贷款是世界各国解决赤字的方式。开化国家可以直接从国家银行贷款，而未开化国家需要实施财政改革之后才能贷款。在预算界面，只要有可用的债权人就可以随时贷款，而出现赤字并且没有现金储备的国家也会自动贷款以满足资金花费（如果无法贷款，资金花费就会自动下降）。所有的贷款都需要支付利息，当一个国家的收入不足以支付贷款利息时，它就会破产。
大bug
目前的利息机制有一个巨大的bug：利息不会支付给提供贷款的人群，而是凭空消失掉。如果所有国家的总利息大于金矿的总产出，世界将耗尽资金，经济系统将被摧毁（当然这通常不可能发生）。如果你确实需要避免这个bug，你可以将defines.lua中的MAX_LOAN_CAP_FROM_BANKS和SHADOWY_FINANCIERS_MAX_LOAN_AMOUNT修改为0来禁止贷款，或者将LOAN_BASE_INTERES修改为0，并且从event_modifiers.txt中移除所有的loan_interest修正来避免产生利息。
利息凭空消失是游戏中两种将货币从经济系统中移除的方式之一（另一种是决议和事件扣除的资金）。
国家银行
人群需要将收入用于消费以满足需求。如果人群的所有需求都得到满足后还有剩余的钱，他们会把钱存入国家银行；在这之后，当人群无法支付其所需资金时，他们可以从国家银行取款。但与此同时，这些钱可能会借给其他国家，借给外国的钱不能主动取回。人群不能贷款。当一个负债累累的国家破产时，所有未取回的人群存款额都会被清空。
当一个政府需要贷款时，它总是先从自己的国家银行贷款，然后再向其他国家借款。在偿还债务时，本国的国家银行总是最后一个得到偿还的。此外，一些国家有时可能会从“私人投资者”那里借款；这些资金是由游戏创造的，目的是在没有足够的富裕国家提供贷款的情况下，保持全球经济稳定。
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy occurs when a country's interest payments are higher than its income. (This means a country cannot borrow more money to fund interest payments.) Events or decisions may cause bankruptcy if they cause an indebted country to get a negative cash reserve; bankruptcy is declared immediately rather than an additional loan being taken out. A bankrupt country is displayed in red in the budget screen.
A bankrupt country loses prestige, and all countries whose national banks lent money to the bankrupt nation receive a "Repay Debts" casus belli. Should they enforce this casus belli, interest payments to the victorious countries will resume as normal. Should the country not be able to make those interest payments, the creditor receives a "Cut Down to Size" casus belli. Additionally, all spending sliders are set to the minimum and all taxation and tariff sliders are set to the maximum once bankruptcy is declared. The bankrupt country also gets a loan_interest modifier of 0.5, making future loans carry a higher interest rate.
A bug in version 3.02 and earlier versions frequently causes bankruptcies when a saved game is loaded. This is because the goods artisans produce is not stored in the save file; upon a reload, artisans must first find something profitable to produce, which takes a few game days. Countries reliant on income taxes and tariffs from those artisans may go bankrupt for lack of revenue, even if they otherwise would not have.
Benefits and risks
Providing loans
The benefit of the national bank lending money to foreign countries lies in the casus belli. When a country goes bankrupt it does not pay its loan back and does not make further interest payments; if the previously paid interest doesn't equal the value of the loan, the creditor's POPs have lost money. For this reason, a creditor government can use the "Repay Debts" casus belli granted upon bankruptcy to protect its POPs' incomes. The "Cut Down to Size" casus belli directly seizes half of the bankrupt country's tax income, instead. (Though the Cut Down to Size funds are paid to the government, not POPs.)
In general, providing loans is beneficial so long as a country has the military force and the will to enforce Repay Debts casus belli against heavily indebted countries. Some amount of losses must be accepted, however: satellite states can borrow money and go bankrupt, but cannot be declared war upon. POPs deposit and loan out their money automatically, but raising income taxes or tariffs can ensure that POPs' money goes to the government treasury rather than to the national bank, if providing loans is not wanted.
Some people see a wealthy national bank as a problem, because the money is inactive while at the bank. It can go back to being active by either increasing taxes, forcing POPs to withdraw money from their bank account, or letting them lend it to governments, then a government can use the money, thus making it active again. In case of a bankruptcy the POPs effectively lose the money that was in their bank account.
