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Victoria 2 17560 After Action Reports (AAR)
Morboth said:
I'm reviving this just to express my sheer frustration:

Alright, I've had TONS of fun with a Prussia->NGF->Germany game. Now, I've tried playing Greece, Sweden and Japan but I haven't been succesfull with any and/or all! I've industrialized with Japan, built a Steel factory in the southwestern island, a fertilizer in the north and a furniture in the middle and ALL OF THEM ARE YIELDING NEGATIVE values! This is getting nearly maddening...

What am I doing wrong?
Click to expand...
What year are you playing as Japan? Do you have negative tarrifs?

Without knowing that I can say that steel is always over produced, becaue the AI builds a lot of those factories. Same goes for furniture, it is always saturated because the inputs are common. Fertilizer is always unprofitable, since the AI handels it pretty well. The AI drastically over produces all of those goods. As Japan I would recomend subsidizing luxury factories, and then taking vietnam, siam, and cambodia. Those are gunna give you the tropical wood for the luxury furniture. Then you have to take southern chinese provinces that supply silk so you can produce luxury cloths. You could put them in your sphere but then the artisans in China could crash the economy, and you can not turn the extra chinese farmers into soldiers.

If you don't want to conquer china or southeast asia, then I would suggest Liquer, artilary, canned food, and cement factories, aswell as any other good that is in demand at the time. Liquer tends to be under produced, artilary and canned food become profitable latter on as countries research more army techs in the late game and army supply consumption goes up, since canned food makes up the majority of army supplies, and artilary has its supply consumption increased by its own tree of techs, they thend to be more in demand than small arms. Cement is pretty profitable throughout the entire game, I have found.

If your really hating the economy though, you can switch to PDM, which really improves the economy.
 
General Pauper said:
What year are you playing as Japan? Do you have negative tarrifs?

Without knowing that I can say that steel is always over produced, becaue the AI builds a lot of those factories. Same goes for furniture, it is always saturated because the inputs are common. Fertilizer is always unprofitable, since the AI handels it pretty well. The AI drastically over produces all of those goods. As Japan I would recomend subsidizing luxury factories, and then taking vietnam, siam, and cambodia. Those are gunna give you the tropical wood for the luxury furniture. Then you have to take southern chinese provinces that supply silk so you can produce luxury cloths. You could put them in your sphere but then the artisans in China could crash the economy, and you can not turn the extra chinese farmers into soldiers.

If you don't want to conquer china or southeast asia, then I would suggest Liquer, artilary, canned food, and cement factories, aswell as any other good that is in demand at the time. Liquer tends to be under produced, artilary and canned food become profitable latter on as countries research more army techs in the late game and army supply consumption goes up, since canned food makes up the majority of army supplies, and artilary has its supply consumption increased by its own tree of techs, they thend to be more in demand than small arms. Cement is pretty profitable throughout the entire game, I have found.

If your really hating the economy though, you can switch to PDM, which really improves the economy.
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1864, and no: I do not have negative tariffs.

Hmm... as far as I can see cement is killing me, as also is liquor: the subsidies are just unbearable, and without them they just don't manage to achieve balance. I just don't know why: they are filled with workers and have access aplenty to raw materials, what am I doing wrong?
 
Morboth said:
1864, and no: I do not have negative tariffs.

Hmm... as far as I can see cement is killing me, as also is liquor: the subsidies are just unbearable, and without them they just don't manage to achieve balance. I just don't know why: they are filled with workers and have access aplenty to raw materials, what am I doing wrong?
Click to expand...
Did you research techs in the commerce tech tree? Those increase profitability by increasing input/output efficiency. The first tech that increases diplo influence is very good, since it gives you one invention that boast output effeciency by 5% and an invention that increases input effeciency by 5%. That results in a significant boast in profit margin. I would not suggest that you research techs that discover economic personas owever, as those are just 1% bonuses. The output bonuses are worth a lot more.
 
The key to succeeding in Vicky2 is understanding how the economy works--both the global economy and your particular nation's. The first step is looking at what raw materials you have access to and then figuring out a chain of production that will turn these into 1) a good that will sell (i.e. there is demand for it), or 2) a high value good (that will give you a decent profit and industrial score even if you can't sell much of it), or 3) ideally something that does both. For example, if you have tropical wood, you know a luxury furniture factory is your end goal, so you build other factories that will support that one. However, its not enough to just look at your country in isolation; you also have to consider how your production is going to fit into the world market. For example, if your country is poor and illiterate, then you're not going to have a good domestic market for luxury items, and your factories making them are going to be inefficient to the point of making it impossible to compete on the world market.

