How to deal with excess capital

[Egg Bub]

It is 1852 and I am playing as Great Britain. Having seen several threads warning about rapid industrialisation, I have invested mostly in agricultural sites and avoided building many steel/mfg factories or railways. I have not yet had to build more coal extraction structures, because I still have excess to sell. Average contentment usually increases by 0.54% as I am importing/producing plenty of stuff.

The problem is this - I am accumulating capital faster than I can use it. The only way I can get rid of it is by investing in structures (more capital in long term) and importing stuff (which I make a profit on anyway). I have more money than I can use for decisions etc. and I don't want to raise taxes much.

Is this ever going to stabilise - if so what is a sensible amount of capital to have? I know that historically Britain put much capital into overseas investment in developing countries, but I can't seem to raise relations to high enough levels for this to be successful (state visits are rarely accepted because we are too powerful! ). If not will I have to wait for the end of a business cycle and get an economic crisis?

Thanks in advance.

[Kensai]

Taxes.
Lower the census ones (which give the income) and push excise and commercial to higher levels (which convert income in state funds directly). Also, try to play with handicaps if it possible. Being reckless and doing something wrong is not a problem.

For more of a challenge, you can also join our MP game. Playing against real human players will keep you on your toes...

[Jim-NC]

The easiest way to get rid of excess capital is to spend it. I would recommend you pay extra for everything (you can use the bid more function - which charges you 25% more) You click on the icon in between the + symbols in all areas of trading. This way you are also more likely to get what you want. If you do that with the taxes (as Kensai suggests), you should be able to lower your capital. I don't have a magical number for how much you need, but keep enough to be able to build at least 1 or 2 structures a turn. If you hold too much, you get the great deals, like 0 opium for $75 (new business emergence).

[James D Burns]

You can invest heavily in buildings like shipyards, they’ll help burn off some excess capital every turn if you have money that needs spending. Building more merchant ships will also use up a lot of excess capital.

I’ve found that once you accumulate 4,000 or so capital, your growth each turn begins to slow considerably as private merchants start to spend more and more each turn for rare items. Eventually your income will be close to what the private merchants spend each turn and you’ll stop accumulating large amounts of capital.

Finally if you simply have tons of capital still, order a lot of unneeded items on the world market and get the cash back into circulation to help out other nations. While crippling other nations economies by not buying their stuff may help in the short term, in the long run if they go bust it affects your economy too as no one will have cash to buy your goods. It’s probably best to keep the economy humming along and healthy, even if you end up helping out nations you may end up fighting some day.

As to politics, I’ve found that state visits are not the way to go early on. Every time I get a group of diplomats, I try and sign a bunch of commercial agreements with nations I wish to become friends with. While most of the agreements get turned down, inevitably one or two will sign. These agreements really boost goodwill and only after they are signed do I go for state visits to increase attitudes. They seem to accept state visits far more often when a commercial agreement exists already.

In my Britain game I had about 4 defensive agreements and 8-12 commercial agreements signed by 1856 using this system. I should note that you should make a point of trying to keep about 6 or so diplomats available so you can play your colonial cards, so don’t use up all of the diplomats every time you get some.

[Pocus]

Chances to accept a treaty, for the AI, is altered by a variable called AIAcceptMod, that you can check in the diplomacy files... State Visit has +15, Commercial Agreement has +10, so James I think you just got lucky... State Visit is the easier to accept agenda for the AI.

For the rest, that's a very good point, i.e to syphon away with trade the excess stocks of the AI... you give them your capital, and you allow them to be rid of extra piles of merchandises, that decay rarely... If you are playing solo, you can act as the 'world economic balancer' with a strong economy.

[Egg Bub]

Thanks again for the replies. Very helpful.