"Should I invest in my economy?" Payback Time and Prosperity.

[Lantantan]

Hello and welcome, here's some good reasons why you might be putting points into economy. Easy answers first, scary maths last at the bottom.

Science Bonuses

There's an increase in a country's science up to 48.750 GDP per capita, linearly increased a nations research from the minimum at 15.000. So roughly a 3 times increase. If you develop for science, no need to go beyond this number.

Unrest Reduction

Every 10K GDP reduces unrest by 1. With enough GDP it doesn't matter how badly the national cohesion is wrecked. Fixing cohesion by lowering Inequality is often more efficient, but not always sufficient.

Minor Population Growth Bonus

More GDP always increases population growth slightly, helps offset all those educated women not having children. The number is 1% annual pop growth per 30.000 GDP per capita. Side note, did you already know high democracy or education scores really tank your pop growth? We're talking -3.5% for either or both scores being 10.

Developed Nation Pop Growth Bonus

More GDP allows you to cross the "developed nation" threshold, this is a hidden 0.7% bonus to your population growth. This bonus decreases for more extreme cohesion values. For nations with 10 democracy 10 education, a nation only needs 20.000 GDP per capita, a hellhole 1 democracy 5 education nation needs 76.000 GDP per capita to still get this bonus.
Formula here is Dem + Edu + GDP per capita/4.000 > 25.

Avoiding Cohesion Penalties

Nations below 6.000 GDP per capita suffer extra resting cohesion penalties. Every 1.000 GDP per capita decreases cohesion resting point by 1. You might be better off reducing inequality though, especially if it's above the dreaded 4.5 threshold.

Defence against Councillor Action

Larger economies are harder for enemy councillors to attack or influence. But meaningful change requires billions worth of GDP changes.

Making my Money Back:

Finally the answer to the big question, "when is investing in economy still worth it? Will I ever get my investment points back?" Investment yields per capita GDP growth, so large pop nations are clearly going to benefit more. But investment points grows as the cube root of GDP, so that sure puts a damper on things. So I did a tiny bit of math for us all to find the time it takes economy investment to pay for itself:

Gr = r * (1+m) * p * 0.33 * GDP^(0.33-1)

Gr = IP Growth increase per invested IP
r = economy per capita growth, between 5 and 20, see $r in economy tooltip
m = economy investment bonus, between 0 and 3, see m% bonus in economy tooltip
p = population of country in billions
GDP = GDP in billions

1/Gr is time to pay back its costs in months.

Formula Examples:

So for my in game China plugging in the numbers:
Gr = 15.4 * (1+0.99) * 0.33 * 1.4 * 49000^-0.67 = 0.01 IP/month
so payback time of 100 months. Pretty good! even for 2035.

Lets see for my in game America:
Gr = 16.6 * (1+0.99) * 0.33 * 0.38 * 23000^-0.67 = 0.005 IP/month
Meaning a 200 months before I earn my investment back, No thank you game.

Okay one more example, Singapore:
Gr = 7.3 * (1+0.99) * 0.33 * 0.006 * 445^-0.67 = 0.0005 IP/month.
So 2000 months before I break even, Yuk!


That's it, hope that cleared up some opacity surrounding this rather important game mechanic. Shout out to Pruppelippelupp on Reddit who's knowledge I built on or just outright stole. And thank you for the awards, it's always nice to be appreciated!

[Lantantan]

So at game start, you're looking at the following estimates for payback time:

China - 10 years payback
US - 29 years
EU - 39 years
Spain - 72 years
Portgual - 108 years
India - 5 years
Nigeria - 10 years
Indonesia - 15 years

The "r" Factor is determined as follows:

+2.5 base
+1 per resource region
+1 per economic core region
+0.2 per democracy
+0.2 per education
+2.5 for cohesion = 5, tapering off to 0 for cohesion = 0 and 10.

[Seva]

My brain is too smooth to understand this but have an award anyway.

[Lantantan]

Originally posted by Mormon Jesus:

My brain is too smooth to understand this but have an award anyway.

Cheers! Maybe I should move the non-scary reasons up and hide the scary math at the bottom?

[corisai]

Originally posted by Mormon Jesus:

My brain is too smooth to understand this but have an award anyway.

As rule of thumb - stop once hit 47.750 GDP per capita :)

[fortydayweekend]

Thanks for doing the math

In the China example, is it meant to be 0.01 IP/mth?

[Lantantan]

Originally posted by corisai:

Originally posted by Mormon Jesus:

My brain is too smooth to understand this but have an award anyway.

As rule of thumb - stop once hit 47.750 GDP per capita :)

Good rule of thumb for your science nation for sure, reformatted the post for this to feature more prominently. I could/should make a TLDR with some more rules of thumb. Prolly after I do some game start examples.

[Lantantan]

Originally posted by fortydayweekend:

Thanks for doing the math

In the China example, is it meant to be 0.01 IP/mth?

Wooops that's what I get for not copying pasting properly, yes indeed, ty, fixed!

