Late Game Trade Issues

[Krytor]

Almost all cash problems can easily be resolved with trade. Makes some excess of a thing, sell it on occasion.

But late game the price to sell EVERYTHING goes down. Often to "No Interest To Buy". At that point the Trade button becomes near useless.

Here's a screenshot of what I see at the start of a turn before I make any transactions:

trade.png (1.46 MiB) Viewed 509 times

As you can see I have almost nothing I can sell. You can see the AI's market pricing on the Regimes screen. They have much higher prices and could still trade in almost all goods.

I'm pretty sure these prices change with world supply, but whatever the formula it's frustrating to not be able to interact with sales of goods at this point onward.

[Kylejack]

Whats your commerce profile? How rich is your own population? My sense is most market demand comes from your own pops, if you make them richer maybe you'll get more demand

alternatively restrict foreign supply by putting huge import tariffs on everyone else. you can also open new markets, get borders with another regime or zone. if you have a new zone somewhere that isnt connected to your main shq it will have its own internal market, maybe see if you can sell stuff in places like that

not to say this isn't a problem but it might be something you could mitigate to your advantage

[Krytor]

Commerce profile is low as it's not my main jam. But it's been like that all game. My pop is generally debt free. All that's left in the world is major powers. I border on pretty much everyone. However I'm totally unaware of how markets are created. I've never seen any guide as to how traders really operate.

I think the issue is I produce a ton of everything so that makes everything cheep. Prices have been going down as my mining/production operations have been increasing. And I own around 50% of the population of the planet (another major owns most of the rest).

But I'm bleeding cash even with my 40% income tax/50% sales tax (I've tried lower taxes as well to see if enriching the pop causes better results but it doesn't.). So on occasion I need to sell....something. No buyers is a huge problem.

[JeanleChauve]

Can you upload your save?

[Krytor]

Sure! Let me know if you find anything interesting. The game has already declared me victorious but that shouldn't interfere with looking into the issue.

[JeanleChauve]

I thought you were complaining about not having enough money because you were overpaying your staff and letting private income go through the roof, but that's not the case, you've managed your economy very well. I think you are playing in hard mode, am I wrong?

On the other hand, you have a stock of 300K metal and 100k rare metals. You throw 30K fuel, 17k energy and 8k food per turn in the trash.
By drastically reducing your production, you will reduce the number of your workers which will allow you to decrease salaries and will increase the income from the income tax since the population will increase by this number. It is the workers who drain the economy in this game.
I also notice that you have suffered a lot of strikes which must have cost you a lot of credits.

And by selling in large quantities, but spacing at least 3-4 turns, the prices should perhaps go up.

But it is also true that Vindissus sold last turn +4600 metal. And as Krytor wrote, by putting taxes on import instead of export, this could push your traders to reduce the quantity purchased abroad to concentrate on yours, but I don't know much about that either.

And it might also be an algorithm problem, Vic has already worked on it quite a bit and I guess it's not finished.

[Voker57]

Don't really the the problem with that save. It is a low-pop world, and there is plenty money for the player without selling anything. The population doesn't have much money so it doesn't buy luxuries. If money is needed, rares and high-tech are still in demand.

Thus said, I think population item needs should scale much more aggressively. If there is free food, population should be multiplying rapidly. If metals are cheap, people should build some luxury apartments from it or something.

[Kylejack]

"On the other hand, you have a stock of 300K metal and 100k rare metals. You throw 30K fuel, 17k energy and 8k food per turn in the trash."

It doesn't go in the trash, if you're producing stuff in excess of your capacity to store it what happens mechanically is the excess gets sold on the market automatically at any price, basically 0, tanking the market price

To fix this just stop producing so much or build more storage capacity. The prices will go back up and you can sell then. You're wasting money paying workers to make stuff that just gets sold for almost zero every turn too

There might be so much on the market at this point that the prices will never go back up now though

[Kylejack]

For creating markets heres what I've got going on in my game right now. Earlyish but I've got a nice little secondary market going

Screenshot 2025-01-28 070924.png (3.08 MiB) Viewed 386 times

Main market for the first SHQ, generates ~9000 credits a turn that I can snatch up selling metal rares and then fuel radioactives or machines. Traders will only pay one third of their money for each individual commodity so you need a mix to sell get it all each turn

Screenshot 2025-01-28 070941.png (3.14 MiB) Viewed 386 times

Secondary market, a minor I diplomatically annexed on the other side of the world unconnected to my main market by land so it has its own 'trader house' or whatever, forget the exact wording from the manual. Generates ~3000 credits a turn and has different prices than the main market reflecting the different supply and demand over there

any island will have its own market for example because no land borders with anyone. It will probably be a small market though because not much trade except with maritime houses

An exclave on the other side of the world with a big pop and maybe bordering big majors could get a bigger market eventually after a few tens of turns building profit though

