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Negative citizens


HeroofTime55

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I've been at war for quite awhile, and have very little resources to my name currently. But having a negative value for citizens (and a negative value on my tax collections due to this) seems a bit silly. I figure it'd be a simple fix to set a lower bound on the citizen count, unless you can find out what's going on here, because I haven't a clue.

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It's the aid offer you accepted with the 2000 soldiers that's giving you negative citizens. Your citizen count is affected by the number of soldiers you have. Normally you wouldn't have been able to buy enough soldiers to have put yourself into negative citizens. In this case you got 2000 with an aid offer. Your citizen count was adjusted for this influx of soldiers. You didn't have enough citizens and ended up in negative citizens.

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Now thats what I thought, except I'm having the same issue and I haven't recieved any aid offers with soldiers. Instead, I've just sold practically all my infrastructure in order to drop NS. Does the same thing apply even though I didn't actually recruit any new soldiers?

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[quote name='Avakael' timestamp='1299849415' post='2659882']
Now thats what I thought, except I'm having the same issue and I haven't recieved any aid offers with soldiers. Instead, I've just sold practically all my infrastructure in order to drop NS. Does the same thing apply even though I didn't actually recruit any new soldiers?
[/quote]


Do you have any events that are negatively affecting your citizen count?

e: more likely, you held on to soldiers that you wouldn't have been able to purchase after selling that infra.

Edited by nippy
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[quote name='Avakael' timestamp='1299849415' post='2659882']
Now thats what I thought, except I'm having the same issue and I haven't recieved any aid offers with soldiers. Instead, I've just sold practically all my infrastructure in order to drop NS. Does the same thing apply even though I didn't actually recruit any new soldiers?
[/quote]

Yes, your citizen count went down from selling infrastructure, and you're soldiers lowered it further, so far that it went negative.

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So is this regarded as an OK mechanic then? Or is there still a problem?

Because if you think about it, say you achieve a negative citizen income as well. Then you'll collect positive income.

I think the lower bound should definitely be placed at zero citizens. You can't have a grocery bag filled with -5 apples after all. The citizens stat is (presumably) a count of a physical object, the least number of which you could have being 0.

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It works as designed. Negative citizens are only possible by the presence of too many soldiers. Your grocery bag/apple analogy isn't quite right. It's not so much of trying to have a bag with -5 apples in as it is you have 500 apples which at 50 per bag needs 10 bags but you only have 5 leaving you 5 bags short. X number of soldiers need Y citizens and you're short the citizens needed.

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But who am I paying when I collect negative taxes? :wacko:

I was under the assumption that the citizen count was reduced to simulate soldiers going off to war/being drafted from the populace. You can't draft more citizens than you have, i.e., drafting until you have a negative citizen count.

But I guess you're saying that it isn't meant to be a hard count of how many heads are in my nation, but whether or not I have a "surplus" or a "deficit" in my citizen count, as if it were a raw resource that supports other functions of my nation?

Still makes zero sense to collect negative taxes in that case, because it is a simple "You have X citizens and you will be collecting Y taxes from each, so here is your X*Y monies." Something is a mistake in all this, not so much a bug as an oversight for an admittedly unusual circumstance.

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[quote name='Cthulhu89' timestamp='1300431848' post='2668873']
Not necessarily, the cit count is simply a number of taxpaying people, not the number of actual citizens in your nation. Therefore, you can have a negative cit count.
[/quote]
A taxpaying person is still a physical object, of which you cannot have a negative number. As it stands, I am paying money into imaginary citizens when I go to collect taxes.


[quote]Or every surviving citizen in your nation has been pressed into service and you' had to higher some mercenaries which is how I'd assume the game sees it.[/quote]
It would be better to place a mercenary fee in bills rather than collecting negative taxes.

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  • 4 weeks later...

As a note, the current setup is such that now it stops you from collecting if it's a negative amount.

This would be fine if "activity" wasn't tied into collecting taxes; As it stands, if someone could force you into negative income for 25 days, they can *literally* force your nation out of the game. Probably not anywhere near feasible in the context of an alliance war, but if someone really wanted to kill off a single nation out there by itself, they theoretically could, with some effort.

Obviously, this needs a proper fix. Anything that poses a mechanical bar to staying active in the context of the game can only cause harm to the community.

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[quote name='Alfred von Tirpitz' timestamp='1302928490' post='2691388']
It should be fairly simple to get rid of the soldiers that are causing negative citizens. Demobilise them, if you can, or get them killed off in your war? A couple of banzai type charges ought to do the trick.
[/quote]
This isn't the point though, I know that I'm at liberty to do this.

What about some small new nation, unaligned, who is being kept at war with all sorts of negative modifiers? He doesn't have access to aid, and he has no more funds on hand. He shouldn't be forced to delete, but the current system would make sure of it.

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[quote name='HeroofTime55' timestamp='1303000299' post='2691725']
What about some small new nation, unaligned, who is being kept at war with all sorts of negative modifiers? He doesn't have access to aid, and he has no more funds on hand. He shouldn't be forced to delete, but the current system would make sure of it.
[/quote]

This is not entirely accurate. All the situations of negative citizens I'm aware of are situations deriving from having too many soldiers for the infrastructure/citizen population the nation has. And when a nation does have negative citizens from having too many soldiers, it's totally within their control whether they continue to have negative citizens or not since they can reduce their soldier count.

