What happens at zero gold and upkeep higher than income

[tabanli]

What happens when you have zero gold and your upkeep is higher than income. Do you loose some of the units or it just ignores the upkeep.

[KGB]

It just ignores the upkeep.

The only penalty is that you can no longer produce any new units.

KGB

[Chazar]

It seems that production is just frozen, ie. multi-turn production can be continued later on, right?!

[Qwertius]

Also units you have ported do not advance to their destination.

[zillusion]

Wouldn't it be better to have units abandon you? They could start disappearing (say starting with level 1 units and only losing level 5 units last) until you are at least even. Otherwise it's like your unit agree to keep working for no pay. Alternatively, some units could have loyalty that allows them to work for no pay.

[KGB]

How would you determine which L1 units disappear? If you lost units on the front line it could be a disaster while losing some on the back line wouldn't be a problem. So having the game randomly decide is a bad idea which means players would need to manually disband units which means a new game interface would be required.

KGB

[zillusion]

I think random would be fine. All players would know that if they can't afford their units, they will risk having the ones they want randomly removed. They can prevent this by manually disbanding before that happens. Same interface; problem solved.

[zillusion]

I wonder about the details of how it currently works though. The turn you go from positive to negative, do you still produce all your new units as you head into that negative turn? If so, there is some strategy to switching production to make as much as possible on that last production turn.

[Chazar]

What is wrong with the current status?

I don't see a way 'to exploit the current method, especially if the debt is tracked (i.e. the treasury growing into the negative, and requiring to become positive first before production restarts). A player with sub-zero treasury is likely to have enough problems already, so why add some more? I you cannot conquer a foe that does not produce any units, then you probably don't deserve it.

Of course, that means that a lost player in an FFA may still obstruct a keypoint or something for a while, but marching through without spending troops might upset the game's balance.

[KGB]

You don't go sub-zero. Your gold total reaches 0 and stays there as there is no concept of 'back pay'.

As long as your upkeep exceeds your income you remain at 0 and don't produce any new units. If you then disband/lose units or conquer a new city so that your income turns positive you start accumulating gold from 0 and can then produce armies again.

KGB