How to Make a Good Economy? (Historical Project Mod)

[subjunctive]

I use the Historical Project Mod and play as the Philippines, which has a modest population of 800,000 and no good natural resources (tropical wood, timber, fruit, fish). How exactly can I develop a sound industrial base?

By 1860, I've conquered Johore, Brunei, Sulu, Dai Nam, and Bali; all taxes and tariffs are at 100%. When I finally industrialize in 1860, I build just one cement factory in each of the three provinces and expand them whenever they approach full capacity. After 10 years my industrial score is only 20; although I'll have a good 900k by now and can afford to build more factories, the problem is that there's not enough population to fill them even with Encourage Craftsman NF, or at least not enough people are becoming craftsmen fast enough. I subsidize all the factories, and it doesn't kill me with all my expenditure sliders at 100% (but no social spending) and a tax efficiency of about 20%.

I just have a feeling that I'm not approaching this in the most efficient way. Here's my main questions:

1. Is war really the only way to achieve economic independence as a small country?
2. Is there a benefit in becoming part of another nation's Sphere of Influence?
3. When should you start encouraging capitalists instead of craftsmen?
4. Do aristocrats really matter?
5. What makes POPs more willing to become craftsmen? (I have all taxes at 100%, but I could afford setting richest taxes to 0%).
6. Would setting all income stratas to a low rate be effective, or does it have to be in a pyramid? (Can they all be at 30%? Or should it be 30%-60%-90%, for example?)
7. What is the ideal tariff rate for a small nation? Should it be high to promote domestic industry, or low to allow importing of foreign goods? Or does subsidizing factories cover that too?

Also:

8. How can you gain POPs as an accepted culture?
9. How do you speed up cultural assimilation?
10. How do you speed up religious conversion?

I know that's a lot of questions, so please just pick the most relevant/important one(s), thank you in advance.

 

[alexti]

All replies are in assumption that the mod doesn't change the standard game too much.
(1) No
(2) Yes, in your situation it can give you access to coal
(3) As soon as you get profitable factories (assuming the state can build factory), but you don't need many - around 30 per state is enough, so it won't take the focus away from other goals for long
(4) In first approximation, no.
(5) Mostly unemployment in RGO and literacy.
(6) Earlier 100% on everybody is usually fine, as the game progresses you will usually have to gradually reduce taxes on poor - they are your primary consumers, so you want them to be able to afford life and everyday needs. Besides, you don't want them to get angry and emigrate. On rich you can keep taxes on max pretty much all the game. Middle strata taxes tend to be somewhere in between - what they can afford is the main guideline.
(7) Initially you could put tariffs at 100% to make some money, but if you need to import food or inputs for your factories it won't be such a good idea. I find that fairly quickly tariffs have to go down. Something like 10-20% tends to be the range that allows you to collect some money without causing economic problems in your nation. The guideline is to keep your factories profitable and make sure that your pops can afford life needs. If they can't afford imported everyday (or luxury) needs that's fine - they should be buying domestic goods anyway
(8) There's no generic way - only some nations have specific decisions (but this is an area mods often change)
(9) It's much faster in Americas/Oceania, but if you want to stay in your area, the main way is to increase pops well-being (so that they can afford luxury needs) and their literacy
(10) It's mostly similar to (9) (except Americas/Oceania), but religion is fairly insignificant, so it rarely matters.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Just two comments: go to pop screen and select an individual pop. There you can see what affects craftsmen, literacy is a big one and i think it is not very worthwhile to industrialize until your lit is at least 40 percent.

Two: there are huge benefits of being in one's sphere. The great power will protected you and sometimes help you in offensive wars. But you don't have to help the great power. There is also the internal market that you first trade with the others in the sphere it is often a good thing .
I know the goal of the game if to bevome a gp but the best would be to stay secondqry power and be protected by a gp. As gp you will have ot deal with constant crisis wars.

 

[subjunctive]

Thank you very much for the replies. Alexti, could you expound on some of the ways a small country can peacefully achieve economic independence?

I don't really understand Spheres of Influence: I understand that the higher your country ranking, the more priority you're given on the market to buy goods. So does being part of a SoI surrender your priority to the Great Power who protects you, or not? IE does a #10 independent nation have the same priority in the international marketplace as a #10 nation that's in a Sphere of Influence? (I might also be misunderstanding the whole common market stuff, so please clarify if I am!)

And don't industrialize until the national literacy rate is 40%? I thought that there's only a penalty on POPs converting to craftsmen with a <20% literacy rate. And if by 1860 my country's literacy rate is only 20%, I'll be left in the dust when the industrial score starts to become more and more important in country rankings

 

[DrZoidberg]

Lets say you are part of britains sphere.
1st round of trade is internal trade your pops buy what you produce, the rest that they dont want both money and goods go to round 2.
Round 2 your sphere of influence trade with each other and when it is gone it goes to world market.
Round 3 world market trades.

So it seems to me at least it is better to be in a sphere as you are more likely that your pops can buy the goods they need to keep mil low.

I dont have time to double check now. But i was pretty sure lit affect pop promotion to and from craftsmen at least up to 40 percent. I remember people have discussed this before and some argue that lit affects craftsmen promotion up to 100 percent. And the thing would be that the tooltips of an individual pops isnt large enough to explain everything and that you would have to look at file to see it.