The situation you're indicating isn't possible.

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[quote name='Captain Nathan Brittles' timestamp='1303174478' post='2692978']
This is not entirely accurate. All the situations of negative citizens I'm aware of are situations deriving from having too many soldiers for the infrastructure/citizen population the nation has. And when a nation does have negative citizens from having too many soldiers, it's totally within their control whether they continue to have negative citizens or not since they can reduce their soldier count.

The situation you're indicating isn't possible.
[/quote]
I mean negative income, sorry if I wasn't clear.

A 0 infra nation, new with little land, struck with a sanction and a couple terribly unlucky events, could potentially result in a negative average citizen income. I'm not sure how many factors exactly would have to stack up to ruin the poor guy's day, but I figure it's within the realm of possibility.

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[quote name='HeroofTime55' timestamp='1303255477' post='2693996']
I mean negative income, sorry if I wasn't clear.

A 0 infra nation, new with little land, struck with a sanction and a couple terribly unlucky events, could potentially result in a negative average citizen income. I'm not sure how many factors exactly would have to stack up to ruin the poor guy's day, but I figure it's within the realm of possibility.
[/quote]
Said nation moves to Grey (the color with no Senate), grabs a few trades, and his income is positive again via collections, aid, and/or donations.

0 infrastructure, no improvements or wonders, little military to speak out = effectively 0 in bills. Granted, the income would be close to 0, but it'll be above 0.

Pretty sure your suggested situation is damn near impossible to pull off....

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[quote name='Iceknave' timestamp='1303274355' post='2694292']
Said nation moves to Grey (the color with no Senate), grabs a few trades, and his income is positive again via collections, aid, and/or donations.

0 infrastructure, no improvements or wonders, little military to speak out = effectively 0 in bills. Granted, the income would be close to 0, but it'll be above 0.

Pretty sure your suggested situation is damn near impossible to pull off....
[/quote]
If he's on day 24, he doesn't have time to wait for trades.

Bills are irrelevant in this.

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[quote name='HeroofTime55' timestamp='1303343233' post='2694962']
[quote name='Iceknave' timestamp='1303274355' post='2694292']
Said nation moves to Grey (the color with no Senate), grabs a few trades, and his income is positive again via collections,[b]aid, and/or donations.[/b]

0 infrastructure, no improvements or wonders, little military to speak out = effectively 0 in bills. Granted, the income would be close to 0, but it'll be above 0.

[b]Pretty sure your suggested situation is damn near impossible to pull off....[/b]
[/quote]

If he's on day 24, he doesn't have time to wait for trades.

Bills are irrelevant in this.
[/quote]
Oops, sorry, forgot that bills don't matter in this case.

Still, the 2 points in bold still apply, though you could make the same argument for a day 24, I'm gonna get deleted event.

Thing is, you pretty much HAVE to work your ass off to make such a thing happen and have insanely bad luck. Let's take a look, shall we?

I forget what the worst events were (usually a response is better than a non-response), but I'm pretty sure it was something like -3 to happiness or something like that. Stack that 3 times for -9 to happiness or -18 bucks to income. Let's assume, said person picks non-response, which I think, the worst was like -5 to happiness. Stack that 3 times for -15 to happiness (or -30 bucks). I'm ignoring the effect of environment just to keep things simple.

Figuring on 0 infra means something like 46 citizens, assuming non population AND non-income boosting trades (7 out of 21 resources, probability of this happens is something like 7/21*6/20 = 10%), and assuming 0 base happiness (I don't know what the base income per citizen/base happiness is unfortunately, so I'm using an estimated value from a calculator I found a while back) means a base income per citizen of $30.75 (before taxes and events), we get something like the following before tax rates:
(30.75-18)*46 = 586.5 bucks per day (response to events)
(30.75-30)*46 = 34.5 bucks per day (non-response to events)

Still got positive income even if it's utterly horrible.

So, is it even possible? Assuming I have everything right, it's down right near impossible to get 0 income let alone negative income.

*Disclaimer: It's possible I have some values wrong. I'll update and fix it if someone provides me with the right numbers.

Edited by Iceknave
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Non-responses to events don't factor in, because they can make the appropriate choice.

But lets say they have been in hippie mode for long enough that they're getting the max penalty, which I think is something like -13 happiness. And you can't leave peace mode until you collect, of course.

And say there's a war raging on and the GRL is at the cap.

I'm sure there's other crap that could be stacked on this.

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[quote name='HeroofTime55' timestamp='1302901275' post='2691226']As a note, the current setup is such that now it stops you from collecting if it's a negative amount.[/quote]
Despite it being highly unlikely, it's [i]possible[/i] that an ignorant player finds her/himself at 24 days of inactivity without being able to dismiss soldiers (e.g. for having done a ground attack). This just requires a combination of inactivity, bad luck and ignorance, thus it [i]is[/i] possible.

IMHO players should never have their nations deleted against their will (unless they broke the rules) thus this issue, though minor, isn't irrelevant.

A simple fix would be to allow nations to collect negative amounts and to have a negative treasury as a result. I don't see why not.

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