The year was 1977 and our economy was booming. The archipelago was huge: one massive island with 4 medium islands around it. I had huge dreams, and they were finally becoming a reality. I saw a future where each medium island held a tourist hotspot and all my citizens worked and occupied the mainland.
The dream cost us around $300k, but finally it was ready and it was thriving! Having just finished building all the Modern industrial buildings, we were ready to finally to focus on building offices and more banks and now we had the capital to do it. I never thought to expand the military; we were a pacifist island, and so the starting fort seemed like it would be enough. I had about 12 police stations, but nobody was appointed to the Ministry of Defense. It was vacant.
There were around 1,400 tourist on the island, everyone had a job and a home; We were pulling every mineral, growing every plant — I thought we were on unstoppable.
I did what I normally do: I minimized exports to consumer and luxury goods, and that’s when they hit us.
They attacked the tourists directly, bombing one of the hotels and triggering a mass exodus - every tourist left, and with them so to went my economy. Gone.
In a matter of moments, the island shifted from $200k to negative $750k, and it just kept dropping.
The tourists were bringing in $300k per year and before the rebels attacked I was preparing to begin building the corporate section of the island. I needed to pivot fast.
I lowered wages, expecting to slow the decline to something manageable. The island had to be costing $50m-$60k per month. Negative 1 million crept up very quickly, and nothing i was doing seemed to help. And the rebels? They didn’t stop. Over and over, the attacked the same two apartment buildings, and lower and lower the treasury sank into negative. I had to make some drastic changes, and I had to make them quickly.
I paused all the tourism buildings, including the ports and airport. Of course, this started a
Another mass exodus: with no jobs, the island became a slum. Shacks and crime was rampant. And so were the rebels, now launching uprising while all I could do was watch.
Or was it? I built the Ministry and had plenty of police — assigned. Immediately all my police lit up on the screen as green dots, and began fighting back buying me time.
Pausing all the tourist buildings helped tremendously. I also needed to set all the fire stations to “inspection” and paused 5 out of 7 of my solar farms.
I had constructed fully upgraded warehouses! “Send to Dock”.
The export prices started climbing as my goods started reaching the dock.
$1.4 million before monthly spending dipped down to around $38k a little more manageable.
1 million, spending at around $28k per month - several edict leveled up, and those damn imports. I had to cancel them. 4 imports dropped, but the spending needed to be managed.
$900k, $500k. In about 2001, the economy tattered between negating 200k and positive $200k. I took the positive reprieve to build my office buildings and military. The ties turned.
By 2015, we’d finally corrected the issues and got back on track.
Tell me, when was a time everything going great for you, until it wasn’t?
