Suggestion: how to improve Urban Centers lack of mid-late game demand for services.

[Supply Slut]

Early game urban centers are excellent, creating new jobs and providing services for your pops.

But by mid game the overproduction of services means the price is too low for urban centers to be efficient. Late game this problem is even worse. It’s unfortunate because urbanization was a key theme during this time period, and people living in cities were the ones working in factories, proposing radical new social ideas, and paving the way for the modern economy. So I propose one of the below balance changes to help alleviate this problem:

Suggestion 1: create more uses for services, or have more sources of demand. Example: factories producing end goods for consumers might need to consume “advertising” - which uses units of services. Perhaps capitalists and other high wealth pops consume “accounting” - another demand for services. Some combination of this might help fix the lack of mid-late game demand for services. However the increased cost to businesses might need to be balance.

Suggestion 2: have urban centers create other types of resources. Perhaps a non-tradable resource… something like “residential housing”, required for all pops working in high-urban industries. Perhaps plantations and farms produce only enough housing for their workers, but factories need cities to provide housing to their workers. Alternatively they could produce a small amount of a variety of goods, similar to how subsistence farms do.

[kgkong]

Demand for services will tend to decrease over time as other alternate services start getting introduced to the market. Rail transportation, radios, telephones etc.

It's like grain for food. The demand for grain begins to drop the more you provide fruit, sugar, groceries, fish and meat to the market.

Also add in that the higher the SoL is for the pop group, the more they'll be inclined to want the alternatives to services.

Having low prices of services is kind of handy though as it allows for greater disposable income in your pop groups so they can afford the more expensive goods and be less impacted by higher priced goods that they demand.

You see this with a few of the goods in the game.

Liquor, tea, wine, tobacco and opium all fall into the same situation. The higher the SoL, and the more the alternatives get introduced to a market, the less the demand for the basic good is, so the price drops and your alternative goods become more profitable and productive.

Just because a building isn't that productive in it's productive score, doesn't actually mean it's not serving a very productive purpose.

[MJAnderson]

I agree. My urban centers usually end up having to be subsidized or I get big swings in unemployment.

[kgkong]

Originally posted by MJAnderson:

I agree. My urban centers usually end up having to be subsidized or I get big swings in unemployment.

Decrease the oversupply of services by reducing the production methods.

Not all production method improvements are actually better than the previous tier. It depends on circumstantial situations.

I tend to just use coal street lights and glass markets. Mid to late game, I'm usually just running electric lights and no glass markets. But it also depends on the cost of goods and how well supplied you are on them.

Part of the reason why Urban Centers get so unproductive late game is they share the same input good as a lot of later game industries. This drives the input good prices up way higher and screws with the productivity rating. Drop your input good needs down to lower production methods down to reduce the input costs a significant amount so you can create more profit margins on the services.

The only way to drive up service demand is to drive up population, particularly any SoL level that uses services. But there's a problem doing this. You gotta give meaningful jobs to those skilled pops, which means industries that tend to consume the same input good somewhere in the production chain. They also demand glass and coal if they're wealthier for a general pop consumer good. So you create all this extra demand for the input goods that outweighs the demand you can generate for services.

Excessive supply and low costs of services is a good thing as you build up your average SoL. Gives them more money to spend on other goods to take less impact on the higher good prices until you can get those good prices down that they use.

[MJAnderson]

I understand the mechanic, its just that you can't control the growth. My services, even on the lowest PM, end up far below the base price. Just pulled up my Germany game and they are 22% below base. Maybe my SoL is too low but it's only behind France among the majors.

[kgkong]

Originally posted by MJAnderson:

I understand the mechanic, its just that you can't control the growth. My services, even on the lowest PM, end up far below the base price. Just pulled up my Germany game and they are 22% below base. Maybe my SoL is too low but it's only behind France among the majors.

It might that your trade market you belong to is also producing a lot of services too. At this point, there's nothing you can do. But the other AI nations are probably using the other production methods in their UC to boost demand and make their industries more profitable that produce the goods that UC's consume.

