German Economoy 1880 Start

[hollowfaith]

Hey there!

I just re-bought PoN from Matrix games so that I could have the latest patch (It is, after all, simply the greatest strategy game that covers this period in such an immersive way). I was having a grand game as France on my 1850's campaign on my old GamersGate.com version, but with the new version and latest patch I decided to start a new game.

So on to the question.

Germany starts in a pretty hefty deficit at the beginning of 1880. Going through the factories, very few are running in the red, and most of the places in red were ports/shipbuilding. Turning them off saved me a little over a hundred in capital but not nearly enough to stem the loss.

I'm not too sure as to how to alleviate the hemmorhage in capital funds. At turn 2 I'm sitting at -2834 with only 1914 coming in, which on turn 3 will put me at -743 in capital. Selling a lot of my extra goods on the market didn't seem to help any.

I also read through Herrdan's AAR but he only starts it in 1881, and by March of 1882 he's clearly sitting on a massive capital cushion of just over 30k and he doesn't explain what he did to pull the nose of the economy up to get to that point.

I've also read Loki's excellent Italian AAR as well which gave me some great pointers, and was an exhilaratingly fun read.

So any advice for a semi-noob? Do I just keep playing and take the inflation that comes from racking up debt? I plan on restarting the campaign. I'm feeling the initial turn is critical, lol.

Thanks guys, semper anticus!

EDIT: I managed to sell enough product to drop the deficit to -127. Still, I'd still appreciate some possible long term economic strategies!

[loki100]

I think there are some oddities to the 1880 set up files, but it was in the middle of a long depression so it maybe realistic.

Some rough and ready generic advice.

You want spare PC, not least to build out every coal resource you have - its going to be in massive demand as fleets convert from sail and more rail lines get built, so that'll underpin your own economy and give you a ready export income line.

I'd suggest work out your production/likely imports of the key goods - steel/manufactures/coal. Then set yourself a per turn surplus budget for PC (as above you need to do more than just survive here, you want a ready surplus to invest).

Then there are 2 ways forward, both rely on shutting down everything as the next step. One is very detailed planning, there is an old PoN AAR by 2Coats over on the Paradox Forum where he did this and describes the process very well. The other is a bit more broadbrush. Make some guesses using the data so far, per turn PC from trades etc.

Now start to open things, coal, then steel and manuf plants. Count up demand/production of those goods and PC. Then look over your other farms/factories for anything that notionally has +ve PC, open those starting with the easiest to trade (luxury goods are an obvious one). If I recall in my Italy AAR I had to do this around 1890 due to a world shortage of coal. Be pessimistic, always remember it is usually cheaper to import than produce. What I would do is to set up a model, run it 2-3 turns and review - is your PC around where you want it to be? If you think you have surpluses then start opening factories/farms that you need but don't produce PC. For farms, even late game you can import a lot of your food so just keep an eye on the F4 screen for any obvious issues - remember that you can only sell so much of any food type to your population so unless you can trade it out (not likely), keep it shut.

[hollowfaith]

Thanks for the advice friend! My apologies for taking so long in getting back to you. I just got back in town so I wasn't able to really check the forum much. Interesting. I'll try that out over the course of my game and see if I can locate that 2Coat's AAR.

So if I build stockpiles does the overstock go to waste? I remember reading that somewhere, that up until a certain point the stock is wasted.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around how the game works, lol.

Again thanks for your help!

[Citizen X]

Overstock goes to waste. Indicated by large amounts being lost to other reasons than production and selling to the populace.