Why the discrepancy between WM and goods available for factories?

[KevinG]

Here it says there isn't enough rubber in the WM to satisfy demand. Yet, when I go take a look at the WM, here's what I find:

According to this ledger, there's a surplus of 30 rubber in the WM. The worst part about this discrepancy is that clearly there IS a worldwide surplus of rubber, because when I take a look at my rubber producing provinces in Africa I get this:

Around 1898, before rubber in the rest of Brazil and Africa was discovered, this province had only around 50% unemployment. After rubber was discovered everywhere else in the world and supply exceeded demand, unemployment skyrocket to around 80-85% in this province.

Clearly there's a surplus of rubber in the WM, so why can't my factories access any rubber? I have tariffs set to 0 and the automobile factory is getting subsidized, not that it should matter because tariffs just raise the cost of imports and it shouldn't prevent factories from getting access to goods.

The worst part about all this is, before 1900, when I basically had a monopoly on rubber in the WM, my automobile and electric gear factories were getting enough rubber due to my own domestic production. My domestic production went DOWN after more rubber was discovered in the rest of the world, and now my factories can't produce anything despite them having access to all the rubber they needed just a few years earlier.

 

[KevinG]

Here is my production in 1897:

Now take a look at it in 1905:

Here are my tariffs:

Remember, there's a surplus of 36 rubber in the WM that no one is buying that I don't have access to. As an experiment I even ran negative 100% tariffs for awhile, and I STILL couldn't get access to rubber.

 

[KevinG]

If anybody cares I did a lot more research into this. When I hover over the supply/demand tabs in the trade screen I can see worldwide supply/demand and how much was actually sold. Here's what supply/demand and actual bought looks like for oil:

Here's silk:

And finally rubber:

I checked every single good in the game and actual bought matched up with either demand or supply to within 1% accuracy. The exception is for Rubber where there's a difference of roughly 28% between the supply and actual bought, and to a smaller extent tropical wood (not pictured), where actual bought was 10% lower than demand.

 

[KevinG]

I tag switched to the top 5 rubber producing countries and looked up their rubber output vs consumption. They all make way more rubber than they are using, and they also happen to be top 5 in electric gear manufacturing too. This is a bug. Its the only explanation.

 

[Bella Gerant]

Have you tried checking your prestige versus the most prestigious nations and seeing if they're having rubber shortages?

 

[KevinG]

The most prestigious nations are also the ones producing surplus rubber, and their factories aren't having shortages.

 

[Bella Gerant]

This isn't a bug, most likely. This is the reason prestige is important: access to the World Market. Even though you produce a huge amount of rubber, I'm assuming Great Britain and Germany (those two tend to be the top prestige+industry nations) will drain the market dry of rubber before any other nations can get any for their industries. Seeing as you're #9 in prestige and having rubber shortages, the Qing and Dutch will obviously be even more starved of rubber.

 

[KevinG]

I tag switched to ALL major countries and wrote down their rubber consumption and rubber production. Their rubber production was always more than their total production. I stated this numerous times. People don't seem to understand this, because I posted this in reddit and got the same responses, despite me trying to tell everyone there was more rubber being sold than consumed. At this stage of the game the only factories that need rubber are electric gear and automobile factories. Only the major countries even have the tech to build them. I recorded the data that shows they are producing more rubber than their factories need. I said this multiple times. I will keep repeating it. There is more rubber on the WM than being consumed, yet I don't have access to it.

Great Britain and Germany specifically are producing more than twice the rubber they consume, and they are the largest consumers of rubber.

You're also wrong about prestige. It doesn't affect buying order, only ranking does.


I started this thread to see if maybe I overlooked something to show that this was WAD. So far the only thing mentioned to me is I lack prestige which is wrong on 2 accounts. Nothing is based off prestige in the first place, and second of all no one higher in rank than me uses more rubber than they produce. Where does all that excess rubber they produce go? Unless someone can answer this, it must be a either a hidden variable no one has discovered or a bug. The former is extremely unlikely given how long this game has been out.

 

[thexmassteam]

Hi

The problem with the trade (and also production) screen is that they can't be trusted 100%. As you point it for some resources it's matching, for other it isn't. But you will probably also find that later it could match. Or match in a game, and not in another.
If you read carefully all the threads about economy, resources and the infos screens, you'll find a lot of this problems, and most of time we can't be sure of what exactly is wrong.

There is other things like that in Vicky 2, as unemployment, that sometimes work as intended, and sometimes ... work weird Most of time the only solution is to live with it.

For your rubber issue, I can't say if it's a bug in mechanics, in the screen's data, or it is WAD. But what you can try to solve it, it's to increase your prestige in order to get access to new markets. It may work ... or not

 

[KevinG]

Did some more research and determined its a bug in the trade screen. I loaded up the same save and found that Bikaner of all countries was producing 10 electric gear from artisans. When I tag switched to them and looked at their trade screen, it showed 0 rubber usage, despite the fact that their artisans needed rubber to produce electric gears. The "actual bought" number doesn't take into account demand from artisans, hence the discrepancy between demand and bought.

I'm guessing the game might not take this additional demand into account when deciding whether to employ/layoff RGO workers, because if everything was working as intended my rubber RGOs should fill up to meet world demand, but they don't.

 

[Treybor]

Honestly subsidizing factories just makes them do wonky things... I personally just let the capitalists do their thing, I'll check the factory screen every so often to reopen/close factories that failed...