Taking out loans
Much like in the real world, loans provide money in the short term while costing money in the long term, due to interest. Nevertheless, it may be useful to take out loans. For example, a country that has researched a naval technology may be interested in upgrading all its naval bases to the next level, an expensive affair. It could save up money and upgrade them as the money becomes available for each, but this may put it behind other countries in the colonization race. In this situation, it can be beneficial to take out a loan and begin upgrading every naval base at once. While the loan is being paid off, the naval bases are already being constructed.
Taking loans to finance habitual deficit spending is usually a bad idea. It can be a stopgap measure, e.g. to finance a war, but in the long run a country must maintain a budget surplus or it will inevitably go bankrupt.
Interest
The interest rate paid for all loans depends on LOAN_BASE_INTEREST (LBI) in the defines.lua file. The amount of money borrowed from the country's national bank (NBD) is important in calculating the interest. The amount of interest in £ per day (IPD) and £ per year (IPY) can be calculated by the following formulas:
- IPD = (NBD + FBD X (1 + FIM)) X (LBI+BIM)/30
- IPY = (73/6) X (NBD + FBD X (1 + FIM)) X (LBI+BIM)
- IPD = Interest Per Day (£)
- IPY = Interest Per Year (£)
- LBI = Loan Base Interest
- BIM = Base Interest Modifier (see list below)
- FIM = Foreign Interest Modifier (see list below)
- NBD = DEBT - FBD = National Bank Debt (£)
- FBD = DEBT - NBD = Foreign Bank Debt (£)
- DEBT = NBD + FBD = Total Debt (£)
When there are multiple BIMs or FIMs, the game adds them up and uses that value (see example 3). For some reason negative BIMs are bugged, BIMs don't work on old loans and a BIM can have a maximum of 3 numbers after a point, else the game will multiply the value by ten until there are 3 numbers after a point (see example 4).
| BIM | FIM |
|---|---|
| Technology | Inventions (only works outside an effect scope) |
| Event Modifiers | |
| Issues & Reforms | |
| Static Modifiers |
The formula may seem complicated, but the LBI is a constant, and both DEBT and NBD are easy to find in the finance tab. BIM is easy to find, just add all values from all techs together. FIM may be harder to find, as it can be used in event_modifiers.txt, inventions, static_modifiers.txt and issues.txt. It is for example used in the central bank event and the great depression event.
In vanilla there are no techs with a FIM and the inventions don't work (effect scope is used).
For an extremely large debt the formula may not be 100% accurate, but about 99.99593%, so there is almost no difference. For an more accurate result the (LBI/30) could be replaced by (LBI/30.00122105).
Example
Here is an example of how the formula can be used.
France has £ 4000 debt. (DEBT)
Of which it borrowed £ 3000 from its national bank (NBD).
LBI = 0.02
All loan_interest modifiers (those from techs excluded) added together (FIM) = 0.05
- IPY = (73/6) X 0.02 X 4000 X (1 + 0.05 - (3000/4000) X 0.05) = £ 985,5 which is a percentage of 24.6375% interest in one year.
- IPD = (0.02/30) X 4000 X (1 + 0.05 - (3000/4000) X 0.05) = £ 2.7 which is a percentage of 0.0675% per day.
Example 2:
- Day 1 France has £ 4000 debt (3000 NBD).
- Day 2 France has £ 5000 debt (3000 NBD).
- Day 3 France has £ 6000 debt (3000 NBD).
On day 2 France pays £ 2.7 (see example above)
On day 3 France pays £ 3.4 (see below)
IPD = (0.02/30) X 5000 X (1 + 0.05 - (3000/5000) X 0.05) = £ 3.4
Example 3:
- Event modifier A gives loan_interest = 0.05
- Event modifier B gives loan_interest = -0.25
- Event modifier C gives loan_interest = 0.1
FIM = 0.05-0.25+0.1 = -0.1
Example 4:
loan_interest (BIM) = 0.00035 5 numbers after the point, so x10 gives BIM = 0.0035 4 numbers after the point, so x10 gives BIM = 0.035 3 numbers after the point, so the game can use it.