Realistic debts

[EricMN93]

Anyone who has had debts in the game will have realized that it is something very unreal, it is true that there are penalties but in many cases it is more worth having debts for an event to appear that brings us money

If we are negative, no miraculous event will appear to solve the problem.You will have to be smart to solve the financial problem



Debt related ideas


1- Ask for money again in a war.

If we ask an enemy for money and we conquer it, their territories will start with 60% less loyalty, thus simulating that they feel looted and massacred.

This idea is to compensate for making continuous wars just for money. Prevent it from becoming abuse.

2-Ask a character for money.

Currently the wealth of the characters does not serve much, except to buy properties.

It would be nice to be able to ask the leader of a family for money, in exchange for your financial help an event will be activated asking for something, for example positions for family members, becoming a general, etc.

In case of being a monarchy and asking for money, a suitor can ask to change the law of succession in exchange.

You will have a period of 6 months to comply with the demands of the lender.

3-Public works.

The ruler will have a unique diplomatic option called public works (it can only be activated when the personal money gain is positive). If this option is selected, all the monthly benefits of personal wealth will go to the state and will be added to the income of this.

Each month the popularity of the ruler will increase and his personal fortune will decrease, thus simulating that the ruler is putting private money to fix the problems of the state.

In the event that your personal fortune reaches zero, the state will no longer receive those earnings


4-Sell territory

Currently we already have this option but the AI rarely offers money in exchange for some territory, this should change if the conditions are met.

In case two civilizations share a province and one of them is in negative numbers, you can sell a territory in exchange for a predefined sum of gold.

settlement 100 gold

city 200 gold

Metropolis 500 Gold

Holy Place 50 extra gold.

5-Sell relics

Give the possibility of selling relics in exchange for gold.


Someday it will be good to see real trade routes that could be looted (both by land and by sea) but for now the next ideas are based on how to get money in an "easy" way to solve debts.


6-Plunder (only available for tribes)

A tribe can create a horde of looters who can invade civilized territories and steal their wealth, it will not be necessary to declare war. The affected civilization can also send its army against the looters, although it cannot go to the looters' territory without starting a war.

7-Piracy

Certain x-tech civilizations could use their ships to capture ships and later sell their commanders to slavers or lay siege to coastal territories.

Basically the idea is to have a very fast fleet that might have a unique option (if the necessary technology has been unlocked) capable of looting the wealth of the coastal territories.

Both looters and pirates should hide where they come from to prevent the affected civilization from knowing where they have attacked them.

These are some ideas to solve debts more realistically than now

.Surely many of these ideas never happened in real history but I try to provide mechanics that could realistically fit

What do you think? How would you change the debt system?

 

[IsaacCAT]

Very nice ideas, but they could be exploited by the human player. We have an inflation problem now, I do not know if we need this right now.

I would rather change the system of bankruptcy by currency debasement as it happened in ancient Rome, described in this suggestion:

Playing with taxes and currency

Preface: The nation income is derived from taxes, commerce and tributes. The Economy menu allows the player to change taxes, commerce and tributes income with three options each. Observation: the three options for taxes are very basic and other...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[EricMN93]

Very nice ideas, but they could be exploited by the human player. We have an inflation problem now, I do not know if we need this right now.

I would rather change the system of bankruptcy by currency debasement as it happened in ancient Rome, described in this suggestion:

Playing with taxes and currency

Preface: The nation income is derived from taxes, commerce and tributes. The Economy menu allows the player to change taxes, commerce and tributes income with three options each. Observation: the three options for taxes are very basic and other...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

I think in your post there are some very good ideas that are difficult to implement in a game.

Concepts such as the devaluation of the currency or inflation, I think, would end up being something very heavy and boring, I am more in favor of simpler ideas that unite already established mechanisms.

Example:

Currently we have the private money of the characters but it has very little real use, beyond buying properties and something minor, why not enhance this mechanism with other alternatives to make a person with high resources influence politics?

 

[IsaacCAT]

Concepts such as the devaluation of the currency or inflation, I think, would end up being something very heavy and boring, I am more in favor of simpler ideas that unite already established mechanisms.

I love economics, I cannot resist bringing up those concepts. But I understand they are not every day conversation topic. But they should, we need more financial and sexual education, for just mentioning two difficult subjects.

Currently we have the private money of the characters but it has very little real use, beyond buying properties and something minor, why not enhance this mechanism with other alternatives to make a person with high resources influence politics?

Yes, you are right. But ripping your characters for their money is not ambitious enough. I would like Characters to have more things to do with their money.

But, your main point is valid, devs have to think about bankruptcy. It is not fun now.

 

[EricMN93]

I love economics, I cannot resist bringing up those concepts. But I understand they are not every day conversation topic. But they should, we need more financial and sexual education, for just mentioning two difficult subjects.

I understand you perfectly, I am a great lover of the concept of "reforms" (military, economic, administrative, etc). I think it is a way of understanding how civilization x had to adapt to the new times and the changes that were approaching, there is room for passionate debates of all kinds, although we also have to be realistic, especially the veterans of Imperator.

