Invest in Private Economy questions

[Daza99]

Advice in the game tells me i can "call the Zone Governor to increase budget to invest in Private Economy."

So i do that and i do not see where i can invest in Private Economy in Zone Orders..

Zone Orders: I see Public Budget, Worker Salary, Recruits, Colonists, Ideal Worker total, max recruits and max colonists.

Is Public budget to do with the Private Economy?

[Twotribes]

I believe it is, at about 3 on that scale you will get a good investment but don't forget they will also build up new oil metal and such more often meaning you get some but less then if it was state owned. They also build food sites.

[Laiders]

Yes. Public budget means public (government) investment budget in that zone. It is an investment fund/subsidy/stimulus package/whatever other term pleases you for the local private economy of that zone.

I've never experimented too much but maybe 3 credits per turn per zone is a good baseline as suggested above by Twotribes. I will try that out. I generally invest heavily in my starting zone, then forget and wonder why I struggle to generate credits.

Note the investment slider is 1 credit per turn in that zone per increment. 1 you invest 1 credit and 100 you invest 100. Even 3 credits per turn every turn will mount up to a sizable boost over the course of a game.

[Twotribes]

Can't take credit for the number some other person said that in an other thread and I have been using it to good success.

[Jdane]

You can see the effect of this "Public Budget" after clicking on the Zone Administration Mode button (in the Zone tab, middle of the top row between City Level and Civilization Level).

You'll see some stats showing that each round the amount you budgeted is added to an "Investment Treasury" which is added to the Private Funds (which you can see after clicking on the Population count button) when the private sector checks if it has enough funds available to start building the next private Asset. If it checks, the Invest. Treasury is spent, paying for a fraction of the cost.

3 credits per turn add up in the long run, but since private Assets can cost hundreds of credits to build, it's a small fraction. I went with a 10 credits budget from turn 1 to kickstart the private Assets building process, which seems to have been beneficial, but it is true that my regime's bank account was struggling on the low end for a while.

Here's a tip: in my experience, most of the private sector's income is made from the trade of Items (food, metal, oil in my current game) with the planetary market (and other regimes if I interpret the trade report correctly). And I also noticed that if I sold to the merchants enough of those Items to make the demand drop to nothing the following turn, the private sector can't sell its production and its income suffers (and so does my regime's since there is no revenue from the Income Tax perceived on such trade).

The tip being: don't be too much of a competition to the private sector if you don't need the cash right now, it'll help in the long run. "Public Budget" is good but ultimately the income from trade is quite substantially bigger.

[GodwinW]

I put my Public Budget to 20/round in my cities and my cities are all doing very well. I'm also constantly around 4000 credits. So that's the value that really works for me on this planet.

[Dampfnudel]

Don't do that. Tax the private sector as much as possible. The private sector is basically useless. Its only purpose is tax money.
QOL is useless too. Never invest in that.

I play on extreme and any dollar into the private sector is wasted. The game is designed in a way that private economy is a bad thing and should be avoided.
Maybe far from reality, but the meta is as it is.

To maximize the tax base, many small cities are superior as each city adds a "hidden economy" you can fully tax.

[Kamelpov]

Really I do the opposite I tax at 30% on income and 20% on sale and try to inject money with the private invesment card only on city that planned to create money maker structure.

[FlashXAron_slith]

ORIGINAL: Dampfnudel

Don't do that. Tax the private sector as much as possible. The private sector is basically useless. Its only purpose is tax money.
QOL is useless too. Never invest in that.

I play on extreme and any dollar into the private sector is wasted. The game is designed in a way that private economy is a bad thing and should be avoided.
Maybe far from reality, but the meta is as it is.

To maximize the tax base, many small cities are superior as each city adds a "hidden economy" you can fully tax.

... stupid game design and that AI even get A LOT MORE from that imaginary economy , if the devs keep that things in the game, like money "out from no where" and resources from "thin air" , nobody of the serious players will like that game !

