Just give an across the board manpower boost to put everyone above 100K. Justify by saying in the past few decades cities have gotten cleaner allowing for a higher growth rate safely, as well as increasing urbanization if on a smaller scale.
I'm already giving massive boosts, in most cases 5x times boost (Ottoman manpower, at max, is less than 25k in game). The cities thing also wouldn't make sense, given in the case of the Ottomans and Spaniards, they're coming off/still embroiled in wars that have been raging since the 1740s.
Oh well. There are enough 100k+ manpower starts anyway. Anybody starting with manpower under 100k will be warned I s'pose. In some cases, the problem can be solved with decomming military units when you don't need them. Unless of course you're the Ottomans.
And infrastructure is bad on the government's end, but infrastructure and manufacturing increases are almost always good for your merchants. I suppose one possible solution would be dropping taxes and raising tariffs, giving your merchants more money to screw around with for a bit. Raising the tariff rate to 50% and lowering taxes to 20% in the Ottomans case would actually raise government revenue from a little over 50k to 250k because the Ottoman market value is a lot higher than the base value (this has the unfortunate side effect of actually lowering the income of merchants who, once again, make more money off trade than they do domestically). Flipping the numbers the same way for France would actually halve state revenue.
It helps tariffs aren't affected by stability apparently.
Then again, the Ottomans have a trade deficient of a $120k, about a third of the real market value once current tariffs are accounted for. Raising tariffs apparently lowers imports (I haven't exactly explored the math of my formulas deeply, so this came as a surprise).
At a tax/tariff rate of 50%/20%, the Ottoman government brings in $50k in revenue, its merchants $62k, and the Total/True market values are 829k/663k (true market value being the value subtracting tariffs). The trade deficient is 120k, meaning next turn, the total market value would drop down by 120k points.
But things are funny at 20/50. The Ottoman government brings in 250k, its merchants only 22k, and the total/true values become 829k/414k. Import drops down to only 63k. Percentage wise, the import:true market value should be close, if not the same, because the shares in the market have not changed.
However, the trade deficient doesn't reducetrue market value, but total market value. Losing 63k of 829k is a lot better than 120k versus 829k.
The 250k in state revenue is woefully insufficient to keep the massive fleet afloat however. Decommissioning a large part of the navy should not only go a long way to reducing overhead, but actually add another $50,000 directly into the bank from the 25% refund (each naval power costing $2000 to build and assuming a hundred points are refunded).
Reducing the Ottoman navy by 100 points would reduce military maintenance by a million dollars. The refund is enough to pay off a third of the new maintenance cost of 150k for the year, meaning that the player would only have to pay in a 100k, which is possible presuming a 50% tariff/20% tax (leaving 150k left over).
Assuming the player goes full defense on land with as many bodies as possible to hold the line, there's 100k of breathing room, which can hire 100 regiments (and if you're the Ottomans and doing the 50% tariff thing, I kid you not, this will only reduce your 250k earnings to 224k).
Things get weird at that point though. 0 manpower means no base economy, meaning you can't raise stability or increase civil/military tech. Your merchants also start suffering losses of 44k a year (because at 50% tariffs, most merchant income is from the domestic/base market value, and because there is no longer a base value, whoops).
The merchants will probably be extremely pissed if you did that and in a painful fit of irony, they would have to take out loans/pray for subsidies, to pay off their 44k a year deficient plus the cost of fielding the pretender army that'll put a guy on the throne that will immediately sign a peace treaty to the Persians, Bulgarian Nationalists, and peasant rebellions. Who better to supply these loans and subsidies than, who else, the Persian merchants?
In other words, my economic system is hilariously broken and mean-spirited.
Long story short: No need to boost manpower any further it seems. In the case of countries with low manpower pools like the Ottomans, the domestic market itself might be big enough to raise tariffs against, and the lowering of taxes at the same time would probably keep peasants off your back for a while. Of course, this all holds true until I find a low-base, low-market/no-trading country.
(c)keepwalking07 Not all those who wander are lost. Setting and General Game Info
Greetings and salutations! Welcome to the Universe of The Great Abyss. TGA is set on a grand setting-The Milky Way Galaxy. In Earth years, the game takes place in AD 2550. Expect imbalanced starts and technological diversity. There is no real galactic stage yet, but lets see if you can change that.