When you can't control the growth or consumption rates of a good in your market, it's usually because of other nation factors.

But again, I can't stress how important it is to have some goods extremely cheap for your pop groups. Low basic good prices like grain, services and wood (when possible but there's so many demands on wood it's hard to drop it to bronze rated prices late game) help pops have better access to the more costly goods. Particularly when wood gets expensive with the huge demand for it in most production chains.

Just because your UC's have a low productivity rating doesn't mean they're not being meaningfully productive for your society and market.

In economics, and this is true in the game, when a pop group has extra disposable income because a primary good or service they need is cheap, they are less impacted by SoL changes that would be otherwise caused by other goods being more expensive. This extra disposable income is better used stimulating the much more demanded industries you have, further boosting your overall GDP.

Because your pops aren't paying half an arm for the services, they can afford a lot more of the more expensive goods which this in turn actually lets them attain higher Standards of Living.

[teron]

You could also change what you are building. Since you get 1 urban center per 100 urbanization.

With factory buildings usually giving 20/30 per level. E.g. 5 grocery factories = 1 urban center, 3.33 Motor industry = 1 urban center.

But mines and lumber camps give 10 per level. Farms and fishing give 5 per level.

You could focus on some of the lower urbanization buildings to get more peasants employed while not generating urban centers. Since those pops will have more wealth due to not being peasants and thus demand more services while generating less urban centers to provide those services.

[Supply Slut]

Originally posted by teron:

You could also change what you are building. Since you get 1 urban center per 100 urbanization.

With factory buildings usually giving 20/30 per level. E.g. 5 grocery factories = 1 urban center, 3.33 Motor industry = 1 urban center.

But mines and lumber camps give 10 per level. Farms and fishing give 5 per level.

You could focus on some of the lower urbanization buildings to get more peasants employed while not generating urban centers. Since those pops will have more wealth due to not being peasants and thus demand more services while generating less urban centers to provide those services.

This will only work in certain circumstances: resource capacity has hard limits in each state, same for arable land. What’s more is that you’re getting better SoL and more investment pool contributing pops when you build urban-heavy industries. Plantations, even with publicly traded, still have more aristocrats than capitalists, so it’s kind of a handicap long term to try and keep urbanization low.

And as for other mentions that we don’t use top level production methods to keep services lower - that’s what I’ve been doing, but I find it ridiculous as that isn’t what happened historically. Cities continued to become ever more productive and ever more important to GDP during this time period, and that isn’t reflected in game because the only good they produce, services, gets vastly overproduced right as multiple mid-late game substitute goods are being produced in larger quantities (like transportation, phones, and art).

[kgkong]

Originally posted by Supply Slut:

Originally posted by teron:

You could also change what you are building. Since you get 1 urban center per 100 urbanization.

With factory buildings usually giving 20/30 per level. E.g. 5 grocery factories = 1 urban center, 3.33 Motor industry = 1 urban center.

But mines and lumber camps give 10 per level. Farms and fishing give 5 per level.

You could focus on some of the lower urbanization buildings to get more peasants employed while not generating urban centers. Since those pops will have more wealth due to not being peasants and thus demand more services while generating less urban centers to provide those services.

This will only work in certain circumstances: resource capacity has hard limits in each state, same for arable land. What’s more is that you’re getting better SoL and more investment pool contributing pops when you build urban-heavy industries. Plantations, even with publicly traded, still have more aristocrats than capitalists, so it’s kind of a handicap long term to try and keep urbanization low.

And as for other mentions that we don’t use top level production methods to keep services lower - that’s what I’ve been doing, but I find it ridiculous as that isn’t what happened historically. Cities continued to become ever more productive and ever more important to GDP during this time period, and that isn’t reflected in game because the only good they produce, services, gets vastly overproduced right as multiple mid-late game substitute goods are being produced in larger quantities (like transportation, phones, and art).

Only so much you can do with a limited number of goods and not enough exotic good types really. I get the feeling that services just kind of oversimplify the whole urban market concept that rose up and gave way to a lot of the small businesses that boomed the economies. They basically provided a service based on the industry goods produced. Maybe having tiers of service types rather than one single service, and a few alternatives (which don't fully replace a pop's need for services anyways).

