Well, you could take the HOI3 approach and simply increase factory throughput while at war XD
Besides that, shortages were historical, mostly they were solved by producing inferior stuff, like shells with less gunpowder.
Victoria II and Economic accuracy
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Besides that, shortages were historical, mostly they were solved by producing inferior stuff, like shells with less gunpowder.
National stockpile should be better. Bigger, may be allowing "buy only in inner market" checkbox, if it wouldn't ruin global supply/demand relation. Buttons like "buy if it is cheaper then X" would be helpful too. Selling and buying operations should be "smoother".
Currently AI buys supply for 1 day only.
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Don't misunderstand. I'm not critiquing the AI. I agree with its strategy in this case. Instead of just passing out money via unemployment subsidies, it keeps craftsmen working through industry subsidies to help keep demand for inputs up, which at least also keeps key RGOs going. It would be worse to let level 50 factories fail in the late game. You can't recover from that, while at least subsidizing them keeps craftsmen employed and minimally satisfied.
What I'm saying is that there is a substantial amount of phantom "industrial growth" that occurs after 1900. The factories are open, even expanding, and full of labor. But they aren't actually making significant profits and are only open and expanding because of subsidies. So, you look at the WM and the IND scores of the GPs, and it looks like things are just peachy. Plenty of demand for timber, for example. But the dirty little secret is that all those lumber and paper mills are operating at a loss and they only employ 1 million POPs (and generate IND score) because the AI (and players) keep them running with subsidies.'
EDIT: Was just glancing through a save. A healthy AI Germany (healthy because she won a Great War at my side) in 1934 is running 3200 a day in subsidies to keep her #1 position in IND. That's not real industrial growth or a solid industrial sector. It's being subsidized into existence. Hell, Germany doesn't even have enough rubber to run the high tech factories, but they are being expanded and filled.
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I was taught letting factories go bankrupt and creating space and workers for the healthy ones is better than spending subsides and I still use this strategy in my games.
Industrial score grows slower, but your economy becomes more reliable and besides I mostly simply cannot afford to spend half my budget on subsides.
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Not really. The spikes only kick in for one-time costs - anything else is a change in continuous demand level, which is less problematic. The one-off costs for constructing a brigade increase demand instantly by X, which then decays away almost immediately. That's very difficult for industry to react to effectively. As long as mobilization is an ongoing cost, the arms industry is able to hire and maintain more workers; likewise, if there's a big loss of units in battle, then the reduced support total is now an ongoing thing. The WM has time to react.
You sometimes see similar problems with construction materials - big increases in cement demand that have decayed away by the time more cement factories are built. It may also contribute to the famous stupidity of Capi AI; a big one-off demand spike can lead to them all building something to fulfill demand that isn't going to exist by the time the building work is done (and the things their building further escalate the issue with yet more one-off demand costs).
That's the best way to run an internal economy, yes. However, if all players practiced the same thing, then the economy would be worse off overall. The AI's subsidies are, to an extent, subsidizing you, as it's creating demand for your outputs with factories which aren't actually making a profit (or, in some cases, making anything at all). As the AI will always subsidize, the best strategy for the human player is always to concentrate his resources on those factories which are making money selling to the AI's inflated demand, rather than wasting his own cash on subsidies.
Half the difficulty of modding V2 is learning how to recognize an unhealthy economy from little clues - it's very hard to spot delinquency until it's too late, by which point figuring out where the initial problem lies is impossible. You might find a late-game problem is actually caused by a shortage or surplus of one particular, seemingly irrelevant good 30 years before the collapse occurs. In the past, I've seen late-game military goods shortages solved by increasing fruit output on 1850s techs. The lack of a life need for iron miners in China was causing increased internal migration, which choked the growth of the iron supply, which caused a shortage 40 years later when the rest of the world was relying on tech-boosted Chinese iron production to keep growing. A 10% increase on fruit output on an early Industry tech allowed the Western nations to feed their wine factories without starving China's fruit supply, leading to a better industrial economy in the end-game.
This is usually how you get what I'd rank as a 'bad' economy; the cash supply is unlikely to cause issues prior to around 1880, but it's still perfectly possible (and, amongst inexperienced modders, highly probable) to create a seemingly functional system that still can't make it 50 years without growing unstable and tearing itself apart, because it's not actually functional in 1836, it just appears to be working because the flaws are only visible on a few POPs in obscure places at that point. But the flaws spread like cracks in the ice, and soon the whole thing begins to break down.
