Factories refusing to build (and some general questions)

[Captain Carrot]

This is my first "successful" (not restarted within 10 years) game. I'm Brazil, because the wiki said that it's good for beginners. For now I just tried to keep everything semi-automated and hopefully figure out correct strategies, so I kept Interventionism and left all trade to the AI. Soon after I researched the commerce tech that unlocks Lumber Mills, a project to build it started, despite there being no capitalists. I assume one pop appeared, invested all its meager money into the factory and demoted back. I invested in it and the needed capital rose sightly, which, I assume, is because buying the needed goods increased their price. I invested to the max again, and then a couple times more, and eventually it got built. Later, two more projects for a Glass Factory and a Cement Factory appeared (the Capitalists vanished again, despite me exempting them from taxes entirely) and had the same issue, but now it doesn't end. The needed investment keeps rising by around £20 every so often and no Machine Parts are ever acquired (the other goods' needs are met). This has been going on for a couple months, so, having more than enough money, I decided to try and buy Machine Parts manually. I disabled automation and set the minimum stockpile to 30, but nothing changes. Now, it's possible that I didn't quite do what I wanted to do, because it was late, but after a few more months absolutely nothing changed, so I assume there's some mechanism in the works that I don't know about. The reasons I can think of are:

• Is it because the Lumber Mill ate most of my unemployed Craftsmen and there are no Capitalists to "finish" the project?
• I'm rank 18 and the 17 nations before me are buying all of the world's Machine Parts?

I also have two other questions. The way I see it, getting 20% Clerks in a factory is quite desirable, but I have no Clerks. What can I do to make pops switch to Clerks, besides using the NF?
After some events making my pops more in favour of reforms (particularly Free Press and Secret Ballots), Liberal UH support is constantly growing by small amounts, together with Reactionary (for whatever reason), the former growing faster. Each election the Conservatives (ruling) enter a coalition with Reactionaries, but the only non-separatist revel faction is still Reactionary. I frankly don't understand a thing here. I remember passing one reform to make people more conservative (the wiki told me this), and I chose the one that would calm the Abolitionists and the Suffragettes, so I might have accidentally enacted more liberal voting (as I said, it was late), but then I still see absolutely no reason why Reactionary would grow, considering that a good chunk of the former non-voter pops are far more Liberal.

 

[Kovax]

The likely situation is that there are barely enough machine parts available at your national rank (#17) to support your existing factories that need it, with nothing to spare for new construction. With no Capitalists, there wouldn't be any further investment aside from your own, and I'm not sure how the purchase of materials works without a capitalist present.

Clerks are very difficult to get until your Literacy rate is a lot higher than Brazil starts with. Promoting Clerics will probably do you more good in the long term, otherwise you'll spend years of NF efforts to get a handful of Clerks while your Research suffers, where boosting Literacy will give you a lot more Clerks down the road, as well as more points toward Research in the mean time.

As for the Conservative/Reactionary/Liberal thing, the game is designed to increase Liberalism over time, regardless of your best efforts. Liberal governments function well in the late-game, once you've laid a solid economic ground for them, but they're disastrous early on. I've generally had better luck choosing outcomes which increase Militancy instead of Consciousness, because Militancy is a lot easier to get rid of. Note that whatever government you end up with, it will tend to cause support for the other parties, so a Conservative government will typically lose popularity, while Reactionaries and Liberals will increase. Put the Liberals in power, and you'll typically see gradually increasing support for Conservatives and Socialists (after socialist parties appear).

 

[Guedes]

Like said, no machine parts available for you to buy on the world market.

Which, btw, is common at early game for non-gps. Just wait a few years and machine parts shortagr should be fixed

 

[Captain Carrot]

Ok, thank both of you.

 

[Denkt]

Capitalist can only invest in factories as long as your government economy policy is not planned so if you get a planned party you may want to replace it.

The quickest way to industrialize is probably to get 100% war exhuastion as that makes farmers very poor so they can demote into craftsmen but it may be seen as an exploit and could kill your economy since your RGO wont produce much. The normal way is to increase literacy since literacy improve both demotion and promotion speed and you need some literacy so that pops want to promote into Craftsmen and about 50% for them to promote to clerks.

