Industry vs Artisans

[Edungeon]

Do you guys know how the competition between your own industry and artisans work? Like, if my artisans produce 50 glass and my industry another 50 and my whole country needs exactly 100. If I increase my industry glass production will it be able to sell its output by taking the market from the artisans?

I'm asking this because if that is the case, if you analyse what your artisans are successfully producing, you will be able to know where there is a market opportunity for your industry to expand (and more reliable than the "population needs" tab)... that will make the initial industrialization easier, I guess...

Any thoughts?

Thanks

 

[mulazimisani]

Do you guys know how the competition between your own industry and artisans work? Like, if my artisans produce 50 glass and my industry another 50 and my whole country needs exactly 100. If I increase my industry glass production will it be able to sell its output by taking the market from the artisans?

I'm asking this because if that is the case, if you analyse what your artisans are successfully producing, you will be able to know where there is a market opportunity for your industry to expand (and more reliable than the "population needs" tab)... that will make the initial industrialization easier, I guess...

Any thoughts?

Thanks

It seems logical.. Some might think that "Hmm.. If artisans are doing well on X product, maybe I should avoid producing it at first", but I saw that idea is wrong when I started with glass, liquour and wine in Ottoman Empire where artisans were already producing plenty of them.

 

[Scuzz]

Industry gains efficiency boosts from capitalists, clerks, and technology, and so the same amount of coal will produce more glass if it is processed by a factory. The rising efficiency will make it impossible for artisans to compete in the production of common goods (glass, liquor) by increasing the demand for inputs and pushing down the demand for outputs to a level that the artisans' ratio of input to output is no longer profitable.
Artisans survive in the late game by being flexible, they mainly exist to fill in the production gaps and supply overflows. I don't think there's any use in trying to keep track of them.

 

[Secret Master]

I don't keep track of them either, although for slightly different reasons.

At the lowest tech levels, artisans are more efficient than factories, so I simply don't waste time industrializing at low techs. There is no real competition to worry about then. Furthermore, at low tech levels and during the first decade of the game, the supply of key goods on the market is questionable unless you already own the production of them (Britain/dye, Russia/timber, France/tropical wood via Madagascar). So, even if you built factories, they can't change their production when the supply of certain items dries up, causing them to fail. Artisans can at least change production in response to market volatility.

But once I own enough colonies that produce tons of coal, iron, silk, and a few other things, and once factory efficiency is up to par, then I switch to massive industrialization and I still don't care about artisans. In this case, the goal is to get my IND up and mass produce consumer goods, which artisans really can't do anyway. I know what consumer goods to produce better than the artisans (and capitalists), so I set up the factories and the artisans can adapt or die.

I wish I could encourage more artisan promotions to capitalist when they are healthy, but it just doesn't work that way. I'd like them to form the nucleus of my new capitalist class, but since they won't promote themselves in significant numbers (and I'm not wasting an NF for very long to encourage capitalist promotion for other reasons), then the artisans can just deal with it.

Another problem is artisans in your colonies, since they tend to do poorly when you ramp up production. But they can't even become clerks or craftsmen, which causes some additional unrest. (Certain states you conquer from Japan and China have significant numbers of artisans).

 

[GC13]

Where are you getting that artisans start out as more efficient? I'm looking at the files and the only inefficiency is that factories require cement and machine parts as maintenance; otherwise they have the same input and output, but with factories having the potential for extra throughput (which isn't material efficiency, but is still population efficiency).

 

[Secret Master]

Where are you getting that artisans start out as more efficient? I'm looking at the files and the only inefficiency is that factories require cement and machine parts as maintenance; otherwise they have the same input and output, but with factories having the potential for extra throughput (which isn't material efficiency, but is still population efficiency).

That is how they are more efficient. Factories that lack maintenance goods take a huge efficiency hit. So, at the lowest tech levels, either the factories eat maintenance goods (cutting into profits they might otherwise make, making them less efficient overall) or they don't get the maintenance goods (because they aren't available to purchase) and run worse than artisans.

Throughput due to POPs is largely irrelevant to this discussion, since I'm focusing on inputs and outputs. Unless you are sitting on millions of unemployed craftsmen while also having really low techs, in which case we're talking about a very odd early game where you civilize China super fast or somehow convince 11 million Russian peasants to become craftsmen in 1840.

It doesn't take much to put factories over artisans, but there is little to be gained as Russia by spamming factories in 1836. You simply lack the infrastructure and techs to make them solid. Britain, France, and Prussia start out with enough techs they can make a better go of it at game start. Austria is in a weird position technologically (she really needs to get literacy up sooner rather than later), and the USA could start some factories, but she lacks the population density to make them worthwhile right away.