In this game, you'll be leading your species to create an empire or republic (or whatever you call yourself) that spans the stars; colonizing celestial bodies, interchangeably dealing with or exploiting anomalies, inferior races, and other things of that nature on the way there. So let's get started.
The Galaxy
It goes without saying the galaxy is big, and you can start anywhere on it. There will be two maps, and they are as follows: The quick-reference map: This will show you just how big all your fellow space-faring empires are quickly, but won't detail systems and the like. The Grid: A ton more detailed than the above, this map will show you who controls what systems, where other fleets are, and where both static and dynamic anomalies are.
Starting Out
I am giving everyone full creative freedom on the applications to join this game, however, there are a few base rules.
Spoiler:
No powergaming your application. You know what I mean.
I reserve the right to decline your application if I believe you're not taking it seriously enough. No "BYZANTINE EMPIRE IN SPAAAAAAACE" stuff, please.
If you wish to be human, you must comply to the following:
Only one human player is allowed.
You start in the region in which earth is estimated to be.
You cannot start with more than your own home system colonized. In other words, deep space exploration is new to humans. Degree of colonization of Sol however, is free game.
Recognize that others may want this spot. The application I like the best will win it, so it's best to have a back-up alien application in case you don't. Also, no butthurt if you don't get the spot, or else you can leave this thread.
Recognize you are probably going to be in the most difficult spot in the game at the start.
As a human, you must be extra careful with ridiculousness in your application.
Everything else is assumed to be free game. However, take the time to realize that I am human too, and thus make mistakes in terms of the above statement. Recognize that I can rescind it if I spy something I don't like in an application.
Now that that's done, actually starting out is quite simple. Here's a standard application.
SpoilerApplication :
Species Name: Self explanatory. Species Description: Biological details of your species; strengths, weaknesses, etc. Does not apply if playing as some sort of cybernetic species. The more descriptive, the more you benefit. Homeworld Details: Description of the biosphere, environment, and climate of your species' homeworld. Like above, the more descriptive you are, the more you benefit. Species History: A history of your species from beginning of sentience to present. Like above, being as detailed as possible can only help you. Technology: Briefly describe what sort of technology your species utilizes to do things such as colonize, fight, etc. I'll give you leeway on the descriptiveness here. Note, you can't be too advanced. See below. Location and Color: Save the grid map and put a dot on where on the grid you want to be. Post coordinates along with it, plus a color.
Technological Advancement
There are 7 Tiers of civilization.
Spoiler:
Tier 7: Pre-Industrial: One of the most common and stable states, with limited weaponry and environmental threats. Societies tend to be small and scattered, driven by subsistence farming, foraging, or hunter-gathering needs. Technology is limited to simple hand made tools, weapons, or agrarian implements and methods, but a very broad understanding of planetary and solar mechanics is not uncommon.
Tier 6: Industrial Age: Often the pinnacle for a civilization. Agrarian societies can remain stable in the pre-industrial stage, but Tier 6 population strain and mechanized food production invariably create political and economic pressures very few can balance. Moving past this usually promises advancement. Some societies improve environmental and medical understanding concurrently with mechanical and transport advancement. Those that do not are frequently doomed.
Tier 5: Atomic Age: Usually begin focusing on clean energy production. The occasional belligerent species will use atomic energy for weapons, often resulting in mass extinctions. In-atmosphere craft are a hallmark, often leading to manned space flight, albeit in a short-scale.
Tier 4: Space Age: Tier 4 is often the final resting place for species intelligent enough to break free from their cradle's surface only to fill the gulf surrounding it with war. Their comfort-focused technology can include medical advances.
Tier 3: Space-Faring: Species has efficient space navigation, mass drivers, asynchronous linear-induction weapons, nanotechnological storage and semi-sentient AIs.
Tier 2: Interstellar: The species has the ability to perform exceedingly accurate space navigation, near-instantaneous communication and man-portable application of energy manipulation.
Tier 1: World Builders: The species has the ability to manipulate gravitational forces, create AI with full sentience, fabricate super-dense materials, perform super-accurate space navigation, the ability to create life, and the ability to create worlds.
Tier 0: Transsentient: Unknown
Props to you if you know where I got it from.
