Loans - how and when?

[gaius valerius]

Title says it all. Loans... on the one hand they seem incredibly useful on the other hand I personally always perceive them as a terrible burden. So are loans a burden or a tool? Speaking from a historical perspective loans should be the bloody norm. History aside, as a game mechanic it all sounds very promising: fast money when you need it with strings attached. When playing I've only had to take loans when in dire financial need, which happens sometimes but on the whole not very much, close to none if you take the entirety of a session and of course, only in the early phase. Do any of you use loans as part of a greater strategy in terms of imperial expansion? Take loans to fund your building programme? Take loans to repay loans? Or avoid them? Do they offer a fun way to play? Roleplay? Or are they mainly tedious?

So the question:

. 1) when to use them? Apart from when you run out of cash, since that's a given
. 2) how to use them? With advisors to lower interest? Other interesting things that might turn taking a loan in a profitable business?

 

[Karnak]

I only use them when i need to mount a quick defense/offense, or to avoid capping on monarch points.

I tend to play as sweden, and so i rush ships and a standing army with loans to declare a war of freedom in 6 months.
If i should lose a regiment permanently through enemy action or self-merging, then i can also take loans to replenish them in wartime as mercs.

If i am two years short of purchasing a tech without being ahead of its time, i have been known to take loans in order to spend the points on buildings. If there is nothing else to spend them on.

 

[Schmoekoeksklok]

I take loans when I'm a tiny country without much of an income so I can afford to build enough troops to start expanding asap.

Occasionally I'll take loans as a giant country with lots of income if I'm ahead on tech and need to burn some monarch points on buildings, but don't have enough cash for it.

Never actually take a loan to build something as an investment, but then again that strategy is much better with economic ideas and I rarely take that nowadays.