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James D Burns
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Economy tips

Sat Aug 08, 2015 12:06 pm

Been playing as Britain recently and have found a few things out that I figured all the recent new players might like to know. First some old tips. To get your economy up and running I recommend players do the following in the opening turns of their game:

Turn all of your industries off, stop all trades and stop all purchases so your f4 screen shows just what is being produced with nothing else in the production mix from current buy or sell orders.

Then turn on just enough industries to get everything into positive territory so you produce +10 or so more than you need. So basically your ‘Overall Balance’ line will be about 10 items higher than your ‘Initial Stocks’ line. Leave any excess production capacity turned off and only use it if future population growth or industry demands make it necessary.

If you lack enough production capacity for a specific resource then use the buy screen to buy yourself into the +10 range.

Once you’ve set that all up check the buy screen and look for items with little or no resources on offer for trade (hover mouse over a resource on the buy screen and it tells you what’s on offer on the pop-up). These items will be cash crops, meaning they’ll sell out every turn if you offer them for sale due to worldwide shortages. If you have any cash crops then over-produce those by turning all industries you have on and producing even more of those industries and sell all excess items on the world market.

This should get your private capital in decent shape with a nice surplus that will allow you to build a lot of industries. What comes now is the stuff I’ve learned recently that I hadn’t realized before.

Players then need to realize they only have about 8-10 years before tier 2 buildings are researched and the new buildings become available, so they need to try and get all their tier 1 cards built and on map before the change occurs.

The reason this is important is because you have a limited amount of cards and the only way to build beyond your limited stack of cards is to first build tier 1 and then build all tier 2 cards before you upgrade any of the earlier completed tier 1 buildings. The tier 1 cards go away when tier 2 becomes available, so get them built out ASAP. I’d even advocate postponing rail builds until you get the tier 1 stuff done, except perhaps for some vital stuff in Russia that would get rail into their coal producing regions.

Britain for example has a ton of tea resources in India, but nowhere near enough tea farms in its available pool to utilize all the regions that can produce tea. So I recommend players build a single tier 1 tea farm in every region and then build 1 tier 2 farm in every region once those become available. Once the tier 2 stack is gone then you can think about upgrading the tier 1 buildings.

Lastly never double up resource farms until you have at least one farm in every region that can produce that resource. You get bonus production for extra resources but lose bonus income for every farm you add to the region. So it’s generally better to not double up until later when you have a much higher number of farms already on map and the loss of 1 or 2 bonus items will no longer mean much. Early in game 1 or 2 items might be a large percentage of your total production.

Jim

Edit:

Turns out the last part of this is bad advice, see posts #10 and #11 for clarification. Sorry about that.

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sirhiggins
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Mon Aug 10, 2015 9:37 am

Under buy screen, do you mean the tab after pressing 'T' ?

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James D Burns
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Mon Aug 10, 2015 3:43 pm

'B' is the buy screen, it allows you to buy items from other nations using the trade markets (hover mouse over individual items to see what is on offer, left and right click to place and remove orders). Most other nations will cancel at start orders and offers so takes a turn or two for the offers to stabilize and become dependable. Your commerce vessels and the trade regions they are in will limit which items on offer you can and cannot place buy orders for.

'T' is the trade screen, it allows you to sell to other nations, anything you put up for trade will be shown in the mouse over pop-ups on the buy screen. Though make sure your mouse is hovering over your capital region when you press 'T' to be sure you see all possible trades for your country.

So in the beginning of the game I recommend players stop all trades and cancel any purchase orders on the buy screen. What I do is right click on each item on the buy screen several times to make sure no orders are still in place. This makes sure that the only thing taken into account on the f4 screen is what you are producing so you can then jump between the f4 and f11 screens and turn on industries individually until everything is in the +10 or so range.

I only place new buy orders for stuff I can't produce or have limited production capacity for once I've tweaked all my available industries.

Jim

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Mon Aug 10, 2015 6:49 pm

For a "jump on the pony and ride" kind of guy like me, PON has been a challenge to understand, let alone play well. I so appreciate you taking the time to provide this detailed discussion. I engaged in my first multiplayer game a few months ago and found myself making random, inappropriate and ineffectual decisions. Part of this was gaining familiarity with the different modes of play, but much of it was simply having no sense of how my decisions interacted with the game system. I have been building a bible of advice and suggestions from those of you who understand this game and are willing to share. You explanation of tier building and the tea fields opened my eyes and created an 'AH HA' moment which I have not had so far in trying to play (let alone master) this complex game.

