Glorious Great Game - a PoN MP AAR

[Respenus]

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

[Betonov]

Originally Posted by Respenus

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.

[Respenus]

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.

[Betonov]

Originally Posted by Respenus

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.

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 ???

[HunterICX]

Originally Posted by Betonov

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.

[Betonov]

Originally Posted by HunterICX

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

[Respenus]

The Italian School of Economics

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!

[Betonov]

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
(moving another 5 corps into Lombardy)

[Oberon]

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. Then again, I do keep spending their ill-gotten gains on tea farms...because if I run out of that...it's all over.

[HunterICX]

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

Nice tutorial and well explained

[Betonov]

And so August of 1855 shall go down in history as the month all powers of the world decided to have a big trade reform for no aparent reason

[Respenus]

Thanks for your kind words guys, but don't forget that the economic plan I presented is very, VERY austere and can, in the long run, cause major problems.

While PoN fortunately does not simulate unemployment and its social effects, you do need certain goods to your population happy. This means that you will be forced to import not only expensive items such as luxury goods, wines and gold, but also basic stuff such as fruit, coffee, tea, sugar, etc, etc. This becomes all the more apparent as consumption by your population increases with certain technologies (each increasing consumption by 20% and with several of them, you can quickly double on what you need each month).

As such, my proposals are good to get your economy under control and to maximize private capital accumulation, but they are not the start all, end all of economic policies in PoN. As I said, the game requires both a lot and little micro-management at the same time.

[Oberon]

Just saw this on facebook, thought it relevant:

[Respenus]

With two Slovenians on the team, such jokes are bound to go down badly (having lost a third of our people to the Italians and having been among the first victims of fascism).

A nice enough polandball (and funny), however it wasn't the Entente that reneged on the London Treaty, it was the Italians who took what they wanted and had to be stopped by the French and British before they took even more (we still got them at Kobarid, though).

[Oberon]

No offense intended, although to be fair I'm British, if I'm not offending someone then I'm probably invading them.