WTH!!! Can someone explain this nonsense to me (ASAP)

So I've been going through my countries doing small edits, for a few game years. But eeverything has now changed to an alarming F-You!

So this is what has happened it would appear that all of my government expenses has increased like 50% for no realizable reason. My monthly profit in Arcadia (GR) has went from 16B down to 8B. The whole time while Income Tax collection increased, contributions to health, contributions to Education, unemployment has beeen falling. Everything positive has been doing well. Yet all my expenses shot through the room! SS is up close to 3B, transportation is up like .6B Cost of Government 1.3B more expensive. Health is up 2B and education about .8B.

THIS is outrageous! I have no clue why. And it's true for all my countries! Too make matters worse I randomly clicked on a few countries and it would seem only my countries are suffering.

If someone wants to look at it, even though I have no idea what they can find to fix it. Countries are Arcadia, Barraxses, Ciole, Dalmasca, Evfuiria, Fianca, Genovis, Hudago all on Golden Rainbow.

Hmm, that is an interesting problem. I have a similar problem on White Giant, but to a smaller extent. I certainly am no genius on this game, but here might be a thought for ya:
Your indexes for health, infrastructure, education, etc. seem very high, almost too high. Do you invest in these sectors daily or weekly? If you do, that may be part of it. If you don't then I don't have an idea for ya. I hope this helps ya a bit, and if it doesn't, i'm sorry but that is the only thing I can think of. Good luck bud!

Right thank you, I know and thought of that. It doesn't account for everything and so I can't see that as the only problem here. But no in the countries thats indexes are too high, I've been waiting for population to grow to straighten those out. Thanks for the reply =)

Nothing is changed in the game and in general, gov. cost declined slightly last week.

In arcadia, total cost did increase from 36 to 45B
(25%).
The reason is very high salaries. These have been set very high and keep increasing.

the level is too high.
although tax income is slightly up with salaries, income from corporations is close to zero due to these high salaries.

also check the quality of raw materials again, as a small number of corporations are buying at a very high quality.

asking for a sale price much above quality also does not help.
the profitability of your corporations will decline if salaries will keep increasing and the country may go into monthly losses.

Thanks Andy. But see I can care less what the profits from my corps are. I have 0 profit transfer, 0 taxes, no foreign stakeholders. I don't get any money from them. So I know I have to keep an eye on those corps as I bring up the salaries with the intent on zeroing out the balance. I just don't understand why the cost increases are so large. Why is my government costs going up because salaries are increasing? I would understand SS going up as my Average LLW salary increases, but many other costs are increasing also at an alarming pace.

And I do know my strategy is unconventional, however it was working very very well, until a game year ago. I just can't seem to find any sense in the increased costs outside of SS. So thanks for your response but by any chance can you explain my problem a little more clearly, just so I can hope to adapt and change my strategy so I can make it work a little better.

Have you set your Gov-Salaries to a fixed level Drew? Maybe those increase as well

No they are fixed, they are fixed quite high, but I had to keep it in reference to my corporate salaries. They have not moved.

But that does bring up a good point. By chance has the employees required for hospitals or schools changed at all recently? They can easily account for some of the increased costs, which is STILL increasing I'm barely still in the positive.

Nothing was changed for a very long time. maybe a slight decline in gov. cost. we see totals decline a bit.
the only changes are in your own country where salaries are going up all the time.

lower them to reasonable levels and the cost will decline.

also, the country will become more profitable.

paying such high salaries in corporations does not make sense.

It must be one of 2 things. Your govt salaries are increasing in line with your corp salaries and/or there is some product like services or whatever all infrastructure uses that is going through a very high price phase.

You can check the number of employees in hosps and schools etc by looking at the graphs in the ed pages. I dont think the number has increased.

Did you take a new country recently? That bumps up govt costs.

Fine you win, without devulging any useful information at all! This is so not cool, and this is another example of simcountry attempting to any bit of individuality out of the game!

To say that maximizing value is NOT an acceptable way is not an option is bonkers. What is the incentive of dropping salaries of 1100 down to 1000 when the corporations profit difference is only 50M? The purpose of the government is to do what is right for its people! To say dropping salary from 1100 down 1000 will help my country when it would lower my profits overall is the right thing to do SHOULD require some explanation. My salaries have been real high for a long time and I continued to see larger and larger levels of success, the only explanation here is the game is broken! Until I hear something else that makes sense that is the excuse for this problem. Oh the average income of your population passed up 38,947 and though the population used to pay for it let's have the government pay more for education. Does that even seem high? My average salary in my country is under 40k and that is too high?

So finally because the game is broken, I'd like you to tell me what is the maximum salary I can set things at before the game breaks. Sorry for the rant I'm just very disapointed in the quality of feedback. Crafty thanks it was worth a check I should've checked that before but no avail.

Drew, Simcountry has always changed, sometimes more than others. Getting feedback from the GM is a luxury once not afforded.

Try experimenting with different things, but remember its just a game

Drew,

you lost it.
ask your employer to increase all salaries to 500K or a multiply of that and see how the corporation is doing.

Increasing salaries makes sense to some level but does not make sense at much higher levels.

Most corporations in the game are profitable.

yours seem over the hill, and broken.

no corporation can be profitable if salaries are 10 times higher than the standard in the industry.
Your country shows the result.
salaries go up and your profits disappeared.
In my book, it is broken.