Not knowing more about your game, I'd suspect that you haven't developed enough local demand for your goods and your not able to compete with the big industrial powers on the world market. Check to see what your pops demands are--are they being met; are you taxing them so much that they can't buy the liquor, is their literacy high enough for them to promote into better types, etc.?
 
Jaol said:
The key to succeeding in Vicky2 is understanding how the economy works--both the global economy and your particular nation's. The first step is looking at what raw materials you have access to and then figuring out a chain of production that will turn these into 1) a good that will sell (i.e. there is demand for it), or 2) a high value good (that will give you a decent profit and industrial score even if you can't sell much of it), or 3) ideally something that does both. For example, if you have tropical wood, you know a luxury furniture factory is your end goal, so you build other factories that will support that one. However, its not enough to just look at your country in isolation; you also have to consider how your production is going to fit into the world market. For example, if your country is poor and illiterate, then you're not going to have a good domestic market for luxury items, and your factories making them are going to be inefficient to the point of making it impossible to compete on the world market.

Not knowing more about your game, I'd suspect that you haven't developed enough local demand for your goods and your not able to compete with the big industrial powers on the world market. Check to see what your pops demands are--are they being met; are you taxing them so much that they can't buy the liquor, is their literacy high enough for them to promote into better types, etc.?
Click to expand...

Here you go: my savegame, all yours to tamper, play and try... I am absolutely clueless on what to do now:

http://www.mediafire.com/?fg4a7l6z86czwc4
 
How to achieve economic success is kind of vague and dependent on a lot of variables but the mistake a lot of new players make is they forget about sphereing countries or they sphere the wrong countries. Open the trade tab or look up at the production tab of the top of the main screen. Take note of which 5 goods you are producing the most of. Try to look to see what goods you lack. What you want to be doing is building a lot of factories that use resources that your nation has access to. If you have a lot of access to wood build lumber factories and then build furniture factories, etc, etc.

Sphere countries that have resources that you need, for example if you have a lot of fruit for wine but no coal for glasses then start sphereing some coal producing nations and they will become a part of your common market (they sell to you first). The World Market will sell to players based on prestige so if you're 20th in prestige rank a lot of your factories will flat out not get what they need. If you can't sphere right away because you're a Latin American country you will need to conquer the resources you need from your neighbors. Make sure your population are getting their needs met as well by having enough access to goods.

Once you start producing mass quantities of wine you want to sphere a country that LACKS wine. Lets say they demand 1000 wine and you produce 800 wine and Britain produces 800 wine. You will both sell to the World Market which has 1600 supply of wine and only 1000 demand meaning your wine sells for less. If you sphere a country you sell directly to it because its in your common market meaning you sell all of your 800 wine to them and they buy the excess from the World Market meaning you get a premium price! The more money your factories make the more you make in taxes and also the more they will draw people into signing up to be craftsmen helped along by technology which improves factory efficiency or RGO efficiency.

If you have an interventionist economy rather than one you can build factories then you need to be proactive about shutting bad unprofitable (or barely profitable) factories down.

EDIT - I should note that you can never have TOO MUCH of a resource that you are producing with. If you are making lumber and have 1000 wood in your common market your factory owners will buy wood at maybe $200. But if you have 2000 wood in your common market your factory owners will buy it at $100 because of excess supply driving the price down. This means more profitable factories and less profitable RGO's mean more industrialization.
 
The_13th_Ronin said:
How to achieve economic success is kind of vague and dependent on a lot of variables but the mistake a lot of new players make is they forget about sphereing countries or they sphere the wrong countries. Open the trade tab or look up at the production tab of the top of the main screen. Take note of which 5 goods you are producing the most of. Try to look to see what goods you lack. What you want to be doing is building a lot of factories that use resources that your nation has access to. If you have a lot of access to wood build lumber factories and then build furniture factories, etc, etc.

Sphere countries that have resources that you need, for example if you have a lot of fruit for wine but no coal for glasses then start sphereing some coal producing nations and they will become a part of your common market (they sell to you first). The World Market will sell to players based on prestige so if you're 20th in prestige rank a lot of your factories will flat out not get what they need. If you can't sphere right away because you're a Latin American country you will need to conquer the resources you need from your neighbors. Make sure your population are getting their needs met as well by having enough access to goods.