I know, it is because of that "AT THE MOMENT" crap AI coding, which wouldn't survive, but @VIC will start soon to improve AI , so that it plays with the rules from a human player ...
so I hope this "hidden economy" and bonuses will be removed from the game , but I think it will depend, if they manage to code a proper pc opponent !

So fingers crossed, that they could handle the task !

[Naselus]

ORIGINAL: FlashXAron_slith

... stupid game design and that AI even get A LOT MORE from that imaginary economy , if the devs keep that things in the game, like money "out from no where" and resources from "thin air" , nobody of the serious players will like that game !

You have no proof of this outside your own terrible economic management being terrible. The AI doesn't get anything extra from the hidden economy, but we've already pointed out numerous ways that your own economy is incredibly badly managed.

[Jdane]

At any rate, this discussion has inspired me to try and apply the opposite of my current policy towards the private sector, just to see the difference it makes.

(I.e. heavy taxation instead of laissez-faire.)

[ramnblam]

I noticed with my OG cities the private sector eventually does not build any more shit. But the tax rates your implement are regime wide, so I guess it's a balance. Does anyone know if you jack the taxes up ALOT is there a happiness hit?

[zgrssd]

ORIGINAL: Dampfnudel

Don't do that. Tax the private sector as much as possible. The private sector is basically useless. Its only purpose is tax money.
QOL is useless too. Never invest in that.

I play on extreme and any dollar into the private sector is wasted. The game is designed in a way that private economy is a bad thing and should be avoided.
Maybe far from reality, but the meta is as it is.

To maximize the tax base, many small cities are superior as each city adds a "hidden economy" you can fully tax.

That sounds like you have not yet figured out how to work (with) it.

It is very common to not understand a part of a game as complex (and poorly documented) as Shadow Empires. There is nothing to be ashamed about that.

But blaming the game design instead of learning the game? That is something to be ashamed of...

[zgrssd]

ORIGINAL: ramnblam

I noticed with my OG cities the private sector eventually does not build any more shit. But the tax rates your implement are regime wide, so I guess it's a balance. Does anyone know if you jack the taxes up ALOT is there a happiness hit?

There was a bug where teh PE got stuck on building a asset outside logistics range.

There was also a bug with the auto-patching for 1.02 not working. So you might still be on a version where the bug exists.

[Naselus]

No, QOL is pretty much useless, he's not wrong. And the private sector is mostly useful for pushing up QOL outside of providing taxation. There's some benefit top letting it run one farm per zone; otherwise it's state-owned all the way tbh.

[Soar_Slitherine]

Based on a read of the manual, investing into the private sector seems mostly useful for happiness management. Public investment directly boosts population happiness and helps the population afford to buy luxury goods to boost their happiness, QOL increases will boost happiness until civilization level catches up, and civilization level increases the reduction rate of unrest and danger (and slows down fear reduction, if that's the way you've decided to control your population) - also, at the regime level, civ level supposedly boosts interpersonal skills for newly recruited leaders, but I have no idea what the actual magnitude of that effect is. There is a bit of a caveat in that worker happiness takes a hit in zones that have lower than regime average QOL, which could be a problem if some of your zones become much richer than others.

If happiness is already doing fine, I would think that the private sector is mainly beneficial in that it provides a boost to your economic output without needing to invest anything specifically in it. I'm not sure how useful putting money in it in expectation of a long-term return for investment is, given that it does build a lot of quality-of-life buildings and their contribution to the economy is dubious (security is beneficial if you need more unrest reduction, health increases the birth rate, but it's not clear how big the benefit is and it also pushes up civilization level which in turn decreases the birth rate, and it's not clear education & entertainment do anything besides increase overall QOL). Private buildings do have the advantage of being energy-independent, which could be beneficial if that's a bottleneck in your economy.

[Kamelpov]

Public investment help to build building and usually once it's self reliant you can always minimize that and private economy usually create money with private salaries paid and to increase the private income.