Most of you will be in either Tier 4 or Tier 3, with a few exceptions if I like your post enough and even a few that cannot be gauged by this system(For example, Ravus_Sol's application for Great Journeys would be so amazingly awesome I'd consider his species an anomaly that plays by its own set of rules unbeknownst to other players because it was that awesome.) Note, if you want to be one of these exceptions I'll be making difficulties to accommodate your advantage, so don't be too eager to start with a hyper-advanced race.
However, in general, this is how large-scale technological strength will be gauged for most of you.
Small-scale progression is also tracked and is much more personal and unique to your species. I won't assume that all of the species in the galaxy will be playing by the same technological rulebook; I intend to see many different kinds of technology trees based on different energy sources and the like later in the game. These small-scale movements in technology will give small bonuses that stack up well as time goes on, and will almost always come about from your actions as you explore and write roleplay. Once I figure you have enough small-scale technological progression, I'll announce to you in private that you are eligible to propose a research effort to increase large-scale progression, and thus get closer to ranking higher in civilization tiers. As you increase in tier, you will need more research efforts to further advance.
Exploration and Colonization
In order to explore the galaxy, you're going to need expeditionary fleets. These fleets are non-permanent units that survey a region of the galaxy and report back on their findings, giving you information of that sector. Note that these fleets are not 100% accurate, but along with what they found will be an approximation of how much left there is to find, from 0-100. Searching a sector numerous times will probably be commonplace.
These fleets can still be attacked and destroyed; the more dangerous your voyages turn out to be, the more it will cost to send exploration fleets out until you guarantee their safety with a military escort. Note, you can send part of your military fleet to survey a sector, but they will be less effective and this probably wouldn't be a bright idea if you're at war as it takes away resources from the immediate threat.
Once you find a body suitable for colonization given your technological perimeters, you may send in colonization efforts to the body in question. As you put more resources into colonization, it will become more likely for the first permanent settlement to be erected there, opening opportunities to explore the planet in-depth and exploit its resources.
Note, one planet can be contested by multiple empires. The implications of such events would surely gain fruition quickly if a compromise is not reached.
Economy
The economics of this will be loosely based off that of Civilization. The most important factor of the domestic economy is the infrastructure of the planet in question. The infrastructure is proportional to how much of the planet's resources you can effectively extract and put to use. Infrastructure is rated from 0-100%. Infrastructure counts the entire planet, indiscriminate of who has settled it if more than one empire has done so. It is split between the empires involved according to how much a respective empire puts into its colony's infrastructure, capping at 100.
SpoilerExample of Infrastructural Dispute :
The galactic empire has colonized Alderaan. upon establishing its colony and expanding its infrastructure to 23%, another civilization, the Batarian Confederation, colonizes the same planet and rapidly expands the infrastructure of the colony. The planet reaches its infrastructure cap of 100, with the Empire owning 42% of it and the Batarians owning 58%. War over the inevitable border dispute likely.
Each planet will have its own resource grade, from its height A to its nadir E. This, along with your infrastructure score, will determine the economic output of a planet.
Domestic trade, trade within your borders, stimulates your final income depending on the average infrastructure across all your systems and the average resource grade likewise across all your systems. Note, with significant terraforming technology, it is possible to increase a planet's resource grade.
Trade with other empires is similar, but it depends on what planets the traders of trading races can reach. Improvements upon conventional engine technology and the sharing of "jumpgate" technologies, if they exist in your technological fields, will help expand the income derived from this trade agreement.
SpoilerExample of a planet :
[Planet Name]
Grade [Letter]
Colonized(Will appear green for yes and red for no.)
Infrastructure: [%%%]%
[Infrastructure owner 1]: [%%%]%
[Infrastructure owner 2]: [%%%]%
[Infrastructure owner x]: [%%%]%
[Brief description of planet]
The number of planets you have colonized and the quality of the resources and the infrastructure of those planets are determined by your application post and how much I like it.
Military
Your empire's military is determined by the quantity and quality of your fleets. Costs and stats of your fleets are exclusive to you, specifically from the beginning. This does not however mean that another person can't, through technological means, build a fleet that more or less mirrors yours in terms of cost and stats. But you can flavor it as actually-exclusive as you want within your technological parameters.
SpoilerExample Fleet :
[Fleet Name] [Cost]
Firepower: [##](Affects how much punch the fleet packs.)
Defensive power: [##](Affects how much incoming damage is mitigated.)
Hull: [##](Essentially the fleet's health points. As this goes down, as does the fleet's firepower.)
