Yeah, this was more or less my France game in 1.3. 2% population growth, that's doubling your population every 35 years. 250 million people around 1910ish, 5 million people per year. There are still 26 years left. Trade Unions love me and are powerful, so millions of people are entering the workforce and finding no jobs. I'm doing the egalitarian achievement, so I have to pay welfare to all of them and provide healthcare. While I was expanding my economy aggressively early on, I got way more lazy towards the second half of the game and didn't bother expanding my construction over time (stopped at around 5k, sometimes just letting private investments do all the building). I'm not conquering everything, I'm mostly trying to keep infamy above 0 but below 25. Ended with a 1935 bankruptcy due to me leaving the game unpaused during a war. Bankruptcy wasn't anywhere near as bad as the default throughput penalties that were slowly strangling the economy. Still got the achievement, but it looked risky for a bit.Essentially, players who lean into metagaming can "max out" their economy pretty quickly. By this I mean build all the mines and farms and oil wells, and the factories to process them. They will see amazing growth, especially since technology allows for labor saving PMs that let you work all those buildings (because you won't have enough people to do it unless you're Qing or EIC.)
That sounds great. You have a huge lead over everyone. Except... your population keeps growing independently of the economic reality. Especially if you were running the healthcare institution.
It's 1890. There are still forty six years left in the game. And you might be a european country with maximized resource production and maxed GDP/capita. Next year another 1,000,000 pops will be born. You need to find jobs for them, which means more resources to fuel industry (which you are tapped out on) or you swap your productivity PMs, which lowers SoL and produces radicals. Well, you say, I can build 100 barracks in each state and I can maybe use government admin to soak up the surplus.
Guess what? You'll get another million pops the next year. And the one after that. And so on, forever.
So it's important to sort of time things a bit, otherwise you might create a time bomb. The alternative is to go on a conquest spree, just like the empires of history.
Lesson learned, the military-construction complex must be fed. I assume population growth around SoL 20 will be reduced a bit eventually, but let's just say that if there was a one-child policy law in Vicky3 I would gladly switch to that to save the people from themselves.
A bit off-topic, but being able to just raise/lower welfare/healthcare without any political reaction from, say, the Social Democrat Trade Union IG that runs the government was a bit strange too. Institutions are an interesting concept, but I think disconnecting them so completely from IG politics might be a mistake.
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