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Talking about life needs, V2 does that quite unrealistic, I don't need both cattle, fish, fruit and grain to survive, with 1-2 you'll survive for sure.
It's simply because of luxury that people desire a mixed diet.
I tried to fix this a little by cutting a part out of the life needs and add it to the luxury and every day needs, as the wealthier you are the more you waste I guess.
This seems to work quite well, but I also have another idea for it.
What about a 'food' good, which can be made from either fruit, cattle, fish or grain and is used for the life needs.
The separate goods can still be used as every day and/or luxury needs.
What do you* think of this idea?
*any interested person, not just Naselus
It's simply because of luxury that people desire a mixed diet.
I tried to fix this a little by cutting a part out of the life needs and add it to the luxury and every day needs, as the wealthier you are the more you waste I guess.
This seems to work quite well, but I also have another idea for it.
What about a 'food' good, which can be made from either fruit, cattle, fish or grain and is used for the life needs.
The separate goods can still be used as every day and/or luxury needs.
What do you* think of this idea?
*any interested person, not just Naselus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumford's_Soup
If we have max consumption of half goods and min of others, then we get medium level of life needs? Is there used such simple formula or more complicated? If that so some-thing like scurvy cannot be represented, but in other case blockades would be much funnier.
If we have max consumption of half goods and min of others, then we get medium level of life needs? Is there used such simple formula or more complicated? If that so some-thing like scurvy cannot be represented, but in other case blockades would be much funnier.
If the economy in general was functioning properly, then yes, subsidies are a terrible idea. And note that I'm not saying a player should do it; I'm saying that I agree with the AI's strategy.
Here's what I mean.
Let's use a clipper factory from AI UK in my last game as Austria. The clipper factory is level 41, and it draws 3200 in subsidies every day (yikes!). It is full of craftsmen.
Now, this factory is clearly a drag on the economy. No one needs 200 clippers a day. So, what should you do about it?
A) Let it die.
This will unemploy 400,000 craftsmen immediately. There is nowhere else for them to work, because the other factories are at full capacity and the state already has 18,000 unemployed POPs. Deleting the factory via bankruptcy will open a new factory slot. At current techs, these craftsmen can be reemployed in 10 years assuming no population growth and factories with a two year construction time. You can shorten the time by building factories with only a one year construction time, but you are at the mercy of the market and perhaps your capitalists in this regard. If no one-year factories are profitable, you are forced to expand/build two year factories.
Also, killing this factory immediately cuts the demand for the following goods: 6000 timber, 7500 fabric, 2400 steel, per day (plus a tiny amount of cement and machine parts as maintenance goods). Killing this factory immediately will hurt those other areas of the economy. There is a fabric factory in another state that produces 5000 fabric a day. It is borderline in its profitability, so a drop in demand like this will kill it, unemploying another 350,000 craftsmen who have nowhere else to work...
You can see where this is going.
B) Keep the factory open with subsidies forever.
The good news is that these POPs will remain employed. The factory will remain open, and will continue to consume inputs.
The bad news is that your government is on the hook for 3200 pounds per day, which is way more expensive than unemployment subsidies. Still, the subsidies you pay here will also indirectly support other aspects of the economy.
That being said, those subsidies are coming from somewhere. The economic burden will hit the RGOs harder than the factories being subsidized.
C) Keep it open, but build tons of factories and bleed off labor into new factories as time goes by.
This is what I do (and why I need to move away from LF at times to adjust the economy, because capitalists suck at this). The factory will get subsidies, but other factories are built and expanded. Every time new factories are completed, the subsidies are removed long enough for labor to bleed into new industries, then they go back on (at least, until they are no longer needed).
The catch is that the AI can't do C. It simply does not know how to do it. So, while I practice C, the AI is left with A or B. I'd rather it choose B.
I will note that when I talk about moving the economic burden onto the RGOs, it also feeds into this inflated demand. The following RGO goods are subject to inflated demand, and thus can support an flagging economy thanks to AI subsidies:
1) Cotton: It's usually a good earner, even when fabric demand has crashed. The AI subsidization of fabric factories makes cotton worth conquering. You can employ millions of cotton farmers in 1935 thanks to the AI. And those cotton farmers buy your stuff.
