Money (unit: $) is one of the primary mechanics in-game. A good economy allows you to manage and improve the nation, trade resources, muster a sizeable military, and create many buildings. Money is most likely the most crucial resource in the game. If your economy is bad and your nation is earning less than its spending (income is less than expenses) then you'll have a deficit (meaning you will slowly be losing money), and if the treasury's value is negative then your nation is in debt. Being in debt gives a 15% penalty to your stability (a very devastating effect if not resolved quickly), and additionally, you will not be able to do much without money.
Balance, Income and Expenses[]
=Your balance is your net change in income per turn.
- Earning more money than losing = Profit
- Losing more money than earning = Deficit
- Negative value of the treasury = Debt
Ways to Earn Money[]
Taxes[]
Every city in this game produces some tax. The higher population the city has, the more tax it creates. The more cities you have, the more taxes you earn. Your tax income from cities can vary based on your technology, ideology, policies, conscription laws, unrest in cities and city development. It will also increase depending on your taxation laws and stability.
Resources[]
Resource spots not only provide you valuable resources, but income as well. You can increase resource income by increasing how many minerals you make, and also making factories. Cities with higher populations will also receive higher resource income.
Factories[]
Building a lot of factories can provide a high amount of trade income if used properly. Having factories also makes you get a huge boost to resource income (each working factory makes you get weekly 250 000$ resource income).
Trade[]
Trading can allow you to earn money by selling goods and resources to other nations. Usually you may only trade 1-3 units of goods to an AI nation at 1x price.
War Reparations[]
If you conquer any nation, you can add “Demand war reparations” as a term in your peace treaty. This will give you 5% to 25% of the defeated nation's income temporarily. This can help you recover any losses during your campaign. However, War Reparations only works on countries that still earn money after you finish the war, so if you annex all of their cities, reparations won't do anything. It's recommended to annex all enemy cities after finishing a war though, as it will give you much more profit and other benefits over time.
Seizing Treasury[]
You can set “Seize State Treasury" as a peace term when you conquer an enemy. You can set it from 5% to 75% of a nation's treasury. It will provide you the states treasury of the percentage you selected. Seizing nations' treasuries is a very important part of aggressive strategies, as it makes you able to get money quickly.
Research[]
Researching the tax technology in political tech tree can increase your tax income by a lot (seriously). You can also research other things that decrease your expenses, such as "Reduce Government Waste" or "Reduce Corruption". You can also research Factory Output to make your factories produce more goods, thus making you able to sell more. If you don't have enough resources to maintain your production, instead of buying them from other countries think about getting resource tech.
Taxation Laws[]
You can set your taxation laws from Minimum to Maximum. Minimum to Low reduces your tax income in exchange for higher stability, Normal doesn't decrease or increase it, and High to Maximum increases tax income in exchange for reduced base stability.
Puppeting[]
You can get extra money by making another country your puppet. The income amounts to about 30% of the puppet's income. It's reccomended to annex a country once you conquered it though. As puppets are always dragged into your wars, they won't serve as a buffer zone against enemy troops.
Receiving Aid[]
It is possible to receive money and manpower from other nations using the "send aid" function. The aid could be recurring monthly or a one-time transaction. Sometimes someone may want to buy your manpower or land in exchange for money sent through aid.
Policies[]
Some Policies such as "Improve Infrastructure" increase the player's tax income, and some policies decrease the player's military spending.
Developing cities[]
Developing your country’s cities provides your treasury with more tax income; the higher a city’s tier is, the higher its tax income.
Modifiers[]
There are several modifiers that increase a nation’s tax income as well (For example, economic growth). Some formables also have their unique modifiers, which can increase or decrease your tax income.
Events[]
There are many events that increase the amount of money in a player’s treasury when they occur, such as “Economic Boom” or “Stock Market doing Well”. It is also possible to gain money from allowing events such as “Backdoor Arms Contract”, “Corporate Dealing”, or “Monopoly Formation”. However, it is strongly advised to refrain from doing this unless you know what you are doing as it will increase corruption and in turn, lead to a variety of consequences.
Money Usage[]
Money is used:
- To create units
- For military upkeep (maintaining your units)
- To mantain forts
- For making buildings
- To buy resources from other countries
- To send aid to other nations
- For increasing government spending to decrease Unrest in cities, increase your Stability, and to reduce the chance of any of your conquered nations protesting and breaking away, which can be very annoying and dangerous
- To increase research spending, which makes your nation get more technology points and thus research technologies faster
- For funding rebels in other countries
- Potentially buying land or/and manpower from players
Money Warning[]
- Deficit means you are losing more money than you are earning. You can fix this by reducing your military size and your other expenses (like government or research spending). A common fear of newer players is deficit; it is perfectly fine to go into deficit for a short period of time, as long as you fix it soon after and don't lose too much money.
- "In Debt" means your treasury has a negative amount of money. Never let this happen, since you will be defeated with no effort. Being in debt decreases Stability by 15%, and makes you unable to create any troops or buildings.
- Low stability means that your Stability is lower than 45%, and it will decrease your tax income by (50%- Your current stability) You can fix this by using Policies like the Welfare Act, having enough Consumer Goods or lowering your "Taxation Law" and making your "Government Spending" "High" or "Maximum" for a while.
Economic strategy[]
Economics can be split into three stages, early, middle and late.
Early Game[]
During the early stage of the game, you will want to focus on making quick money, one of the best ways to achieve that is selling electronics to other countries (only useful at the very early game, when nobody has done it yet). The second best way and probably the most reliable one is to sell consumer goods, but getting them takes more time and money. Consumers goods take a while to make, considering that you have to get the Steel Factory, Motor Factory, Fertilizer Factory and Electronics Factory and buy some resources if needed. Consumer goods can be sold for semi-high price. Having consumer goods not only benefits your stability (+25% boost!!!), but can net you great wealth by selling them to other countries. However, managing your trades in a unstable world can be a hassle, so playing as a country with many resources will net higher results.
Middle Game[]
You will know that the mid-game has started when the world is being taken over by regional powers (e.g. the Balkans, USA, Germany, UK or Iberia). During the mid-game a lot of unarmed AI countries will be annexed or puppetted. Focus on improving your economy and making it self-sustainable so that you are not reliant on foreign trade. There are two ways to do this, tax income and resource income. You should combine both to achieve the biggest wealth possible.
Late/End Game[]
During this stage you hopefully have created an empire (like other players) and a strong army consisting of artillery, infantry, tanks, naval and air divisions, developed all cities to high/max tiers, built a lot of factories, placed mines on all valuable resource deposits, cranked up government and research spending and got good economic technology. Most of the world world should now be taken over by continental superpowers (Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, North America, Oceania). Now it is the time to have fun. Aim to get nuclear technology if you still didn't so you won't get killed by a random country with nukes (nukes kill your stability very quickly and will collapse you no matter how stable and safe your empire is).
Trivia[]
- Even though most of the countries in the world don't use dollars (e.g. the United Kingdom using pounds or countries in Europe using euros and other currencies), the dollars are used as the currency for all nations.