I think "bonds" as a reward for running your economy well enough that your people are happy, is fine. There have been much worse changes to reality for gameplay's sake.
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
I think the bond system as is, is quite awful. Perhaps turn it into an event instead? 
Has anybody ever got into a position where POPs ever buy bonds? I know they exist at the game's outset and dissappear as soon as you go into debt for the first time. I have never had a POP buy bonds after that.
Sometimes, I do get a few pounds from bonds at the end of the game, but at that time, I am usually running a surplus of 100 pounds or more per day, so they aren´t really useful.
Yes, in the last decade or so of games where I have fully industrialised and are making a surplus of a few thousand pounds per day I have had my (insanely wealthy) rich class POPs purchasing state bonds.
As Germany I have experimented with trying to build an economy where I had low taxes and low tarriffs, and partially succeeded.
Basically it starts out with 45% taxes on all classes, and tarriffs set to max. The lower your taxes are, the more your pops will buy from the world market and from my experiments, you will make up for lower taxes, with increses in tarriffs.
This of course assumes you arnt shooting yourself in the foot by building too many factories that produce everyday goods for your pops and thus they dont pay tarrifs on
Once I become industrialized, I lower the taxes gradually over time, to somewhere like 35% with tarrifs set to max. You will find that your population will grow faster as well with lower taxes, since they can buy more of the essential goods due to lower taxes, while keeping your budget up with high tarrifs.
I have been able to build a massive army, navy and have 3 social reforms set to good, and still maintain a healty profit of several hundred a month.
With taxes set to the low 30's and high tariffs I started to see bonds being bought.
I figure that if you are willing to build a nation with no social services, or not a very large army, you can cut your budget down enough to afford lowerign the tarrifs and taxes at the same time. Over the space of say 60 years, with the greatly increased pop growth, and slow growth of state bonds, you can largely recoupe your budget to high profit, and thus build your army up as if you had not gone this route.
This methode however takes most of the game, and thus you spend it building your economy and not stomping all around the world hehe
Basically it starts out with 45% taxes on all classes, and tarriffs set to max. The lower your taxes are, the more your pops will buy from the world market and from my experiments, you will make up for lower taxes, with increses in tarriffs.
This of course assumes you arnt shooting yourself in the foot by building too many factories that produce everyday goods for your pops and thus they dont pay tarrifs on
Once I become industrialized, I lower the taxes gradually over time, to somewhere like 35% with tarrifs set to max. You will find that your population will grow faster as well with lower taxes, since they can buy more of the essential goods due to lower taxes, while keeping your budget up with high tarrifs.
I have been able to build a massive army, navy and have 3 social reforms set to good, and still maintain a healty profit of several hundred a month.
With taxes set to the low 30's and high tariffs I started to see bonds being bought.
I figure that if you are willing to build a nation with no social services, or not a very large army, you can cut your budget down enough to afford lowerign the tarrifs and taxes at the same time. Over the space of say 60 years, with the greatly increased pop growth, and slow growth of state bonds, you can largely recoupe your budget to high profit, and thus build your army up as if you had not gone this route.
This methode however takes most of the game, and thus you spend it building your economy and not stomping all around the world hehe
The Starfox said:This methode however takes most of the game, and thus you spend it building your economy and not stomping all around the world hehe
I found your method interesting. And I'm no good at the stomping around the world bit so it may be worth my while experimenting here.
Yeah, you can speed up the process by putting taxes at about 30%, and tarrifs at zero, or subsidized. This however requiers that you be a large and heavely industrialzed country for it to work out in a reasonable time period (my favorite is Prussia\Germany).
It also means you cant afford a huge military, and too many social services. In the end though once you get several hundred bonds, you can afford to build a big military and such, it just takes so fricking long to get there.
It also means you cant afford a huge military, and too many social services. In the end though once you get several hundred bonds, you can afford to build a big military and such, it just takes so fricking long to get there.