Potential Worldeconomy. A test of what the world can produce.

[Fawr]

But if you are producing too much regular cloths and chairs you can lower regular PM in atleast some factories.
Also the lack of hardwood is very fitting since it represents the severe deforestation that happend in that time.

There were lots of hardwood forests left in the world after 1936 and there are lots left even today.

OurWorldInData says that even today we have used up 2 billion hectares of the original 6 billion hectares of total forested area in the world (half lost before 1900 and half lost afterwards).

Deforestation and Forest Loss

Explore long-term changes in deforestation, and deforestation rates across the world today.

ourworldindata.org

If you look at this graph you can also see that the deforestation before 1920 was quite small compared to what has happened afterwards. From 1840 to 1940 this graph has 500 million hectares of forest loss, half of that in the last 20 years.

So even if your victoria 3 world used 3 times more wood than historically, and you kept playing until 2020 you wouldn't run out of forest. If you used up trees at about 10 or 11 times the historical then you would have to worry about running out before 1936.

Also I'm not taking into account that some of the forests that were cleared historically were not cleared for timber (slash and burn to get new agricultural land). That would mean cutting timber for lumber could increase by an even larger amount.

That isn't to say that deforestation isn't a problem for things like biodiversity, species extinction and future timber needs, but there was next to no chance of the world running out of timber during the vicky timeframe. Small areas may be different, but those are exceptions (eg when Britain stopped importing much timber during WW1, the forests in the UK shrunk significantly in size).

 

[Fawr]

Also the reason they are using more then they produce is their SOL of 18. Their main expenses are soo cheap that they can afford that SoL and at this point it would seem the demand is greater then their own subsistance production.

I don't think I've explained it very well. The issue I'm worried about isn't them affording the goods. The issue is that they buy 10% of those goods from the Prussian Market and 90% of the goods from somewhere else (for the moment lets say that 90% is purchased by the magic Faries). I'll try to explain further down with some examples and screenshots from your save game.

I've had a look at a large pop of peasants in Texas.

These are a bit under 1% of your total peasant population (1.4M out of ~160M).

They buy 418 clothes

This suggests that your whole peasant population should buy 41800 clothes (that is 100 * 418) or likely a bit more.

However when you look at the market they are buying about 10% of what you would expect from the market. The other 90% of what they buy comes from somewhere else that the game doesn't document (aka the magic Faries).

There is this thread here on the forum though that discusses how subsistance works. And if i understands that one correctly then they do buy 100% of their needs on the market. But iam not following that thread really.

Eitherway. All i can say is that these numbers are correct. Its simply a question of SoL.

Also i dont think it would help at this point to have more demand. It would just make everyone poorer and still not solve the unemployment issue. My world is an utopia where alot of people dont have to work. But if this continues, then the state budget will collabse under the wellfare expenses.

I think removing the magic Faries and their goods from your simulation would give us a better idea of how many goods the game can produce, and how many people that many goods can support, and in what level of living.

 

[Znikii]

There were lots of hardwood forests left in the world after 1936 and there are lots left even today.

OurWorldInData says that even today we have used up 2 billion hectares of the original 6 billion hectares of total forested area in the world (half lost before 1900 and half lost afterwards).

Deforestation and Forest Loss

Explore long-term changes in deforestation, and deforestation rates across the world today.

ourworldindata.org

If you look at this graph you can also see that the deforestation before 1920 was quite small compared to what has happened afterwards. From 1840 to 1940 this graph has 500 million hectares of forest loss, half of that in the last 20 years.

So even if your victoria 3 world used 3 times more wood than historically, and you kept playing until 2020 you wouldn't run out of forest. If you used up trees at about 10 or 11 times the historical then you would have to worry about running out before 1936.

Also I'm not taking into account that some of the forests that were cleared historically were not cleared for timber (slash and burn to get new agricultural land). That would mean cutting timber for lumber could increase by an even larger amount.