Engine power: [##](Affects how far the fleet can travel in one turn and the chance of an evasion roll in combat, although very slightly for the latter.)
Fleet stats increases as technology progresses, but as does their cost consequently. The starting stats of your fleet(s) is determined by your application and how much I like it.
Also note that you can have more than one fleet type, but its stats will be comparably lower. However, this allows one to have set-ups such as defensive and offensive fleet types.
Espionage
Espionage is very free-form. However, you need to set up a network in the civilization you want to internally wreck before committing yourself to actually causing turbulence. All that needs to be done to do this is investing some of your economy into the effort and your agents/robotic spyware/whatever will do the rest. From there, you can propose what you want to be done and you will get a report on how possible that effort is. You can also request information your spy network has uncovered about the civilization in question, including secret deals, projects, and if your spy network is big enough, orders from previous turns!
(c)keepwalking07 Not all those who wander are lost. Setting and General Game Info
Greetings and salutations! Welcome to the Universe of The Great Abyss. TGA is set on a grand setting-The Milky Way Galaxy. In Earth years, the game takes place in AD 2550. Expect imbalanced starts and technological diversity. There is no real galactic stage yet, but lets see if you can change that.
In this game, you'll be leading your species to create an empire or republic (or whatever you call yourself) that spans the stars; colonizing celestial bodies, interchangeably dealing with or exploiting anomalies, inferior races, and other things of that nature on the way there. So let's get started.
The Galaxy
It goes without saying the galaxy is big, and you can start anywhere on it. There will be two maps, and they are as follows: The quick-reference map: This will show you just how big all your fellow space-faring empires are quickly, but won't detail systems and the like. The Grid: A ton more detailed than the above, this map will show you who controls what systems, where other fleets are, and where both static and dynamic anomalies are.
Starting Out
I am giving everyone full creative freedom on the applications to join this game, however, there are a few base rules.
Spoiler:
No powergaming your application. You know what I mean.
I reserve the right to decline your application if I believe you're not taking it seriously enough. No "BYZANTINE EMPIRE IN SPAAAAAAACE" stuff, please.
If you wish to be human, you must comply to the following:
Only one human player is allowed.
You start in the region in which earth is estimated to be.
You cannot start with more than your own home system colonized. In other words, deep space exploration is new to humans. Degree of colonization of Sol however, is free game.
Recognize that others may want this spot. The application I like the best will win it, so it's best to have a back-up alien application in case you don't. Also, no butthurt if you don't get the spot, or else you can leave this thread.
Recognize you are probably going to be in the most difficult spot in the game at the start.
As a human, you must be extra careful with ridiculousness in your application.
Everything else is assumed to be free game. However, take the time to realize that I am human too, and thus make mistakes in terms of the above statement. Recognize that I can rescind it if I spy something I don't like in an application.
Now that that's done, actually starting out is quite simple. Here's a standard application.
SpoilerApplication :
Species Name: Self explanatory. Species Description: Biological details of your species; strengths, weaknesses, etc. Does not apply if playing as some sort of cybernetic species. The more descriptive, the more you benefit. Homeworld Details: Description of the biosphere, environment, and climate of your species' homeworld. Like above, the more descriptive you are, the more you benefit. Species History: A history of your species from beginning of sentience to present. Like above, being as detailed as possible can only help you. Technology: Briefly describe what sort of technology your species utilizes to do things such as colonize, fight, etc. I'll give you leeway on the descriptiveness here. Note, you can't be too advanced. See below. Location and Color: Save the grid map and put a dot on where on the grid you want to be. Post coordinates along with it, plus a color.
Technological Advancement
There are 7 Tiers of civilization.
Spoiler:
Tier 7: Pre-Industrial: One of the most common and stable states, with limited weaponry and environmental threats. Societies tend to be small and scattered, driven by subsistence farming, foraging, or hunter-gathering needs. Technology is limited to simple hand made tools, weapons, or agrarian implements and methods, but a very broad understanding of planetary and solar mechanics is not uncommon.
Tier 6: Industrial Age: Often the pinnacle for a civilization. Agrarian societies can remain stable in the pre-industrial stage, but Tier 6 population strain and mechanized food production invariably create political and economic pressures very few can balance. Moving past this usually promises advancement. Some societies improve environmental and medical understanding concurrently with mechanical and transport advancement. Those that do not are frequently doomed.
