ease up on the positive revenue

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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Shadow Empire >> Suggestions and Feedback >> ease up on the positive revenue

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ease up on the positive revenue - 4/28/2021 8:39:00 PM

Dark_Revenant

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Joined: 4/28/2021
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I have played around eight SE games by now, and I feel that I experience an ongoing trend with a negative revenue. Most people suggest trading resources to maintain the budget but that stops being viable when the only players left are major regimes.

Overall it seems extremely difficult to make any progress while nurturing positive revenue. I would suggest making significant capital rewards by leveling up your cities while also maintaining the civilization of those cities. Right now cities just seem to be money pits and they don't generate positive revenue like I feel they should.

I have tried building all the CIV buildings thinking that the cities would then use the private investment funds to build money makers, but that doesn't seem to work and those buildings just increase my revenue debt.

I have tried using all the zone Stratagems to keep a large investment sum for a city thinking they would build a lot more, but it doesn't seem to make much of a difference.

EDIT:

In a game that is getting quite "late game" I think I have noticed something that might even be a bug and wanted to mention - I have seen zones that have private credits in the five digits. I have even seen private credits in the six digits! Unfortunately, they still don't expand. These are zones that are tier 3 and 4 and have private economy that isn't even leveled up that far. Am I doing something wrong to cause this I wonder?

EDIT SUGGESTIONS:

It seems like the logic used to determine what the private economy builds is exceptionally poor. A lot of the time they build on an asset that is already in such great abundance that traders don't even trade it. Or they go and construct another QOL building when I have already raised the QOL of the zone to 100 (I am desperately hoping they build credit makers).

It would be nice if there was greater variance in what the private economy could be building. I haven't ever seen any "special" buildings that could net a lot of more passive credits. A suggestion would make it so that the private economy could also construct building chains that you have researched.

Another cool suggestion on this topic would be to allow the private economy to construct special buildings. I think it would be very cool for special buildings that could be built depending on the tier of the city.

< Message edited by Dark_Revenant -- 5/9/2021 7:43:06 PM >

Post #: 1

RE: ease up on the positive revenue - 4/28/2021 9:12:30 PM

Soar_Slitherine

Posts: 426
Joined: 6/7/2020
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There's a trade report under Reports -> Overviews that has information on your internal and foreign trade the last turn.

(in reply to Dark_Revenant)

Post #: 2

RE: ease up on the positive revenue - 4/28/2021 10:16:08 PM

Dark_Revenant

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Joined: 4/28/2021
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Soar_Slitherine

There's a trade report under Reports -> Overviews that has information on your internal and foreign trade the last turn.

Ah thank you! I will edit that out of my post then.

(in reply to Soar_Slitherine)

Post #: 3

RE: ease up on the positive revenue - 4/29/2021 6:22:42 AM

zgrssd

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What are you tax rates?
What is the difficulty? (defines how high you can set the tax rate)
What is your worker pay compared to the Private Salary?
What is your recruit and colonist hiring bonus?

< Message edited by zgrssd -- 4/29/2021 6:23:29 AM >

(in reply to Dark_Revenant)

Post #: 4

RE: ease up on the positive revenue - 5/9/2021 7:32:11 PM

Dark_Revenant

Posts: 7
Joined: 4/28/2021
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quote:

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

What are you tax rates?
What is the difficulty? (defines how high you can set the tax rate)
What is your worker pay compared to the Private Salary?
What is your recruit and colonist hiring bonus?

I think in my recent games both taxes end up around 50%.
Difficulty is regular.
Worker pay varies by zone but is usually around 9 and 10 but sometimes higher for smaller zones.
Recruit hiring bonus is 15 and I haven't had to worry about colonist hiring. Actually in my most recent game I haven't been recruiting at all so this isn't much of a factor.

(in reply to zgrssd)

Post #: 5

RE: ease up on the positive revenue - 5/9/2021 7:51:07 PM

Soar_Slitherine

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I don't find that I usually need to raise worker pay above 5. Keep in mind that workers compare their wages to what people earn in the private sector, and their wages go into the private economy, so if the ratio of population to workers is too low, they will never be happy about their wages no matter how much you pay them.

(in reply to Dark_Revenant)

Post #: 6

RE: ease up on the positive revenue - 5/9/2021 8:15:09 PM

zgrssd

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Dark_Revenant

quote:

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

What are you tax rates?
What is the difficulty? (defines how high you can set the tax rate)
What is your worker pay compared to the Private Salary?
What is your recruit and colonist hiring bonus?

I think in my recent games both taxes end up around 50%.
Difficulty is regular.
Worker pay varies by zone but is usually around 9 and 10 but sometimes higher for smaller zones.
Recruit hiring bonus is 15 and I haven't had to worry about colonist hiring. Actually in my most recent game I haven't been recruiting at all so this isn't much of a factor.

The highest pay I ever saw from the Private Economy was 7. And that was because I had literally just founded the city, meaning it was drastically underpopulated.
9-10 Worker pay is excessive. If you ever need to go that high, you need to stop build and stop recruit in that city yesterday. Also shut turn down or shut down some non-critical infrastructure.

