Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #8 - Institutions

[Leoreth]

The problem with this is that auto-built buildings when you incorporate a state is functionally in terms of gameplay just the same as how institutions have already been implemented, but with added micromanagement, not removed. The removed micromanagement is what Paradox is already doing with the auto-building being abstracted to the process and time it takes to incorporate a state. Once the state is incorporated, it's added to the coverage map of your institutions so requires higher bureaucratic capacity.

Skipped a few pages. You're still here ignoring arguments against your position that have been made in the first days of this thread?

 

[Tamwin5]

You also need economists, civil engineers, correctional officers and so on... So where do you stop? I think developers are doing the right thing for the game by aggregating various non-interchangeable occupations into a small number of pop types.

I think what Lorehead was advocating for wasn't that new pop types be added, but that pop jobs be added for those professions. So Academics for doctors, clerks for nurses, etc. Currently there is no need for high skill professionals to work in your state of the art hospitals, and that feels very weird to some.

 

[Spartakusbund]

I think what Lorehead was advocating for wasn't that new pop types be added, but that pop jobs be added for those professions. So Academics for doctors, clerks for nurses, etc. Currently there is no need for high skill professionals to work in your state of the art hospitals, and that feels very weird to some.

You need bureaucrats and clerks. Those are high skill professionals. Granted, there are no hospitals, but I’m not seeing a hospital springing out of the ground by government fiat as an improvement over the status quo from an immersion perspective.

 

[Tamwin5]

You need bureaucrats and clerks. Those are high skill professionals. Granted, there are no hospitals, but I’m not seeing a hospital springing out of the ground by government fiat as an improvement over the status quo from an immersion perspective.

I'd rate those as "skilled" professions, not high skilled, but that's ultimately a fairly minor point. The trouble is less representing those jobs as bureaucrats and clerks (really only doctors and police are the ones who wouldn't, and I'm still not sure what police would be), and more that the bureaucrats and clerks can be on the other side of the country, and relatively easily swap from being doctors to being police.

Personally I'm for attaching the jobs to the city center, rather than spawning any buildings. But yes, having buildings be built over the course of you implementing an institution is significantly superior to a miner in California having his doctor be in New York, at least from an immersion perspective.

 

[Spartakusbund]

I'd rate those as "skilled" professions, not high skilled, but that's ultimately a fairly minor point. The trouble is less representing those jobs as bureaucrats and clerks (really only doctors and police are the ones who wouldn't, and I'm still not sure what police would be), and more that the bureaucrats and clerks can be on the other side of the country, and relatively easily swap from being doctors to being police.

Personally I'm for attaching the jobs to the city center, rather than spawning any buildings. But yes, having buildings be built over the course of you implementing an institution is significantly superior to a miner in California having his doctor be in New York, at least from an immersion perspective.

If you can get away with having the entirety of your bureaucrats in New York then there is something wrong with the system, I agree. My guess is that you’re probably going to have to pretty quickly build up California’s local capacity as it’s population explodes due to the Gold Rush, or else risk going over your BC and gimping your tax collection.

I’m fine with doctors being abstracted behind the normal Bureaucratic Capacity system, though.

 

[MTGian]

You need bureaucrats and clerks. Those are high skill professionals. Granted, there are no hospitals, but I’m not seeing a hospital springing out of the ground by government fiat as an improvement over the status quo from an immersion perspective.

In my proposal, I did put in an option for having institutions come at a cost that would represent the building of police stations, hospitals, etc. The reason that I put this as optional is that given a choice between having the immersion break of bureaucrats in New York serving as doctors for my POPs in Fargo or having buildings/urban slot/whatever appear without cost, I think the former is far more immersion breaking*. Ten to one for me. Not even close.

That said, if you feel the reverse, then I did include that option. If it was balanced properly, then why not have a fee to establish an institution? If you are controlling a country and you are broke, then shouldn't enabling state of the art hospitals be something that you couldn't do? It isn't crazy to put some cost on things that would realistically have a cost.

Edit: I wrote in terms of immersion above (because Spartakusbund did), but as I have detailed in previous posts, this is not just about immersion. The economy in Fargo will be fundamentally flawed without all of the jobs needed to provide local bureaucracy/administrative services. This is not just about flavor.