Liberalism and socialism is caused by pops wanting reforms and the main cause of reforms is how much conscious the pops have, if it is low pops will mostly be happy and stay conservative but as it increase so do demand for reforms. High militantism also allow for reforms but it can cause rebellion. Pops that can purchase luxury goods will get conscious and so will literate pops depending on your country's plurality value.

 

[Thrake]

I remember passing one reform to make people more conservative (the wiki told me this), and I chose the one that would calm the Abolitionists and the Suffragettes, so I might have accidentally enacted more liberal voting (as I said, it was late), but then I still see absolutely no reason why Reactionary would grow, considering that a good chunk of the former non-voter pops are far more Liberal.

It is important to keep check of which reforms you pass. Passing the reforms you want rather than what your people want will increase radicalism a good deal very quickly (tooltip for the reform will show radicalism increases). If you want to ignore the public opinion anyway and get away with this, it's still possible. Typically the most wanted reform is suffrage reform. But let's say I want to stay an absolute monarchy all game but still reform my country.

When I get a chance to pass a reform, I suppress the suffrage movement. It disapears from the list and another reform becomes the most supported: you can pass that reform and there will be no increase of radicalism.

Later on suffrage will pop up again and you will have to repress it everytilme you want to pass another reform.

Overall liberalism support will increase with pop's consciousness, and consciousness increases with literacy, but is decreased by clergy pops (low consciousness means your pops will not vote in a way that reflects their own interest: low class will not support left wing and thus your starting conservative government has a lot of support). So over time liberalism will increase unless you don't increase your literacy. However, if you don't want to become liberal, it's still possible: Brazil is a monarchy and starts with very little suffrage reforms (maybe none at all?). Refuse passing the suffrage reforms and the electorate will be largely aristocrats which should stay conservative. The drawback is that not going full on reforms will decrease immigration. But if you want to stick with a conservative party anyway, it's possible. As brazil, industrialization should be a fairly slow process, and state capitalism is very welcome to kick start industrialization.

Well, there is a lot more that influences party support, like what your pop types are. Remember to read tooltips and check "hidden" windows, like clicking on pops in pop window will show lots of info and tooltips will show why all this is happening.

The way I see it, getting 20% Clerks in a factory is quite desirable, but I have no Clerks. What can I do to make pops switch to Clerks, besides using the NF?

Only pops with at least 50% literacy can become clerks. So yes, clerks are great but sometimes you simply can't get any. NF can create say capitalists when you have none (you should kickstart your capis in states with factories this way, not necessarily a lot but just a handful is enough to fund projects and more importantly railroads) but you can't do that with clerks.

 

[Captain Carrot]

Wow, that's quite comprehensive, thank you. Brazil's starting suffrage is, I think, Weighted Universal, and I have, in fact, passed Universal, but despite the population being mostly in favour of Conservative and Liberal parties (over 30% each) and maybe 15% and 10% for Reactionary and Socialist ones (and these statistics being reflected in the post-election pop-up), my Upper House keeps seemingly randomly fluctuating between Socialist and Liberal dominance, with a great deal of Communist and Anarcho-Liberal seats (which never exceed 4% pop popularity combined). Even the increase in Conservative seats after passing a reform just disappears on the next assembly. This confuses me even more than the old issue, but it doesn't seem to have any actual effect, because HM's Government allows me to freely choose my ruling party, disregarding the Upper House layout or election results, and with sufficient Militancy any reforms can be passed. And there's another line on the election pop-up, which doesn't seem to matter - "A coalition of Conservative and Reactionary parties won the vote". Why create a coalition in the first few elections, if Conservative support is like 70%, way more than 50%? Not that it has any (visible) effect on policies or pops or reforms...

Honestly, I don't even need a full explanation, if you just tell me "this is WAD because X, look for that in the Y menu", or even just point me to the right direction on the wiki, I'll be eternally grateful and figure out the rest myself.

 

[Guedes]

Most important thing that you should understand on vic2 political system is that parties and elections have nothing to do with reforms and upperhouse composition.

Voters vote on upperhouse senators based on ideology, and that will define your upperhouse composition yearly, and weather you can or cant pass reforms.

