Brutal budget cuts at war end

[thedoctorking]

If you have a large fleet, when peace breaks out you are pretty much guaranteed to go in the red with your finances. You can't even scrap ships to meet the target if they are located outside your home country ports - as they probably will be when the war ends if you won. I think the budget cuts should be phased in over a period of six months or so to permit you to get your forces back home and into mothballs or scrapped or whatever.

[thedoctorking]

Worse, I just noticed that the penalty is collected on the turn that the war ended. So somebody whose budget was well in balance with a couple thousand pounds in the bank is suddenly 8,000 in the red and will lose a half dozen prestige before they can get out even with the best will in the world.

[thedoctorking]

Just ran it again, and before the peace was signed, I had 10K in the bank and a deficit of a few hundred. Peace is signed and at once I go to a -3K balance and a -17K deficit. I get dinged by the minister of the navy for overspending and the navy's morale suffers because the "pay is late again". Got to be a bug.

[WLRoo]

It's how the game is set up at the moment, so it is working as designed - but that doesn't mean it's best practice.

IMO the finances should be dealt with as follows:

Add monthly income
Make payments (e.g. maintenance, construction, research etc.)
Check for excess Funds
Add any bonus income (e.g. 50,000 for a new Battleship)
Apply income modifiers (e.g. war end, tensions, completed construction etc.)
Check for negative Funds

[thedoctorking]

And I think that the budget reductions for war end should be applied progressively over several turns to reflect the time needed to demobilize. Either that or you should be able to put units on mothballed or reserve status or scrap wherever they are in the world.

What I did was CTRL-ALT-Delete, restart from the save, and move everybody home. So the last months of the war saw my allies bearing the brunt of the struggle while I had a few cruisers on foreign stations and the main fleet was hanging out on the coasts. Very unhistorical, of course ("oh, Admiral Nimitz,we think Japan is about to surrender, so please stop supporting the upcoming landing operations and bombing their industry and move the whole Pacific Fleet back to San Diego, otherwise the government will go broke on August 9th").

[Searry]

When this happens I cut all funding to stuff that isn't needed immediately. All construction halted. All planes deleted from airbases (not carriers) research cut down to 0 no spies at all and everything mothballed in your home port. It is kinda silly so I agree with the staged demobilisation period.

[WilliamMiller]

Will look at this to see if this can be delayed/spread out a bit.

Thanks!

[thedoctorking]

One workaround that I discovered is to put ships on rebuild, which can (oddly) happen from anywhere in the world. This doesn't deal with the going immediately broke problem, but if you keep a healthy bank balance through the war years (hard to do, I know), then when _most_ of it disappears as soon as peace is declared, you can put your whole fleet on rebuild and then halt construction and keep yourself in the black. Another obviously gamey response to a flaw in the way the program works.

[Garwin]

When this happens I cut all funding to stuff that isn't needed immediately. All construction halted. All planes deleted from airbases (not carriers) research cut down to 0 no spies at all and everything mothballed in your home port. It is kinda silly so I agree with the staged demobilisation period.

Do you have information how large was your budget before cut and after cut?

Usually maximum drop of funds is expected to be about 55-60 % however your maintenance usually drops about 33 % just being in peace with still possibilty to mothball /reserve ships and scrap old ships, easily go to 50 %.
So it means that your budget before the war end was in substantially red numbers make difficult to it.
So it means usually to find sowhere 5-10 % in extreme cases, which can be done temporary by halting all construction, halting reserach etc. which is certainly not something you would like but you can survive.
Another thing is that you should not expect that after bloody war, you can maintain large fleet than before the war.

[Searry]

When this happens I cut all funding to stuff that isn't needed immediately. All construction halted. All planes deleted from airbases (not carriers) research cut down to 0 no spies at all and everything mothballed in your home port. It is kinda silly so I agree with the staged demobilisation period.

Do you have information how large was your budget before cut and after cut?