 

[MTGian]

I only spent a few minutes on this, so don't shoot me if there is a lot more depth here. I just did a quick google search regarding percent of people who work in the public sector and found the following article.

Public sector jobs: States where the most people work for the government

Since the economic recovery began in 2010, the private sector has added 16 million jobs. At the same time, however, the number of public sector jobs has remained static. As a result, government employment as a share of total employment has declined from 17.3% to 15.2%.

www.usatoday.com

The results are pretty much as I expected. From the article:
"While states with government-friendly political environments, such as New York, Pennsylvania, and California, might spend more overall, they tend to have the fewest government jobs as a share of total state employment. Rather, sparsely-populated states, such as Wyoming, Alaska, and Montana, have relatively larger public sector workers.

Martin Kohli, chief regional economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, explained that the primary reason for this is that government services, particularly local government jobs, exist even in small towns. Such government services provide jobs even if there are no major sources of private sector jobs."

Some notables:
Pennsylvania (lowest/50th): 11.8%
Wisconsin (40th): 13.8%
California (32nd): 15.2%
Texas (29th): 15.9%
Nebraska (20th): 17%
Virginia (14th): 18.1%
Mississippi (5th): 21.1%
Wyoming (highest/1st): 24.9%

Plus, I don't think that this includes health care. So, these numbers are actually lower than they would be in game terms. If someone has the equivalent for a non-USA country, then that would be interesting to see. I also found this link (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_sector_size), which has public sector size for various countries. I wonder what public sector employment looks like in various regions of say Norway (35.6% nationally). USA is at 17.6% on this list.

Before anyone says it, I realize that today != 1830 to 1930. If someone has hard data that shows that the numbers were dramatically smaller (say 1/5) the size during the time period, then okay. This isn't that big of a deal. If public sector jobs were not meaningful, then it doesn't matter where they are located. However, if they are meaningful, then they really need to be in the communities where the corresponding services are provided. Otherwise, the local economy in places like Wyoming will suffer.

 

[alexti]

I think what Lorehead was advocating for wasn't that new pop types be added, but that pop jobs be added for those professions. So Academics for doctors, clerks for nurses, etc. Currently there is no need for high skill professionals to work in your state of the art hospitals, and that feels very weird to some.

Even in that assumption the same flaws exist. Wouldn't it feel weird to some that the prisoners are in California and prison guards are in New York? And you could also say that chemical engineers and mechanical engineers should be a separate jobs.

At that time period academics for doctors wouldn't make sense (well, it wouldn't make sense now either). Percentage of doctors involved into an academic research would be very small. Vast majority of doctors would be practitioners, more often than not educated in the hospital or medical school which for the most of the period would be built along the trade apprenticeship model.

 

[Indignation211]

A thought occured to me. We know there is a "Services" good that is generated primarily from Urban Centers, which grow as you build more buildings. One could theoretically include healthcare, education and maybe even law enforcement among these "Services". The institutions and the Bureaucrats who run them don't provide the services directly but merely enforce government-imposed regulations on HOW they're provided.

Of course this would mean that instead of Bureaucrats, medical services and education would be provided by Shopkeepers...

EDIT: to be clear I am aware that none of these institutions modify the Services good in any way, nor as far as we know do the Services good affect things like mortality, turmoil or education access.

 

[alexti]

Before anyone says it, I realize that today != 1830 to 1930. If someone has hard data that shows that the numbers were dramatically smaller (say 1/5) the size during the time period, then okay. This isn't that big of a deal. If public sector jobs were not meaningful, then it doesn't matter where they are located. However, if they are meaningful, then they really need to be in the communities where the corresponding services are provided. Otherwise, the local economy in places like Wyoming will suffer.

According to Our World in Data (https://ourworldindata.org/government-spending), USA government spending were in 1-3% range until WW1. That would, of course, include debt servicing, military etc... In the modern days, it's ~45%. So it's probably safe to say that the numbers were 10-100 smaller in Victoria period.

Regarding USA, we could probably say that public sector jobs were not meaningful in that period, but in Europe it was much larger than USA, so it probably needs to be modeled in some way. I think the bigger argument for modeling government bureaucracy is because of the role it played by interacting with other aspects of society rather than due to its direct economic impact due to employment.

