Genral industrialization of Japan

[Akry]

Hi folks,
I'm gonna need some advise here because frankly I'm lost.
Trying to build up japan, used a LOT of money to get 30ish construction and tool production+iron mining. The price of furniture, cloth, groceries, paper, liquor are constantly +20% or more, I'm desperately trying to build more factories for these but cant seem to keep up the pace. At first I went down to 80% credit limit to set up tools and iron then I upped the taxes to get around zero:

Currently 1864, 45 construction and -15k a week with high taxes. There just not enough money to construct more. I could not build a single steel mill yet because I have to keep building the textile and food factories. Using all the current tech available.
And now the infrastructure is overused, and this looks the end. With no way to keep up.

I somehow managed change isolationist to mercantilism, hoping some trade would help but I can barely import anything, there is nothing on the global market I need. No cloth, not paper, no furniture. I can import The amounts are 10-20 for each route. Insignificant.
I can import wheat and fabric from quing in larger volume, but I dont need them.

My suspicion is that the workers who start working in textile and food factories and others are adding to the demand of these products so it feels like a vicious cycle.
I dont have sewing machines yet, guess that could help, for the cloths but it would trade having to build textile factories to more tool shops, cotton plants and dye plants. Maybe I'll try it anyway but in the meantime, let me hear your 2cents.

Thank you.

[hendrasutrisno34]

input price?

[Lord Forwind]

Too high construction level is my guess, focus on slow early build up (1 construction at most) then go nuts with construction later. Try building one of each agriculture and resource building in Japan.

[Red_Dwarf]

If your economy is fine without building expenses then reduce the amount of construction hubs you have.
Also expand your market to increase your potential sales, joining a market like Russia's might help but I haven't tried that myself.

[Akry]

Ok, it is clear that reducing construction would make my economy fine, but if I do that, instead of increasing it, i'll never ever be able to build enough factories and all the prices for very basic goods are over +30% which kills any chance for an increased standard of living.
As I said, its feels like a dead end. I have no use for money besides dumping it to construction, and its still not enough.
The price of construction materials are balanced. I have enough of the materials just not enough money to buy adaquate amount of consturction point to keep up with demand.

[Blind Reverend]

Had similar issiues with madagaskar, getting out of isolation. I entered early a protectorate with Austria, which led to the Autrian market being my market now. This helped me with industrializing Madagaskar fast and with replacing landowner supremacy (Traditionalists) with industrialists. Being part of a large market is really fine for cheap production.

[Akry]

Changing japan from isolationist to protectionism wrekt the budged palance. Lost about 400 authority, cant say how much exactly which means I'm not missing out about 20k consumption tax.
And tariffs are like 500 a week. Negligible.
Not like I have a great fleet to trade with....

[Akry]

oh and, I basically have no army spending, like not even small arms. If anyone decided to try and take my land, I have shovels and crude swords to try and stop them :D
I'm not sure how one builds a healthy economy that can keep up with pop demand. My second try I never even bothered with food factories. SoL is not moving anywhere and its already 1868, I mean, why do I have 20 cloth factory and 15 furniture factory if it doesn't move the SoL anywhere?
Any increase in tax is perfectly balanced by government wages and goods for government buildings. The net income hasn't moved for 20 years. Not a single penny to space to increase construction scale, and now with the market opened I lost a bunch of consumption tax, some of my goods are taken by foreign powers and I cant really import anything meaningful. This is a disaster.

[Nubz_Unite]

Build 5 construction at the start of the game, build up wood industry and some fabric, then build about 3 lvls of tool factorys, don't worry about the fact that it won't be staffed, once that is done build iron mines. Then switch to tier 2 construction and stabilize your construction costs buy building tools and iron as necessary. Then tackle your deficits. Your luxury/need goods don't need to be lowered. Furniture/luxury furniture, clothing/luxury clothing should all be sitting at about 20-30% mark up. focus on getting appointed beaurucrats and interventionism economy. destabilize the shogun power based asap and bolster both intelligentsia and industrialists at the start. put very high taxes and lowest government/military wages. consumption tax services and luxury goods, never grain. Do this and you should be able to snowball Japans economy

[Akry]

Originally posted by Nubz_Unite:

Build 5 construction at the start of the game, build up wood industry and some fabric, then build about 3 lvls of tool factorys, don't worry about the fact that it won't be staffed, once that is done build iron mines. Then switch to tier 2 construction and stabilize your construction costs buy building tools and iron as necessary. Then tackle your deficits. Your luxury/need goods don't need to be lowered. Furniture/luxury furniture, clothing/luxury clothing should all be sitting at about 20-30% mark up. focus on getting appointed beaurucrats and interventionism economy. destabilize the shogun power based asap and bolster both intelligentsia and industrialists at the start. put very high taxes and lowest government/military wages. consumption tax services and luxury goods, never grain. Do this and you should be able to snowball Japans economy

The first part I did similary, so thats ok.
but... Very High taxes and lowest goverment wages? I mean, well.... so you are saying the goal is to squeze the population untill the shogun is gone and proper investments can be made? Thats it? A kick in the nut to stand up more strong?

