1 - I think King will have to explain what happens here, I don't want to botch it.
2 - Nations in your SoI give you 2nd crack on their output in raw materials and industrial goods, so if there are raw materials you need and don't produce on your own, and have trouble getting supplies on the world market, having an SoI on a nation that produces them will give you an edge in getting those resources (since you get first call on them after the producers own POPs, rather than whatever your overall rank is in game which is what determines market acces in general in the World Market.) It also gives you access to new markets to sell your production, so if your factories are producing more than your nation needs of goods, your SoIs become their next market, which might not be the case if those nations are lower on the global ranking scale). At the same time, having the SoI instead of direct rule means you do not have any of the administrative costs of controlling the territory, so can be a cost-effective way to build an "informal empire" with economic access locked in without the headaches of administration and order maintenance.
Okay, so you just want them in the SOI so you can get first dibs on rare goods they produce, is that the gist of it? If they make guns, and demand outstrips supply, you want to get their guns directly. Does price on the world market get affected only by the amount of supply released to it, and thus not sold internally?
Are the prices the same internally as on the world market? Because if so, it doesn't seem like having stuff produced internally helps at all. Prices still go up because world demand outstrips world supply, so even if your pops get all the opium they want from china, they pay more and more for it because there's not enough supply in the world for everyone to get it? I'm just not really understanding how the whole thing works, I guess, as far as prices go and the value of buying internally if tariffs are 0.
Oh, one more question: Does it help your people in any way to have tariffs? Seems to me that it either has no effect at all, assuming you make enough to keep them happy, or it hurts everyone, if they have to buy some elsewhere. Unless there's a different internal and world market price, the only thing it would change is that your bottom line gets greener because your pops spend more to fulfill their needs.
Also, thanks for the Q&A time. I fancy myself an economic man, and understood most of Vicky 1's intricacies, but I can't seem to grasp how the new world market works, even after reading the manual.
Edit: Oh, and one more thing: Since it's built on ratios, wouldn't that mean that excess demand on the world market increases the speed that a price inflates? So if you put someone in your SoI, and your demands became internal, because there's lower supply and demand on the world market in the same amount, it speeds up the movement of the price. So if you put someone in your SoI, you'll actually end up paying more for a rare good than otherwise, although you might not have gotten it before. For example: You want 5 iron, GB wants 5 iron, and china makes 6 iron. If it were on the world market, you wouldn't get enough iron, but the ratio of demand:supply would be 10:6, or ~1.66. However, if you put them in your SoI, then the world demand is 5 iron from GB and the world supply is 1 iron from China, which is what gets out of your internal market, and thus the ratio is 5:1. As you can see, that example has a greatly increased speed of price change, and if the internal and world market prices are the same, has you paying way more for iron in the long run. Now in a real situation it wouldn't be as drastic, but lower volume with the same difference increases the ratio, with a limit of 0 for the supply.