In a second pbem game we have added in many nations not included in the eight nation opening. This was helpful to me as playing a smaller nation, Spain, I have a much better sense of scope. However, your insights make so much sense, thanks.

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loki100
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Tue Aug 11, 2015 8:20 am

great guide.

Think the strategy of shutting everything off and then restarting is sound. 2Coats briefly started a PoN AAR on the paradox forums with the same opening approach. Worth a read for anyone trying to set up the at start economy.

the only bit of the advice here I'd add is trading strategy. In a single player game or a PBEM where most countries are left to the AI, the player has to trade. This can involve buying anything you can and if necessary sell it on. Early game this can work as the smaller powers will have limited trade networks (also probably more use if you are playing a European power). In general if you use mercantalism as your basic economic strategy the game will suffer for it, in nineteenth century terms trade as if your were the UK not Italy.

Mid-game, if you can buy it, do so rather than worry about domestic production. Again that will help the AI and you need a strong AI (this is one way in which PoN really rewards a historical mindset) late game or the entire world economy (incl yours) will grind to a halt due to shortages of key goods
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sirhiggins
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Tue Aug 11, 2015 9:35 am

The problem with this -for me- is that when i make the production +10/commodity, the needed primary commodity has to be increased
(steel <iron+coal for example), so the surplus capital from trade will be lost because of the increased production of base materials.

empusas
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Tue Aug 11, 2015 2:32 pm

Sirhiggins, this is where you pay close attention to your buildings "profitability". If for example, it shows your making 10% profit on the steel your producing, that might mean your cost of supplies your puting into building the steel combines to a value of 8 and the steel you actually produce has a value of 12 on the open market. Therefore, the items your producing are move valuable than the items used in manufacturing the item.

I found it interesting to check my buildings profitability (F10) when the price of goods change (up or down). Generally, when the price of what your manufacturing goes down, then it might be a wise decision to check your profitability of those buildings. Sometimes even turning off the less profitable buildings producing it. Also, this will happen when the price of goods going INTO what your producing goes up or down.

Hope this makes sense and helps,

Empusas

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sirhiggins
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Tue Aug 11, 2015 2:41 pm

I made quite similar decisions, make all stuff about +10unit; only coal, steel, manuf.goods, ammo and supplies are produced in great
quantities to stock it for ship and unit movements/builds. The other group of exception are tropical fruits/gold/luxury goods/chemicals/steel what are exported usually.

With this the state funds and prvt.capital only raising about 1000 per turn, which is not much for Germany...but
i don't want to check every turn for the actual most needed goods and always alter the facilities on and off.
It's enough to check the trades turn by turn when it's misaligned.
The turn speed is enough slow with the calculations by the game engine :)

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James D Burns
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Tue Aug 11, 2015 4:06 pm

The strategy I’ve laid out is an opening strategy only designed to get your private capital into healthy status so you can build up your economy. So for example at game start Britain is lucky to get 1 farm built every few months or so. In my game now (1860) I’m up to a point where I can build one or two farms a turn now.

Now that my economy is healthy I’m in a position to help other nations directly, so for example I’ve built a lot of tobacco farms in the US and rice farms in Siam, as soon as I can get a commerce agreement with them China will get lots of silk and rice farms. Once I’ve got these guys helped, I’ll break the agreements and allow them to seize the farms.

I think it is far more important to get unused resources working in game than to buy stuff from other nations off the global markets. As the game wears on and demand for everything skyrockets it will be lack of a diversity of resources that tanks the economies of the world due to unrest and rebellions popping up everywhere.

If you can get a lot of the bonus resources like tea, tobacco, silk etc. producing at a level that they are plentiful on the world market, it will help all nations keep unrest under control and keep their regions loyal and producing.

80%-90% of the private money available in game is made via selling to your own internal markets, so you need to get that money unlocked by making sure you have sufficient resources to sell to them and a glut of excess to also sell to other countries to sell to their own markets as well. Other nations will make far more money if they have a ton of diverse extra resources to buy and then sell to their own people. If not all that private money stays locked in their populations.

As an example if you only have corn you can only sell x amount to your people. But if you have corn, cattle, rice, grapes and fish the total amount of items sold as food will be higher and your people get a bonus to happiness for the diversity of food. So you make more money and your people are less likely to rebel.

