The manual! Chapter 4 is basically what you’re looking for.
-Tom
I said not the manual!
Ok, I didn’t realize the manual included a “getting started” chapter.
Can I ask where so much of your money is going? Are your salaries set high?
You can always lower taxes again if you go too far. In my limited experience, all of the quality of life buildings are pretty affordable and seem to be very effective at keeping people happy.
If you have any stratagems that help boost private assets those might indirectly help some with your cashflow problem too. IIRC the Efficiency Drive stratagem is also the one that lets you roll for cash and can help in a pinch.
In response to morale demands, I’ve raised soldier salary to .004cr, or 26 credits a turn. That’s the biggest culprit. I have only one regiment, 3 or 4 independent battalions, and militia. More soldiers would help me conquer more territory, which would possibly bring in more income, but the soldiers would gulp down even more of my cash.
Anyway, I guess I’ll try raising taxes. To pull that off, it looks like one needs the Interior Council, to avoid the -25% penalty for trying to do so without using the Director of the Interior Council.
That’s not a huge outgoing?
How big is your main town? I’d expect a Big Town to be paying for that in service tax alone…
I usually end up getting bankrupted by building sprees and suddenly having to pay a lot more worker wages than I’d expected
I’ve got a pretty small town; I’ll check the size when I fire up the game again. It’s still pretty early in the game. I do have other expenses; another 25 credits in salaries, and some other stuff, yielding a 40 credit loss a turn or thereabouts.
Despite getting my shiny new 3060 Ti, this game remains my most played in weeks. So good.
It is a very good game. I quit my first two games after I messed up construction. My third game is going well, except that I immediately went to war with neighboring major and minor regimes.
I’ve fallen into the trap of wanting more things in the game, even though it already has so much and I love it so much. I’d love for a decent naval implementation, really just to make water feel important and especially for what it would do for my logistics. I’m thinking of all the sweet sweet transport points I could get from a big port and how well that could link all of my coastal cities.
I’ve also found that a lot of the late-game unit types are pretty blah. Something to really shake up the tactical game(granted, I’ve not really dabbled in the nukes and maybe they do this), rather than some new unit models that feel pretty similar to all the others. Why not hover units that can skirt across previously inaccessible terrain or a walker upgrade that lets them rocket behind enemy lines. Being able to mind control some of the native wildlife would be cool too.
Also I’d be interested in some additional late game construction options. Let me terraform or build wonders or something.
I agree it would be nice to have some tactical variability in the late game. And mega projects for late game would be super cool.
Naval is one of the major features planned for 2021 - in the below video, last 20 minutes, the creator shares some ideas he’d like to try. Great to hear that he is thinking of how interesting maps may be with real oceans and continents.
I also like the idea of increasing informational fog of war, which is already an interesting and unique (?) mechanic. The UI could be improved on this.
The idea of finding a way to scrap multiple unused stragems for something else is nice to - one reaches a point after mid point where there are dozens and dozens of unused cards.
Thanks for sharing this, I’ve been trying in vain to locate a source of information on his future plans. His blog doesn’t get updated much and I don’t see much from him on the forums either. I will say, the forums are otherwise very active and can be an interesting read.
I would very much pay for an expansion/dlc for this game if it gave him more time to work on it.
Wow, that’s a really interesting video. I don’t normally listen to interviews with designers, but I’m enjoying this one. Thanks for posting it.
I’m frustrated with demands. Especially ones that want me to improve a given profile. It seems impossible unless the demand was slight and you get lucky.
How can I raise say my democratic profile if I’m never given decisions that involve it? Actually the opposite choices are more the norm and picking the best one for the situation actively sets you back.
If I refuse the demand leaders get mad, fine I’ll take the lesser hit. But they’ll just ask again in a turn or two. I wonder if it’s better to accept the demand and live with the inevitable failure (which will come due in say 9 turns) or refuse, take less of a hit now but risk similar demands in subsequent turns.
Tech and recon demands are usually pretty doable. So are raising some “points” like education, bureaucratic, security, or whatever.
Another one I hate is raising civilization level. It’s impossible after taking a city and funny enough that’s when I get the demand. It take many turns and several expensive (in terms of workers) QOL buildings. This seems to me impossible after taking a back-water minor in the time given.
I love the game. Can’t stop playing it. But I don’t understand half of it.
I suggest being more picking with the leaders you are appointing - reject or fire those who do not align with the ethos you want to build. Early game this is a challenge, but once you have a decent Interior Ministry running it should be limited only by your PP. The same goes for factions - figure out which one you really want to be promoting via leaders and which others you’d rather keep only in reserve/assassinate. Once I realized this was a sub game of its own I started having much better experience with leaders by mid game.
I also find conquering cities a very mixed bag, given all the challenges that come afterwards. I wish it were easier to simply raze the city and its people. I guess this is somewhat realistic in that I can’t just do that.
My pet peeve of the moment is design - a spreadsheet with drop downs by category would be infinitely better than the UI currently used. Especially for air design. Hopefully this is addressed eventually.
But, I still love this game - many dozens of hours since the Steam release in December, still lots to learn.
Hey thanks Icebear! I’m with you on the leaders. I pick a faction I want to work with and keep doing those things. I even figured out how (I think) to bolster a faction for a majority in parliament. These guys bounce back quick if I happen to piss them off.
But the demands, ugh. After a refusal there needs to be more time before they repeat the demand.
I got a question about model research that’s been bugging me. I can’t find a direct answer in the manual or online.
Once I have discovered a model, say light aircraft, do I have to design one in order to allow discovery of medium aircraft? It seems like I do, but I’m not sure.
I don’t think so - I think you can look on the “Type” window in the MNG screen to see that which models are discoverable. Some require the preceding model to be discovered already, others also require a separate tech (e.g. high velocity guns for anti-tank), but I don’t think any require you to have working models of the preceding tech in use.
I actually believe that you do. Very noticeable with aircraft since it’s a long chain of models that isn’t really dependent on additional technologies.
That’s exactly where I noticed it too. But then I’ve had Flak Gun discovered without an AT Gun design. I wonder if that was some kind of event. Don’t know what to think.
Thing is, early game all these designs suck without lots of applied physics. I don’t want to design a Medium 2e aircraft that can only go 3 hexes unloaded.
Yeah, early game if I don’t have anything else to design I’ll do the next aircraft type, but they are pretty useless for anything but recon until later techs. Getting airbases built up is more worth the time because that takes awhile