I shudder when I think of the mayhem herr Mustache will unleash on Europe.

The game is going to get fuuuuuuuuuun :D

The scutlebutt is that a new player has joined the fray :03:

http://i.imgur.com/Mqih9F6.jpg?1

http://www.effedieffe.com/images/sto...o_emanuele.jpg

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The Savoyard Royal Court first thought that the news of Cavour and Victorio Emmanuel II finally emerging from their drunken revel was an April Fool's joke, but apparently the Kingdom will once again be put under some sort of governance.

After spending the past three years drinking their kingdom's fine wines and decking themselves with bling, a groggy Camillo and Victorio finally popped from their "man cave" and ordered something for their headaches. When an aid responded that there is nothing to be found, the King shouted back: "Then go get me some coffee from Africa, you fool!" His order became the basis for Italian colonial ambition in the Horn of Africa.

Their second order to business was to get some more stuff to drown/crown their sorrows in/with. After they were informed that the stocks are low, Cavour ordered a complete re-examination of Piedmont's industrial and commerce policy, ensuring that there was plenty of everything, while shutting down those industries that contributed little to the economy. In his enthusiasm, he also halved all national taxes, after one of his buddy industrialists complained that they have no money to produce more "party essentials". The King even decided to try and stop child labour. Thus was born future Italy's economic policy.

Realising that they need to sell what little they had to improve their "prestige", Cavour send out every diplomat they had to neighbouring countries to improve relations (and hopefully get a nice trade agreement in the process).

Some in the diplomatic circles even spoke of a future Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between Italian states, but those are nothing but vicious rumours spread around by Austrian agents, Hell bent on delegating Savoy to the dustbin of history.

---

I hope that my writing somewhat matches the less serious style espoused by the players of The Great Game. I will also be preparing a short tutorial on the management of your national economies (with an embargo on Austrian students) in the next few days.

:D Great start.

Tutorials are always welcome (some of us think that we have the slightest idea what we're doing:haha:) and someone clean up the spilled drink and glass Austria just dropped or this floor will get sticky.

As for styles I tend to be a bit full of myself when I have something report from within the game in the most Prussian way I can imagine you know pompous, knowing it better and a lot of self importance. At least I try to make it sound like that but still have to get used to writing AAR reports especially flavouring it up with a bit of a tongue in cheek way of an approach.

Bah, we Austrians drink first and then drop glasses to the floor :smug:

Good Teran and Refosk is not something we waste

And welcome to the fray Respenus :up:
And don't worry, I'm here to play the game, no grudges will be held if Austria gets steamrolled (this game is so historic I'll loose Milano even if I burn Turin to the ground)

Africa?

http://www.thinkbluela.com/wp-conten...09/Lawn-01.jpg

It's bad enough I've got baguettes and sauerkraut ruining my tea-time without pasta being added into the mix! :O::O::O:

But yes, welcome to the game, just watch out for those French, I swear they're plotting something... :hmmm:

Today I almost became the shortest reigning monarch in Italian history. After serving me dutifully and without fail for almost 5 years and 25.000 hours, my laptop's graphics card went kaput. After troubleshooting for 6 hours and trying to get it back up and running, I could only come to the conclusion that it has failed.

Fortunately, the laptop comes with an Intel integrated graphics processor and that one is luckily still in working order. While not great for general gaming, it can run 2D games (which I prefer) and with PoN working, I can continue with the game. But damn, this was too close for my liking. For some people, it is their motherboard or their CPU that fails, for me, it has always been graphic cards or fans.

Well, enough moaning, I have an empire to carve out :O:

Take the pasta out of the cooling fan. :nope:

Early May was always a pleasant month in Vienna. The capital of an Empire was never neglected. Streets were swept, parks were green and every house had flowers blooming on window sills. But something was in the air. A silent tension, un-noticed by the average city dweller or visitor.

Hans Prozwan, the Vienna station master noticed it. He noticed everything. He worked his entire life in the gateway of Vienna. Before the railroad he was an experienced coach master and as soon as the iron horse got its place in the Empire, he was personaly picked to run the station. He knows every arrival and departure of anyone worth noting. And the last few days caught his attention.
Every commander in the Empire arrived in the capital. Nothin new there. Von Hess has his wife in Vienna, Radetzky had frequent rummy games with fellow noblemen and war games were at least twice a year. But the lack of pomp gave it away that something was different this year.

The Habsburgs were full of themselves and anyone favoured by the crown never arrived without a kings welcome. Nearly cost Colonel von Augsperk his marriage when a 30 men march band avaited him when he visited his mistress. Radetzky, the hero of Novara arrived with only a guard detachment in plain clothes to greet him. Hans also had a small talent. He knew how to read people. He knew that the 20 men that boarded the special train to Venice were diplomats. He knew that they were given instructions by the Emperor Himself. He knew that they werent on a delegation they would not enjoy.

Cold chills went down his spine. He remembered a similar tension he witnesed as a young porter nearly 50 years ago. The silent arrival of generals, the dashing of diplomats and less than a year later, the French marched in.

Cooking up something nice for me, Betonov? Don't forget to add tomatoes and Mediterranean spices!

Austria has no teritorial claim in Italy. We only wish to keep Northern Italy in the hands of those that know how to rule and Empire.
The land is far to fertile and rich to be ruled over by some Savonian tribal chiefs.

We still have a long way to go and History can be a cruel mistress. So why don't you add some nice factories to Milano and Venice? You know, to improve your fertile north Italian lands. :D

I'll do that, Italians need to start learning the arts of Germanic efficiency somewhere.
God knows what will spring up if there's no Austrian guidance. A FIAT factory ???

You want your expatriates to commit suicide?
I'd give them 1 minute into the introductions with the local populace before they start looking for the highest building/tower to jump down from.