Btw, regarding modern numbers, in most Western nations they are going to show artificially low concentration because as various small towns that used to be mining/manufacturing centers are dying out, the governments would often move public jobs that can be done from anywhere (various paper works, call centers etc) to those places.

 

[Spartakusbund]

Before anyone says it, I realize that today != 1830 to 1930. If someone has hard data that shows that the numbers were dramatically smaller (say 1/5) the size during the time period, then okay. This isn't that big of a deal. If public sector jobs were not meaningful, then it doesn't matter where they are located. However, if they are meaningful, then they really need to be in the communities where the corresponding services are provided. Otherwise, the local economy in places like Wyoming will suffer.

I don’t have hard numbers, but I would guess 1/5th would be an extremely conservative estimate. The modern US economy is not only post-industrial, it is post-agricultural. Unlike today, where only a tiny percentage of the population works in agriculture, the vast majority of the population will be peasants for a big chunk of Vicky 3.

Regardless, I think your overall point is why the player will want to build out out Bureaucratic Capacity into as many states as they can, rather than building it up. Government Administration buildings will build urbanization at the same time they put an upward pressure on highly educated pops, acting in concert to raise up the development of the local economy.

Of course, maybe you don’t want that, and would rather leave the more rural states underdeveloped and uneducated so they’re too dumb to oppose your iron gloved autocracy. In that case, you can run a smaller state with fewer institutions and just rely on Bureaucrats in the capital.

 

[MTGian]

According to Our World in Data (https://ourworldindata.org/government-spending), USA government spending were in 1-3% range until WW1. That would, of course, include debt servicing, military etc... In the modern days, it's ~45%. So it's probably safe to say that the numbers were 10-100 smaller in Victoria period.

Regarding USA, we could probably say that public sector jobs were not meaningful in that period, but in Europe it was much larger than USA, so it probably needs to be modeled in some way. I think the bigger argument for modeling government bureaucracy is because of the role it played by interacting with other aspects of society rather than due to its direct economic impact due to employment.

Btw, regarding modern numbers, in most Western nations they are going to show artificially low concentration because as various small towns that used to be mining/manufacturing centers are dying out, the governments would often move public jobs that can be done from anywhere (various paper works, call centers etc) to those places.

I don’t have hard numbers, but I would guess 1/5th would be an extremely conservative estimate. The modern US economy is not only post-industrial, it is post-agricultural. Unlike today, where only a tiny percentage of the population works in agriculture, the vast majority of the population will be peasants for a big chunk of Vicky 3.

Regardless, I think your overall point is why the player will want to build out out Bureaucratic Capacity into as many states as they can, rather than building it up. Government Administration buildings will build urbanization at the same time they put an upward pressure on highly educated pops, acting in concert to raise up the development of the local economy.

Of course, maybe you don’t want that, and would rather leave the more rural states underdeveloped and uneducated so they’re too dumb to oppose your iron gloved autocracy. In that case, you can run a smaller state with fewer institutions and just rely on Bureaucrats in the capital.

Okay. Good information. Thanks. For my part, if all of the local bureaucrats, police officers, teachers, fire fighters, police officers, nurses, and doctors combined were not a significant part of local economies, then I feel a bit better about ignoring them. I would want to do a bit more research before being satisfied that was true, but I am not close minded to the possibility.

 

[Spartakusbund]

Okay. Good information. Thanks. For my part, if all of the local bureaucrats, police officers, teachers, fire fighters, police officers, nurses, and doctors combined were not a significant part of local economies, then I feel a bit better about ignoring them. I would want to do a bit more research before being satisfied that was true, but I am not close minded to the possibility.

I wouldn’t say they were insignificant, and I don’t think the current description of game mechanics amounts to ignoring them. My point is that the value of clerks and bureaucrat POPs to a state’s economy is itself the reason why you won’t want to pile all your Government Administration buildings in New York.

Yes, you could make it so that GA buildings (EDIT: or Urban Centers, as you’ve proposed) change their production methods and start demanding new POP types and goods as you add and expand Institutions. You could even add medicine, bandages, textbooks, and a myriad of other new goods. The problem is that you reach a point where the added complexity starts to take away from gameplay. POP Demand Mod for Vicky 2 is a good example of this.

