Liquor Shortage

[Engineer Bob]

In every playthrough I've tried so far (Belgium, Mexico, Spain), the world economy seems to be in a perpetual shortage of liquor. This makes me unable to recruit most land units aside from basic infantry at most times.

I've tried everything I can think of to encourage domestic production: national focus, encouragement of craftsmen where there are distilleries, even raising taxes so that my population has less money to spend on consuming it. Nothings seems to be able to make supply suffice.

One would think that with the market-based mechanics in Victoria II that the price would skyrocket after such a chronic shortage; unfortunately that does not seem to happen. This would reward any nation which could produce enough to export and punish the nations using up the supply with their population and military.

Has anyone else had this happen? Is it intentional or a bug? How am I supposed to build artillery and elite infantry with this problem?

tl;dr: It's too hard to get drunk in the 1800s

[Engineer Bob]

I should add that I'm playing the vanilla game and not the expansion.

[Chase]

Happened to me alot when i was playing on vanilla, only solution i can think of is to build yourself some liquor distilleries.

[Engineer Bob]

Yeah, I thought about doing that. I'd have to do it every play-through though, and it would mean switching to state capitalism or planned economy, which would require playing a nation where you have a monarchy and can just switch political parties.

[JoeBiden'sOnlyfans]

i have had this problame my whole game as Siam. i must have 9 liquor disilories but i can not get liquor to build artilery. I am also in vinilla.

[Engineer Bob]

This seems to be fixed in the expansion, but I'm still pretty frustrated about its affect on the vanilla game.

[ThatGuyRandomly]

This sucks mostly when you're democratic, you're only good if you can take a small democratic nation and turn it into a power house like Switzerland. This sucks most for democratic nations because you can't force make liquor distillaries. A way to combat this is to sphere the southern and western South American nations, especially Ecuador. When Ecuador becomes sphered it usually becomes an economic power house however, personally I've seen it go from weak to top 4 for the rest of the game, vinnilla. Which is a down side majorly. In litterally all my playthroughs, ESPECIALLY AS AMERICA, I have sphered Ecuador right as I became a great power, usually if you keep them in line by not supporting wars they get it or when they become a great power instantly start to free states from Peru, because if you don't allie Peru they eat Peru, or just take their 2nd state. This stuff will keep them in line for as long as possible. China is another way, but with how firm the grip is from the rest of the Great Powers on securing China I doubt you can sphere it, especially if you start late. It's kind of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that you haft to go this far in extent just to get some liquor in a time that has never been recorded to have total world liquor issues.

[ThatGuyRandomly]

You can't force make factories as democratic, I meant it's harder to because you can't force change government, this is really shown with the US's love of the Democratic Party that I've never been able to shake off.

[JulgranSkillz]

Not sure if this was mentioned, but I've had this happen sometimes and usually it fixes itself when manually buying the item.

Normally the supply of goods is automatic, but you can turn it off through the trade interface.
There is a good tutorial at the start-screen if you are unaware of how to do this.

[Liberty Prime]

Manually control your stockpile of liquor. Honestly when I get to a certain point in the game I literally set the stockpile for every single good to the max because I never have another shortage of anything ever again except for tanks and planes. It's a HUGE money hole but you'll be happy when every singe brigade you recruit instantly starts training (still obviously one per province at a time) even after you've set hundreds of them to be built. Also this greatly helps your economy if you end up in a war with the main supplier of resources and goods of a certain type.

[Agent Orange]

Yes, I started my first game now, playing Vanilla, and I cannot recruit artillery because they are out of liquor. This is a game breaking flaw of the vanilla game. I manually set to buy 2000 liquor, still got 0.

Playing as Prussia, now Germany.

I have 9 liquor factories, but they sell to the international market instead of me. Why?

[ThatGuyRandomly]

Could try raising raising tarriffs to keep it in your country, or lowering/paying for goods to import. Also could check the national stockpile box and only buy from your own factories. Don't do this with uncivilized nations though because it shatters the base game.

[Agent Orange]

Yes, I found a workaround now. If I prioritize workers to glass and liquor factories, the production is sufficient. It produces heavy losses on the income, so I have to manually switch back to normal after the units are recruited.

[ThatGuyRandomly]

Another work around is to get the DLC on sale, the game is not even close to complete without it.