That isn't to say that deforestation isn't a problem for things like biodiversity, species extinction and future timber needs, but there was next to no chance of the world running out of timber during the vicky timeframe. Small areas may be different, but those are exceptions (eg when Britain stopped importing much timber during WW1, the forests in the UK shrunk significantly in size).

But I imagine the vast majority of pristine forest that is useful for hardwood is located in remote places far away from any population centres and infrastructure, making it an expansive and scarce resource even if technically there is still a lot of potential supply around the world.

 

[TheHostName]

I don't think I've explained it very well. The issue I'm worried about isn't them affording the goods. The issue is that they buy 10% of those goods from the Prussian Market and 90% of the goods from somewhere else (for the moment lets say that 90% is purchased by the magic Faries). I'll try to explain further down with some examples and screenshots from your save game.

I've had a look at a large pop of peasants in Texas.
View attachment 930969
These are a bit under 1% of your total peasant population (1.4M out of ~160M).

They buy 418 clothes
View attachment 930970

This suggests that your whole peasant population should buy 41800 clothes (that is 100 * 418) or likely a bit more.
View attachment 930971
However when you look at the market they are buying about 10% of what you would expect from the market. The other 90% of what they buy comes from somewhere else that the game doesn't document (aka the magic Faries).



I think removing the magic Faries and their goods from your simulation would give us a better idea of how many goods the game can produce, and how many people that many goods can support, and in what level of living.

Ohhh so that tab with the 418 clothes actually lies. That pop only actually buys 41.8 clothes on the market.
Well that does mean, that they are a net producer of goods on the prussian market.
So it might be advantages to build out the remaining 14k subsistance field with farms like tea and stuff, but mostly even more cheap wheat, so that they turn into unemployed.

 

[Stelaria]

As has been said in other threads, peasants run on an abstraction of a hidden system, but it's a bit disingenuous to call it 'magic fairies'. The other 90% is accounted for by peasants obtaining goods from each other's cottage industries via untaxed, undocumented purchases or barter. If you want all their economic activity to be documented, made with currency and taxable, you'll need to carry out land reform to bring them into the system, which in the game is modeled by either filling all the arable land with farm buildings or implementing a command economy.

Basically, they're raising their own livestock in small enclosures, cultivating their own grain, fruit and vegetables on a per-family basis, weaving their own cloth and sewing their own clothes, only selling a minimal surplus in order to save up funds for goods they can't get themselves, such as medicines, or to pay poll or land taxes. I do wonder if, based on this, their SOL calculations might be a bit screwy though?

Also, as an aside...

Trying to implement a utopian society in which a large proportion of the population doesn't work and doesn't need to work is troublesome in V3. I think what would be needed is more granular control of taxation and the money supply, really; highly liberal societies have very low authority generation, but modern welfare states fund themselves through a mixture of graduated income tax, moderate-to-high dividend and corporation tax, and value-added taxes.

The closest thing to value-added taxes in the game is consumption taxes, but there's no combination of laws at present that allows you to maintain a liberal society while running that type of taxation regime; and also, there's very little control over minting rate, and the entire world operates on a single currency so there's no way to control foreign exchange. Indeed, the game seems to abstract the difference between commodity-backed and fiat currencies, despite simulating a period of history during which many governments issued large amounts of bonds and treasury bills in order to pay for increasingly expensive wars or public works. I'd like to see an implementation of these elements of economic management, but I imagine it'd be very difficult with the particular optimizations and abstractions the developers have chosen to make to run the core economic engine.

 

[Secret Master]

I agree it would be different.

