Yes Russia has a really high ratio of States per Population. Those states beeing full of lumber allows Russia to be a net exporter of Wood even at SoL levels of over 30 and 100 Mio pops.
So, let's talk about the big four resources
- Thread starter Secret Master
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The issue is that, as I understand it, at a certain point, the mass labor savings (layoffs) created by the mass shift of production methods creates unemployment, obviously. And at a certain point, with these kind of resource shortages that are being discussed in the posts here, there simply are no more profitable/reasonable expansions to be made in any industries to absorb/redirect the unemployed folks.
You're right - an increase in SOL for a pop is a good thing. As is (generally) the automation of many industries. However, at a certain point it is objectively better to have masses of low/mid-wage laborers that remain employed at a less-than-idea (but still better than minimum-expected) SOL than it is to entirely unemploy them and thus skyrocket your welfare payments and/or create radicals through firings/long-term unemployment.
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Maybe, but he still has to maximise utility of every input good when he is in a shortage. He was using his base goods inefficiently, there are other things he could be making that would raise SOL more.
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Sure, but the real question is whether they have better (more profitable) industries to develop. If yes, why should they instead develop something just to feed your unrealistic industrial machine?
OK. If the assumption is that your population outgrows your potential economic growth then yeah. But i can only say that i only ever had a problem with a lack of workers for the rest of the game.
Iam going to do a playthrough where i console annex all of Western and Central Europe. Lets see what GDP and SoL and employmentrate i will reach.
I agree. Given other many other PDX games are not balanced late game either I'd consider addressing resource shortages for an £8bn GDP a relatively low priority concern.
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Except that this can also represent 4x 2B GDP nations. Thats a very reasonoble GDP for some european nations. The Game should be balanced in a way that the world can sustain a WorldGDP of 10B. Iam fine if it cant sustain 20B but 10 is minimum
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The AI being unable or unwilling to build buildings that are in great demand should not be a low priority concern.
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What a very interesting thread indeed. The discussion is really enlightening and I can't help but seeing how GDP as a metric is part of the issue.
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Game has no inflation mechanic. One pound in 1836 is the same as one pound in 1936. Prices for goods might differ, but that's only due to shortages or excesses - if the supply matches demand in same proportions, goods will cost the same in 1836 and 1936.
Pre-ww1, British pound sterling was on the gold standard - for about a century, 1 pound sterling was worth ~7,32238 g of pure gold. UK GDP is estimated at 528 million pounds in 1836, and 2445 pounds in 1914. In game, UK starts with a GDP of just under 60 million - and by extrapolation, we can approximate 268 million in-game by 1914 with real-world standards. Germany and Russia had similar GDP to UK in 1914. USA had a GDP that was over 3 times that of the UK in 1914. In fact, there are studies, that approximate the world GDP right before WW1 to be about 12-13 times that of the UK - or about 3,5 billion in-game currency. GDP of itself means nothing. Its about goods and services produced.
Part of the problem is that switching PM is instantaneous and cost-free. Also, goods delivery is instant and free.
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In my experience, late in the game the population increases at least as fast as you can build new industry, and possibly faster, which means that many of the unemployed people created by your automation do not get new jobs, which means you will get more radicals and/or more welfare expenses. When I started with a low-population country, there was benefit to automation, and you'll probably get labor shortages anyways, but once past that period of labor shortage, the population increase created by advanced healthcare means your society will benefit more from not automating. Some countries are even better served by never automating much in the first place depending on how you play them.
Yeah, that too. You'd think coal was abundant if you look at almost any game start, but really it isn't. Meanwhile, I never used even half of all arable land I had available. Colonies to supply your home country with food? Nope, all you need is coal, iron, sulfur and lead. And oil and rubber of course.
I mean, what industries could they be developing that don't require coal, iron, lead, wood, hardwood, sulfur, rubber, or oil?
If the problem was "The AI won't feed me because it's using its own resources to feed its own industry" then we would be having a very different discussion. But how is the AI going to feed its own industrialization if it builds 1 lousy iron mine in 20 years?
With the way Vic3 works, PMs that purely save labor are bad in many situations past the mid game because you have plenty of labor, but coal (or other resources) is a rising cost.
While this makes sense for some developing economies, it means even advanced economies in Vic3 have a tendency to be more profitable when not using labor saving PMs. This isn't a bad thing in terms of "I want to to win the game" because you, as the player, have the option of what to do.
But it seems really weird from an economic history standpoint because the mechanization of agriculture comes to a grinding halt or even regresses in well run economies or assembly line production is ignored simply because you'd rather employ another 2.5 million laborers instead of employ 2.5 million fewer laborers, but expand your industry as it gets more profitable to hire more overall labor.
Now, is this because in Vic3 we have far higher population growth rates? Is it because resource costs are too high compared to labor costs? Is it because even laborers draw paychecks that are too high in 1.1? I'm not sure, but it all feels really weird when making a better end game economy when all techs are researched is... hire more ditch diggers and stop using steam engines?
Because in the late game, I always have more labor to use. Between population growth, immigration, and conquest, I might have millions of people who need jobs.
To put it in perspective, in the save game you can examine in my first post, Bohemia by itself is a state with 40+ million people. That doesn't even count the rest of Germany or Germany's holdings in China.
I'm flattered, but I'm sure some people in this thread could do even better with Germany.
Although, as Voigt and a few others pointed out, with some optimizations, I could still maintain the same SoL and lose just 300k from my GDP while eliminating most resource shortages.
The fact that I could take a 300k hit to my GDP and not bat an eye might be an indication that GDP numbers aren't always the best metric to use.
At a certain point, I was just building factories like mad. As in, I'd just control-click 100 factories into a state, wait a month, and do it again. And I'd do this for any goods that still had some demand with available inputs. This is where most of the synthetic plants came from. I had outstripped my ability to grow dye, so I just made more from synthetic plants to let me keep expanding textile mills which were drawing electricity from power plants that needed engines which required steel which required iron and coal.
That seems to be the overall lesson at a certain demographic point.
But is it due to POP growth, conquest + medical advances, or goofy implementation of PMs?
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PMs basically, both automation ones and the main production ones
Also remember that in-game GDP is double counting input goods and intermediate goods. In 1914 there were a lot more input goods and intermediate goods in the world economy than in 1836.
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And consumption ones. For example, the Steel main PMs no.1 and 4 use the same amount of Iron per Steel unit - 2 and 3 far more. One would assume that the vastly higher quality of late-game steel and very important stuff like alloyed steels would result in more use being made of the same steel (in-game more steel per iron).