2) Sulfur: No matter how shaky the market for military goods, I can always count on the AI to subsidize fertilizer factories. This keeps a significant number of POPs employed.
3) Coal: I shouldn't even have to discuss this one, although it is both a POP good and a factory input. Factory demand keeps the demand for coal so high that conquering China is an economic boon even when other RGOs are failing.
4) Timber: Let me just throw this out there for you to consider: As Russia, I can conquer 65% of the world's timber, and despite the hordes of lumber that go unsold every day thanks to overproduction, I can employ tons of POPs in these RGOs.
This is also why imperialism in Asia helps the world economy so much. Plugging in those Chinese states into your economy and applying better techs to them earlier is a net win. No wonder the Chinese POPs hate my rule less than the Qing; their wages and access to consumer goods is 200000% better.
The risk here is that you can cause starvation in lower-ranked nations as the higher-ranked ones become wealthier. This can be largely countered through thoughtful use of tech, as long as you keep aware of the risk.
I used Canned Goods, and implemented this exact idea in PDM years ago. There's lots of advantages to this, particularly in that it creates a lot of demand that artisans can tap into. Keeping Artisans happy is one of the keys to successfully balancing a good economy. It also allows some substitution in the economy, which helps to cushion it against bottlenecks.
I don't understand your first point, moving demand away from life needs to every day and luxury needs, means the average guy consumes less food and thus there is more left for the lower ranked nations. About the second point, I should've noticed XD
See, this is still a band aid to me. People weren't starving on farms for thousands of years, because artisans and factories weren't turning enough grain/fish/fruit/cattle into canned food. Part of the reason POPs just consume grain instead of a manufactured food item is because you don't need an industrial process to make bread (or skilled middle class labor). It's assumed that grain---> bread is an economic activity that happens at the sub-POP level. Just like steaks, cheese, espresso, crumpets, and egg salad sandwiches.
I'm not criticizing (you're trying to make the system work), but this is an area where I felt the game has gotten better over time. The overproduction of grain, fish, cattle, and wine thanks to the industrialization of agriculture produce surpluses that cause farmers to leave farms and go find jobs as craftsmen. Having a nice colonial empire that generates lots of food stuffs helps accelerate this process, as the POPs in the colonies can't quit their jobs and go to factories. They keep returning to farms while farmers in your homeland leave for the cities to do something useful with their time.
The starvation with fruit is a function of how little fruit is grown in high tech areas of the world in 1836, so industrialization of agriculture doesn't reach as far as it does with grain. A bit of conquest usually alleviates this problem (although we have to ask whether conquest of colonial states should be the answer here). This is why I wish provinces had a primary good and secondary good. It would make RGOs more responsive to world market changes.
I must partially agree, you could see artisans as bakers, butchers and such, besides that, you're right.
Sadly V2 doesn't have a substitution system, like people start using opium to get drugged instead of liquor.
Hopefully V3 will work like the stronghold series. There any type of food can be used to fulfill hunger, but having a variety of foods increases happiness.
I don't really play often enough to understand how to game the system. I've heard arguments, though, that subsidizing your factories is bad (both in real life and in the game) because you're propping up a useless industry when you could be building a better one its place. Are there any thoughts on the matter?
EDIT: Did some reading, found my answer. NEVER occurred to me to just temporarily remove subsidies.
EDIT: Did some reading, found my answer. NEVER occurred to me to just temporarily remove subsidies.
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Life needs are immune to need increases. Everyday and luxury goods are not. As Europe begins to grow in wealth and tech, you'll begin starving the rest of the world. Of course, you can remove the needs increase from inventions to counter that somewhat; it's largely not needed.
It's a band aid, but a relatively well-justified one. Many of the medieval artisan classes were food-related - millers, bakers, butchers, costerrmongers. Even tavern keepers and domestic servants were basically in the game of buying raw food and selling cooked food. The aristocrat POPs certainly aren't cooking their own dinner, after all. And let's not forget the legions of (entirely unrepresented) merchants hauling stuff around, too.
Besides, there's so many benefits. Letting Artis do the substitution and distribution produces a wealthy middle class for uncivs, and adds a layer of production that can switch goods rapidly when required. It pushes money into the artisans, who are then more likely to promote to capitalists naturally (as well as usually feeding demand for everyday goods more effectively than farmers). Artisans are the grease which makes the whole system more resilient, and anything which benefits them is generally a good thing.
