RoyalArk14 said:
I have the exact same problem with my Persian capis (note, play Persia and civilize in VIP...awesome). But my industrial level is 11th in the world, but I have 3 capis worth 60,000 each. However, my industrial and commerce is more or less the same. How wide must the gap be to cause this problem?
It's not the gap per se, it's how much your capi POPs are making each day from their cut of the export income, and how much it costs them to buy their needs. If you don't produce the goods they need (and export them to the WM, your POPs get first crack to buy the goods you put out into the marketplace, and do not pay tariffs on the domestic quantities they buy), they have to import it from other countries, and if you have tariffs, that raises the cost of those imports.
All that is after you take a cut of their daily income via taxes.
So to give a hypothetical
Daily income for a capi pop is 50.00
30% tax takes 15.00, leaving it 35.00
the cost to purchase the amounts needed (including additional cost in tariffs to pay for the needs they have to import in) for their needs must be less than 35.00 for the capi to have money left over to put into reserves.
If the daily cost to fill needs are less than the 35.00, the extra goes into reserves.
If the daily cost is more than 35.00, the difference is made by taking money out of reserves or buying all they can until they hit 0 income for the day. In either case, no reserves are being build up to allow the POP to be in a position to start a railway or factory.
The biggest causes for players falling into a cycle where capis no longer receive enough export income to cover their needs are
1) Quatities of needs demanded rises faster than economic growth, thus more of the daily income needs to go to buying needs, until such point that the cost to buy is more than the income made. Because in Revolutions quantities of goods needed to fill needs is proportional to the number of industrial and commerce techs researched (so that full quantity demanded is reached when all 60 techs are researched), if you rush the commerce and industry techs without expanding your export amount by a similar rate, the result is a demand/income scissor that cuts off reserve growth.
2) goods that were not available on the World Market for your POPs because they were either not produced at all or not produced in quantities to allow your POPs to buy given your overall ranking in the game (higher ranked nations get first dibs on WM goods produced by nations other than their own) suddenly become available either due to the beginning of prodution of other nations creating supply that allows you to buy given your overall ranking, or you yourself start producing the goods and putting them on the world market, and your POPs get first chance to buy them.
Biggest culprit in this are the really expensive luxury toys - cars and, in base Victoria but not VIP, airplanes. Those are really expensive when they first come on the market because demand is almost always higher than supply, and if your capis are in a position where they either can buy your production first or your nation is high enough ranked they can import them in, the potential hit to their reserve income can be huge, and magnified if you put high tariffs on the goods.
Solution - focus on rapid production expansion in the couple decades before these new goods generally start appearing (usually 1890s) so that your capi POPs are making huge daily increases in reserve income and thus will have plenty of extra income for making the new, expensive purchases.
And note here having very large capi POPs can be the worse thing. Quantity of good demanded for a need is based on the formula base need * (pop size/100K). So if it says a capi pop has a 1.2 demand for cars, IIRC if that capi POP is 100K in size, it will try to purchase 1.2 cars, which given that they run in the 150-180 pound range per car, means they need something approaching 200 pounds in free reserve income to cover the cost when they become available. If their reserve margin isn't that big before the cars come on the market, then the capis will dip into reserves until they fall to below 100, at which point no POP buys luxury needs, reserve income builds back over 100, capi buys lux needs, putting reserve back below 100, and you end up in the dreaded luxury need reserve loop that is very difficult to break, esp if you have a laissez-faire party in power. This is why small to medium sized capi POPs are better in the long term unless you are playing an economic juggernaut, you reduce the risk of getting caught in the lux need warp come the 1890s.