The money that generates in a market comes from many different places but some less obvious ones are (directly) a roll your governers do in each zone to generate credit for local traders based on the trade skill, (indirectly) maritime trading houses selling 'treasures' when they're broke to generate credits, (indirectly) another roll your zone governers do each turn to stimulate something like a local grey market economy etc

putting a high int/high trade/high admin governor in your biggest city can create a couple hundred extra credits a turn from nothing you can suck up, in addition to whatever profit the traders make from trade that you can also grab. in a lot of places money gets created from nothing in the economy and you can cultivate that and get at it through trade

[Kylejack]

The reason I mention commerce is that it gives 'commerce bonuses' at two points that I believe, don't understand the exact mechanics and they're opaque as far as I can tell, but it seems to make zone traders more profitable and this kind of funding a lot more sustainable

I like government a lot and even prefer it but you really need commerce if you're planning on using trade to run your government at a deficit long term imo

Another option here is two cards you can use to get at iirc private credit, patriotic collection in meritocracy and efficiency drive in enforcement. probably 'pillage' under autocracy too but i haven't used that one. thousands of credits possible using those

[JeanleChauve]

"On the other hand, you have a stock of 300K metal and 100k rare metals. You throw 30K fuel, 17k energy and 8k food per turn in the trash."

It doesn't go in the trash, if you're producing stuff in excess of your capacity to store it what happens mechanically is the excess gets sold on the market automatically at any price, basically 0, tanking the market price

No, only if the trader buy it, otherwise it's for the trash!

There might be so much on the market at this point that the prices will never go back up now though

I agree.

[Krytor]

What I'm hearing is: "Produce less"

I've worked hard to get these values to where they are because while I have huge stockpiles now I use them all in bursts quite quickly when I need more units.

I think what a need is a tutorial on how exactly markets work. How many markets are there? Is it a zero sum game (are the items on the market and their prices ONLY from all existing empires on the map?). Early game you can buy Hi Tech off the market, but no one can possibly be producing it. So there must be some 'magic' happening.

If I made another SHQ out of one of my cities would it see different prices? Does location matter?

Why does my capital have far lower private wages than some of my smaller cities? This influences what I pay my workers. My QoL in my capital is far higher than other places so it can't just be that.

What causes Debt in my cities? I've read explanations but nothing seems to really explain how it works in relation to my taxes and how much money/turn I fund a city with.

Really I just want to make sure I can keep a good balance of cash at all times. I find it easiest mid game when I'm producing AND can sell excess. Late game I guess I produce too much.

[Thrake]

There is a maximal storage for most resources (mostly metal has no limit), if it goes past this this either vanish into thin air (energy, ammo) or all the excess is forecefully sold.

Every regime has its own market. It's a single market per regime unless it's an Oceania game where you own multiple islands (then each island is a different market, for every regime). The prices are based on supply and demand, within your market and between the neighbouring markets.

Traders start with a stockpile of resources, which is what you're buying early game.

Private wages is private income/private workers (everybody counts, even those that don't have a private job).

Private income derived from the cumulative worker salaries in this city for sure, minus taxes, I think leader and soldiers salary is also redistributed between the cities to feed private income but this is not confirmed. On top of it is added private credits produced from private assets (most of the time irrelevant amounts), as well as credits earned from selling private resources (private mines, farms).

Debt is the result of building private assets. For exemple, first level qol assets cost 500 credits. When the private economy has that many credits, it start building the asset, and also buy resources from traders. Debt is the result of the extra cost from buying resources. There is nothing you can do to prevent it. If you give the private economy more money, it buy more resources as they build assets faster, drive up the demand, increase market prices therefore the cost of private assets. Taxes impact this as you are cutting the private income (income taxes), or increasing the price of resources (trade tax or whatever it is called). Somewhere in the interface the tooltip for debt will show which fraction is debt to traders and debt to you (debt incurred from taxes).

[Krytor]

Thanks Thrake, that's super helpful stuff I wish I'd known earlier.

As metal has no limit it's a bit surprising that metal was unsellable in my game.

You mention the market is my own + traders (this seems like a market made of magically created materials that regenerate) + neighbors. I assume neighbors are any regime that directly borders mine.

You mention private income is worker salaries - taxes. Do you mean ALL workers or just private workers? It sounds like my smaller cities had higher private income because they had more private assets per population. And it also sounds like raising my taxes can lower their income.

Really it's all about lowering private income so I can keep public worker prices as low as possible. Does that mean I should do my best to stifle the private industry by high taxes and nationalizing anything I can? How would you lower private income?

[Thrake]

For the most part, private workers do NOT produce credits. As long as your city is reasonably large and you did not allow the private economy to own mines, then private income is proportional to worker salary. So if you want to reduce private income, progressively reduce worker salary. This will work as long as you don't hire more than a set % of your population as workers. If you have more workers than this cut off point, then private salary will always be higher than worker salary. This acts as a soft cap to the % of your population that can effectively become workers.

Nationalizing mines will certainly help but natinonalizing farms will only have little, temporary effect as a new one will be built ASAP.