[donalddawkins]

I would try and join a customs market if I were you; the products from a larger market should lower your prices. You will have to be careful though to specialise your industry so it doesn’t get saturated by the larger market. Maybe try a customs Union with the USA, or failing that Great Britain

[Nubz_Unite]

Originally posted by Lac(H):

Originally posted by Nubz_Unite:

Build 5 construction at the start of the game, build up wood industry and some fabric, then build about 3 lvls of tool factorys, don't worry about the fact that it won't be staffed, once that is done build iron mines. Then switch to tier 2 construction and stabilize your construction costs buy building tools and iron as necessary. Then tackle your deficits. Your luxury/need goods don't need to be lowered. Furniture/luxury furniture, clothing/luxury clothing should all be sitting at about 20-30% mark up. focus on getting appointed beaurucrats and interventionism economy. destabilize the shogun power based asap and bolster both intelligentsia and industrialists at the start. put very high taxes and lowest government/military wages. consumption tax services and luxury goods, never grain. Do this and you should be able to snowball Japans economy

The first part I did similary, so thats ok.
but... Very High taxes and lowest goverment wages? I mean, well.... so you are saying the goal is to squeze the population untill the shogun is gone and proper investments can be made? Thats it? A kick in the nut to stand up more strong?

]
basically, you start with decent surpluses on most of the essential goods, you can lower wages since it only really impacts interest group opinion of you and at the start intellgensia is not powerful and your debasing the samurai anyways. As long as you don't put consumption taxes on essentials like grain you should be able to have about 40k surplus which you can dedicate in the early game to expanding construction development and industry and the snowball your local economy from there.

[Bloodeagle369]

Hear is my advice to you. Dont uppgrade construction sector. They cost a ton of iron and iron mines are worthless until the uppgrade that increases the amount by 40. I build 15 construction sectors in Kyoto with basic tools. You will probably need to downgrade if you uppgrade later. Only use iron for building tools.

I have never gotten to the military phase but I think the key element is to weaken the Shogunate and when you have build up your economy to adress the shortages, start focusing on building your navy and attack China for their island. I think the key for Japan is that you need to expand through China and Korea. I have not tried this though. For a strong economy I think you need to be offensive. You can´t sit on your island like Britain. Fight China with a stronger navy. They have the largest GDP in the game and if you can control that region you should be ok I think.

[Slippin Jimmy]

Theres 8 gold mines in Hokkaido, brings in around 50k from minting. Helps a lot. Go for trains as fast as possible and build rails, once you can produce enough profitable steel its safe to start flooding the markets with cheap iron then you can safely switch to using it for construction because its so cheap. But 30 construction centres in 1860 is just going to bankrupt you.

[Alehkra]

I would say you're building up the construction industry too quickly. I switched to Iron-Framed buildings in the first 5 years or so, but then didn't add any more sectors for a couple decades, only ramping up once I switched out of traditional and could rely on capitalist investment funds. I didn't hit 30 construction until the late 1860s, maybe even 1870 or so. Because of the tax laws you start with having very high taxes is going to be hitting the peasants (the majority of your population) particularly hard, which is almost certainly playing a part in stagnating your SoL. Laborers only pay Income tax (which even at very high is only 10% for Land taxes), but the peasants have to pay both income and land taxes, so with laborers already having a higher wage to start with they're going to eat up the majority of what you produce while not nudging the SoL until they're a bigger part of your population.

I'm not going to say I'm doing it perfectly or even particularly well, I'm sure it can be done better (and if someone wants to say I'm industrializing too slowly I wouldn't disagree). But I've managed to avoid going into debt 40 years so far, currently at 1876, and the national standard of living is up to nearly 12, higher in Kanto and Kyushu where I've industrialized most, with taxes at low for most of the game. The only time I've ran a red deficit was on purpose for a year when I put taxes at Very Low to pass a law faster after finally booting the Shogunate from government.

I also started with iron and tools, mainly using the tools to switch all my lumber to saw mills, then constructed a few levels of food industries with sweeteners (I also switched all rice farms to fig farming for sugar output), but after that my early focus was actually on coal and glass production in order to switch all the urban centers to gas streetlights and market stalls. Early on I think the best thing to do is focus on creating a middle class and a wealthy capitalist force to balance out the aristocrats, because the single biggest thing you can do for your SoL is getting out of Serfdom. That alone brought my peasants from Struggling to Impoverished, opening them up to a whole new world of goods that you can then focus on making cheaper.

[ManBearPig]

There is a mod that reduces the construction maintenance cost, it allows for more steady building without crippling your income. Pair it with mods that change starting resources etc to balance out the difficultly (resource spread is very unhistorical atm without mods)