You might be right that the current design leans too far towards oversimplifying things. The good news is that since the system is so moddable, it wouldn’t be that difficult to add some or all of these things after release.

 

[Tamwin5]

Even in that assumption the same flaws exist. Wouldn't it feel weird to some that the prisoners are in California and prison guards are in New York? And you could also say that chemical engineers and mechanical engineers should be a separate jobs.

At that time period academics for doctors wouldn't make sense (well, it wouldn't make sense now either). Percentage of doctors involved into an academic research would be very small. Vast majority of doctors would be practitioners, more often than not educated in the hospital or medical school which for the most of the period would be built along the trade apprenticeship model.

And I totally agree about that also being weird, which is why I'm in support of institution adding some jobs to city centers.

For more modern doctors, I think academic is the best fit out of the professions we've seen so far. Just because they don't write their own research doesn't mean they can't easily read and understand it, or be capable of writing their own if they were so willing. You are completely correct that what sorts of jobs are created by healthcare would change, likely by the type of healthcare you have, how big the institution is, and how advanced your technology is. So early on it might be mostly clergymen or shopkeepers, but even then I imagine there would be some academics (depending on the type of healthcare). But ultimately the exact type of profession is less important than the fact there should be some matching profession appearing locally, through whatever means.

 

[Tamwin5]

I wouldn’t say they were insignificant, and I don’t think the current description of game mechanics amounts to ignoring them. My point is that the value of clerks and bureaucrat POPs to a state’s economy is itself the reason why you won’t want to pile all your Government Administration buildings in New York.

Yes, you could make it so that GA buildings (EDIT: or Urban Centers, as you’ve proposed) change their production methods and start demanding new POP types and goods as you add and expand Institutions. You could even add medicine, bandages, textbooks, and a myriad of other new goods. The problem is that you reach a point where the added complexity starts to take away from gameplay. POP Demand Mod for Vicky 2 is a good example of this.

You might be right that the current design leans too far towards oversimplifying things. The good news is that since the system is so moddable, it wouldn’t be that difficult to add some or all of these things after release.

I wouldn't add any new goods or professions, but adding a handful of jobs to city centers with some associated goods upkeep (say cloth, alcohol, and later chemicals for healthcare) would do 80% of the work of immersion. You wouldn't control them at all via the city center, perhaps having their own section of "institution provided jobs". Ideally there would be some mechanic where failing to provide the workers/upkeep would make that insitution's effects lessen in that state, but that's ultimately secondary to just having the jobs and upkeep.

It just feels weird for a game which dives so deeply into the simulation in other areas just totally simply stuff like police and medicine into a flat country-wide bar, with no economic effects or local nuance.

 

[Serenity84]

For more modern doctors, I think academic is the best fit out of the professions we've seen so far. Just because they don't write their own research doesn't mean they can't easily read and understand it, or be capable of writing their own if they were so willing.

The clear distinction between research and applied medicine is really more modern I think. The 19th century saw huge advances in medicine. Often made by doctors who came to those conclusions by practical experience with patients.

But even without that, I think it's a good enough description. Arguing about it is a lot more hairsplitting than the clerk thing

 

[Spartakusbund]

It just feels weird for a game which dives so deeply into the simulation in other areas just totally simply stuff like police and medicine into a flat country-wide bar, with no economic effects or local nuance.

On the contrary, I think delving deep into just one or two Institutions while leaving the others totally abstract would be the immersion breaking thing to do.

You’ve only pointed towards healthcare (academic pops plus the basket of goods you’ve named). We could do the same for schools, maybe (clerks/clergy and paper, though this getting redundant with Government Admin centers), but past that it gets even more opaque. How do you represent policing? Homeland Security (or whatever the secret police Institution is called). Colonization?

That not only breaks immersion, but it also unbalances the gameplay. If adopting or expanding my healthcare institution had all these extra costs associated with it for each of my Urban Centers, in the aggregate it’s going to be an immensely expensive Institution. How good would it have to be to make up for that? And the larger you are, the more unbalanced it becomes.