However it will also not mean much for them, given that you are taking half of it back via taxes.

Something is generally wrong with your setup or your state, if you ever need to pay workers that much. Or have that high taxes.
30% Income tax. Maybe 40% on lower difficulty. With 0 or maybe 25% Sales tax.

(in reply to Dark_Revenant)

Post #: 7

RE: ease up on the positive revenue - 5/10/2021 2:58:00 AM

Dark_Revenant

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Cool thats all good to know.

I did an experiment that I barely pulled off in my most recent game. It was late game and I was heavily gearing up both economically and militarily to wage that final war against the next most powerful to swing the win. I went way, way overboard with my scale up. By the time I stopped building I was in the hole at around 2800 credits a turn. Shocker, that is around the time that the trade economy basically shut down.

So I quit building and started using the private investment stratagems every turn as much as I could. Zones started building private economy (except for a minor conquered city even though they had 5 digit savings - I still think there is a bug here). And at this point I have to confess there is something going on that I don't understand: I was all the way down to hitting 0 two turns out and suddenly things turned around.

I don't understand how or why though when all the zones were building were mostly all QOL assets and all of my zones already had 100 QOL.... but the budget turned around in a big way.

< Message edited by Dark_Revenant -- 5/10/2021 3:00:37 AM >

(in reply to zgrssd)

Post #: 8

RE: ease up on the positive revenue - 5/10/2021 9:42:15 AM

zgrssd

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quote:

(except for a minor conquered city even though they had 5 digit savings - I still think there is a bug here

Private assets need Private Workers. Which are defined by "however much non-Public Worker population there is".

The Private Economy is not dumb enough to build stuff if it lacks the workers to actually run it.

(in reply to Dark_Revenant)

Post #: 9

RE: ease up on the positive revenue - 5/10/2021 12:13:44 PM

Soar_Slitherine

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Dark_Revenant
I don't understand how or why though when all the zones were building were mostly all QOL assets and all of my zones already had 100 QOL.... but the budget turned around in a big way.

Private Investment injecting credits into the economy may have caused your population to buy more resources from the market to turn into luxury goods, which generates sales tax. This may also have increased demand for resources on the market, boosting income tax from the population selling resources to the traders and possibly increasing foreign imports for increased tariff income.

(in reply to Dark_Revenant)

Post #: 10

RE: ease up on the positive revenue - 5/10/2021 3:46:58 PM

Dark_Revenant

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quote:

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

quote:

(except for a minor conquered city even though they had 5 digit savings - I still think there is a bug here

Private assets need Private Workers. Which are defined by "however much non-Public Worker population there is".

The Private Economy is not dumb enough to build stuff if it lacks the workers to actually run it.

Except this zone had the largest discrepancy between available population and public workers. I'm talking like 108,000 people vs only 20,000 public workers.

(in reply to zgrssd)

Post #: 11

RE: ease up on the positive revenue - 5/10/2021 4:18:59 PM

zgrssd

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Dark_Revenant

quote:

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

quote:

(except for a minor conquered city even though they had 5 digit savings - I still think there is a bug here

Private assets need Private Workers. Which are defined by "however much non-Public Worker population there is".

The Private Economy is not dumb enough to build stuff if it lacks the workers to actually run it.

Except this zone had the largest discrepancy between available population and public workers. I'm talking like 108,000 people vs only 20,000 public workers.

That is missing a few piece of information:
- how much population was already in use in buildings? Particulary farms can quickly drain private workforce.
- is there anything left they could sensibly build or upgrade? Any unexploited resources (other then Recycling)? Could they use more privte food from farming? Did they have enough workers left ot actually run another level of farm/a new farm?

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Post #: 12

RE: ease up on the positive revenue - 5/16/2021 11:19:35 AM

BlueTemplar

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My experience is that the private economy is pretty quick at building and upgrading Light Industry. There's also a Fate Stratagem that does it.

Yeah, selling items, tariffs and tributes pretty much stops working in the late game. If you're not running one of the Profiles that allows for money-creating Stratagems, you're going to have to raise taxes (which is mostly how you get money from those private credit making assets).

You might want to consider lowering expenses. I'm curious as to why you have to pay your workers so much in your "core" zones. In my experience in the late game I instead have to be careful not to reduce the worker salary to 0.

(in reply to zgrssd)

Post #: 13

RE: ease up on the positive revenue - 5/18/2021 5:47:22 PM

Dark_Revenant

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So first of all a big thanks to everyone for the information and help. I had quite a few things to learn regarding the economy.

zgrssd you were right that I didn't have zones upgrading because of population issues; I wasn't keeping a close enough eye on it and was sabotaging growth with recruitment.

BlueTemplar you are also right in that I didn't have to be paying people so much. Another mistake on my part misunderstanding things a bit in terms of happiness and civilization level.

(in reply to BlueTemplar)

Post #: 14