Post Release Beta - Civic Donation Amounts don't appear to make sense

[David]

It is likely that you didn't have any recurring donation because the buildings you donated have been set to "zero operation" by the city government, as shown in this screenshot. You can view the ones you donated and see if they are all having 0% operations (the bar at the top of the civic building info window).

I see but this implies that the city pays for everything - so even if I donate the city doesn't have any of their expenses reduced as they still have to pay for all of the buildings I donated to them?

When the operation level is zero, neither you nor the city have to pay for the civic building.

When the operation level is not zero, when you donate, your donations will be deducted from the city's expenses.

Please note that the operation level is not a new feature in the recent version, it has always been a feature of the CES DLC.

[Stylesjl]

You're right, it does deduct from the expenses.

In fact it does it a little too well, see the negative education expenses for the city:

NegativeCost.png (208.32 KiB) Viewed 791 times

Which means negative government expenditure:

NegativeGDP.png (34.52 KiB) Viewed 791 times

A save game where you can see this happen:

NegativeGovGDP.zip

(2.06 MiB) Downloaded 16 times

I suppose at an extreme enough level the negative government GDP might cause negative GDP for the whole economy! In general I think the donations should contribute to the GDP - as big donations like the one above could basically depress the city's economy by subtracting a lot of government spending at once with no offsets.

[David]

In fact it does it a little too well, see the negative education expenses for the city:

The bug has been fixed. Please download the new patch v10.0.04.

[Stylesjl]

Yes, can confirm bug is fixed and negative expenses no longer occur. However I have noted that contributions still cause a drop in the government spending part of GDP. I think this should be looked at too as this might potentially wreck an economy by causing a big GDP drop. See this game for how this looks (switch off contributions and look at how the government part of the GDP surges all of a sudden):

GDP.zip

(2.13 MiB) Downloaded 14 times