It would be nice if UC's also added in newspapers as another good they can produce which could help offset some of these challenges.

[Supply Slut]

Originally posted by KingGorillaKong:

Only so much you can do with a limited number of goods and not enough exotic good types really. I get the feeling that services just kind of oversimplify the whole urban market concept that rose up and gave way to a lot of the small businesses that boomed the economies. They basically provided a service based on the industry goods produced. Maybe having tiers of service types rather than one single service, and a few alternatives (which don't fully replace a pop's need for services anyways).

It would be nice if UC's also added in newspapers as another good they can produce which could help offset some of these challenges.

Now this I can get behind. Newspapers sounds great. Having different tiers or quality of services also makes sense and could help balance it out. A capitalist making $200/year isn’t going to be hiring the same services as a laborer making $15/year.

However perhaps a easier fix would be to add the catch-all production that subsistence farms get. A city would be producing a lot of different goods after all: taking food and turning it into groceries, fabric into clothes, paper into newspapers. If they added a small amount of production for a broad number of goods it’s unlikely to drastically throw off the supply/demand of those goods, while also providing an important source of revenue for urban centers once services reach their inevitable downward price spiral.

Or they could consider adding more uses for services. I have a level 5 public healthcare institution… where are all the pops providing healthcare services to meet those needs?

[shiggies713]

That sounds the most elegant solution. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting on paradox to add a new production method for newspapers for UC's. Maybe in a dlc.

[kgkong]

Originally posted by Supply Slut:

Originally posted by KingGorillaKong:

Only so much you can do with a limited number of goods and not enough exotic good types really. I get the feeling that services just kind of oversimplify the whole urban market concept that rose up and gave way to a lot of the small businesses that boomed the economies. They basically provided a service based on the industry goods produced. Maybe having tiers of service types rather than one single service, and a few alternatives (which don't fully replace a pop's need for services anyways).

It would be nice if UC's also added in newspapers as another good they can produce which could help offset some of these challenges.

Now this I can get behind. Newspapers sounds great. Having different tiers or quality of services also makes sense and could help balance it out. A capitalist making $200/year isn’t going to be hiring the same services as a laborer making $15/year.

However perhaps a easier fix would be to add the catch-all production that subsistence farms get. A city would be producing a lot of different goods after all: taking food and turning it into groceries, fabric into clothes, paper into newspapers. If they added a small amount of production for a broad number of goods it’s unlikely to drastically throw off the supply/demand of those goods, while also providing an important source of revenue for urban centers once services reach their inevitable downward price spiral.

Or they could consider adding more uses for services. I have a level 5 public healthcare institution… where are all the pops providing healthcare services to meet those needs?

OOoo....
Okay to add the subsistence urban center feature, scale it by tier of UC. Every 2nd, 3rd or 5th tier unlocks a new tier of service and improves the throughput mildly of the lower tiers. But scale it somehow to the industries that are local market.

I read somewhere there is talk of providing a local market view and management of some sort. No idea if valid or not. But services could be based locally, not necessarily nation-wide or market wide.

[teron]

Or they could just break markets into sub markets based on continents (baring land connections) and make certain goods like transit/services/power not available across sub markets.

Then make ports the bottlenecks like they are in real life, with techs/pms that improve port though put / make stocking goods on ships more efficient.
With the holy grail being intermodal shipping containers which while they were more common after the end year of the game, it is basically just the simple concept of preload stuff in metal boxes and then use cranes to move the boxes between trucks/trains/cargo ships. Which is a way more efficiently then unloading/loading by hand. They are the reason why shipping goods internationally became so cheap, since it make loading/unloading ships a ton faster with less labour and loss. Basically it make unload/loading times of ships go from weeks --> Days.

Which would also incentivize some local production within markets to reduce the strain on your ports. Since you could model market access the prioritizing higher value goods Could also make ports the bottleneck in wars.