Good idea to lower nationalistic agitation :hmmm:

Money supply

Pride of Nation's economy is quite different from any other similar strategy games (especially for those accustomed to Victoria or other Paradox titles). The first major element of divergence are the dual money supplies. As statism had not yet been invented at that point in time, state money is gained through taxation at far lower levels than we know today. Furthermore, state funds can only be used to purchase military equipment or to support certain policies offered to you through the many F screens.

You thus have to rely on private capital in order to support and build the "real" economy, so if you overtax or mismanage the private sector, you entire country will feel the sting (especially with a major hit to the happiness levels of certain provinces, which lowers production efficiency and can lead to revolts). Now, I cannot recommend the appropriate level of taxation for each of your specific countries, so you will have to experiment, but a census tax will always cause happiness hits unless you have reduced it practically to zero.

Macro-economic management

Now we come to the most paradoxical (pun not intended) part of PoN's economic system. Running your economy requires both at the same time high levels of micro-management and letting the game run on auto.

The reason behind this is that despite its complexity, you can still game the system into providing you the maximum benefits possible. You have four screen to help you with that. A quick overview, which you should check each turn, is the Assets Balance screen ('B'). Its nice graphs allow you to ascertain the current and future levels of certain resources and whether or now you will hit critical lows (the square flashes red). You can also use it to quickly increase or decrease your purchase of a specific good by 10 units (left click to increase, right to decrease). The system will automatically choose the trade zone that you have access to and with the least amount of competing requests (ie. where you are most likely to get the goods).

The second screen is the Industry and Commerce screen (F4). This is an insane overview of every product that you can use or produce in the game and see what is happening with it during the current turn, the previous 10 turns and what will (most likely) happen to it during the next turn. I only check this screen if absolutely necessary, as it is a major headache, useful only during the micro-management part.

The third and last important scree is the Economic structures info (F11). This was added to the game in one of the patches after requests for a simple way of seeing all of the production structures in your country. You can see all your factories and farms or you can focus on a particular good that is used either as an input or output (production) in a specific structure. This screen is mostly useful for micro-management or if you wish to find the location of a certain factory.

Industry & Commerce

Now we come to the most complex part of the economic management of your country, the nexus of industry and commerce. The first thing you should do is cancel ALL TRADES. The simplest way to do this is to use the Assets balance screen and reduce all purchases to zero. Then you should press 'T' over your country's different trade zones and reduce all sales to zero.

Now that you have "reset" your economy to its most basic level, you will have to spend a lot of time in the Assets balance screen. If there are any critical goods, such as coal and manufactured goods that you need for the economy to function, make certain to sell them. Do not forget that the purchases are made with private capital, so the more you buy, the less you have to spend to invest into future production. If you are especially low on cash, you can manually set the trade requests in specific trade zones, so that you will only buy to maintain a stockpile balance.

After you are done with that, stay on the Assets balance screen to see which of your goods are going to increase in size. If your stockpile will increase for a good that is in high demand (you will see few markets offering them, often with far higher demand than supply), such as luxury goods and rare products (wine, coffee, sugar, etc.), go to your national trade zone and press 'T' (you may have several, depending on your size) and set the sales to whatever is needed to maintain a balanced stockpile (if you have a lot of such goods that you do not use, you can always sell more to decrease the stockpile to a more "natural" size). The Assets screen will automatically adjust the graphs, so that you can quickly tell how your goods stock will adjust to a specific trade policy.

For goods that are in massive supply, but have little demand, I recommend that you do no attempt to sell them (unless you have a trade agreement with a buyer, as it makes it more likely they will buy from you). At this point, you have to go to the F11 screen and deactivate the surplus production sites (you naturally sell some units of each product on your national market or is consumed by another structure, so you have to pay attention to this as well). This will save you capital and perhaps some other goods, but the quantities are not as high as to demand a new "economic rebalancing".

Another thing to keep an eye on is the national market, which is only accessible through the F4 screen. In your micro-management, you have to keep in mind that your people need to eat and use some common (and also luxurious goods) goods. However, you can regulate how much of each you will sell on your national market by left clicking (increase the amount available by 5%) and right clicking (decrease by 5%) on the icon of each good.

Overview

The basic gist of the economy in PoN is the one as old as mankind: sell high, buy low. The only difference is that you can achieve a decent measure of self-sufficiency within your own country, although thanks to comparative advantages, you may be doing your overall economy a disservice. But, focusing on your national market and trading only valuable surplus goods with foreign countries, is an easy, quick and decent way of managing your economy.

I remain at your disposal for any other questions you may have. If you have the time and inclination, you can check the "Manufacturing Italy" AAR, which contains a nice, illustrated guide to many of principles I presented here.

Have fun!

After the Austrian inteligence rewied the captured Italian Economics Guide, the Emperors advisors came to a conclusion that they're clueless and should hide it from the Emperor in fear of getting sacked (or hanged) since idiotism has been outlawed in the Empire.

Good one Respenus, I didn't know a lot of the things you pointed out :up:
(moving another 5 corps into Lombardy)

It can help, say every game month, just having a look at the factories screen and temporarily closing factories which aren't producing any profit. Your fat-cats will thank you for this, but eventually the factories might start making a profit again so you'll need to open them up again.

At the moment I'm doing great with state funds, over 10k, but my capitalists are being rather disappointing and only have about 1500. :hmmm: Then again, I do keep spending their ill-gotten gains on tea farms...because if I run out of that...it's all over.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zACeJXfnpE...Mobs_Riots.jpg

Great just when I thought I kind of sorted my Economy it seems I still have so much to learn. :haha:
Well...time to go to step 1...again.:D

Nice tutorial and well explained :yep::up: