Yesterday I wrote that it should make sense building more wine and regular clothes factories, since Germany is not producing enough to satisfy internal demands and is even exporting those goods.
Turns out I was wrong. There were two mistakes in my thinking process.
First, what the game calls "Exported Goods" are actually "Goods which are available for export". Which does not mean they are necessarily going to get exchanged. If Global Demand exceeds Global Supply, they are sold, otherwise they are going to disappear without profit. Therefore, the glass, fabric, clothes Germany is exporting end up wasted, since Global Supply for those goods exceeds Global Demand by far. But the automobiles which get exported, for instance, do get sold, since global demand exceeds supply.
Second, demand is not the same as the goods which are actually bought. Even if Germany's pops (mostly in China) would like to buy more wine and regular clothes, they might not have the money to do that. The ones who do have money will get the goods from the "Available" pool, which contains both the goods produced by the country and the spherelings, but NOT the goods which can be imported, as I explain in the following post. The quantity actually bought will be shown under the "Total Used" label. The difference "Total produced ( by us and spherelings)"-"Total used by us ( and spherelings?)" gets exported - or wasted. At least, this is how I understood it.
(Numbers are different since I took these screenshots in October 1903)
But it actually doesn't have to be that complicated. Actually, you can find out what goods should be profitable to produce in greater quantity just by looking at the trade screen. Green = good, black = average, red = bad. Looking at the trade screen you can see what goods are profitable (not counting RGOs).
Good : Eletronic Parts, Automobile, Aeroplanes, Fuel,
Neutral : Machine Parts, Telephones, Liquors, Luxury Clothes, Luxury Furniture, Ammo, Artillery, Canned Foods, Barrels
Bad : Everything else.
A look at the factory list confirms that in part - you have to weigh profit by numer of employees though. And regrettably the numbers could be different from day to day. But this list is even more useful to decide what kind of factory you should build (or close or subsidize - but that is another matter).
Most Profitable.
Less Profitable
It is obviously not that clear-cut, since steel, furniture and glass (sometimes) seem to be profitable too, and barrels might not.
I was not convinced, and I created another spreadsheet, to find out whether there is a relation between Profitability (Total Income/ Total Employees) and Percentage of Supply covered (Global Demand/ Global Supply*100). After all, some factories might be profitable and other not, even if producing the same good, so I tried to get average values.
There is some relation, barring errors, but it is still not clear-cut.
(There are some inconsistences with the previous images since I took the result over a couple of days, and the income ripples.)
So what to make of it ? Not sure....
Maybe I am making it more complicated than it is.
Turns out I was wrong. There were two mistakes in my thinking process.
First, what the game calls "Exported Goods" are actually "Goods which are available for export". Which does not mean they are necessarily going to get exchanged. If Global Demand exceeds Global Supply, they are sold, otherwise they are going to disappear without profit. Therefore, the glass, fabric, clothes Germany is exporting end up wasted, since Global Supply for those goods exceeds Global Demand by far. But the automobiles which get exported, for instance, do get sold, since global demand exceeds supply.
Second, demand is not the same as the goods which are actually bought. Even if Germany's pops (mostly in China) would like to buy more wine and regular clothes, they might not have the money to do that. The ones who do have money will get the goods from the "Available" pool, which contains both the goods produced by the country and the spherelings, but NOT the goods which can be imported, as I explain in the following post. The quantity actually bought will be shown under the "Total Used" label. The difference "Total produced ( by us and spherelings)"-"Total used by us ( and spherelings?)" gets exported - or wasted. At least, this is how I understood it.
(Numbers are different since I took these screenshots in October 1903)
But it actually doesn't have to be that complicated. Actually, you can find out what goods should be profitable to produce in greater quantity just by looking at the trade screen. Green = good, black = average, red = bad. Looking at the trade screen you can see what goods are profitable (not counting RGOs).
Good : Eletronic Parts, Automobile, Aeroplanes, Fuel,
Neutral : Machine Parts, Telephones, Liquors, Luxury Clothes, Luxury Furniture, Ammo, Artillery, Canned Foods, Barrels
Bad : Everything else.
A look at the factory list confirms that in part - you have to weigh profit by numer of employees though. And regrettably the numbers could be different from day to day. But this list is even more useful to decide what kind of factory you should build (or close or subsidize - but that is another matter).
Most Profitable.
Less Profitable
It is obviously not that clear-cut, since steel, furniture and glass (sometimes) seem to be profitable too, and barrels might not.
I was not convinced, and I created another spreadsheet, to find out whether there is a relation between Profitability (Total Income/ Total Employees) and Percentage of Supply covered (Global Demand/ Global Supply*100). After all, some factories might be profitable and other not, even if producing the same good, so I tried to get average values.
There is some relation, barring errors, but it is still not clear-cut.
(There are some inconsistences with the previous images since I took the result over a couple of days, and the income ripples.)
So what to make of it ? Not sure....
Maybe I am making it more complicated than it is.
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