Industry Power Boom

Liberals are actually pretty good for kickstarting an economy.

France starts with good conditions for creating craftsmen, which is pretty key to industrial score. What country are you playing as? IIRC patch 1.2 tried to slow down the industrialisation of more backward countires like Austria

You'll catch up later. Prussia starts with a smaller population so you're naturally disadvantaged there. With the Rhur Booom etc though, once you unified you should have no problem building up a massive industrial base.

It's all got to do with excess population in the poor strata, meaning people who'll quickly promote to craftsmen.

As far as I can tell, to skyrocket Prussia industrial power, you need to unify at least the NGF.
I started yesterday a game as Prussia, staying in interventionism/laissez-faire as much as possible and now by 1841, I already have a 70 industrial score as far as I can remember. No NF used for crafmen... I prefered to use those on clergymen to get more research points.

Capitalist will try to build factory if :
- there is none in a state
- there is 70% of the state factories filled with craftmen
I guess, right now you have a factory in all your states but not enough craftmen to fill them.

Mass influx of craftsmen is usually because of overpopulation in Farmers and Labourers. If the RGO is full, they'll be unemployed, and have no choice but to demote, either to Craftsmen, or Soldiers.

If you want to encourage this, grab techs that reduce farm/mine size (though many increase mine size), and also encourage population growth (certain techs, healthcare reform). For American nations, Immigration can also mean your RGOs are full very quickly. In my UCSA game, most of my RGOs were full by 1840 simply because of immigrant influx.

Zarine said:

Capitalist will try to build factory if :
- there is none in a state
- there is 70% of the state factories filled with craftmen
I guess, right now you have a factory in all your states but not enough craftmen to fill them.

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This. I'm currently playing a game as Germany and I'm industrialising extremely slowly compared to all the other Great Powers. It's 1875 and my industrial score is around 500-600 - about a third that of France, Russia or Austria.

What's needed is the techs that reduce RGO size, since this will mean more people out of work on the land will have to move to cities to find jobs. Lots of industry techs will do this, as well as some commerce techs. Once commerce tech in particular will halve RGO sizes.

Dewirix said:

This. I'm currently playing a game as Germany and I'm industrialising extremely slowly compared to all the other Great Powers. It's 1875 and my industrial score is around 500-600 - about a third that of France, Russia or Austria.

What's needed is the techs that reduce RGO size, since this will mean more people out of work on the land will have to move to cities to find jobs. Lots of industry techs will do this, as well as some commerce techs. Once commerce tech in particular will halve RGO sizes.

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Also, get Medicine as early as you can, it'll boost your pop growth, help you militariliy and lowers min liferating for colonies. One of those "killer techs".

EDIT: I'm wondering though, it seems to me that the AI nations are usually better than me at getting craftsmen, might it be that they use the encourage craftsmen NF a lot? Does anyone know if it's effective?

Raph said:

Also, get Medicine as early as you can, it'll boost your pop growth, help you militariliy and lowers min liferating for colonies. One of those "killer techs".

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And the 'Presssure Chambers for Thorax Surgery' invention which gives the first discovery 50 prestige! Medicine is definitely useful, although the boost to colonsing could be a mixed blessing given you don't have enough people to begin with. I generally go for Medicine after picking up the RP boosting philosophy tech and a military tech.

Raph said:

EDIT: I'm wondering though, it seems to me that the AI nations are usually better than me at getting craftsmen, might it be that they use the encourage craftsmen NF a lot? Does anyone know if it's effective?

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It certainly seems to help. I tried it in my current game and it allowed my capitalists to expand factories as they filled up. POPs won't switch careers if they're doing what the NF is focused on, so it will stop craftsmen promoting to clerks/officers/etc. and will encourage more to join.

However, I'm about to start turbo-colonising by using all my NFs in Africa. I've decided not to use brigades to speed colonisation as the AI won't do this either, so I need whatever edge I can get.

You'll rocket ahead when you've formed the NGF. Once you've formed Germany completely you'll outstrip even the UK in 10 years.
In my recent Prussia->NGF->Germany game, the French economy rocketed as yours did, but by the time I formed NGF, in the 1850s some time, their economy stagnated. It stayed the same for about a decade, then grew very slowly. I'd like to think it was because of constant large wars with me (NGF) but i suspect it's just another quirk of Vicky's.

Just too bad the capitalists only build luxury clothes and furniture factories.

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In late game, luxury clothes factories are a gold mine

I do not believe that you'll out-strip the UK by fiddling around in Central Europe, since the UK has infinite people via India and will end up expanding all factories in all states simultaneously forever. This is how they get 30k+ industry score.

If you are goign to do something like that, you need more people, so you can have oceans of unemployed people who will move anywhere and do anything.

Industry score can be built up later. Early in the game, you want to worry less about that, and set the stage for later, if you are going for #1 GP.