If you depend mostly on buying from the world markets late game, I think you will actually be hurting the game by limiting what is available to the intrinsic markets in the world. Of course if you have a healthy economy as mine is now, it doesn’t hurt to buy a lot of stuff to help out other nations. But for best results try and get most or all of the resource sites on map built out and producing before you make this kind of shift in strategy as to how you spend your private capital each turn.

I cannot stress enough how much more important I think it is to get a ton of textile factories (or any complex industry that requires multiple different supply inputs) producing and selling to the world markets vs. just buying basic items from other nations. Once you have that up and running switching to buying is fine, but you only have 10 years or so until tier 2 removes all the tier 1 cards so don’t delay getting stuff built.

The AI simply isn’t good enough to make enough of these complex structures to feed their late game economies. It’s all up to the player, so early game get all you tier 1 stuff built and then you can double up your resource cards by building tier 2. All these extra resource cards will allow you to feed a healthy complex economy that has lots of factories pumping out the complex items the world markets need as well. Not to mention the fact if you’re the main supplier in the world for textiles, luxury goods, power, etc., you’ll have plenty of extra private capital sitting around to use to buy up all the basic items in the world the AI has sitting on offer.

Another way to look at is this. Every region on map has the same locked away private money potential, the trick is figuring out a way to unlock the money.

So if you are looking at a one region foreign country that only has the potential to build and sell corn, and you simply buy the corn, you slightly help that nation but your own cash reserve is degraded as you are spending your own money to get that corn item.

But if you produce several items that one region nation needs to keep its people happy, you unlock the money from its internal market (it buys from you and sells to its own internal market) and the now unlocked money comes home into your coffers. You can then buy the corn and still help the small country out, but because you sold it items it needed for happiness, you still walk away with a profit. And because it got the money it spent on your stuff back when it sold items to its internal market you did not hurt that nations cash reserve.

Jim

empusas
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Tue Aug 11, 2015 8:40 pm

James D Burns wrote:
The reason this is important is because you have a limited amount of cards and the only way to build beyond your limited stack of cards is to first build tier 1 and then build all tier 2 cards before you upgrade any of the earlier completed tier 1 buildings. The tier 1 cards go away when tier 2 becomes available, so get them built out ASAP. I’d even advocate postponing rail builds until you get the tier 1 stuff done, except perhaps for some vital stuff in Russia that would get rail into their coal producing regions.

Jim


Jim, It's possible I misunderstood what you were saying here, and I thank you immensely for the advice and thoughts put into this discussion. The one point you made is about the building with all your tier 1 cards as soon as possible or you will loose them when the tier 2 cards come out.

While I think it is advizable to build the tier 1's as soon as possible (for different reasons I think), I don't think you actually loose those cards when tier 2 comes out. You have a set amount of procable buildings of each type. When the "tier 2" buildings come out... the way I read it, it actually is added to your "building pool" IE, if you had 3 tier 1 buildings you could still build and get say an 80% increase in that building pool due to new tech etc, your remaining 3 buildings are added to the extra buildings you get from the new tech, but you can't build the OLD TECH anymore. So, say you had 3 left and with the increase in building pool, you get 5 more ... giving you 8 buildings you can now build with the tier 2.

Now, I do think you absolutely right , (the logic isnt as imortant as the outcome) you should build all of those tier 1's as soon as possible, but my reason is when the tier 2's come out they almost always require additional resources other than just money to produce. So, when the economy changes or your in a tight stretch with one particular resource (often coal!), you can shut down the higher tier buildings while still having some production that isnt trying to use the resource your short of. The reaslly expensive structures that use coal, steel, manufatured goods are ones to pay close attention to. I usually leave about 1/2 my buildings NOT upgraded if they use these resources, at least for a long while.

KUDOS to the great thread and the thought provoking discussion!!

Empusas

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James D Burns
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Tue Aug 11, 2015 10:13 pm

I’m basing my logic on what I saw with my logging cards in my current game. I built all my tier 1 logging cards and then they upgraded to tier 2 and 11 new tier 2 cards immediately became available to build when no logging cards were there the turn before.

Then what I assume was due to population increases suddenly 2 of each of my remaining tier 1 resource cards that I had built out but that hadn’t upgraded yet (corn, cattle, tea, etc.) became available to be built when those stacks had been gone before. But no new logging tier 1 cards appeared and the 11 tier 2 cards remained constant.

So I think each stack is its own entity and when you lose tier 1 cards you lose the stack and the farms they could have built for you. I assume my tier 2 cards will see increases due to pop growth eventually, but they probably require a larger growth before any new cards become available for them.