This is a game and for it to continue improving and enjoying, players are needed and that will not come if it is an impossible game for someone new to understand. Nor am I saying that you have to simplify everything, that would be a very big mistake, you have to find the balance, create a game that is easy to learn and difficult to master. In that sense go my ideas "simplified" like the simmaquia or the 1st century after Christ.

Thank you very much for your answers.

 

[EricMN93]

But, your main point is valid, devs have to think about bankruptcy. It is not fun now.

In my opinion, the biggest problem with debts are miracles, you have financial problems, don't worry, money appears out of nowhere in exchange for a few small penalties, this is a mistake that makes the player not feel the need to make reforms economic, administrative, etc ..

Debts have to require the player to make major changes to avoid that situation.

 

[CaptinObvious]

2-Ask a character for money.

Currently the wealth of the characters does not serve much, except to buy properties.

It would be nice to be able to ask the leader of a family for money, in exchange for your financial help an event will be activated asking for something, for example positions for family members, becoming a general, etc.

In case of being a monarchy and asking for money, a suitor can ask to change the law of succession in exchange.

You will have a period of 6 months to comply with the demands of the lender.

this used to be in the game, as in, in one of the first DDs, taking loans was mentioned

So how do you interact with these characters then? Well, Imperator has lots of different ways, besides the normal event interactions like most of our games, we also have the direct character interactions..

Character Interactions usually have costs in power and or gold, and some have different chance of success as well, and in Republics, some of the character interactions require senate approval as well.
[...]

• Loan - To get money from a wealthy character. They may want it back though.

[...]

• Release Prisoner - For bleeding-heart liberals..
• Repay Loan - Sadly you can’t imprison and execute people you owe money…

[...]

Taken from DD 17

apparently, during early development, you used to be, or were planned to be, able to take a loan from characters, it also apparently blocked hostile actions, such as imprisonment

No idea why it was cut though

 

[Abirami aka Pete]

I totally agree with the issue you raise, and most of the proposed solutions. I would add:

1. in monarchies and empires the ruler should have the ability to donate some money to the state. I've had rulers accumulate 50,000 gold and still run a deficit to maintain mercenaries... especially if a war is going badly it would make sense for the ruler to step in

2. for public works, much in the style of actual hellenistic euergetism, I think it would make sense for the ruler to have the ability to sponsor the construction of a building. it would be closer to the ancient practice if it was one actual building in a given city with a one-off popularity boost (or local happiness), rather than a continuous stream of popularity in/cash out.

to avoid abuse, I would add a "sponsor benefaction" option between character interactions, and then the game randomizes across cities and buildings

3. more crucially, once a civilization is developed enough, you should have the ability to borrow money intentionally, with some repayment scheme that you better respect lest you incur in big costs (senate support, tyranny, stability, etc)

 

[Herennius]

I agree that the current way of "resolving" debt in IR is far from ideal, but any solution/improvement has to be carefully checked: Even what might be more balanced/fun/realistic on the first glance and work when used by a roleplaying/fair player, has to be made exploit-proof and AI-save as well. Sadly both the latter points seem to be a killer. Almost all (and I'm writing "almost" only because of the theoretical possibility I missed the exceptional one) strategy or simulation games capitulate here to totally or at least to a significant extend. Out of the head, I can't remember having any really found an "ideal solution", despite having seen everything of and between just not allowing debt (by either making it just game over then or having 0 as lowest possible treasury values and inflicting penalties like disbanding units with no treasury and negative balance) and simulating it (by allowing you to go into the reds and using concepts like loans, interest...). Both approaches come with their own special problems:

If you don't allow debt as a concept, you have to find balanced consequences for the case of running out of money. Which is a nightmare: Make them too light and players have a happy free ride. Make them too strong and you ruin the AI...unless you exempt it, which is - for my taste - equally worse (feel free to disagree, but "human-only" features are a no-go for me!), or -adding more workload- make them really competent.

If you choose the road of "making debt a feature", you are presented with a slightly different challenge: You need to build features around a topic which isn't exactly a "seller" - I guess more players like to be a map painter than a debt manager -, suceeded in finding the sweet balance between making them interesting and deep, but not too deep. Then you have think about every potential way a ruthless human player will try to exploit them, e.g. the classic "loan from nation X, then declare war" and find solutions for those exploits. No consequences? Reputation Damage? Eternal Debt (I personally created this owrding for the unique solution Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri used - DoWing only supsends debt payments and they resume after signing peace)? And once more you have to teach the AI (both to allow them to play the "debt game" at all and to offer the various human player a credible diplomatic experience, to put it short: The question, if the Ai should try to exploit the human player as well...and if, under which conditions and how often?)

Long post - and it honestly does nothing more then superficially describing the can of worms we are talking of here.

P.S.: I believe I have read somewhere that the "loaning gold from character"-interaction was removed before release because of the exploit potential (no good solution was found for taking care of players just executing the creditors to get rid of the debt)