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Hello all!

Interesting conversations are beginning to be had in the eUK about TW’s and their impact on moneyflow. This has prompted me to take a look at the eUK’s statistics, and a look at some other nations, some of comparable size, some because they are interesting.

I’ve drawn some conclusions and observations on what I have seen based on the premise that mid/small sized nations who do not earn more in tax income than they can donate would want to keep their money moving out of country accounts. This is general advice and it won’t fit all nations - those who earn way more than can be donated won’t get much out of the practical tips below, and those who earn way less may not need them. Nevertheless it may prove interesting and informative reading.

Mechanics and terminology

For those who may not be aware, tax income, concession fees, and money from occupying regions goes directly to the treasury, or ‘country accounts’ (if you are old school!).

Nations can then take this money out using a donate law. Only one donate law can be ran at a time, as with all admin-module laws they take 24 hours.

There is a cap on how much a donate law can seek to move from the treasury - 400,000cc.

In other words, the maximum money you can move out of the treasury is 400k a day, but this requires back-to-back law proposals which in most democracies is not practical or realistic. Nevertheless some of the calculations below are based on that premise.

In this article, the pound sign is used in visuals to mean currency - take it to mean cc!

I also use the terms ‘returnable income’, ‘income-to-return’ and make references to ‘liquid treasury’ or ‘liquidatable treasury’. References to returning income refer to the fact that in most cases income generated by concession agreements and occupying regions for Training Wars is returned to the hosting nation. This is certainly true in the eUK. When I describe a liquid treasury, I refer to the circumstance of a nation which is earning less than it can donate, i.e. the funds in the treasury are ‘liquid’ in that they can be accessed. There are some nations who earn more than can be donated and are accruing millions in their accounts - this is money that cannot be accessed. Those nations are doing very well for themselves of course so this is not a negative reflection on them!


Stats

As my interest in Training Wars and how they can apply pressure to a treasury comes from discussions in the eUK Congress, I started off with the eUK’s figures. I have used other countries, some of a comparable size to the eUK, some picked at random to offer some comparatives and demonstrate some interesting points. The figures come from the economy page.

If you are reading from outside the eUK, feel more than free to message me or comment and we can take a look at the figures for your nation, and indeed if you are from one of the nations included in the table by all means get in touch and I can share some thoughts on what might work for your treasury.

Notes on the Table (feel free to skip)

This has broken down the number of TW’s (Training Wars), whether they are via border or MPP, and then some info on the impact they are having on the accounts of the countries reviewed. Some figures (percentages, treasury sums) have been rounded.

The 60 day average income is derived from figures in the economy page, the average daily percentage of income via TWs is derived from the amount of income that comes from occupying nations for TW purposes each day. This is ‘returnable income’ in most instances, but there may be exceptions to that rule.

Lastly, and perhaps the most interesting parts are the columns on liquidating the treasuries of the nations reviewed. I have offered thoughts on how easy it would be to liquidate the accounts (i.e. run donations to get the accounts to 0cc). This is largely based on the stats and won’t account for the political circumstances in any nation. There’s a few nations where I have given a ‘maybe’ when saying if it could be easy for them - this is based on the fact some relatively small changes could make their accounts liquidatable.

The days needed to liquidate have been arrived at using the average daily income, which can of course fluctuate. I have used the average daily income and worked out how long it would take to empty the treasuries whilst that income was still being generated. These figures are based on the incomes of the nations between days 5843 and 5902, and the position of the national treasuries this morning (approx 2am game tame, day 5903).

It is quite easy to arrive at these figures and to play around with them to see how different factors may alter the picture. By all means get in touch if you want me to look at anything for your respective nations.


Practical advice for managing liquidity

Of those nations sampled there are a handful where a large proportion of their income is returnable TW income. It is interesting to note there are nations with ample TW’s who do not face this problem, and there are some who have a lower amount of TW’s who do face this problem.

But why should we care? If we can get money out from the Treasury we should. It is after all part of our income, that we don’t want to be locked away where we cannot get it.

Again a reminder of some mechanic points before offering advice; you generate a returnable income by occupying a foreign region. If a TW partner occupies one of your regions, they generate a returnable income, not you. MPP’s can be signed which allow you to fight in the battles of another nation. These cost 10k. In my view these are under-utilised. Lastly, concessions - a nation can concede a region to another, and this generates a fee. As that fee adds to the income of a nation, this can cause fluctuations in returnable TW income elsewhere. An example of this can be seen in this article.

Some practical steps to assisting liquidity may be:

Pick partners according to preference, rather than randomly or first come first served
Nations you border, nations you can host in your own cores, and even access to battles via an MPP may be preferable to being hosted in another nation, depending on circumstance. Nations with a large GDP or concessions can generate a lot of money into their occupiers’ accounts - as such it can be better to host them in your own cores, or find a different TW partner altogether.

Strike a good balance
There’s a lot to be said about not going abroad too much without utilising your own cores, and not allowing your TW’s abroad to tip the scales of your donatable income. This is very similar to the above, regarding taking care, but I really wanted to point out that you should figure out what your max number of TW’s that rely on your nation being hosted abroad might be, and who are good candidates based on their gdp/income.

Keep an active Congress
That might mean more than just whipping people into running donates, in my experience a good baseline of Congress activity and debate makes it much easier to get donates proposed. You can even get them to discuss what they think a good amount of TW’s should be.

Keep an active Government!
The President, the MoD, and MoFA all need to be active to get good value for money from TW’s. Special attention should be given to what percentage of medals are attained by your own citizens, which will help determine how many TW’s is too little, and even how many may be too much if your citizens can’t keep up with the medals.

Agree where the money will go
Good democrats among you will know that Congress throwing cash at Governments doesn’t always sit easy with the role of Congressperson or with the politics of your nation. My suggestion is an Org is delegated to Congress for this purpose, which Congress can run donates to without losing effective responsibility for, and control of, those funds. They can fund the Government or programs how they see fit according to the practicalities and customs of a nation (you may reside in a place where people do just throw money at the Government, if you think that works too, then great!). The main point is to carefully manage donates so they keep up with income.

Check income and GDP of nations hosting you for a TW - don’t forget concessions
If you wish to have a liquid Treasury you want partners with a consistent income/GDP and who will not be resulting in large amounts of added income to your treasury. Check out the economy pages of the potential partners and especially if they have any concessions, as if you have a region in a country that has a concession in place then your income will be impacted by both the TW partner in question and their concession partner.

Consider how to lower income!
This part gets a section of its own below!


Ways to lower income

If all else fails or is not practical, you can look at the source of the challenge itself - the income. It is unlikely you will want to decrease it, and as mentioned elsewhere, if you are earning way more than you can donate then this article isn’t going to help! But if you are consistently above the donate limit there are some tips as to how to get you under that limit - including using a concession with a friendly nation to help you liquidate your treasury.

The main thing to reiterate is that, as described above it is only occupying regions abroad that generates income-to-return, so hosting nations in cores, or making use of core borders will provide TWs which do not place added pressure on the Treasury. Also as described above, if a single TW partner is creating the pressure, re-evaluate how that TW may work.

However, you could always sign a concession, whereby money is removed from your treasury and given to the nation conceding you a region. Even if you didn’t need the resource, if the conceding nation agreed to return the concession fee you would effectively increase the daily amount of money leaving the treasury. You would want to find a partner to do this with whose own income is below 400k.

Lastly there are taxes - most taxes will be pretty low already, and in a lot of cases tax income does not generate pressure on the donation limit. But it is an option to lower incomes by a smaller degree. You will want to base your taxes on your markets more so than your donations so this is something to only do with caution.

As a reminder, this is of course only relevant to nations who don’t hugely exceed the donate limit with their tax income. Nations such as those are well advised to spam donations as best they can!


Can’t we just owe people loads of money?

It is not unusual for countries to draw up large debts with one another, and pay it off in large lump sums or slowly over time. This is not in fact ideal for countries of the size and incomes for whom this article will be relevant. My advice would always be to clear your debts. This comes from two key things - firstly if your income climbs and the money ends up inaccessible, you’ll have to find it elsewhere.

Secondly and more importantly is a simple risk management view - if you owe hundreds of thousands of cc to a nation, you have no control over the terms of that debt. Unless you have written up some sort of treaty, debt taken on trust is a big risk to carry when Governments, attitudes, geopolitics may all change. You don’t want to handover to a new Cabinet and tell them we owe loads of money, even worse you don’t want your creditors suddenly talking about interest or increased payments so they can fight a big war somewhere. Stranger things have happened!

Conclusion and tl ; dr

I didn’t think this article would get so large, but here we are. The point that seems most evident to me based on a quick survey of a small number of nations is that managing your treasury income and making sure it is below the donate level is easier than you might think. Yes, it may involve challenging whether a particular TW is causing pressure on the liquidity of your treasury, but of those nations reviewed, Japan, the UK, Portugal and Ireland are all in a position to make tweaks to their TW partners and be able to empty (or begin emptying) their treasuries. There’s a pretty strong case for doing so, whether it is in clearing debts or just making sure that the money doesn’t end up locked away forever. In many examples (and indeed for 3 of the 4 nations just named) changing just one TW would make their income dip below donations, and they’d be able to begin liquifying their treasuries.

If you’re reading this and thinking how you might liquidate your own treasury, head to the economy page. Spot the TW partner adding the most to your income and suggest a pause - even of just a month in some instances, could be enough to empty the coffers and get the cash somewhere it can be put to use. In most countries this won’t be seen as controversial, but a practical step to preventing money being locked away FOREVER!

My final apology goes to those nations whose income looks like this:



I cannot help you! … but I don’t think you need it 🙂

Thanks for reading,
Mr Woldy