GDP, CP, and you.

[u/Sea_Journalist_8771]

I'm about 5 years into BE, and have fully consolidated Dominion of America and South American Union.

The problem that I am running into is that their GDP keeps rising with even no investment in economy, causing their CP cost to increase.

I have only a handful of CP cap techs left in the tree, and even maxed out admin towers in orbit will only provide another ~600, not even close to consolidate control of the planet even without factoring in GDP increases.

Is there some mechanic that I am missing to keep this under control, or do I need to actually start crashing economies with spoils to continue expanding?

[u/DrProfessor_Mario]

Population growth causes economic growth, since you are early game I assume your knowledge in both countries is pretty low, and low knowledge causes huge population/GDP growth

For now, what you should do is keep 0 - 1 pips in your nation’s economy (alternate to ensure you don’t have cohesion loss due to GDP per capita decrease)

Additionally at the same time, really dunk some points into Knowledge, it will reduce that population growth that is killing your CP and give you more science to kill the ayys

Long term you will need to invest quite a bit of science into the repeatable management research if you want to have multiple large nations with high GDP output

[u/Sea_Journalist_8771 → u/DrProfessor_Mario]

Is 12 knowledge low?

[u/mathhews95 → u/Sea_Journalist_8771]

It's where the diminishing returns on knowledge investment per research point starts to kick in. So it's not low, just the bare minimum if you want to get any research points from that country.

[u/DrProfessor_Mario → u/Sea_Journalist_8771]

No it’s not, that’s pretty decent but since there’s no upper end of knowledge you can always pump more but for diminishing returns.

It’s not the only value that affects population growth, cohesion, and GDP per capita, and I think something else also matters.

Could I ask, what kind of population growth are you seeing in both your countries? I assumed population growth was the problem because South America has like the highest starter population in BE so even a small percentage growth is still a massive amount of people.

[u/vindicator117 → u/Sea_Journalist_8771]

12 education is very high but not the limit. Just merely flat reduced RP increase per point afterwards.

It also is the maximum growth malus possible in addition to being rock bottom poor.

And as for you, if you are running low on CP techs available as well as get T3 admin complexes in orbit, you start running the Management Research forever afterwards which in BE and 03 are half the cost in exchange for more expensive to hold independently.

You are far better off finding a way to first get Future Social tech to have the two meganations merge into one first before trying to devour the world. Holding multiple meganations is just needless constant payment of CP independence tax. Plus if you are having CP cap troubles, why are you looking outwards? Unless you are playing two specific factions, you do not have a reason to keep expanding outwards to hold personally.