If someone has a couple hundred industry score, that's probably because they are upgrading industry techs. This is a fine thing, and you should do it too (especially medicine), but at the very beginning with Prussia, you could be increasing research techs, military techs, and nationalism and imperialism, and using these to conquer places that will eventually cause you to have stupid huge numbers of Prussians.

You can role play this game and mess around with Austria and slap France in the face, but South Bengal and North Bengal are worth way way more than Bohemia and Moravia *the way the game works now*. If you get early cores in Bangladesh, nobody including the UK will ever attack you and you can do whatever you want.

In my current game as Spain I have problems with industrial score. I am the fourth in prestige and 8th in military score, but my I am number 14 in industrial score, with just 5 or 6 points. My problme (I think) it´s that there are very few craftsmen in my factories. I have had to use my 3 NFs to encourage craftsmen because there were states with factories that have been stooped for months because NOBODY would work at them. I think my problems come because of low density of population (I mean, my RGOs are only half filled) which causes that there will be none to few people willing to turn into craftsmen. However, there has to be something else, because Brazil has even worse density of population and they are ahead of me in industrial score. I have researched Medicine recently, and I am researching a tech that reduces RGO size.

What else can I do to improve my industrial score? Will playing with the taxes and expenditure make more probable for people to change to craftsmen?. Thank you for your tips.

No idea said:

What else can I do to improve my industrial score? Will playing with the taxes and expenditure make more probable for people to change to craftsmen?. Thank you for your tips.

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Best thing to do here is to investigate the situation on a state-by-state basis.

1. Find a state you want to industrialise (probably the one with the biggest population/most-filled RGO), then go to the population window and select it.
2. In the top right, click 'Deselect All' and then select only the labourers/farmers
3. Arrange in order of size and click into the information window for the largest group. This should show you the percentage chance of that POP promoting to craftsman, soldier, bureaucrat, clergy, etc.
4. By hovering over each of these you can see what affects the promotion chances. Adjust your budget accordingly to ensure that your spending is maximising craftsmen

Note that this is a trade off. The maximum chance for craftsmen promotion will mean low spending on the military, education and administration budgets, so you might not want to go down the most pro-craftsman route.

No idea said:

What else can I do to improve my industrial score? Will playing with the taxes and expenditure make more probable for people to change to craftsmen?. Thank you for your tips.

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The biggest thing to do to get industrialization is to drive up your militancy early. Switch to dumb parties, break truces. Take every militancy increasing event.

"Ok, stop trolling me...", you say. But no! Once you average above 6 militancy, you win the game quite simply. At that point (unless you have stupidly high reactionary in the upper house), you can get health care! Each step of health care gives you +.1% increase in population a year. IIRC, the increase from two levels of health care outstrips the increase from every population increase tech and invention combined. I'd recommend against taking it all the way to Good, however. I found that at good health care, by 1880 or so I think I had 100k unemployed in just about every state, despite my capitalists increasing the size of all 8 factories in every state. Revolution central.

The other big helps are, in my opinion:

Don't colonize too much. Colonial states give your farmers somewhere else to go than into factories. Many of them will prefer to immigrate, despite the fact there are already 500k unemployed farmers in Iceland. If you do get colonial states, quickly NF bureaucrats in them to state them.

Increase literacy. IIRC, you get rather big bonuses at 40%, 50%, and 60% literacy.

Make sure to pick up business banks in 1850 and combustion engine/electricity in 1880. They each provide events that give -20% to farm size, giving you a lot of that sexy unemployment.

Either tax your peasants incredibly harshly or quite lightly. Farmers can either promote or demote to craftsmen. I've found that harshly works better, but unfortunately is incompatable with LF.

Tarriff at 100% in your pre-industrial era. Once you have switched to industrialization (preferably by kickstarting with state capitalism), drop your tarriffs to -25%. This way, your factories will not have nearly as many issues buying inputs.

SoI China. They'll buy pretty much anything you produce, so you won't have as many output not sold problems.

Pretty crucial is to make the first few factories in every state yourself. If your first factory in a state is useless, that state will pretty much never industrialize. The factories I have found to be nearly always profitable are: Steel, Wine, Liquor, Cement, and Glass. Lumber is nice, but you can overproduce it rather easily. I try to build two factories in every state at the beginning to give a backup if the market goes wonky.

LF works quite nicely once you've got things going, but will run into occasional snags. If you're a HMS, switch to another form of government periodically and wipe out the nonproducing factories. A lot of times, however, a factory will close simply because there are not enough people working there before it shuts down, so unless it's a factory that never makes any money (canned food, small arms, etc...) subsidize it for a few months first to see if enough craftsmen will come to make it work. If it is still losing money, trash it. Then hold an election, if you want to go back to LF.

Thank you for the tips Zug. I have always had problems with my industrial score. Always two or three steps ahead of my position in military and prestige but always 2 or 3 steps backwards in my industrial score. By the way, truly gamey tip the first one¡. I will restrain myself from using it as I don´t like gamey tactics.