Automation systems issue

Hey there,
I have a situation where I turned off the education/health/transportation autobuild systems in my states to save money, and yet despite this, after not building any schools/roads/hospitals for a few days the game has been autobuilding these anyway, and has spent hundreds of billions of my cash doing this.
This really gets my goat! because I turned off the autobuild specifically because I didnt want this to happen, and yet it does anyway!
I realize that this system is in place as a safeguard, but what it has done in my case is spend my (very limited) game money to do something i had not intended be done.
The automation logs show a message telling me that I can avoid this sort of intervention by building these various infrastructures... ummm... lmao?!?

This issue should be fixed please! Make an option in the automation system to 'opt out at your own risk' and could even make a renewal requirement every 3 or 5 or 7 days or something.

Thanks for your consideration,
Alexius

Had a further thought. When I look at various player countries many of them have negative cash levels because the autobuild spent all their money building stuff like crazy, I believe this is a related issue. The system goes overboard buying stuff spending so much cash, its really quite broken imo, new players should not get plunged into a negative cash position because the game is trying to 'help' them!

The automation settings will only build up to a certain Index level of 120 Which is really nothing, you'll want to be higher at around 140 for the most part.

My education index is currently sits at 141 in my main Country and this equates for my population to a monthly cost of 9,138.99M SC$ of which 2,373.38M SC$ is made back on its own so a net running expense of only 6.7 billion $SC

On KB: Elementary schools cost 40.80M SC$ per school. Highschools are 47.96M and University's run 1.59B SC$ per facility.
Roads and hospitals are similarly not that expensive. compaird to what your stating.

You might want to check your Profit loss page to make sure your not hemorrhaging funds in other areas because I doubt the automation will go so overboard to cost you hundreds of billions.

Usually financial troubles stem from overspending your military.

As for why its not turning off. Make sure you hit the save automation features button under the list of automation options. I know overlooked it on more than a few occasions.

I turned off most of the automation a long time ago precisely because it way overspends. I had even had one case where it spent $1.5 trillion buying precision bombs which is completely ridiculous.
I don't like being forced by the game to waste my money to raise up these indices in my slave countries when its not needed.

We'll when it comes to munitions the automation will only buy what your military needs for maintenance and training so if its spending 1.5 trillion on just precision bombs and that's a problem for you, Its possible that what I stated before is true and your Military has grown beyond your economy's capacity to support.

Still though if the setting is disabled it shouldn't making purchases anyway, unless they were already pending. Check for any local or common market contracts as well as active trade offers that might have been overlooked. If its still happening after that, I'm at a loss sorry dude. For my country's everything is working as it should.

Maybe a more experienced player or Andy will have some insight.

@DisplacerBeast Thanks for taking the time to write your suggestions. I started this thread more as a rant about an unbalanced and broken game system than anything else. I appreciate your suggestions but you dont understand the context. The problem is that the games automation system IS working as intended by its creator, and Im trying to point out in this limited format about how this system needs rebalancing.

I frequently check my cash and spending logs and trade to try to prevent this stuff from happening. My contracts and stuff are all fine, military cost is not a problem and is within my means. The system buying $1.5t of bombs example happened when i purchased a new state with coins and shortly after that is when it happened out of the blue. The country did not need bombs, it already had enough with its starting military and when i purchased it there was no contract to buy the bombs, that happened afterward.
These sort of giant purchases have happened to me several times now and always leaves me scratching my head. Everything from schools and roads and bombs to other types of goods like def/off weapons maintenance or construction or whatever.
I definitely dont need or want the game to order 3000 elementary schools for my country just because the game thinks my country needs to be at a 120+ education level.

In short the automation system is great at wrecking player finances. I see so many new players deep in negative cash because of this system. Theres a lot of player countries with less than 20m pop who are deep in negative cash territory because the game thinks they needed high level indices and it doesnt need to be this way.
Why does a country with 18m pop need such high levels? I dont think it does.

And your are certain they are actively player controlled and not Inactive or C3's?

I get that your just ranting but I'm pretty certain your overlooking details that impact the observations your making.

The automation system exists to help new players maintain a functional baseline in normal situations. And its a system that goes away once you hit level 4. I find it a little hard to believe that you've seen Countless "players" succumb to this systems supposed bad choices when what you describe latterly looks like every non player controlled country I've ever looked at.

Any time I see country with relative low population of around 20m and negative cash flow as you described, its either a C3 (Computer Controlled Country) or an inactive players Slave country. They rarely are ever player controlled (on my world)

C3's finances don't matter in the slightest. once they get poor enough from what I've seen they just bounce back positive. Once there taken over after a month passes again they just sort of stabilize to a set level then that a player then takes control from.

This allows players to raid C3's and for the raided country to Spring back to a baseline if and when a new player gets placed in that country.

Bear in mind That baseline includes an military that can take on a few C3's itself so new players can experience warfare early. However it is also a bit too large for young country's to support without the new player financial bonuses. So if they just go inactive and never develop their economy the military expenses catch up with them once the bonus dries up.

It really does not take much effort to balance a country's budget so long as the military isn't out of hand. Personally I actually prefer to leave the automation settings enabled except for ammo and automated corp setup.

The corp setup because it genuinely just picks corps at random which usually is a bad, and the ammo because I play on a Relatively peaceful world.

Also you cant view the cash log of other country's, it just reverts back to your country's log.

The numbers you mention are too large and unrealistic.

The system will not purchase 1.5T of a single type of ammunition.

In general, the system these days will not set up facilities and will not intervene unless your country if found to be failing and close to bankrupt.

no billions on schools.
if it builds, these are small numbers each month to get you to a reasonable education level.

You need to look into your defense cost each month and how much it is compared to your income.

Building the military is only possible if you have a good running economy that earns you money each game month. This is not so difficult.
With many products on short supply, you can build very profitable corporations.
All countries now have many natural resources. Building corporations that use them, results in very high profits.

If you want me to look into it, give me the name of the country and the world name and I will look into it.

In my opinion, if the automation feature is turned off, then the game should not build anything, nothing, zilch. It really ticks me off when I have something turned off and then the game builds it anyway. I don't care if the index should be higher, if I want it higher I will make it higher. This is something which is an ongoing issue with this game. When I started playing this game about 10+ years ago it did not do this. It was a real simulation. Now it just pisses me off to the point I am thinking about no longer playing/paying this game. Andy make it stop please!

Please read what we wrote today about it.
We hope it is now resolved but if any of this occurs again, please let us know and we will find out what happened and fix it.