[VoiD]

Originally posted by fortydayweekend:

Thanks for doing the math

In the China example, is it meant to be 0.01 IP/mth?

That's what I was wondering.

For instance, unifying the caliphate with africa and the entire indochina area up to siberia created a region with 6.5b people, 42 development per month while supporting 8 armies+navies and due to all of the resource regions the economy priority is giving me, even though the government and inequality are both very bad, $38.2 per capita GDP.

Which gets me diminishing returns, sure, if I stay like this, but what about heavily developing the entire region then splitting them back up and using them as smaller super developed nations?

[Lantantan]

For sure, grouping everything together to develop the GDP is way more efficient. And indeed having more economic centres and resource nodes in a country directly increases the r making it even more efficient. So if you would then split the country in 2, your investment points would...

IP_old = GDP^0.33
IP_new = 2 * (GDP/2)^0.33)
IP_new/IP_old = 2/2^0.33 = 2^0.67 = 1.59ish

So every time you split your country in 2 pieces, the number of investment points increases by 59%. I think your control point usage would scale in the same way tho.

Edit:
So if the 80 nations of the world unify IP points decrease by... 80^-0.67 so a 95% drop.

[fortydayweekend]

A few examples from my early game:
China - 10 year payback
US - 29 year payback
EU - 39 years
Spain - 72
Portgual - 108
India - 5 years
Nigeria - 10
Indonesia - 15

The formula basically says it's only worth investing in large, not-rich countries

What determines the "r" value though? That makes a huge difference (e.g. India in my game has r = $11.30 but Nigeria is only $7.50).

[Lantantan]

ECONOMY INVESTMENT, or the "r" factor. Pruppelippelupp again to the rescure:

2.5 base
+1 per resource region
+1 per economic core region
+0.2 per democracy
+0.2 per education
+2.5 for cohesion = 5, tapering off to 0 for cohesion = 0 and 10.


Cheers for getting those payback time numbers fortydayweekend, i'll shamelessly copy them now.

[fortydayweekend]

There's also a question of optionality, i.e. what else would you be spending the IP on now instead of economy? Putting them into economy might be less efficient, but gives you more IP later on. The future IP are generic and can then be invested into anything, with IP you spend now you have to choose now.

That might not be a huge consideration (especially if you have a certain strategy in mind and know what levels of miltech/MC etc you want to hit) but could swing the balance towards investing more in economy for your first games if you're unsure of what to invest in.

As a simple example you're better off investing inefficiently in economy than investing in unnecessary mission control / boost.

[fortydayweekend]

Originally posted by Lantantan:

ECONOMY INVESTMENT, or the "r" factor. Pruppelippelupp again to the rescure:

2.5 base
+1 per resource region
+1 per economic core region
+0.2 per democracy
+0.2 per education
+2.5 for cohesion = 5, tapering off to 0 for cohesion = 0 and 10.


Cheers for getting those numbers fortydayweekend, i'll shamelessly copy them now.

Thanks... those make a huge difference!

So I guess the idea is:
- Rich countries need to be large pop, with high dem/edu and mid cohesion, otherwise don't bother
- Large poor countries should focus on bringing dem/edu/cohesion in line, then invest in economy
- Huge poor countries like China & India might be worth investing in economy no matter what

[Lantantan]

Good point on optionality and that's certainly goes for things like armies, navies, nukes and spoils. Flipside is we're also missing out on the payback period worth of funding or even idle MC income, really cant have too much earth based MC generation.

I agree with those investment conclusions except for the large poor country one. The sheer amount of investment points to fix democracy, AND eco, AND inequallity AND stabilising the transition period, is extremely painful. we're talking in the ballpark of 40.000 GDP/person worth of investment points. Best just dump it all into eco and bask in the sweet 3% high pop growth of uneducated countries. Or dev until the stabilising 6.000 threshold, then milk it for MC.

[Zuul]

Originally posted by Lantantan:

Developed Nation Pop Growth Bonus

More GDP allows you to hit the "developed nation" threshold, this is a hidden 0.7% bonus to your population growth. For nations with 10 democracy 10 education, a nation only needs 20.000 GDP per capita, a hellhole 1 democracy 5 education nation needs 76.000 GDP per capita to still get this bonus.
Formula here is Dem + Edu + GDP per capita/4.000 > 25.

This needs the qualifier that not all nations are even ELIGIBLE to be developed nations. It must be a multi-region nation, or a "fake" nation that is multiple RL nations smashed together. So things like Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, etc can NOT get it without conquest. Also, developed nation does not itself give you anything towards population growth. Rather, it unlocks the ability for COHESION to provide a population grown modifier, which is only obtained in full at a perfect 5.0, no less, no more.

Otherwise, the only thing I think is missing is the fact that GDP is the other modifier along with cohesion that affects resting unrest. Every 10K GDP reduces unrest by 1. With enough GDP it doesn't matter how badly the national cohesion is wrecked.

Edit: Also, that the size of the national economy is a defense modifier against a number of councilor missions. So even outside of the purely economic benefits, this makes your nations harder to hit with some actions.