All this is based solely on my observations though, so I could very well be wrong.

Edit:

I don’t like giving bad advice, so I wanted a definitive answer. I decided to go into my game and test it. First thing I noticed was I now only have 8 tier 2 logging farms available to be built (been a while since I last checked) instead of the 11 I had before. The only thing that has changed is my national morale was up near 180 near the end of the Indian Mutiny war and is now down to 130 and falling a bit each turn.

So it looks like the extra tier 1 farms I mentioned above probably occurred due to morale changes and not because of population growth as the timing all fits with when I made my observations.

As my test, I plotted 6 of my 12 on map tier 1 logging farms to be deleted and ran a turn. Sure enough 14 farms are available in the tier 2 stack to be built the next turn so the capacity of the different tiers is tied together as Empusas suggested.

Sorry for the bad advice guys the timing of the end of the war, increase in national morale and the upgrading of my logging farms all tied together to give me a false impression of how it was all working. I thought I had discovered something new and was simply mistaken, sorry about that.

Jim

empusas
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Wed Aug 12, 2015 12:36 am

Don't you love learning as you go allong? I think that's what makes games allot of fun, the experimenting.

Your advice was sound, as I said, regardless of how it happens, and I'd listen to it anyday.

One thing I will add or maybe answer a question you kinda hinted at there in your last post. You were wondering if the morale or war weariness etc was affecting your building pool. What I learned (the hard way) is Your president's numbers as well as his cabinets numbers also affect your building pool. 5 is the "average". You gain buildings in your pool or loose them if the combined scores of congress and president (as the USA but equal leaders for other countries) are above or below the combined score of 5.

For example I just FINALLY gor rid of U.S. Grant serving his 2 LONG terms as president. His scores were 6, 0, 4 (first term) and 6, -1, 4 for the 2nd term. They can change from term to term but usually very little. The 3 numbers if you look on the F1 screen stand for Imperialism, Administrative, and Diplomatic ratings. (they give a tool tip if you mouse over them. Those tool tips don't tell EVERYTHING they affect. For example Grant had a 0 for administrative rating first term and a -1 the second term... When he took office, I went to build buildings and allot of the stockpiles I had was gone (example I had about 5 harbors I could build and they were at 0. SO I spent the next 8 years unable to build harbors. Also, my production went way way down, and the cost to build what I COULD build went up by about 25%. Finally after 8 long years of Grant, Ruthoford B Hayes was sworn in to office and his admin score combined with congress is a 5. So, as I anticipated, I could suddenly build another 5 harbors as well as lots of other things I had down to zero, and MUCH cheaper too.

Have Fun Gaming!!
Empusas

empusas
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One more bit of info

Wed Aug 12, 2015 12:57 am

One other thing I should have mentioned...

After reading the posts again I realized what other iformation was missing.

You mentioned getting more cards for farming type buildings. That is actually an increase in the card pool for different farms that use a discovered technology (steam tractor or something). So, all your "cards" that use tractors would gain production and more cards. whenever I learn a new tech I always go to the (F9) screen to read about my newly acquired technology and what it affects. When it says like you gain 80% pool in the following techs, thats a very good thing, as you gain more cards. Sometimes it only upgrades the buildings you can build ( like from tier 1 to tier 2), but I like the ones that also add more cards.

You do get somewhat of a benefit from population growth from what I've read, you learn tech faster with more people and higher education levels, although lots of educated people can lead to the want for more reforms and harder to keep them all content (but that is for another discussion lol). So, as far as I know there is not a direct connection in population size and your card pool other than that.

Hope that is helpful,

Emp

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sirhiggins
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Thu Aug 13, 2015 11:15 am

Any indea why is that if i place a sell order for example 20units of luxury goods, and on the next turn
the amount is zero? I'm sure there is demand for the commodity but still the sell order is cancelled automatically.
Some of the other goods will sell order are up and running.

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James D Burns
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Thu Aug 13, 2015 12:25 pm

I think it auto-cancels if your stockpile drops to zero during the turn due to internal market consumption. Make sure you have excess items over and above your usage numbers and only sell that. I compare my ‘initial balance’ line (top row) with my ‘overall balance’ line (bottom row) and sell all but 2 of the surplus. So if the top line reads 100 and the bottom line reads 125, I put 23 items up for trade via the trade screen. The extra 2 items leaves room for minor production fluctuations so I don’t need to check the f4 page as often.