Tier 5: Atomic Age: Usually begin focusing on clean energy production. The occasional belligerent species will use atomic energy for weapons, often resulting in mass extinctions. In-atmosphere craft are a hallmark, often leading to manned space flight, albeit in a short-scale.
Tier 4: Space Age: Tier 4 is often the final resting place for species intelligent enough to break free from their cradle's surface only to fill the gulf surrounding it with war. Their comfort-focused technology can include medical advances.
Tier 3: Space-Faring: Species has efficient space navigation, mass drivers, asynchronous linear-induction weapons, nanotechnological storage and semi-sentient AIs.
Tier 2: Interstellar: The species has the ability to perform exceedingly accurate space navigation, near-instantaneous communication and man-portable application of energy manipulation.
Tier 1: World Builders: The species has the ability to manipulate gravitational forces, create AI with full sentience, fabricate super-dense materials, perform super-accurate space navigation, the ability to create life, and the ability to create worlds.
Tier 0: Transsentient: Unknown
Props to you if you know where I got it from.
Most of you will be in either Tier 4 or Tier 3, with a few exceptions if I like your post enough and even a few that cannot be gauged by this system(For example, Ravus_Sol's application for Great Journeys would be so amazingly awesome I'd consider his species an anomaly that plays by its own set of rules unbeknownst to other players because it was that awesome.) Note, if you want to be one of these exceptions I'll be making difficulties to accommodate your advantage, so don't be too eager to start with a hyper-advanced race.
However, in general, this is how large-scale technological strength will be gauged for most of you.
Small-scale progression is also tracked and is much more personal and unique to your species. I won't assume that all of the species in the galaxy will be playing by the same technological rulebook; I intend to see many different kinds of technology trees based on different energy sources and the like later in the game. These small-scale movements in technology will give small bonuses that stack up well as time goes on, and will almost always come about from your actions as you explore and write roleplay. Once I figure you have enough small-scale technological progression, I'll announce to you in private that you are eligible to propose a research effort to increase large-scale progression, and thus get closer to ranking higher in civilization tiers. As you increase in tier, you will need more research efforts to further advance.
Exploration and Colonization
In order to explore the galaxy, you're going to need expeditionary fleets. These fleets are non-permanent units that survey a region of the galaxy and report back on their findings, giving you information of that sector. Note that these fleets are not 100% accurate, but along with what they found will be an approximation of how much left there is to find, from 0-100. Searching a sector numerous times will probably be commonplace.
These fleets can still be attacked and destroyed; the more dangerous your voyages turn out to be, the more it will cost to send exploration fleets out until you guarantee their safety with a military escort. Note, you can send part of your military fleet to survey a sector, but they will be less effective and this probably wouldn't be a bright idea if you're at war as it takes away resources from the immediate threat.
Once you find a body suitable for colonization given your technological perimeters, you may send in colonization efforts to the body in question. As you put more resources into colonization, it will become more likely for the first permanent settlement to be erected there, opening opportunities to explore the planet in-depth and exploit its resources.
Note, one planet can be contested by multiple empires. The implications of such events would surely gain fruition quickly if a compromise is not reached.
Economy
The economics of this will be loosely based off that of Civilization. The most important factor of the domestic economy is the infrastructure of the planet in question. The infrastructure is proportional to how much of the planet's resources you can effectively extract and put to use. Infrastructure is rated from 0-100%. Infrastructure counts the entire planet, indiscriminate of who has settled it if more than one empire has done so. It is split between the empires involved according to how much a respective empire puts into its colony's infrastructure, capping at 100.
SpoilerExample of Infrastructural Dispute :
The galactic empire has colonized Alderaan. upon establishing its colony and expanding its infrastructure to 23%, another civilization, the Batarian Confederation, colonizes the same planet and rapidly expands the infrastructure of the colony. The planet reaches its infrastructure cap of 100, with the Empire owning 42% of it and the Batarians owning 58%. War over the inevitable border dispute likely.
Each planet will have its own resource grade, from its height A to its nadir E. This, along with your infrastructure score, will determine the economic output of a planet.
Domestic trade, trade within your borders, stimulates your final income depending on the average infrastructure across all your systems and the average resource grade likewise across all your systems. Note, with significant terraforming technology, it is possible to increase a planet's resource grade.
