Income and manpower
I am getting close to setting the NWOL-3 start values for income, treasuries, and manpower.
In NWOL-1, incomes were 25/30/35 per level for cities, port cities, and colonies respectively. Treasuries started with one year's income (before any purchases were made) and manpower was 25,000 per city.
In NWOL-2, incomes were reduced to 15/18/21 per level, which was a 40% reduction across the board. Treasuries were one season's income, except that it appears that I used the old income values in making this calculation, and Britain got three seasons rather than one to give her financial advantages.
I am thinking incomes of 18/21/24 for NWOL-3 or maybe a little higher, and treasuries somewhere between the NWOL-1 and NWOL-2 levels but closer to NWOL-2, with some kind of bonus for Britain and a somewhat smaller bonus for Holland, which also had very well developed financial markets in 1789. I do not want to say exactly what the start treasuries will be.
Steve
Who's new
- joequ1oeil
- koolguy66
- Sakkal
- David Adams
- rkimler
Britain's Finances
I have a couple of problems with the way Britain's financial strength is reflected.
First, there are numbers around somewhere that show the debt the British government incurred. I recall that it is truly immense -- far more than any single year's revenue. So Britain's "bonus" needs to be very much larger. Britain has manpower issues but financially, they didn't start to get into real trouble until about 1813-14, even after providing enormous subsidies to their allies over the years.
Secondly, the British "bonus" should not be available, in total, at game start. What we are talking about here is credit and credit was never used that way even if it had been available that way and in those amounts, which I doubt. That kind of an at-start "bubble" also leads to really unhistorical British behavior as we saw in NWOL II.
Thirdly, some allowance has to be made for the fact that one of the insidious things about credit is that it has to be paid back, with interest, which has significant cash-flow implications, implications of which lenders were aware. Hence higher borrowing must inevitably lead to higher taxes both to service debt and to satisfy lenders of the nation's creditworthiness.
Finally, while higher taxes were certainly raised in Britain historically and Britain had a very strong ability to raise funds in this manner, the taxpayer probably didn't look at it that way and with Britain (maybe Holland too) probably being the only true democracy in the game, the taxpayers' views could not be ignored. So you have this tremendous financial capacity in Britain but also very strong restraints to its use.
How this played out historically was that ultimately, as mentioned above, vast sums were borrowed, but gradually, as needs arose and no faster than the British people could be acclimatized to a higher debt load and ultimately to higher taxes.
The best thing to do would be to construct a credit facility in the game. I can appreciate that you don't want to do that. But something should be done in an effort to approximate the historical reality -- essentially it is a matter of ensuring that Britain is able to carry on significant and costly operations, primarily naval at least to start, *and* provide its allies with vast subsidies, all without any impairment of its financial health but without so much at any one time that British decision making is wildly skewed from the historical.
Jim
Jim Voege
Income and Manpower - Spain
If I recall, there was some thought to adjusting Spain's income to reflect the change to a major?
John Vanvark
Spain's income
That didn't make it onto my short list. In the past, Spain has had more income than I thought it ought to have because its colonies are so valuable and so numerous (and it never lost one in either NWOL-1 or NWOL-2). I think putting it into the major category brings it into line with the income it's always had. That said, if someone wants to make the case for why Spain's income should change, go ahead. Nothing is set in stone yet (but will be in a couple weeks time, at least as far as NWOL-3 is concerned).
Steve
I am a wizard. I make things using magic. SJS
Spain's Income
Spain's income should be fine.... If I recall it is actually more than Prussia. Of course the quality of the units puts the military on par with Naples. Planning and defending the colonies and whom to back on the continent is a big task in Spain's politics.
So far no one has tried a major assault on the Caribbean. It is not an easy task to move a force so far from home. To do so one has to have the home front covered and a navy powerful enough to control it's horizon. This limits dramatically those who can venture into the Carib. In reality only the 4 that are there as they have staging bases. Almost every other state has a problem of not enough Navy, or military or finances to mount an attack into the Caribbean.
If the numbers look critical, I imagine a minor adjustment in the starting treasury can even up the differential. Even given a major status they should not be considered a prime mover of events. They should be more like Holland, in our simulations, or Prussia.... a valuable ally but not able to take the brunt of the action.
Robert