 

[wilcoxchar]

I only spent a few minutes on this, so don't shoot me if there is a lot more depth here. I just did a quick google search regarding percent of people who work in the public sector and found the following article.

Public sector jobs: States where the most people work for the government

Since the economic recovery began in 2010, the private sector has added 16 million jobs. At the same time, however, the number of public sector jobs has remained static. As a result, government employment as a share of total employment has declined from 17.3% to 15.2%.

www.usatoday.com

The results are pretty much as I expected. From the article:
"While states with government-friendly political environments, such as New York, Pennsylvania, and California, might spend more overall, they tend to have the fewest government jobs as a share of total state employment. Rather, sparsely-populated states, such as Wyoming, Alaska, and Montana, have relatively larger public sector workers.

Martin Kohli, chief regional economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, explained that the primary reason for this is that government services, particularly local government jobs, exist even in small towns. Such government services provide jobs even if there are no major sources of private sector jobs."

Some notables:
Pennsylvania (lowest/50th): 11.8%
Wisconsin (40th): 13.8%
California (32nd): 15.2%
Texas (29th): 15.9%
Nebraska (20th): 17%
Virginia (14th): 18.1%
Mississippi (5th): 21.1%
Wyoming (highest/1st): 24.9%

Plus, I don't think that this includes health care. So, these numbers are actually lower than they would be in game terms. If someone has the equivalent for a non-USA country, then that would be interesting to see. I also found this link (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_sector_size), which has public sector size for various countries. I wonder what public sector employment looks like in various regions of say Norway (35.6% nationally). USA is at 17.6% on this list.

Before anyone says it, I realize that today != 1830 to 1930. If someone has hard data that shows that the numbers were dramatically smaller (say 1/5) the size during the time period, then okay. This isn't that big of a deal. If public sector jobs were not meaningful, then it doesn't matter where they are located. However, if they are meaningful, then they really need to be in the communities where the corresponding services are provided. Otherwise, the local economy in places like Wyoming will suffer.

This data is pretty misleading for the argument that public servants are needed to be local. For starters, this is just public sector employment, i.e. anyone employed by the government, not just the industries that bureaucrats and clerks would be representing. It includes people like forest service and park rangers (not really applicable to the Victoria time period) and members of the military (servicemen and officers), which is why the three states with the most highest percentage of public service workforce - Wyoming, Alaska, and New Mexico - are all low population, rural states with a lot of military bases and national or state parks, forests, or wilderness areas.

But even if we do look at the kind of professions that government administration would represent, it's still pretty misleading. Let's look at, for example, the Education Instruction and Library Operations employment category since teachers have been brought up a lot. Now, according to the BLS, in total there are 6,274,820 people employed in the United States in that category. Of that, there are just 19,130 people in that employment category in Wyoming. And that is one of biggest employment categories in Wyoming. That means, if we wanted to completely accurately represent the geographic distribution of teachers today in Victoria 3, just 0.3% of total teachers would need to be in Wyoming. Compare that to, say, the New York City metro area. Not New York state, but just the New York City metropolitan area. Within the NYC metro area, there are 652,260 people employed in the Education Instruction and Library Operation category. That's over 10% of the total employed nationwide in the category, and over 34 times the amount employed in all of Wyoming. (Because of how the New York metro area spreads out into New Jersey and Connecticut and how dominant NYC is in New York state, the number employed in the NYC metro is actually about the same as the number in New York state, but the city comparison makes it much clearer)

Then, think back to the idea of factories representing entire industries. The point of that is to not have factories and other buildings being built everywhere, and to make the specific industries stand out in the places where they're built. Even though you had plenty of industries that had factories all over the place in an industrializing society, you want to make it noticeable for the industries to stand out in the places where they're well known. You want the auto industry being built in Michigan to stand out, or the shipbuilding industry in Virginia, or the fuel refinery in Texas. So you abstract it, both to make them stand out as actually important and to keep numbers of factory levels at least somewhat low, so those factories are the only ones that show up with any significance in the game. Even if it's not a perfect representation of everywhere the industry existed in real life since you might not have a fuel refinery in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Colorado, and California even though they also had gas and fuel industries in the time period, it's a good enough representation of the areas where the industries actually became well known and a recognizable hallmark of the area.