Personally ive stopped trying to force industrialisation. If my people want to work in factories they can do it. If they want to work in the field they can do that as long as the state gets money to buy soldiers im happy.

 

[niallmcfc]

Being in a sphere's fine unless you plan to make any money from tariffs. Effectively if you get sphered you can expect to make money from tariffs as if it was set at ~.5%. Can be crippling, especially for countries will low tax efficiency.

 

[alexti]

Thank you very much for the replies. Alexti, could you expound on some of the ways a small country can peacefully achieve economic independence?

Economic independence is a bit relative. Every nation (including UK) is importing something. At the same time, your starting position is kind of independent too. Even without imports your people aren't going to starve. What we can achieve with Philippines is to build a prosperous nation with decent GDP.

For the start we should evaluate the starting position. Population is fairly good (2nd tier of nations), RGO has a good size, so we aren't in immediate danger of overpopulation and there's a good selection of commodities - iron and tropic wood are very good, agricultural products are also one of the better ones - grain and fruit will feed our liquor and wine industries, fish is kind of ok, at least it's not a wool or cattle. The main weaknesses are lack of coal and low literacy. However, all population is concentrated in only 3 states, so we will a good focus coverage.

Next step is to evaluate our targets (assuming peaceful life). UK, France, Prussia, NGF/Germany has much more people, land and much higher literacy - we can't compete with them. Italy has good RGOs and population, but low literacy and it's uncertain when/how it will form. Japan is going to overtake us soon after they westernize - they have everything: people, land and literacy. If China gets its act together it will also be in front (due to their population alone). So our goal is probably to be #6-#8. Who are our competitors? Russia, Austria, Ottomans and Spain start well but fade away as the game progresses due to poor literacy, national issues etc... We will still need to be a good industry to overcome their military score. Netherlands can start well, but they don't have large non-colonial population and AI is poor at converting colonies into the states. Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland are in similar position to ours, but with much higher starting literacy - we will have to outperform AI to finish in front. Brazil and Mexico could become competitors, but they also have very low literacy and AI isn't very efficient at building industry in such circumstances.

At the start we need to quickly bootstrap industry and work on the literacy. Vast majority of our population is in 2 largest states and in the third a lot of people are mining valuable iron anyway, so we'll use focus on 2 larger states. First we'll raise bureaucrats until ~75%, then clergy until 3.8-4%. After that we will be encouraging craftsmen for a long time. At this stage tariffs should be at 100% to bring some cash and to encourage artisans to demote into some useful occupation. Research focus should start from medicine (for growth) and research tech, then to aestethics to get some prestige, then into education column. When there's a gap we can get commerce/industry tech or two to increase farming/mining efficiency.

Liquor and wine industries are the most promising in our circumstances and it's easy to co-locate them with corresponding RGO. It's also worth building glass factories so that we can buy any combination of glass and coal to keep our industries supplied (in the early game we will be suffering from resource shortages). Luxury furniture factory is another useful branch. At the start we don't have money for that, so the first factory will have to be cement, just to start industrialization process. As money from tariffs come in we can build more factories. Later on, it's good to build some military factories, like canned goods - they can be profitable during the wars, right at the time when demand on wine and liquor could drop.

In the first decade all industry is going to be running on subsidies and since it's small it doesn't matter. But sometime in the early 1850s, after we finished researching education tech we can research factory efficiency tech in commerce group, by that time we should have 5+% of craftsmen and now factories can be profitable, so it's time to lower tariffs (to around 10%, depending on how many efficiency inventions we got) so that the industry can start making profits. At the same time we can quickly switch to capitalists focus for a little while to get some capitalists (30-50 per state is enough). Now we can make money by taxing them In this period we will need tax efficiency tech, but as our tax efficiency increases we will need to lower taxes on poor, so that effective tax rates stays the same (around 20% at that period).

From there on the industry will be snowballing, since we are gaining craftsmen both from promotion and from the natural growth (now craftsmen can finally make some money). The following targets include colonizing Borneo and Guinea (good resources and people), so we need to prepare required tech and navies.

When we become GP (perhaps around 1860) we will need to sphere to secure critical resources (until that point our industry will be suffering from periodic shortages). Korea is good - it provides coal and number of other useful resources. Dai Nam is also good (rubber in the future). Brazil, Ethiopia, Sokoto are further sphering targets. We should spent diplomats in the early game to improve relations with those countries.

Further on, we will need develop industry providing main consumer goods (liquor, furniture and clothes) and later high tech (rubber-based) goods.

 

[subjunctive]

Thank you for clearing it up, Dr. Zoidberg and niall! And thank you very much for the detailed reply, alexti Is there some benefit to adding nations to your Sphere of Influence rather than just annexing them, apart from how it takes up less infamy and/or time?

 

[alexti]

Is there some benefit to adding nations to your Sphere of Influence rather than just annexing them, apart from how it takes up less infamy and/or time?

If you annex, you will have to take care of annexed population, which might be less than ideal for number of reasons. For example, if you have shortage of certain goods, the newly acquired states will also need some, so everybody will start getting less. If annexed population has much lower literacy, clergy and clerk percentages it will drag your overall rates down. You may also need with the unrest - population will often have wrong culture/religion and if there's a high unemployment (like if you happened to annex some dye province) you'll likely have rebellions. If you add nation to SoI instead, all this is not your problem.

 

[subjunctive]

I see. Thank you for the clarification, all of this will help me immensely!