Economic Investment & Growth (Full Version)

All Forums >> [Current Games From Matrix.] >> [Napoleonics] >> Crown of Glory



Message

jchastain -> Economic Investment & Growth (7/6/2005 12:53:20 AM)

I decided to take a somewhat unusual tact to see what the real impact of economic investment would be. I played Prussia and maintained absolute and strict neutrality throughout. Over roughly 3 years, I focused my efforts solely on building up my economy. In the end, I decided that province improvements actually have a very minor impact on the game. That is actually fairly realistic, but it does limit the strategic impact of a fairly substantial portion of the game.

Here is a small sampling. All are all provinces that are specializing in their best attribute and have full labor (as much as possible) allocated to that pursuit:

Magdeburg: +2 farms, +2 population = +4 food (21-25, 19% growth)
Pomerania: +2 farms, +1 population = +4 food (22-26, 18% growth)
Posen: +3 farms, +3 population = +3 food (32-35, 9% growth)
W Prussia: +2 farms, +1 population = +4 food (24-28, 16% growth)

Silesia: +3 farms, +2 population = +3 wood (32-35, 9% growth)

Krakow: +3 banks, +1 population = +3 money (12-15, 25% growth)
Thorn: +3 banks, +0 population = +3 money (13-16, 23% growth)

Labor clearly benefitted the most, though slightly less than the 50% per factory stated in the manual:

E Prussia: +2 factories, +2 population = +10 labor (9-19, 111% growth or 45% per additional factory)
Masovia: +4 factories, +1 population = +8 labor (4-12, 300% growth or 31% per additional factory)

My Conclusions:

Every economist dreams about 20% growth over 3 years and that is what you can get. But in game terms, that doesn't amount to much. Conquering one neighboring province or enticing one additional protectorate can yield far more additional production than spending a year closely managing every investment in your entire economy. Essentially (with the notable exception of labor which is primarily used to purchase more upgrades), for every economic investment, be it a farm, a factory or a bank, you get roughly one additional unit of whatever you are producing.

Feudalism: A Foot Note

Another point worth mentioning is that I noticed the clause in the manual (section 8.1.3 regarding feudalism) that states: "Feudalism lowers a nation's income in all tradable resources (except money) by 1 resource per level of feudalism". It wasn't clear on whether that was one for the entire nation or one of each item that was produced in each province. The economic report shows one per level being reduced so I assumed that's all it was, but just for fun I tried abolishing feudalism (lowering my feudalism payment to zero) and waiting to see what happened when it drifted down. Doing so had no impact upon production so those 3 per unit that are deducted on the economic report really are the only impact. In fact, I was generally underwhealmed with the economic impact of such a major societal change. The biggest impact was that labor was reduced while the time to build improvements was shortened so that labor became the gating factor rather than the build queue. That allows additional concentration of your improvements but overall the impact is quite minor.



Ralegh -> RE: Economic Investment & Growth (7/6/2005 2:02:43 AM)

Very interesting findings, jchastain. But in your analysis you attribute all the causes to the increase in the farms etc - I would expect just the population increase to cause this level of improvement. Perhaps something is broken. - Eric?



sol_invictus -> RE: Economic Investment & Growth (7/6/2005 5:56:42 AM)

I too like the fact that your results showed that a player can't optimise his economy and have a huge impact, since the game starts with most provinces as already well developed. It should be simply a matter of the player choosing priorities to change things on the margin. I am surprised that your slashing of Feudalism didn't cause more upheaval.



Mynok -> RE: Economic Investment & Growth (7/6/2005 6:00:54 AM)


Abolishing feudalism also increases merchant income significantly and raises maintenance costs significantly. If you want to see the effects most dramatically, try playing Turkey and reducing feudalism to 25 from the 62 it starts at........ [X(]



YohanTM2 -> RE: Economic Investment & Growth (7/6/2005 2:09:50 PM)

It looks like the effect might vary by country? This would be a good thing.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Mynok


Abolishing feudalism also increases merchant income significantly and raises maintenance costs significantly. If you want to see the effects most dramatically, try playing Turkey and reducing feudalism to 25 from the 62 it starts at........ [X(]




YohanTM2 -> RE: Economic Investment & Growth (7/6/2005 2:11:45 PM)

I would be disappointed if all the effort to work on your economy had little effect over the course of the war.

jchastain, I wonder if the impact of barracks etc. to build better units might have more focus in a game of this length?



willgamer -> RE: Economic Investment & Growth (7/6/2005 8:33:49 PM)

Dang! I'm currently attempting an econ game with Spain. Given your results all I can say is I'm brokenhearted.... I was really looking forward to econ being a viable approach [:(][:(][:(][:(]



Erik Rutins -> RE: Economic Investment & Growth (7/6/2005 9:03:58 PM)

This is just my experience, but I've found that these boosts to add up when you are developing improvements over an entire nation. Maybe I have lower expectations of what can be accomplished in a year or two but I've found that when fighting a long campaign ignoring your economic improvements is not a good idea. With that said, we're watching and listening and taking notes on all feedback.



DrewMatrix -> RE: Economic Investment & Growth (7/6/2005 9:42:10 PM)

Isn't another way to get a lot more wine and spice and farms to just move in with your army and take someone else's ? (he says innocently)



Alex Gilbert -> RE: Economic Investment & Growth (7/6/2005 11:57:41 PM)

I think this is an interesting analysis, but perhaps things are not as limited as this. Farms add more than just food, dont they? I think there was something in the strategy suggestions in the manual that horses and perhaps also wool/cotton were increased by farms.