Usually maximum drop of funds is expected to be about 55-60 % however your maintenance usually drops about 33 % just being in peace with still possibilty to mothball /reserve ships and scrap old ships, easily go to 50 %.
So it means that your budget before the war end was in substantially red numbers make difficult to it.
So it means usually to find sowhere 5-10 % in extreme cases, which can be done temporary by halting all construction, halting reserach etc. which is certainly not something you would like but you can survive.
Another thing is that you should not expect that after bloody war, you can maintain large fleet than before the war.

This is late 30s and early 40s. Playing Japan.

During peace time my trade protection forces are in mothball and the rest of the fleet in reserve except for aircraft carriers. The land based air forces are very small. In doctrines I have damage control and I have spies in all countries.
This results in a situation where I can build a lot of ships since Japan is really streched in terms of budget.

My budget was increasing a lot before a war against France since I had so much prestige I kept taking decision which upped the budget and removed prestige. When war started the budget went from 700k to 1 million which meant I could build a bunch of corvettes and expand the air force to war time strenght and start replacing destroyers as they started getting sunk etc.

The problem with demobilisation is that you are slashed with half which means your budget goes from 1 million to almost nothing.

Prestige in this game is clearly meant as currency to boost your budget so I guess it's good you have to start building up your budget again but maybe the demobilisation cost is just too high and immediate right now.

As an extra note I think I have noticed this super budget slash especially with Japan since the beta.

[Glenn Beasley]

Yes This Budget issue in the Game needs to be looked at again and tweaked ,

[Glenn Beasley]

Yes this Budget Issue needs to be Looked at again and tweaked ,And just a Suggestion that when it comes times to decide if the Player is retired or not due to spending being over Budget , It would be nice to have the game do a Random 50/50 chance if your retired( or not ) By surviving a vote of no confidence (Or Not ) ,not left to one guy in the Finance Ministry (After all during your Career you Hopefully did make some friends in High Political Places who can vouch for you and your Financial abilities in spite of the Finances looking rather bleak at some points in the Game .

[thedoctorking]

Following up on this - I had a war end where I had a positive balance of funds of $57,913, and after the peace we went to - 21,981. I lost prestige for overspending and fleet morale suffered because "pay was late again." That last bit is particularly enraging - I was nowhere near having pay late, in fact, I thought I was maintaining a good positive balance. I can't imagine how I would reduce expenses enough to get to a +22K$ monthly balance to avoid another punishment next turn.

You've really got to fix this, players are not going to appreciate being punished for winning a war. I've attached a save so devs can see if this is some sort of a bug or WAD.

[Searry]

Following up on this - I had a war end where I had a positive balance of funds of $57,913, and after the peace we went to - 21,981. I lost prestige for overspending and fleet morale suffered because "pay was late again." That last bit is particularly enraging - I was nowhere near having pay late, in fact, I thought I was maintaining a good positive balance. I can't imagine how I would reduce expenses enough to get to a +22K$ monthly balance to avoid another punishment next turn.

You've really got to fix this, players are not going to appreciate being punished for winning a war. I've attached a save so devs can see if this is some sort of a bug or WAD.

This wasn't so bad. I managed to get to positive in 1 turn by disbanding the airforce and cutting all spending and moving the ships to northeast asia.

Then there is the transition to peacetime spending what you want to do from that budget you got left.


But I really think there should be a demobilisation period after a war so you don't get the immediate budget cut to peacetime level. Instead a few turns of gradual drop to peacetime.

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[EwaldvonKleist]

Wouldn't the easiest solution be one more turn at wartime spending after the peace deal? This way you can correct everything and it is not even unrealistic, armies after war for a short time benefit a lot of economics of scale, unused prefabricates, cheap mobilized personnel etc. so the one turn cash infusion resulting from wartime budget but peacetime costs is justifiable.

[Bigfish]

Wouldn't the easiest solution be one more turn at wartime spending after the peace deal? This way you can correct everything and it is not even unrealistic, armies after war for a short time benefit a lot of economics of scale, unused prefabricates, cheap mobilized personnel etc. so the one turn cash infusion resulting from wartime budget but peacetime costs is justifiable.

I think the war budget should be lowered in steps over 6 to 12 months. Anything other is not realistic - you could not disarm a whole army, navy and air force within one month or two.