Yup that's fine and dandy. I just need to understand why is all. If 1000 salaries have really harsh effects that is fine with me, I just want to know why COG health, education, and transportation costs increase because of it. I can't develop a new strategy without understanding that. That leaves me with a situation in which I have to guess some arbritrary level in which unrelated costs seem to move. And once again as my salaries grew higher my health paid itself, my education paid for itself, and income tax was able to pay for everything else, to say it is not sustainable is untrue. And as for the corps the game allows corps to be profitable at that level so... As long as can keep the corps out of the red I don't see the issue. These corps work for the people, and should serve the people. Is it wrong to believe that my imaginary people would rather see its company pay higher wages then recieve larger dividends? As the larger the wages go the more they get to invest in.

Andy, if I may ask, what do you mean by increasing levels of salaries for corporate workers? I only ask because my country of Pontus on White Giant is going through the virtually identical problem as Drew is going through.

Ok oops I apologize Andy, I think you said IT IS broken. If you are saying my strategy is broken then of course I retract my statement, but if you think I just reached too far and messed with game mechanics then I'm sorry for my last post. I sincerly thank you for spending the time to look at my country and offer me a response.

But I'm not going to tell my boss to increase salaries as he runs a for profit business, but Country Controlled Corps are not for profit businesses they are tools of the government to run how the government sees fit

@Keith - I understand what my problem is very well, just the effect doesn't seem right to me. You can wait for Andy's response or you can take my word for it. SO..... The continously increasing salaries, mean: The salaries were high, all corps set to 1000 they didn't all make it there but they were all high. If still profitable at 1000 which like all were, I increased further 100 at a time, if at any point it looked to go the other way I'd bring it back down. But with quite a few corps moving into 1100 and a few moving into 1200, one that I was ready to plave at 1300 the salaries are already far too large, and getting even bigger. Andy proposes that my salary levels are just plain too high. The increasing factor really isn't the issue it is the severity of how high they are.

So if you have the same problem as I do then your salary levels are most likely above 500 in your corps, if not then it is most likely a different issue. If you want though I can keep you posted, I dropped my salary levels down to 900 across the board to measure the effects. This is an attempt to find what that threshold number is. But there can be many threshold levels as there can be different variables in our countries. Such as gov/corp employment, gov salaries, high pay/low pay etc. Hope that helps

Drew, by broken he means your strategy failed.

I thought he meant drew is broken. Drew is after all the one who sympathises with the terrorists that flew airplanes into the World Trade Center and thinks it is perfectly acceptable for others to indiscriminately blow up themselves and many others just because someone made a joke about a prophet.

It still hasnt been explained why overly high salaries would cause greater govt and associated costs. Sure, it may cripple corps, but the original question was why are the govt costs going up so much.

As my salaries decrease the contributions by the public decrease across the board. My expenses across the board are remaining stagnant, meaning less profit to the country. There remains to be a small difference in how profitable my corps are just as expected.

And Crafty I sympathesize with people. I never once said I liked what they did, I said I understand why they do the things that they do and these kinds of situations are avoidable, but simply showing respect to other people. Tell me how many Americans/Europeans care about the slaughters in Yemen or Syria. It isn't much in the grand spectrum of things just as they wouldn't be to influenced by if we went through a 2nd civil war. Until there is some level of commpassion there will be no respect for human life on either side. This isn't a character flaw. Laguna I thought so originally but the reread sounded like it went the other way.

So it seems there is some maximum threshold point I have to stay under which implies a broken game.

It is a character flaw to say that its acceptable to kill people in the name of a dead prophet. You should read back what you said. You are a terrorist sympathiser and need exposing as such. If I thought you were old enough and smart enough to do anything but talk nonsense about such things then I would have you incarcerated.

@Drew-Thanks for the info. Actually I have my corp salaries set at 250, so I'm not too worried about my salaries. I meant I was just curious by what he meant since like you, I am losing cash fast. All my corps are producing a solid profit, so I assumed it had to do with govt. salaries, but not that either. I will just have to keep digging until I find the root of the problem. Thanks again.

And by the way, where did the terrorism thing come out of an economic/fiscal question? That just kind of threw me for a loop, so anyone please explain.

Kieth I'm just to vocal on the forums I guess. Crafty thinks I should go against my values and join the military. I don't believe in terrorism I believe in cognition! People do what they do to react to situations that beset them. The same reason Republicans lie to get votes, its the only way to get what they want. You do it, we all do it. Behave a certain way to get what they want, do what we see is our best case for success. I wonder what else Arabic people could've done to get Israel to stop buying weapons from America that get used against them. But really off topic, agreed.

There's a limit to what is acceptable (not just to our western way of thinking, but to human race) to acheive your ends. Mass murder is beyong that limit. Was Hitlers regime justified in its genocide to achieve purity of the Arian race?

So you still talk so much shit Drew.

Rethink your neo-hippy naive middle class idealism fool, or I shall continue to persecute you anywhere and everywhere I can. As any terrorist, or supporter of, should be.

P.S Lose the dumb avatar, it shows you for the college kid you are, with two birds with massive overbite drapped around you.

Well you really should Stop it because I have a real issue here and it's getting worse. And I think it's worse than terrorism to squander all the funds of the world.

I really don't know what to do anymore my costs are still overbearing and unchanged and know my contributions are to low that I'm losing money now. This doesnt make any sense. Andy your solution that made no sense didn't work so what do I do now?

Wow, I've apparently missed some MAJOR geopolitical/philosophical arguments! lol

Drew, I wonder if your cash problem has anything to do with slave countries. The only reason I say that is because I know that leader countries can get stripped of cash mysteriously when in fact it the slaves are losing the money and siphon the lost cash from the wealthier leader country. I know that probably sounds dumb, but I've only been playing this game for a few month.

Crafty, do I dare ask how these mass murder/terrorism arguments got started? And by the way, just out of curiosity, are you from the US or possibly the UK?

I'm from Great Britain and if you care to see Drews praise of terrorism and agreement with mass murder and 9/11 then the threads are still pretty new.