ROI for governments

[DavidC]

I have no idea where to post this. Maybe a mod would like to move it to El D's (fine), OOT (I hope not), or SMP (as it deals with economics, this is probably best choice, if this forum isn't appropriate).

Preface:
I'm playing a computer game called Europa Universalis, in which you manage an empire. You make investments in various things, and in this game, the payouts are REALLY small for said investments.

i.e. to make a colony overseas will cost something like 660 gold over 5 years, and it has a mayout of maybe like 15 gold per year = 44 years to pay off.

Likewise, fighting a war will cost you at least one stability, which costs maybe like 2 years worth of production to get back, which costs, at the stage of the game I'm at, about 360 gold. You could conceivably win a provinces worth say 10g/year from this pursuit, which will have additional costs in policing and the maintenance of a growing army as well as just the building of that army in the first place.

Also, there are workshops that you can build once you get a certain level of tech, that earn about 2g/year and cost 48g to build.

Needless to say, this is a very slow game. A game where the rewards were bigger would be more like Risk or something of that nature. But it's got me thinking about the value of investing towards such small gains for governments.

The low rates of return don't seem that important, when you consider that you'll have them for centuries, and those investments will honestly make the difference between industrialized nations and medieval city states, over the course of centuries... At least, it would appear that way.

Anyways, if anyone wants to discuss what sort of ROI a government should get before taking on a project (assume that your ROI considers all possible means of ROI = i.e. all the extra tax that you would get from alternate sources when you improve infrastructure, not just tolls on the road itself, etc etc), and ignore the politics of it (i.e. pretend like you don't care about public support, just increasing the wealth/power of a nation).

Please feel free to comment.
--Dave.