The principle of diminishing trade income returns

[MKeogh]

I can't say that I'm too happy to the new econ changes. It appears a rehash of 1.x: I'm super rich and everyone else is broke.

I'm playing Sweden on VH campaign. It's around turn 50 and I've been the wealthiest country by far since turn 5 or so. I'm able to fill in my construction queues without thought as to cost, buy any treaty I want, and have two full stack armies crushing pitifully weak Denmark. It's boring. Despite all the stability and CAI problems, at least I had some fun trying to build-up my economy and now that's gone. Meanwhile, almost all the AI nations are bankrupt.

Is Austria busted economically? Probably, but the solution is to work on Austria to make it more financially viable, not make things easier for everyone else. I'd suggest putting some upkeep back in for generals. Maybe 250 was too much, but 0 upkeep is absurd.

My thinking about the economic engine is that something has to be done about merc recruitment. They've got be greatly reduced in availability and their initial recruitment costs should be much more expensive. This is to prevent the CAI from going on a recruiting spree in the first turn and then being broke for the rest of the game. A broke AI is a passive AI even if it has a sizeable army.

EDIT:

I've trying out the Patch 3 as Sweden on VH campaign again. As a player, the economic engine has been great. Generals do not have upkeep, but the diminishing trade function has worked very well to keep my economy from "snowballing" despite my taking three cities off the Danes, five from the Poles, and one each from Bremen and the Catholic League. I have approximately four armies, but to save money I usually keep 2-3 of them garrisoned in small cities. Putting a large army in the field is expensive as it's been since time eternal.

The AI, the other hand, is still struggling. Some them went bankrupt within two turns. Almost every city that I've conquered has maybe ONE improvement which was probably built with the initial starting funds. How bad are things economically for the AI? I went into the red a few times and saw that I was STILL ranked in the top 5 economically! Again, too many AI nations start with armies they can't afford and then compound that issue by going on a recruiting/hiring binge with their starting money. The AI has been incredibly passive due to being broke, and it really hurts the game.

[MIKE GOLF]

Can someone kindly point out where the trade script is located? I have searched and must be going blind and or senile because I cannot find it whatsoever. IMO the trade script is too unbalanced as is and would like to experiment with the script.

[Gigantus]

There is no trade script. It's entries in the EDB: core_buildings give a additional, individual trading bonus and a global trading bonus deduction, example (from RotK):

        large_stone_wall requires factions { barbarian, middle_eastern, [ snip ]
        {
            capability
            {
                wall_level 2
                
                [ snip ]
                
                trade_base_income_bonus bonus 6 requires factions { all, }   ; individual, added bonus for settlement - Gig
            }
            faction_capability  ; global deduction from all settlements - Gig
            {
                trade_base_income_bonus bonus -1 requires factions { all, }
            }

If you do your math then you will realize that the trading bonus is cancelled with the sixth large_stone_wall core building (gets a bit more complicated when applied to all core_buildings in possible random numbers of settlement levels) , after that it will reduce the bonus from other buildings in the settlement until it reaches zero over all. All that's left then in the city is income from tax and merchants.

Your max score will be achieved by having a fixed number of settlements, with fixed levels - pyramid style:

1x - huge stone wall
2x - large stone wall
3x - stone wall
etc

It also depends at what level the deduction starts, it requires a rethinking of tactics: have one or two cities at max levels to churn out high level units and let the rest generate the money for the upkeep\recruitment at lower city levels.

[MIKE GOLF]

Thanks for the quick reply as always!

From what I can see 1648 does not use the city level pyramid scheme as all the cities start as large cities. Instead it uses the "verheer" (The Country is Bleeding) building to supply global reduction in trade. There is a verheer in each province which in effect stops all trade for a given faction between 16 and 20 settlements to include merchant trade. Using Austria as an example, I have built all the buildings that provide trade benefits in each province for the Austrian Habsburgs and it still adds up to less then a thousand gold pieces or florins worth of trade, thus making it nearly impossible to construct any buildings or recruit any armies.

Currently, I have eliminated the faction_capability trade_base_income_bonus -1 with:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

        verheer city requires factions {  }
        {
            capability
            {
                happiness_bonus bonus -1
                trade_base_income_bonus bonus -5 requires factions { all, }
            }
            faction_capability
            {
              ;  taxable_income_bonus bonus -3 requires factions { all, }
              ;  trade_base_income_bonus bonus -1 requires factions { all, }

I have also added a few other negative trade bonuses and it seems to make things livable for a faction that starts with 2 provinces as well as for larger factions such as Prussia. I haven't been able to progress very far turn wise, but things seem much more playable now.

If in the future that factions do become uber wealthy the the global trade penalty can be used with specific buildings such as the top tier or top two tiers of the infantry recruitment buildings and perhaps a global tax penalty can be add to the top tier or top two tiers of the artillery building. This will have the added benefit of limiting recruitment centers to a few settlements. Not quite sure what effect this will have on the ai as the player can always destroy the recruitment buildings when more income is needed, but the ai never destroys buildings in my experience.

[Gigantus]

Ah yes, I was mixing up 1648 and RotK - we got the same diminishing income implemented in both, but RotK has 'normal' city progression, hence doesn't use the special building.

It's possible to use a script to trigger effects for individual factions or based on a total count of settlements, all through the event_counter condition in EDB.

[k/t]

The problem is that taxable_bonus things don't work.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...57#post8692157

[Gigantus]

The diminishing income principle uses a trade_income_bonus penalty (see post #24 as well). Hence no income from trade at some stage, no connection to tax income.

Taxable_income_bonus hasn't worked from day 1 as your link confirms.

[k/t]

I was talking to Mike Golf, but now that I look closer, he had those lines edited out in his script.

[Napoli]

I actually recall there being an event that temporarily nukes trade completely, even if you are a small faction with only three cities. If this is so, perhaps it might be possible to just create an event that makes this the case for everyone at almost all times except once or twice per year. (simulating an annual or bi-annual tax I suppose)

I never realized how much I would miss seeing carts driving around on my roads until they suddenly aren't. It is obvious that the real problem is that there are too many trade buildings that upgrade trade bonuses compared to most other mods and vanilla campaigns. If you end up losing all trade anyway, I can't help but wonder what the point of all these buildings even is.

Additional note: I tried compensating for lack of trade income with merchants. It didn't work. All resources started off only being worth 1-3 ducats / turn. Then they dropped to 0 and never recovered.

[Gigantus]

The black plague 'nukes' trade completely in any city it infects.

[Napoli]

The black plague 'nukes' trade completely in any city it infects.

I know. It definitely wasn't that.
There are also events for farms pop grown being negated and such. As well as events that suddenly boost unrest to insanely high levels (like 75%) or make it so that markets cause disorder.

On that note, I wonder if it might be a better alternative to make unrest increase with trade buildings so that it forces the player to use trade income on happiness buildings. The AI can't plan for it, but then again, they can't plan for not having trade either.
I'm used to Baden and Palitinate basically standing still like statutes because the aforementioned bankruptcy problems never being fixed. (Why on Earth does the AI do this CA?)

[Gigantus]

Oh that - those are random, scripted disaster events.

Even after all these years no one has succeeded to write a satisfactory AI economy script - just simply too many variables.