Now, consider that buildings like factories and government administration buildings are on a statewide scale. They're not representing individual schools or factories. That would be far too small in scope for Victoria. So factories and other buildings are representing an entire localized industry, which means it needs to be greater than the typical distribution of the industry in that state to actually stand out enough to be able to be represented. But again, let's assume we want to combined that statewide measure into a building to represent the local industry. Since Wyoming is a state, we'll use it as a baseline. So if we're trying to represent this completely accurately down to every last person in every industry, we'll give Wyoming with its less than 20,000 employed as a teacher or librarian an Education building of level 1. That means New York, with its 669,080 people employed in that category would need an Education building of level 34 to create an equivalency with Wyoming. California, with its 1,025,580 people employed in the category would need a level 53 building to do so.

And then we start looking at overall numbers. California has 1,025,580 people employed in the Education/Library category. New York has 669,080. Texas has 740,670. Florida has 424,600. That's a combined total of 2,859,930 people, and you're already getting close to half of the total employed in just four states. Which... also happen to be the four largest state by population, because of course the states with the most people are going to have the most people employed in the education industry.

So then, it makes sense to tie the education and other government administration buildings to where the population is since that's naturally going to be where the jobs and the workers end up and where the industry is most recognizable. So you link government administration buildings to urban centers, with, as has been shown so far, government administration buildings contributing to the urbanization of an area and thus the growth of the urban center. It doesn't prevent people from building government administration buildings in a small, rural area just like it doesn't prevent people from building a factory somewhere that geographically doesn't fit the resources it's near. But it does encourage players to build their government administration industries in the places where they want to create urban clusters, which fits how the industry is distributed in real life. It's not perfect, but nothing will be when you're working on a global scale and it's a good enough fit for the purposes of the game and it fits with the same scope and abstraction that the rest of the buildings are on.

oh no I was just looking up numbers why did this become an essay aaaaaa

 

[Tamwin5]

On the contrary, I think delving deep into just one or two Institutions while leaving the others totally abstract would be the immersion breaking thing to do.

You’ve only pointed towards healthcare (academic pops plus the basket of goods you’ve named). We could do the same for schools, maybe (clerks/clergy and paper, though this getting redundant with Government Admin centers), but past that it gets even more opaque. How do you represent policing? Homeland Security (or whatever the secret police Institution is called). Colonization?

That not only breaks immersion, but it also unbalances the gameplay. If adopting or expanding my healthcare institution had all these extra costs associated with it for each of my Urban Centers, in the aggregate it’s going to be an immensely expensive Institution. How good would it have to be to make up for that? And the larger you are, the more unbalanced it becomes.

I was just using healthcare as an example because it most obviously illustrates the point. But yes, schools would employ some clerks/clergy (depending on school type), conscription would employ some clerks, workplace safety and home affairs would employ some bureaucrats/clerks (although those might not employ any additional pops, or only do so at higher levels), etc. Colonial affairs wouldn't employ any pops in your states, but might create some jobs in your colonies depending on laws/level.

The jobs/goods would also probably scale based on the level you have. Level 1 schooling might not take any paper, but level 2+ certainly would, and much more of it at that. It's the difference between a teacher just using a chalkboard vs every student having a textbook. Similary, low levels of police would probably just be beat cops (laborers? servicemen?) while higher levels would employ bureaucrats to represent the various investigators, judges, lawyers, etc. that get involved in the process. Or, depending on the law you have, higher levels of police might lean more towards more servicemen and take military equipment.

I struggle to see how adding jobs breaks immersion, besides personal choice/preference as to what professions are the best match for a job. I doubt it would imbalance gameplay, as I was envisioning only a handful of jobs being created compared to dozens or hundreds which are created by each factory. But yes, it would be an additional cost, and one which would be listed when considering increasing the level of an institution. Considering that each additional state grants you more income and resources, and allows the institution to provide for more pops, it makes sense that cost would scale with size (and indeed, the bureaucratic cost of institutions already scales with population size).

