Allow nations to have a deficit?

[Icevulture]

In real life, countries have deficits. We all know this. If you're stupid with your money, you will lose it and be forced to borrow. Just look at the USA after they wasted their money in Iraq. My own country (Canada) also has a large debt, and I'm sure there are plenty of others with a debt. Should civilizations be allowed to go into the negatives in gold and be forced to pay interest on the negative balance until they bring it above zero again?

I don't see it as an extremely difficult thing to program in. Maybe it could be part of the discovery of banking or another similar technology.

Your thoughts?

 

[toft]

Its a brilliant idea

Never saw the point in borrowing money - with this little feature the topic might even have a point...

 

[Reinhard]

This is already in Civ3, you'll just have to manually find the financing from AI nations.

 

[Dearmad]

The current economic theories about national debt and how it plays out aren't sophisticated enough to explain it.

One the one hand, debt is good to build credit, ala Hamilton's theories. On the other hand, debt can hold you back and lead to horrible governance (germany post wwi). If anyone could describe the effect debt should have... another person will argue the counter.

Bottom line is, if you owe the bank all its money... you *own* the bank... so national debts as large as the US are in fact unimportant, since all the money is ours.

Then again, CHina owns a lot of $$ and could flood the market with them- dropping the dollar, ruining its own economy and the american way of life...

confusing...

 

[stormbind]

UK is another example: think WW2.

Although borrowing money exists as an option, it does not have the desired effect. I would also like to see deficits allowed.

What would be the risks of deficit? The case of the UK, it was the economic argument behind dispanding an empire (though there were other reasons aswell).

 

[Commander Bello]

From whom would you borrow the money? Who should determine your rating (AAA - junk)?

I don't see this work, and therefor, I don't like the idea as it would just mean that you don't have to care about money at all.

 

[Philips beard]

In Norway we don't have any deficit, but billions of dollars in funds all over the world!

Our plan is to buy all the world, and enslave all of you moneylenders!!!


Muahahahahahahahaha!

 

[Icevulture]

You can borrow money from banks or from other nations. They can easily implement something once you have a debt for too long of a time. Let's say you've been in the negatives for 20 turns in a row. Upon turn 21, there are consequences. Let's say your cities' health starts to diminish (because you'd have to divert funds from health care to pay off the debt), or you could have buildings being sold as a type of foreclosure. How about entire cities being liquidated and demolished. Maybe just leave it at units being acquired. If you're a civilization that has a strong economy, and you know of two other civs that are fighting and both are in heavy debt with you, it might be more interesting if you were able to acquire units or cities in order to pay off the debt.

You have some options. It isn't a case closed kind of thing like that one guy made it sound.

 

[ogmoir]

In Norway we don't have any deficit, but billions of dollars in funds all over the world!

Our plan is to buy all the world, and enslave all of you moneylenders!!!


Muahahahahahahahaha!

Please, join EU and fund our agriculture!

 

[stormbind]

You can borrow money from banks or from other nations. They can easily implement something once you have a debt for too long of a time. Let's say you've been in the negatives for 20 turns in a row. Upon turn 21, there are consequences. Let's say your cities' health starts to diminish (because you'd have to divert funds from health care to pay off the debt), or you could have buildings being sold as a type of foreclosure. How about entire cities being liquidated and demolished. Maybe just leave it at units being acquired. If you're a civilization that has a strong economy, and you know of two other civs that are fighting and both are in heavy debt with you, it might be more interesting if you were able to acquire units or cities in order to pay off the debt.

You have some options. It isn't a case closed kind of thing like that one guy made it sound.

To keep me happy, the game needs to respect history.

 

[evirus]

In real life, countries have deficits. We all know this. If you're stupid with your money, you will lose it and be forced to borrow. Just look at the USA after they wasted their money in Iraq. My own country (Canada) also has a large debt, and I'm sure there are plenty of others with a debt. Should civilizations be allowed to go into the negatives in gold and be forced to pay interest on the negative balance until they bring it above zero again?

I don't see it as an extremely difficult thing to program in. Maybe it could be part of the discovery of banking or another similar technology.

Your thoughts?

is there any country that isnt in debt up to its eyeballs so to speak..... id like to see how this all plays out gameplay wise if there is allowed debt...but i dont realy want to be playing gofish with money if i dont have to

 

[NP300]

Well deficits already exist to a limited extent. When you are making -1 gold per turn you are running a deficit. The thing is that Civ3 only allows this if you saved money up.

Raising money by bonds could easily be implemented. You could sell 100gold worth of bonds to your citizens. In 20 turns you would need to pay 110 gold. Or it could be such that you get 100 gold when you sell them, but for 20 turns thereafter you have to pay 6 gold per turn. Then there would need to be a mechanism to prevent you from selling too many bonds. There should be some kind of limit, which could vary depending on the amount of trade produced by your civ. Thus, republic/democracy would have a higher limit due to the trade bonus.

Or perhaps the price for which you can sell the bonds would drop drastically as you sell more and more bonds until you could only sell them for 0 gold. In this case you could issue lots of bonds for temporary financing during war but face a crushing war debt when the war was over. In this case, the diminishing price for bonds could vary depending on the total trade produced by your Civ. If you "mobilize" the diminishng effect could be reduced due to the citizen's willingness to buy bonds for patriotic reasons.

 

[Darwin420]

I think the negative GPT we can already run best simulates debt, and if you run negative after running out of gold, losing buildings or units works really well. Being that Civ is a strategy game, if we were allowed to run deficits without worrying about more than "paying back a few more gold we don't have" it would just seriously unbalance the game to a more warmongering aspect (hey, let's kill everyone before the debt really does kill us).

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Well, there is your answer right there. Allow for the construction of 'Improvements', or 'Small Wonders' like International Lending or Government Bond Issue. You get money for 'selling' these small wonders and-if you ever want to get more money, then you have to build them all over again. Of course, this takes hammers away from building other important stuff.
Technically, you COULD do that in civ3, though I am not sure if you can ever CHOOSE which improvements you can sell once your money runs out.
Lastly, the ones I mentioned above are obviously the modern versions of borrowing international capital, I am sure you could build Usurers in the Middle Ages too as a source of cash. Anyway, just a thought!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Steve2000]

I like the bond idea. But once again it seems like this is already part of the game. You can sell expensive improvements like cathedrals to elliminate the maintence cost and raise some quick cash for a particular city, but the side effect is that your people get unhappy!

I just wouldn't want to see some sort of complex economic system that increases micromanagement. It's CIV after all - it should be fun. Leave the economics for one of those "tycoon" games.

 

[searcheagle]

One part of the civ financial system i dont like is that you can only allocate your income, not your treasury. It really sucks when you are researching all you can and you want a few more bucks and cant use the massive stockpiles of gold that you have built up in the past.

I would allow a deficit but not a debit.

Deficit-Spending more money than you have income
Debit-Spending more then you HAVE.