Whew... tough game. help me out here

[TheDarkside]

Looks like luxury furniture is all just hype. I am slowly developing my country but it's so hard to get a positive balance. My factories produce so little and the prices on world market drop steadily nulling any profit I was making. I am just barely able to do 4 pounds a day in budget even now with a luxury furnitue factory, but my crime fighting is low, tax is slightly high, and military budget at absolute minimum.

Some questions I have though:

Corruption is rampant ! Should I spend more money on crime fighting? Does corruption have any effect on my budget whatsoever? The manual does not indicate so, but I want to make sure.

My people have no cash in their pockets, I tried lowering taxes and even put tariffs into negatives and no effect. Almost all my middle class and poor have 0 cash reserves- any idea why?

Do inventions require research points? I've been steadily researching new technologies but inventions seem to be few and far between, is it just a random amount of time to pass or do they depend on how many research pts available?

 

[Stingray]

Inventions are events and have certain random and time triggers once the main tech is researched. I don't think there's any way to raise the likelyness for them to happen though.

If you are somewhat advanced, you could sell tech to countries like russia, and gain a decent profit from it, enough to build a new factory and start making some cash. Are you industry running on 100% efficeny? Are all of the worker slots filled? Do you sell all the luxury furniture that you produce?

Early on, clipper factorys, luxury clothes, luxury furniture, artillery and explosives are good goods to produce. Steel is also rather vital, since once everybody starts building railrods, the market will run out quickly.

Crime has different effects depending on what type of crime it is. Some splits wealth unevenly, some raises revolt risk, some lowers production, check the manual page 30-31 for exact effects.

If I were you, I'd sell some tech to russia in exchange for a decnt amount of money, then build myself an artillery factory and start selling guns. Keep doing this until you can sustain you economy on your own.

 

[ComteDeMeighan]

I got alot of corruption and I have the MAFIA all over Italy, I'm playing as the Two Sicilies I raised my crimefighting that seemed to help a little

 

[Talmonious]

Also, I believe that some of your research improves the efficiency of your crime fighting. If I remember correctly, Stock Market regulation is one of them and it improves your crime fighting rate by like 5 percent. I'm sure there are other advancements that help too.