factories buy equipment
Naval Dockyards buy naval units
Resources buy Civilian factories and production time
Thoughts?
... in the game every country even the smalest one can produce anything if they have the tech and some industries ... this is wrong ... Tibet could not build Panzers or planes irl for example ... adding currency in the game gives the realistic feature of buying foreign equipment your country cant produce (if you can afford it) ... isnt that more realistic than Luxembourgian Strategic Bombers industries ?
Money has been used in HOI for a long time, they never got it to work right. CIC works so much better.
It'd be way easier/cleaner to just let players trade CIC for MIC/NIC owned by other countries. The country selling the MIC/NIC would have to add their MIC/NIC to a factory page labeled Produce Equipment for Export, and then they could be bought 1:1 from the trade page just like any other resource. No one buying it? Not being used. Traded factories would show up as yellow on pages where they get used.
Cap the amount that can be sold or bought to some sane number so that eg soviets can't farm out their entire MIC to US and get 300 CIC to spam even more MIC with starting at 36 or some such other ridiculous shit... And then you've got "equipment trading" without having to fiddle about with money or sliders or other nasty stuff. You could also add a production bonus for licensed kit to traded MIC/NIC to really get the feel of foreign stuff being bought.
Cap the amount that can be sold or bought to some sane number so that eg soviets can't farm out their entire MIC to US and get 300 CIC to spam even more MIC with starting at 36 or some such other ridiculous shit... And then you've got "equipment trading" without having to fiddle about with money or sliders or other nasty stuff. You could also add a production bonus for licensed kit to traded MIC/NIC to really get the feel of foreign stuff being bought.
I'd like money in in some form because it's a component in Grand Strategy that helps make it feel like running a country. Let's remember not all games played are the majors.
As for the debt issue. I wonder whether the significant debt could be added to the stability mechanic, post war mechanics such as peace conf points, puppet liberty desire etc, and end game scoring.
As for the debt issue. I wonder whether the significant debt could be added to the stability mechanic, post war mechanics such as peace conf points, puppet liberty desire etc, and end game scoring.
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I think the bigger concern at the moment is the way the resources we do have right now are handled. Oil should not just be a factory resource but a limit on the number of vehicles, ships and planes you have in the field at one time. Right now you can field an endless number of Tiger IIs based on your production capacity rather than your oilfield ownership.