1.5 and still a BIG GRIPE!

[Fisherking]

All along since 1.2 taking regions cuts your funds and in a game so dependent on monetary growth it sure puts the brakes on any fun you are having.

So here we are in 1.5 and they tell us this is how they want the game.

I am going along in a shot game trying to make ends meet making about 6 or 7 thousand per turn and France goes to war with me. But that is no big deal because they are a paper tiger. I siege Paris and ask for peace and the Windward Islands and offer them some techs.

They reply with the usual insulting remark. They have no other European regions and this is life and death. They still have a large overseas empire but no place to fall back to.

So I take it. What happens now is my income goes down to 4000. But that isn't the end of it. Now they are in revolt and it is best to exempt taxes, right?

Now the income is down to 2500 and you have all the riches of the French Region. That works out to something over 12000 per turn, except where is it going?

What happens to the almost 9000 the region is worth not counting the 3000 plus it is worth in taxes.

Town watch only costs 1400 rounded up. Admin costs are 6.4 %. So where does the money go?

If you don't take it, make peace and a trade agreement it says you will make over 8000, except when the next turn comes around you only made 6000.

Back to what happens if you take it:

Because of the French ports I could add trade partners. It gave me a figure but when I moved troops around to add to the garrison and checked the screen again I had lost 2000. Nothing else changed it just went away.

Why?

I don't feel much like running an accounts ledger and comparing it and updating it every time I do something in the game.

I just want to know how the game works and why.

Is it bugged? Is there a toll on troops using the roads?

The economic game is already frustrating. The game goes out of its way to cap or diminish the player's income. Is it also cheating to do this?

What gives?


All of this just seems a mess!

It makes the game seem like it is still broken.

It needs to be explained or fixed!


So what is going on here CA?




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[Slaists]

Well, could it be that adding France gave you a global tax hit (global admin costs) so big that it would explain the loss you're describing?

That having been said, I usually struggle economically at the start of the game, but by mid-game (around 1740 or so), I have in excess of 20,000 K profit per turn playing almost any faction in 1.5. And that's without pursuing trade nodes aggressively.

[Megas Methuselah]

I NEVER exempt a region from taxes unless I really need to in the absence of an army. Let the peasants rebel, and crush them one by one until they get the point and stop. Destroy their farms and fishing ports and churches. If they're rebelling, you may as well go all the way and cull their population while converting the survivors to your religion. Exempting taxes will make no difference when they're suffering a -30 penalty to resist foreign invaders. Millions of people are going to die either way.

France is essentially a bread-basket. Take advantage of that.

[Fisherking]

Well, could it be that adding France gave you a global tax hit (global admin costs) so big that it would explain the loss you're describing?

That having been said, I usually struggle economically at the start of the game, but by mid-game (around 1740 or so), I have in excess of 20,000 K profit per turn playing almost any faction in 1.5. And that's without pursuing trade nodes aggressively.

No the admin costs went up less than 1% world wide and it was only the 15th region. ( like 0.1 here or 0.2 there)

There are other things going on.

Several bugs from 1.2 are back in the system.

Ships can once again pirate a block trade route.

If you pirate an active trade route and move the ships in the same turn to a different spot (continuing to pirate the same route) you lose money.

Oh, and another big gripe is that agents block movement now. A priest or a rake can stop an army, block bridges and so on.The more I play in this patch the bugger and screwier it seems.

[NimitsTexan]

If you pirate an active trade route and move the ships in the same turn to a different spot (continuing to pirate the same route) you lose money.

It seems the amount of money you get can depend on where you are on the trade route, and/or changes randomly. For one example, as Britian at war with pretty much the entire Med. Basin, I had a fleet of ships blockading a combined French/Spanish/Maratha/Russian/Italian trade route. At one point, I moved the ships from just inside the Med to just outside, and my income jumped up by about 6000.

[Fisherking]

That is not what I mean.

You can mouse over a trade route and see the income stream. It does change at places.

Each ship takes about 5% of what is there to pirate. It may increase over time which is why you want to remove those ships pirating your own routes.

What I mean is an unbranched stream. It is an odd little bug.

[Vlad Tzepes]

I've noticed this as well - income dropping immediately after taking a region. It is or completely illogical, or very, very subtle economics (that I have no chance of understanding*).

As a matter of fact, I've given up trying to figure out how economy in ETW really works - I just try to get as many trade agreements, trade nodes and trading ports as possible, and focus on plantations first. Like Slaists said, usually by 1740 the income gets pretty comfortable.

________
* Even though Kantalla is doing his best to help out dumbos like me here :-D

[Northnovas]

The economics take sometime before they get comfortable but I still don't understand the mechanism in the game. Sometimes I would double a turn with no spending to get some cash but I struggle between army build up and infrastructure. As posted one must get trade agreements, trade note and ports for building an economic base.

It makes it hard to supply and army and build an empire. There is no looting for the treasury after a conquest. I have to scale back units to get some cash flow. Even after some rich estate I still get the people are starving or rebelling. Though it is easy to let them rebel crush the army and the general gets some nice traits.

Even when I think I am in the right direction building the economic base the cash flow is low and slow.

[Zenicetus]

Oh, and another big gripe is that agents block movement now. A priest or a rake can stop an army, block bridges and so on.The more I play in this patch the bugger and screwier it seems.

That's a bad one. And it's a huge potential player exploit because the AI won't use it intentionally. I'm thinking of a point in my UP campaign where I had taken the South American coastal provinces up to Colombia, and was trying to avoid moving north along that route, focusing more on the Caribbean islands. It sure would have been nice to block the Spanish at the Isthmus of Panama, just by parking an agent there!

They need to fix a lot of things, but they sure need to fix this, because I'm not sure I won't be tempted to use it, if I know it's there.