Trade with other empires is similar, but it depends on what planets the traders of trading races can reach. Improvements upon conventional engine technology and the sharing of "jumpgate" technologies, if they exist in your technological fields, will help expand the income derived from this trade agreement.
SpoilerExample of a planet :
[Planet Name]
Grade [Letter]
Colonized(Will appear green for yes and red for no.)
Infrastructure: [%%%]%
[Infrastructure owner 1]: [%%%]%
[Infrastructure owner 2]: [%%%]%
[Infrastructure owner x]: [%%%]%
[Brief description of planet]
The number of planets you have colonized and the quality of the resources and the infrastructure of those planets are determined by your application post and how much I like it.
Military
Your empire's military is determined by the quantity and quality of your fleets. Costs and stats of your fleets are exclusive to you, specifically from the beginning. This does not however mean that another person can't, through technological means, build a fleet that more or less mirrors yours in terms of cost and stats. But you can flavor it as actually-exclusive as you want within your technological parameters.
SpoilerExample Fleet :
[Fleet Name] [Cost]
Firepower: [##](Affects how much punch the fleet packs.)
Defensive power: [##](Affects how much incoming damage is mitigated.)
Hull: [##](Essentially the fleet's health points. As this goes down, as does the fleet's firepower.)
Engine power: [##](Affects how far the fleet can travel in one turn and the chance of an evasion roll in combat, although very slightly for the latter.)
Fleet stats increases as technology progresses, but as does their cost consequently. The starting stats of your fleet(s) is determined by your application and how much I like it.
Also note that you can have more than one fleet type, but its stats will be comparably lower. However, this allows one to have set-ups such as defensive and offensive fleet types.
Espionage
Espionage is very free-form. However, you need to set up a network in the civilization you want to internally wreck before committing yourself to actually causing turbulence. All that needs to be done to do this is investing some of your economy into the effort and your agents/robotic spyware/whatever will do the rest. From there, you can propose what you want to be done and you will get a report on how possible that effort is. You can also request information your spy network has uncovered about the civilization in question, including secret deals, projects, and if your spy network is big enough, orders from previous turns!
Figured I go ahead and post the last thing I was working on today.
Originally, I intended on using MP4's slavery system and make it so slaves simply are more "productive" but I scrapped the idea in favor of something more general.
There are three policies a country can have in regards to slavery. A slave state, a country that uses slaves on a mass scale, receives infrastructure maintenance discounts. The bonus of this should be clear by now. This decreases state expenditures on maintenance, allows you to fund and maintain larger infrastructure projects, which increases state revenues (to a point), as well as the revenue of your merchants. Slave states also receive a population growth bonus. On the flip side, a slave state receives a stability cost penalty.
A slave exporting country gets an export bonus. It doesn't get a larger share in any market it operates in. Instead, the final export value, after all exports are added up, receives a straight bonus (great for your merchants and you if your tariff-dependent). You also get a stability cost bonus (because you're getting rid of political rivals and the like I guess). On the flip side, you receive a population growth penalty.
Finally, you can abolish slavery. A country that abolishes slavery gets a small bonus to population growth, infrastructure maintenance, and stability costs.
Each offers advantages and disadvantages. Countries with chronic manpower issues can benefit from the growth bonus and infrastructure discounts of importing slaves. Countries with surplus manpower and stability issues could benefit from the slave trade. Free states receive growth, stability, and infrastructure bonuses, but not on the scale of the bonuses received from the others. However, being a free state means no stability or growth penalties.
Some countries, such as France, have already abolished slavery. Once a country abolishes slavery, restitution can only be done with a hefty hit to stability.
If there are no slave-exporting countries, slave-importers lose their manpower growth penalty and stability bonus. If there are no importers, exporters lose their growth bonus (but not stability penalty or infrastructure bonus).
Hot damn these IOT's are getting complex. Totally understand the need for a computer to do it, although, that would just be Paradox or even civ wouldn't it.
I used to incorporate Paradox mechanics in my games but then I thought, "Why don't I just play a Paradox game?"
The strength of an IOT is the freeform, multiplayer aspect of it that none of the actual online games possess. There's great merit to text and picture based games, and that is what mechanics should exploit the most I think.
So when I make mechanics, even complex ones, I try to avoid making it so long I start to think I'd be better off coding an actual game.
None of the math presented here today is complex. 99% of it is basic algebra and every bit of it is trivial with the aid of a spreadsheet. The only difficulty I had earlier was the making the market sheet interact with two other sheets correctly, and that fixed itself with remarkable results.