You may have to check your China saved game again. 5000 workers produce 0.75, 0.5 or 0.25 wood depending on the type of subsistence farm.

default_building_subsistence_farms = {
    texture = "gfx/interface/icons/production_method_icons/subsistence_farming.dds"
  
    building_modifiers = {
        workforce_scaled = { # 85
            building_output_grain_add = 2.5 # 50
            building_output_fabric_add = 0.5 # 10
            building_output_wood_add = 0.5 # 10
            building_output_services_add = 0.5 # 15
        }

        level_scaled = {
            building_employment_peasants_add = 4750
        }
      
        unscaled = {
            building_aristocrats_shares_add = 5
            building_clergymen_shares_add = 2
        }
    }
}

That increases if you tell them they can't have home workshops. ~5000 workers producing 0.5 leads to 1M workers producing 100 wood. I've just checked a new Japanese game again and 750k workers are producing 75 wood as confirmation.

A few million workers should be producing a few hundred wood.

Wait you cant download/load the save from the second test? The one i have attached to this comment aswell?
View attachment 930947
Also the reason they are using more then they produce is their SOL of 18. Their main expenses are soo cheap that they can afford that SoL and at this point it would seem the demand is greater then their own subsistance production.

So, this is why I'm so confused.

China in my game with 99 million peasants:

I shouldn't be producing more wood via peasants then you should be. My peasant population isn't as large

We aren't using different PMs, since I don't have access to different PMs than you (I think?).

Wait a moment...

I have more subsistence farms than you do, but I thought you had 168 million peasants. The tooltip tells me otherwise.

My workforce ratio is different from yours because you have things like women's suffrage in place that I don't.

Giving it some thought, the numbers actually do shake out. The important difference is that in my China save, a larger % of my wood income is from peasants because I don't own the planet and I have more total peasants and a larger % of my population are peasants.

 

[TheHostName]

Btw what i noticed from the extreme pop growth i implemented:
I dont think workforce ratio actually changes dependents into workforce pops. What really happens is that a certain % of new added pops through birth are made directly into workers. That results into a heavy shift of the %.

As an example: Going up from 1B pops to 2B only increased my dependents by 250Mio while it added 750Mio workers. Its a really strange way of simulating this.

 

[TheHostName]

So i just spammed more farms of everything and wheat aswell. I though i was going to have empty farms but iam actually getting fully occupied farms. The rest of the wages are subsidized through the state as wellfare. With a further reduction in primary pms for Textile workshops was i able to now have a balanced budget and only 200Mio unemployed and 0 peasants. Only thing i had to do is service, porcelain, luxury textiles taxes.

And yes the immideat switch from peasants to laborers meant a large (not that relevant though) demand increase for clothes and the likes. Subsidized by the state though.

 

[0watcherinthewater0]

As has been said in other threads, peasants run on an abstraction of a hidden system, but it's a bit disingenuous to call it 'magic fairies'. The other 90% is accounted for by peasants obtaining goods from each other's cottage industries via untaxed, undocumented purchases or barter. If you want all their economic activity to be documented, made with currency and taxable, you'll need to carry out land reform to bring them into the system, which in the game is modeled by either filling all the arable land with farm buildings or implementing a command economy.

Basically, they're raising their own livestock in small enclosures, cultivating their own grain, fruit and vegetables on a per-family basis, weaving their own cloth and sewing their own clothes, only selling a minimal surplus in order to save up funds for goods they can't get themselves, such as medicines, or to pay poll or land taxes. I do wonder if, based on this, their SOL calculations might be a bit screwy though?

Wouldn’t a far more elegant solution to this be to, instead of having some arbitrary extra income and reduced market impact that solely exists for peasants, just use the existing infrastructure system?

The level of subsistence, in a country would be a function of how developed national infrastructure is, and by default, market access would be 0 in most states, only being any higher in areas with access to water transport.

The development of railways would be necessary for a truly integrated market. If you want to add even more interactibility, maybe there could be a cap on market access until you unlock certain communications technologies, like telegraphs or telephones. That would actually be really interesting to see.

Using infrastructure this way also allows us to differentiate between non-market participants, and market-participants. Peasants in a State with little to no market access would more accurately represent serfs, trading in kind if they trade at all, while peasants in a state with 100% market access would just be normal farmers that lack extensive specialization, and thus are less efficient than larger establishments.