Also, it may be that balanced improvements do better. For instance, the population growth you reported may have been limited by a lack of roads improvements.



Beorn -> RE: Economic Investment & Growth (7/7/2005 12:34:12 AM)

Very interesting study!

And it seems realistic to me that, in a short scenerio you cannot make economic changes which overwhelmingly change things. However, if you are talking the long run, 10-15 years, certainly, then it should make a very significant difference.



EarlPembroke -> RE: Economic Investment & Growth (7/7/2005 3:25:31 AM)

You do want it so that in the short run, conquest adds more than management of resources. Thus you have the realism of "it's easier to go take someone else's than build your own." But having said that, I also like to play an economic game first, which allows you to do more later. I haven't played enough to have an opinion on whether it should be tweaked. But this is interesting to see the result of the study. Thanks.



JosephL -> RE: Economic Investment & Growth (7/7/2005 3:33:46 AM)

Im not convinced by this. Yes, it seems farms are not so effective, though if you took a crazy province like Stockholm and did farms+wood you'd have wood coming out your ears... so maybe the problem is it requires some serious "buckling down" on selecting provinces.

What doesn't have me convinced is A) Labor and B) Barracks. Barracks didn't get any study but they do two very huge things. First they make better troops and second they increase the speed at which you get a new technology. In a higher glory game (say 2000+) this could be stunningly important.

In the end it is true that most of your building will be split between factories and barracks... banks and farms seem a little weak in this study. The other structures don't seem very vital... except roads in some cases :)

-Joe



jchastain -> RE: Economic Investment & Growth (7/7/2005 7:51:14 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: JosephL
Im not convinced by this. Yes, it seems farms are not so effective, though if you took a crazy province like Stockholm and did farms+wood you'd have wood coming out your ears... so maybe the problem is it requires some serious "buckling down" on selecting provinces.


Well, I did specialize each province in the commodity that it was best suited for. Ralegh has some excellent guides that detail production base figures for each commodity in each province and that is what I used to determine who did what. What I presented above is somewhat oversimplified, but I literally tracked every commodity in every province and the figures above represent the biggest impacts - totally focused labor in the primary commodity within the most advantageous provinces. I even studied similar times of the year and made sure there was no inclement weather to reduce potential impacts of those types of external influences. Of course, my results were limited to Prussia. But Eric's comments above seem to confirm in my mind that my numbers are in the right ballpark.

quote:

What doesn't have me convinced is A) Labor and B) Barracks. Barracks didn't get any study but they do two very huge things. First they make better troops and second they increase the speed at which you get a new technology. In a higher glory game (say 2000+) this could be stunningly important.


Barracks are important, though the real importance is that the barracks level determines (1) which specialized troops can be produced, (2) what the starting morale of the unit will be, and (3) drives military advances. I upped my barracks to where I could build riflemen in at least 1 province and made barracks advancements in several others as well. Labor is important to some degree. While you need some for building units, it is primarily used for building additional improvements. And as stated above, more than anything else, labor production is impacted by additional factory upgrades so investments in this area have far more impact than in other areas.

quote:

In the end it is true that most of your building will be split between factories and barracks... banks and farms seem a little weak in this study. The other structures don't seem very vital... except roads in some cases :)


Yep. And that is the point - building your economy (factories for additional textiles or luxeries, farms for food, wine and timber) all have very limited impacts. While not discussed above, when you consider the production that must be diverted to "development" in order to complete these improvements in a timely manner, I am not at all certain a player receives any benefit at all from these investments. (ie. if I divert 40% of my slider labor to "development" for 3 turns to complete a factory, will the additional output produced by that factory add up to more than what could have been produced by the effort devoted tyo development to begin with? I'm not sure that it will.)



I don't think we want a player to be able to build sweden into the strongest economic engine in Europe within 10 short years - that would be far too ahistorical and unrealistic. However, as things are now, I suspect that most people will not bother to invest in many improvements and most investment will be focused on barracks, which give real benefits. I think that is a shame as it effectively trivializes the entire economic development portion of the game and makes one of the major strategic pillars of the game almost meaningless and therefore ignorable. Personally, I think that the impact of farms and factories should be a bit greater to make economic development a viable part of the stratgic portfolio - not so much as to make it so that everyone must focus on building their provinces in order to compete, but just enough so that it is worth considering as one of the options. Should I spend my resources or guns or butter? hmmmm. Right now, there is no real incentive to buy anything but guns.

The problem, of course, is that if they are given too much of an impact then the economy might become awash in resources which causes a different set of balancing problems. I think that if we make the change I would prefer here and raise supply, then we need a corresponding increase in demand to maintain a balanced economy. I've got a few ideas about that as well, but I'll save them for another time.



Naomi -> RE: Economic Investment & Growth (7/7/2005 5:42:54 PM)

I treated the economic development this way. I am not sure how a particular economic development decison bears upon the receipts or anything else. So I proceeded to lift all under-developed provinces to half-advanced status, i.e. 5/10 for each area of development except, perhaps, gun and wall (for less srategically important provinces). Really, I hope economic development can hv significant effect, as this aspect of game play does command much of my attention and effort.



carnifex -> RE: Economic Investment & Growth (7/9/2005 6:54:02 PM)

dont underestimate banks

sure it's only 10% to province money but once built that 10% adds up over time and pays for itself many times over

same for farms - it's not only food, it's horses, wool, cotton, timber, wine, spices

yeah it'll definitely take you a couple of years to see any results but like i said early investment pays off in the long run



Page: [1]

Valid CSS!




Forum Software © ASPPlayground.NET Advanced Edition 2.4.5 ANSI
1.359375