Cours: Compréhension annuelle ou mensuelle (document en anglais)

EU3: Economics for Dummies

By Azonalanthious

Chapter I: Understanding yearly vs monthy:

First, you have 2 major types of income, your yearly and your monthly income. Yearly is paid on Jan 1st and is based strictly off the tax value of your provinces. It is important to note that this is where cores matter - a non-core province will pay your 10% of their tax income, a cored province will pay you 100%. Constables increase either of these by 50% (so 60% and 150% respectively). Its also worth noting that overseas provinces (colonies basicly) have a -90% penalty, so pay very little. The yearly income all goes into your actual cash pool - this is the money you have to spend to maintain and buy your soldiers, buy buildings or ships, and so on and so forth.

Your monthly income is the second type. It is paid at the 1st of each month and will be 1/12th of each provinces tax income (so yes tax counts twice. Also worth noting that cores/constables do not matter for this version of tax, though overseas still matters), 1/24th the province tax income of any vassals, production income, your trade income, your tarrifs, and your gold income. By default this income goes into improving your tech or stability, but by minting can be used to generate actual cash money at the cost on of inflation. Chapters 2-6 are pretty much only concerned with monthly income, as it is by far the more complex of the 2 income types.

Chapter 2: Trade Goods and Trade Value

Most provinces (new colonies and uncolonized provinces are the only exceptions, new colonies gain one eventually) produce a trade good. Each trade good has a global price that is generated by combining factors for every country, the factors varying from good to good -- for example, naval supplies prices go up if a county with a large number of big ships is at war, while spices go up for every marketplace built. This number is the top of the two price numbers listed by a trade good when you have the province view up.

Once the price is determined, you next look at how much is made - overseas provinces will always be 1.0 (once a full province, while still building up a colony it will be lower). Home provinces will get a bonus based on both their tax income and their population - I believe the highest I've seem was 3.1 units produced. A province's trade value is the price of its trade good times what it produces -- for example, if grain is selling at 5.0 and a province produces 2.0 grain, then its trade value is 10.

The modifiers National Trade Income Modifer and Local Trade Income Modifier increase this value, to to use the above grain example, if you had a +10% National Trade Income Modifier, it would now be 110% of 10, so have a trade value of 11. Prestige is the most common National Trade Income Modifier (you get +0.15% per point of prestige) but there are others you can get as well. This number is the second of the two price numbers you see when the province view is up. So that's Trade Goods and Trade Value - will discuss why Trade Value is important in a second here.

Chapter 2a: Gold

Gold is a special trade good. Each month you add 1/12th its Trade Value directly to your monthly income. However, its Trade Value does not apply to the production and trade uses mentioned below. Having a large % of your income be gold will also increase you inflation, but this doesn't matter for 95% of countries (there are 4 I believe that start with enough gold to matter, and by the time you have taken a number of gold provinces with other countries you will generally also have taken enough non-gold provinces that it still won't matter to you).

Chapter 3: Production

First, overseas provinces do not have a production income (there is one exception, covered under buildings below). Provinces which are not overseas will have a production income - this income is the trade value from above times your production efficiency. This is the number that shows next to production in province view. 1/12th of this income is added to your monthly income each month. So generally speaking high trade value + high production efficiency = high production income - simple enough.

Chapter 4: Trade

Each of your provinces adds its trade value to whatever CoT it trades though. This has no direct effect on your income (but remember that trade value also drives a province's production income). Trade income is generated by placing merchants in a CoT. Each merchant placed will control 5% of that CoT -- for example, if you have 2 merchants in a 100 ducat CoT, you will control 10% of it or 10 ducats worth. You then take this amount times your trade efficency to determine the actual income from that CoT for you, then (like all other forms of monthly income) divide by 12 and add that amount each month. Having a monopoly in a trade center offers an extra bonus -- any empty spots give their 5% to you. So for example, if you have a monopoly in a CoT with 2 empty spots, you will get 40% of that CoT's value - 30% for your 6 merchants and 10% for the empty spots.

Chapter 5: Tarrifs

Oversea's provinces produce tarrifs. A province's tarrif income will equal its tax income plus the production income it would have had if it wasn't overseas. In order to fully collect tarrifs you need

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