The strength of IOTs are the limits. Complex mechanics are more fi at accomodating player actions than mere storytelling when it comes to IOT. The ruleset manages to remain very short, with the dev thread posts being long only to explain behavior.
The only difficult part would proably come from the fact that players are managing hundreds of thousands and millions instead of mere hundreds and thousands. However, because growth isn't "spam X To win", there'll probably be more worthwhile diplomacy (and real reason to throw money in the treasury).
For me the biggest slowdown is having to enter all the spending manually.
With Google Docs, however, this becomes a thing of the past, which is why I tend to give generous rewards to players who adopt the model. PM-based spending is obsolete.
The combat sheet works! Since each "front" battle is three phrases (skirmish, battle, battle/rout), having to manually roll and calculate for each single phrase could've been a chore.
The sheet determines casualties, costs, modifiers, and whatnot for each phrase and gives the winner. A little later I'll add a few more lines to calculate # of provinces lost/gained and leadership lost/gained. That should be rather easy.
I also discovered an interesting quirk of the military maintenance system. Military tech increases maintenance over time (by .2 per level, meaning at MT5 you start getting the "full" cost). However, under five, armies can be quite cheap. In France's case, if its military technology was only one, military maintenance would drop from $4 million or so to just $200,000.
Because of this, I'm probably going to allow military tech trading. Some countries, like the Ottomans, would benefit somewhat from giving away ten or so tech levels.
Spoiler:
All the green boxes (except Skirmish, and I'm missing a few boxes) are inputs. There are 16 inputs, largely typing in X number of regiments, the front, and type of maintenance I'd have to deal with. Attacking occupied territory is cheaper than attacking hostile territory, and both are more expensive than just defender.
In other words, got rid of sieges and the cost of defending allied territory or defending occupied territory (all defense is the base maintenance).
Improved the sheet so you don't have to scroll down to look at more than just six countries. Government bonuses removed, leadership bonuses still exist. Governments are for flavor I suppose, with the biggest differences being republics actually have elections.
I will need to convert the range into a table so it is easier to look at. Hopefully the green columns help direct attention to things players immediately look for (income, treasuries, and market).
Edit: I should just go ahead and merge the infra maintenance with revenue. Not of the other forumlas relies on it (the Base column is relied on by four different columns, not including the Revenue column, so I can't ax it). Likewise, I can't roll tariff income into Revenue because I think two entire sheets rely on it. Either that or I made the column indepdent of tariff income. I can't be sure since I'm not at a computer.
All of this is made somewhat mute given I added six more columns with one more on the way, but those are all references columns that won't change often for most player.
Edi2: If you think your spreadsheet can be compressed, it probably can. Good news, isn't it?
I managed to compress the military and main sheet even further by shortening terms such as Manufacturing down to Mfg. I ax'd civil tech (which got rid of that tech cost column) because all it did is limit how much infrastructure you can built. I rolled infrastructure and civil tech together, meaning the cost (but not maintenance) increases as your base economy increases.
For example, to go from 30 Infra to 31, France would have to pay 3.7 million. The action would bring in an extra 700k a year in revenue, increase merchant revenue by nearly a million, and increase the base economy by two million.
The cost for the Ottomans, on the other hand, is only 19k, but increasing Otto revenue without changing taxes/tariffs or whatever actually decreases Otto revenue by 50,000 a year so not the best policy decision.
Manufacturing, likewise, now has an associated cost based on the size of the country doing it. In France's case, going from 2 to 3 would cost $34 million, add $12 million to state revenues, increase the base economy by nearly $40 million, and increase merchant revenue (merchants will actually build manufacturing themselves) by $5 million. As you can imagine, merchants will prefer trading and buying and selling market shares over investing in manufacturing.
Again, smaller countries like the Ottomans, pay smaller costs, like $190k (which is more money than both the state brings in in revenue and merchants have in total income). It is possible for smaller countries to industrialize faster than large countries like France, but the costs are still based on base economic size, meaning smaller countries will be reliant on loans from affluent countries to industrialize.
Even if the Ottomans raised their Manufacturing to 10, the Ottoman economy would still only be 1/34th the size of the French economy (raising Mfg to 100 without raising infrastructure brings the Ottoman economy to only 1/3rd the size of the French economy).
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