Well, you can create a basic substitution system using factories - I even considered producing a set of filter goods that could be produced from multiple sources each (so a food good that could be made from any food, a 'leisure' good that could be produced from various luxuries, an intoxicants goods made from opium/liquor/tobacco etc) and then setting up 'retail' factories that could do the conversion, just so that if, say, there was a shortage of tobacco people could smoke opium instead. You use up a lot of potential goods slots from that, though, and adding extra goods in can be helpful for wealth redistribution.
Artisans can rot in Hell in vanilla as far as I'm concerned. The bastards won't promote to capitalists even when coddled. That may have something to do with your remarks, however.
That being said, I could see a set up with "artisan only" goods at certain tech levels. What I don't want is a system where "Bread making" is unlocked, and I can either have artisans do it or have factories do it. But if "Bread Making" is on the artisan reserve list until you hit a much higher tech level, it would be sensible.
To be honest, though, the worst thing about artisans is that they don't use their flexibility to their advantage often enough.
EDIT: I suspect because they use the same AI as capitalists.
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@Naselus
Have you ever just doubled the impact of techs on the output efficiency of gold mines? Does the money help, or does it end up pooling in the national banks?
Have you ever just doubled the impact of techs on the output efficiency of gold mines? Does the money help, or does it end up pooling in the national banks?
I think economic collapses, good shortages and starvation in some countries is a good simulation of the actual world economy in this time period. Late game depression happened in reality also along with many panics in late 19th century early 20th century. Making the economy function smoothly would be unrealistic. Trying to simulate the economy in a game is extremely difficult and I think V2 does it as well as can be expected for the computing power used and for the games purposes. Not to say trade, monetary system and banking could not be improved.
Even today professional economists trying to predict the economy with very powerful models and computer simulations are extremely inaccurate. Just look at prediction by central banks and professional economists in last 10 years and see how wrong they are predicting just 6-12 months in the future, let alone farther in the future. It is near impossible to model the economy correctly.
Even today professional economists trying to predict the economy with very powerful models and computer simulations are extremely inaccurate. Just look at prediction by central banks and professional economists in last 10 years and see how wrong they are predicting just 6-12 months in the future, let alone farther in the future. It is near impossible to model the economy correctly.
Meh, it doesn't help much. Many of the gold mines are in countries that won't get those techs for a long while, and the output bonuses aren't huge anyway - besides, they continue to rise in a manner completely unrelated to the rest of the simulation. The problem is a pretty fundamental design flaw which can't realistically be scripted round.
Most economics textbooks will tell you that money has 3 functions - a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. Now, in the majority of Paradox games, it only really acts as a unit of account and store of value. It pretends to act as a medium of exchange, but exchanges don't really happen in EU, HOI, CK2 or even Vicky 1 (the game just conjures the purchased item into existence and destroys the money). In V2, it actually has to fulfill the medium of exchange function properly in addition to the other functions, because that's how POPs use it - they pass it to each other. The problem is, the design basically treated money in the same way as EU or CK - it thought of it as a unit of account for the player, rather than as the thing which makes the economy go.
This is the design problem at the heart of Vicky 2 - money has been thought of a resource for the player, as in EU, when it needed to be primarily conceived of as a medium of exchange for the POPs. The player should really be working with debt as his resource; the capacity to create money to fund his national spending. Being able to keep interest rates low while still spending freely is the concern of central banks, not sitting on piles of gold or coins.
Therefore, what we really need is a debt creation subroutine where money is created and destroyed, to allow the medium of exchange to closely track the total exchange value of the world. A 'bond market' daemon would basically control the creation and destruction of money, and the player's primary function would be to attempt to maintain a low interest rate, rather than balancing the books. The player would service the debt using money from taxes, prior to actual government spending. That would be impacted on by the economic cycle - during recessions the slowing industrial growth would cause nations' interest rates to rise, leading to a reduction in the amount of money that is created automatically (the bonds would remain the same value, but more is 'paid back' in interest taken from taxes). Likewise, in a boom interest rates would fall, leading to a net increase in circulating money.
We need to reach a position where the player see money as an ancillary effect of something else, rather than an end in itself.
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But is it realistic for Vic 2 time period?
BTW, we can't have Dutch disease without multiple markets. Though, it is more 20th century thing. And no local inflation (global inflation actually not happen either, due to goods overproduction)