That allows us to avoid the issue of subsistence farmers existing right next to some huge market center when in reality that would make 0 sense.

 

[Secret Master]

What really happens is that a certain % of new added pops through birth are made directly into workers. That results into a heavy shift of the %.

Wait, what? That's odd. It might explain some weird stuff I've seen with labor when changing policies.

 

[TheHostName]

Wait, what? That's odd. It might explain some weird stuff I've seen with labor when changing policies.

Yep. Just annex_all. Have birth and deathrate be next to 0 and change the laws with fastenact. You will see no changes in workforce. Yet you will if you increase birthrate by a huge share.

 

[Fawr]

But I imagine the vast majority of pristine forest that is useful for hardwood is located in remote places far away from any population centres and infrastructure, making it an expansive and scarce resource even if technically there is still a lot of potential supply around the world.

You could simulate that by having places like the Amazon having much more lumber available than small provinces in Europe. Infrastructure is an in-game thing you would have to build, and before you can use it you would need people to migrate there too. A state modifier reducing infrastructure and migration attractiveness for some of those untapped forests might be fair too. Even without that it might be hard to get migration there unless lumber prices are high, but IMO the game should have the option of this stuff happening.

 

[EwaldvonKleist]

Good test, thanks!
There should be more variability in production methods for factories which produce multiple goods. Or even better, let factories auto-adjust for maximum profit.

 

[Fawr]

Wait, what? That's odd. It might explain some weird stuff I've seen with labor when changing policies.

Yep. Just annex_all. Have birth and deathrate be next to 0 and change the laws with fastenact. You will see no changes in workforce. Yet you will if you increase birthrate by a huge share.

This is very interesting.

I had been worried that having the socialist IG bonus would give me lots of unemployed when it turned on and then lost of empty jobs when it turned off. This really takes out a lot of the downsides and makes that bonus much better.

Thinking of the move towards women in the workplace, and I think that rule on gradually ramping it up makes a lot of sense. Women's workforce participation is still rising in Australia today because it takes a long time for things like education to catch up, and even longer for expectations, or for things like childcare to be an easy and consistent option.

It makes less sense for the effect of pensions or mandatory schooling to be gradual.

EDIT: your high proportion of people in the workforce also helps explain how the SoL of your peasant farmers is higher than normal (assuming peasant workers earn more than dependents do).

 

[TheHostName]

EDIT: your high proportion of people in the workforce also helps explain how the SoL of your peasant farmers is higher than normal (assuming peasant workers earn more than dependents do).

That is an interesting thought. Iam going to try that in a sec and report back. Though i imagine that its not going to work. That 2.5mio pop i showed earlier in this thread had 200k in subsistance income and 50k in wages. I dont think the SoL increase can be attributed to those 50k. But who know maybe even subsistance income is affected by workforce.

Btw what iam always scared of is heavily reducing dependent income for my pops while the workforce modifiers havent taken their real effect. Those dependent wages can be one or two SoL

 

[TheHostName]

EDIT: your high proportion of people in the workforce also helps explain how the SoL of your peasant farmers is higher than normal (assuming peasant workers earn more than dependents do).

So i played Russia for this test. I looked at a state that had 559k workers. After abolishing taxes and serfdom the SoL equivilibrium was 11 and prices for these goods were low enought hat this pop had to spend only 0.2% over base prices.

After the increase in pop growth the workforce share increase from 25% to 34% (i overdid the popgrowth. So apererently this pop shrank in size by 200k which is now unemployed)

I havent continued a day to led this pop increase its SoL, but it would with that extra income while having to supported less pops. Also note how the resources are all more expensiv now. This pop has to pay 20% over baseprize, yet it would still grow in SoL.

My conclusion therefore is that high workforce ratio in subsistance farmers lets them use the same subsistance income for less pops. That obviously increases their SoL.