Voters vote on election based on issues, and that will ultimately define your ruling party (you can change it on certain types os government) each time there is an election.

That said its perfectly reasonable to have a conservative party on government while having a liberal upperhouse.

 

[Thrake]

You should be cautious when playing with militantism. Victoria rebelion system is brutal if you're rude to your pops. It can also lead to serial crisis if you own foreign cores. Changing your ruling party increases your militantism if you have elections.

 

[Captain Carrot]

Voters vote on upperhouse senators based on ideology, and that will define your upperhouse composition yearly, and weather you can or cant pass reforms.

If they vote based on ideology, why is my UH so different from pop ideology stats? If it's defined yearly, why does drift in a seemingly random (so long as it's not Conservative) direction every couple of weeks?

You should be cautious when playing with militantism. Victoria rebelion system is brutal if you're rude to your pops. It can also lead to serial crisis if you own foreign cores. Changing your ruling party increases your militantism if you have elections.

I am careful: ever since all my craftsmen got employed, the only largely militant pops are nationalists and Africans, and those that got random events. I haven't done anything like deliberately raise taxes or close factories to pass reforms, I only meant that the Conservative-Liberal-Socialist majority will eventually at least somewhat bend to reform desire in either category.

 

[Guedes]

If they vote based on ideology, why is my UH so different from pop ideology stats? If it's defined yearly, why does drift in a seemingly random (so long as it's not Conservative) direction every couple of weeks?

First question; note i said "voters" and not "population ". That happens probably because your voting franchise political reform isnt "universal" yet. If it is ,for example, "only landed" than only aristrocats + capitalists ideology will matter. If you go to the pop tab and select only those 2 stratas and check their ideology should match (almost)exactly the composition of your upperhouse on 1st of january. Upperhouse composition political reform can also affect it, if it is "ruling party only " for example your upperhouse will be 100% of the ruling party, regardless of your voters ideology.

Second question: it doesnt "drift ". You must be confusing it with something else. Upperhouse only changes yearly or when you enact a reform. Why it changes after you enact a reform? Probably a mechanic just to prevent abuses, but at 1st January of the next year it should match the voters ideology again .

 

[Captain Carrot]

your voting franchise political reform isnt "universal"

It might've been the case if I hadn't passed Universal (as I noted twice in this thread already) way before Socialism even became a thing.

As for the drifting, I get "King, our new Upper House has been assembled" messages way more frequently than once a year. Of course, it might be that I simply didn't notice that it only happened on 1. Jan (since I've only played one game so far and on speed 4), but I find that highly unlikely as I have half-yearly autosaves and would probably have noticed the slight lag coinciding with that pop-up.

Actually, nevermind, I just checked the wiki and remembered that I didn't have the fully liberal Upper House Composition reform option, so that's probably the root of all evil.

 

[Kovax]

Just remember that you shouldn't pass most of the reforms when you can, pass them when you MUST to avoid a gigantic revolt, otherwise you'll run out of things to pass in order to relieve the pressure in the late game. Just because you've passed every possible reform is no excuse, the peasants will still find something to revolt over anyway. I had to pass Universal Suffrage in order to stave off a revolt by 2.2 million angry pops with over 80% fanaticism.

 

[Guedes]

Actually, nevermind, I just checked the wiki and remembered that I didn't have the fully liberal Upper House Composition reform option, so that's probably the root of all evil.

Yeah, upperhouse composition reforms may mess with it.

Just remember that you shouldn't pass most of the reforms when you can, pass them when you MUST to avoid a gigantic revolt, otherwise you'll run out of things to pass in order to relieve the pressure in the late game. Just because you've passed every possible reform is no excuse, the peasants will still find something to revolt over anyway. I had to pass Universal Suffrage in order to stave off a revolt by 2.2 million angry pops with over 80% fanaticism.

I disagree. Playing as an American nation theres is no reason not to pass all political reforms and all the "good" social reforms as soon as possible to attract immigration .

Late game should be a welfare state with 0 or near 0% tax on poor and middle strata and full military spending, with that setting is impossible to have a rebellion strong enough to take the government . Commies may rise a few times asking for the bad social reforms but the military will be at your side and your tanks and airplanes will just stramroll over those few poor peasants.