Once you start producing mass quantities of wine you want to sphere a country that LACKS wine. Lets say they demand 1000 wine and you produce 800 wine and Britain produces 800 wine. You will both sell to the World Market which has 1600 supply of wine and only 1000 demand meaning your wine sells for less. If you sphere a country you sell directly to it because its in your common market meaning you sell all of your 800 wine to them and they buy the excess from the World Market meaning you get a premium price! The more money your factories make the more you make in taxes and also the more they will draw people into signing up to be craftsmen helped along by technology which improves factory efficiency or RGO efficiency.

If you have an interventionist economy rather than one you can build factories then you need to be proactive about shutting bad unprofitable (or barely profitable) factories down.
Click to expand...

The basics of 'building that which your RGOs can back' is not unbeknownst to me: however, even with countries such as Austria - building Cement and/or Steel factories -, where there are all the raw materials you can possibly require, I have a hard time keeping the industry running. In my Prussia -> NGF -> Germany game I went all Steel, some Luxury and Canned, then Laissez Faire and it worked beautifully, but with other countries... I'm clueless.

This gets even worse in my current Japan game: I am a secondary power, and thus have no sphere - being currently 13, or something like that - , what should I do?
 
Morboth said:
The basics of 'building that which your RGOs can back' is not unbeknownst to me: however, even with countries such as Austria - building Cement and/or Steel factories -, where there are all the raw materials you can possibly require, I have a hard time keeping the industry running. In my Prussia -> NGF -> Germany game I went all Steel, some Luxury and Canned, then Laissez Faire and it worked beautifully, but with other countries... I'm clueless.
Click to expand...

Even if you have the RGO good you're making depending on what it is you might still not have enough. Some goods get demanded by both your population AND factories and demand can rise quite high. If you see factory inputs flashing red it means that there's shortages and shortages will drive the price up and bankrupt the factory. Also you need to sell what a lot of people need. A lot of people need steel and canned goods but cement is often not demanded quite as much and the price fluctuates depending on how much building is going on. You need to make sure you have people to sell to who need a lot of cement. You can also create artificial state demand by say building a lot of forts which will temporarily drive the price of cement up.

Morboth said:
This gets even worse in my current Japan game: I am a secondary power, and thus have no sphere - being currently 13, or something like that - , what should I do?
Click to expand...

Two options. Either conquer Korea/islands and get some of that juicy RGO resources for your factories which will help you rise to a GP or try to grab as much prestige as possible so you are higher on the world market list and your GP status also increases. As Japan you are pretty much required to at least conquer a little so that you have enough of a stream of goods coming in to satisfy your factories (historical Japan did much the same thing prior to WW2 taking over much of Asia).

Also you could take a third route and increase relations with a GP to 200 so they sphere YOU and then you're part of their common market. This might lead to a war later though when you want out.
 
Morboth said:
Here you go: my savegame, all yours to tamper, play and try... I am absolutely clueless on what to do now:

http://www.mediafire.com/?fg4a7l6z86czwc4
Click to expand...

OK, let me see if I can give you any tips.

EDIT: OK, I think I've found your main problems.

1) you're using the NFs in the least useful way possible. Capitalists never need encouragement to build railroads, and there's no point in encouraging specific industries when you have state capitalism. Use your NFs to encourage POP promotion. In particular, promote craftsmen and clerks in states with factories. Neither of the factories you have there need a subsidy after you get them full with clerks/craftsmen. Also, you need more bureaucrats everywhere, so promote them.

2) your budget was backwards. You want to raise taxes and spending, not keep both low. The only class you want to keep low taxes on are the rich, because that way your capitalists will have enough money to invest in things (although that's less crucial with State Capitalism. I raised the taxes on the poor to 75% and on the middle class to 65% and that not only balanced the budget, but it also caused tons of pops to demote to craftsmen and clerks.

EDIT to the EDIT: I forgot to mention how to use the encourage industry NFs. Capitalists won't build a new factory until the open factories in a province are 70 % full (that's the vanilla value, mods change it). So you can either watch like a hawk and place the NF right before the existing factories fill up that much, or if you have spare cash, you can close a factory to push it over the limit and then reopen it. If you have a factory you wanted to close anyway, then all the better.
 
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