In Victoria 3 you have more possibilities how to play. And one tactic could be go temporary to debt. So you could invest into your economy and you will temporary have negative budget. But if you invest well then your economy will grow and you will get more money with which you could pay off the debt and be better.
Debt is good, change my mind
In my games I play “on the line” of debt. Because I have opinion if I have a lot of money in reserves then I doesn’t invest much and If I’m in debt then I need to pay interest for my debt so this isn’t effective to. A balanced budget around zero is great.
But back to realistic life of Victoria 3 I play that I accumulate money to have 20% of gold reserves full and after that I invest to economy until I get into debt for, like, 500k (depending on your normal weekly intake). The way into debt works very well for me when I increase construction sectors level so I boost construction and temporary I have bigger expanses. Which, however, increases GDP significantly faster…
and increased GDP also increases how much money will go to construction sector and how much strong will be private construction. I have been repeating this journey for a long time and so I am getting better and better through the “growth spiral”.
But you could also invest in more things not just building. You could invest money to your poops by welfare or by buildings university increase literacy.
But better way which I personally like is investment to battalions / barracks and army. War cost a lot of money and a stronger army is worth it to prevent aggressive actions against you and you also could attacks your neighborhood to level-up your economy.
How to finance buildings?
Before we look at how to get out of debt (found below) let’s look at another avenue where money can roll in. The investment pools could have a lot of money which could be spend on buildings. If you have a lot of money there you’re also playing inefficiently.
You want to always have investment pools at zero. If you have for example 300k – 600k of money and you are still gaining money, you can definitely build 3 to 4 construction sectors that will gradually help to exhaust your budget.
How to get out of debt?
Now when you know why is debt good is important to know how to get out of debts. Because if you are in debt then you must pay interests. And if interests will be high then you’ll slowly enter a death spiral. Because when your debt cost you interests (usually around 10%). And if debt is increase then is harder to get enough income to get out of debt.
To get out of debt is best way to increase taxes. This way is “easy” to perform for you because you could just click. But on other side this could cause decrease standards of livings because your population will have less money to spend.
If you need increase taxes you could start with consumption taxes and best for your situation will be perform taxes which will cost you 100 authority (how get more authority), because this doesn’t cost much and could bring a lot of money. Usually is better to set this taxes on goods which is mainly consumed by upper strata because they have usually low taxes.
If you can’t add another consumption taxes then you could increase all taxes which are sued by your population. But this will affects all and SOL will be increase faster.
If you can’t increase taxes then you could decrease military wages or government wages this should be problems because your military loose some strength but that’s temporarily fine. Decreasing government wages could cost you prestige which could run of another death spiral (so be aware of this steps).
Perhaps I don’t need to mention it, but you have already stopped the construction (of your government, right) because that is the biggest expense. In case you get really heavily in debt, we’re not talking about investing well – right?
If nothing helps you could decrease production methods in your army. So you need to less army goods and army will cost you less. But this could also spin a death spiral where you gradually collapse your industry while being a weak competitor to others. So this is the last one.
And I think we are all at home here and things should slowly turn for the better. If it hasn’t gotten better, you better hope someone pays you off.