Also make sure you hover the mouse over your capital region before you press 'T', it could be your trades get cancelled due to you not trading through the right trade zone. Your capital region assures you can trade anything in your empire as long as it has a proper trade link to the trade network.

Otherwise if you do have a large stock and it is cancelling, it might be a bug.

Jim

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sirhiggins
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Thu Aug 13, 2015 12:55 pm

Great it'll be a bug... thanks anyway.

empusas
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Thu Aug 13, 2015 5:30 pm

Is the sell order actually cancelled (IE in the turn log you get a message as to why the order itself was cancelled). If on the sell line it still has your attempt to sell, but you sell 0 and there is still countries buying the item (check under the "B" screen for that commodity), it can be that other countries just prefer to buy the amount they need from another country offering it.

Also, it helps to make sure you have at least one merchant ship in each trade zone to ensure you can buy from the countries connected to that trade zone... but I think what your doing is selling and that wouldnt apply, I don't think since you ability to buy requires you connected to the trade zone they are selling in. (the number of ships dont matter as long as you have at least 1 there. Where more than 1 ship comes in is when the countries dont have enough transport themselves, they will hire you ships and you make additional money. As USA I make sure I have more overall selling power in every trade zone, but USA is big on comerce and not as important for other countries I dont think.

Emp

Oh a bit more info on the trading... countries preference on who to buy and sell comes from that countries diplomacy with yours, higher gives better chance AND your chances are Double if you have a commerce ageeement with them. Also, some techs you reseach boost your chances of selling and buying to countrries.

33rd Fusilier Regt
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Wed Jun 22, 2016 2:31 am

This is a great thread, restarted a new beta patch following this advise as USA. Have played to the start of 1851, in much better shape. Prior having all structures on would have massive stock-piles at some point there would be a global glut and then a crash in goods prices. For the first six months did not build anything, now can build a farm per turn, mostly fruit, vineyards, tropical fruit, all are high yield. Also, the events where private businessmen obtain luxuries fire and sometimes obtain 15-20 opium/silk/gems. This has boosted national sales and contentment. Great thread still trying to figure out game mechanics though.

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Wed Jun 22, 2016 7:32 am

33rd Fusilier Regt wrote:Also, the events where private businessmen obtain luxuries fire and sometimes obtain 15-20 opium/silk/gems. This has boosted national sales and contentment.

As far as I understood these events are triggered when your private capital stock is very high. Have a look at the price the talented businessmen pay for these bargains, and compare it with the price you would have paid if you had bought this luxury stuff directly on the international markets.

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loki100
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Wed Jun 22, 2016 3:41 pm

Siegfroh wrote:As far as I understood these events are triggered when your private capital stock is very high. Have a look at the price the talented businessmen pay for these bargains, and compare it with the price you would have paid if you had bought this luxury stuff directly on the international markets.


true but they often buy things that are not easily available - I tend to think of it as a slightly illegal black market form of trade, bit of smuggling, evading sanctions or export rules - so of course you are paying just that little bit more?
AJE The Hero, The Traitor and The Barbarian
PoN Manufacturing Italy; A clear bright sun
RoP The Mightiest Empires Fall
WIA Burning down the Houses; Wars in America; The Tea Wars

Siegfroh
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Wed Jun 22, 2016 3:52 pm

I didn't say I dislike the feature :)

In the one game I played as Austria until 1856, before deciding to await a new patch with the issue of experience levels not shown solved, I had plenty of money and could afford to build something new every one or two turns, so I am happy these merchants' initiatives make the game a tiny bit less easy. And it adds a bit more of flavour.

djconklin
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Mon Aug 29, 2016 5:06 pm

>your f4 screen

On my HP laptop, the F4 key shrinks the screen size. Any other options? Is there a list of what keys do what?

>you have a limited amount of cards

How do I see these cards?

Siegfroh
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Mon Aug 29, 2016 5:36 pm

djconklin wrote:>your f4 screen

On my HP laptop, the F4 key shrinks the screen size. Any other options? Is there a list of what keys do what?

At the top of the game screen with the main map, below the line showing capital, steel, coal, etc., you see small icons namd F1, F2, F3 etc. A click on them will open the screens, as do the F-keys.

The tooltips show which screen will be opened by each icon or F-key.

A PDF with keyboard commands and shortcuts here, together with other useful stuff:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/pride-of-nations-strategy-guide-overview-and-general-strategies.539829/

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