 

[Tamwin5]

This data is pretty misleading for the argument that public servants are needed to be local. For starters, this is just public sector employment, i.e. anyone employed by the government, not just the industries that bureaucrats and clerks would be representing. It includes people like forest service and park rangers (not really applicable to the Victoria time period) and members of the military (servicemen and officers), which is why the three states with the most highest percentage of public service workforce - Wyoming, Alaska, and New Mexico - are all low population, rural states with a lot of military bases and national or state parks, forests, or wilderness areas.

But even if we do look at the kind of professions that government administration would represent, it's still pretty misleading. Let's look at, for example, the Education Instruction and Library Operations employment category since teachers have been brought up a lot. Now, according to the BLS, in total there are 6,274,820 people employed in the United States in that category. Of that, there are just 19,130 people in that employment category in Wyoming. And that is one of biggest employment categories in Wyoming. That means, if we wanted to completely accurately represent the geographic distribution of teachers today in Victoria 3, just 0.3% of total teachers would need to be in Wyoming. Compare that to, say, the New York City metro area. Not New York state, but just the New York City metropolitan area. Within the NYC metro area, there are 652,260 people employed in the Education Instruction and Library Operation category. That's over 10% of the total employed nationwide in the category, and over 34 times the amount employed in all of Wyoming. (Because of how the New York metro area spreads out into New Jersey and Connecticut and how dominant NYC is in New York state, the number employed in the NYC metro is actually about the same as the number in New York state, but the city comparison makes it much clearer)

Then, think back to the idea of factories representing entire industries. The point of that is to not have factories and other buildings being built everywhere, and to make the specific industries stand out in the places where they're built. Even though you had plenty of industries that had factories all over the place in an industrializing society, you want to make it noticeable for the industries to stand out in the places where they're well known. You want the auto industry being built in Michigan to stand out, or the shipbuilding industry in Virginia, or the fuel refinery in Texas. So you abstract it, both to make them stand out as actually important and to keep numbers of factory levels at least somewhat low, so those factories are the only ones that show up with any significance in the game. Even if it's not a perfect representation of everywhere the industry existed in real life since you might not have a fuel refinery in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Colorado, and California even though they also had gas and fuel industries in the time period, it's a good enough representation of the areas where the industries actually became well known and a recognizable hallmark of the area.

Now, consider that buildings like factories and government administration buildings are on a statewide scale. They're not representing individual schools or factories. That would be far too small in scope for Victoria. So factories and other buildings are representing an entire localized industry, which means it needs to be greater than the typical distribution of the industry in that state to actually stand out enough to be able to be represented. But again, let's assume we want to combined that statewide measure into a building to represent the local industry. Since Wyoming is a state, we'll use it as a baseline. So if we're trying to represent this completely accurately down to every last person in every industry, we'll give Wyoming with its less than 20,000 employed as a teacher or librarian an Education building of level 1. That means New York, with its 669,080 people employed in that category would need an Education building of level 34 to create an equivalency with Wyoming. California, with its 1,025,580 people employed in the category would need a level 53 building to do so.

And then we start looking at overall numbers. California has 1,025,580 people employed in the Education/Library category. New York has 669,080. Texas has 740,670. Florida has 424,600. That's a combined total of 2,859,930 people, and you're already getting close to half of the total employed in just four states. Which... also happen to be the four largest state by population, because of course the states with the most people are going to have the most people employed in the education industry.

So then, it makes sense to tie the education and other government administration buildings to where the population is since that's naturally going to be where the jobs and the workers end up and where the industry is most recognizable. So you link government administration buildings to urban centers, with, as has been shown so far, government administration buildings contributing to the urbanization of an area and thus the growth of the urban center. It doesn't prevent people from building government administration buildings in a small, rural area just like it doesn't prevent people from building a factory somewhere that geographically doesn't fit the resources it's near. But it does encourage players to build their government administration industries in the places where they want to create urban clusters, which fits how the industry is distributed in real life. It's not perfect, but nothing will be when you're working on a global scale and it's a good enough fit for the purposes of the game and it fits with the same scope and abstraction that the rest of the buildings are on.

oh no I was just looking up numbers why did this become an essay aaaaaa

The more I read this the more I'm thinking that adding the jobs to urban centers makes the most sense (which admittedly might be confirmation bias, since I'm already partial to the idea).