Subsidies

[HRE Billygoat]

I always, since victoria2, always had an issue with subsidies, how do you guys prevent subsidies from getting to much, my subsidies range from 30 to 60k with a gdp of about 30M...

[BebopFx]

What are you subsidizing? You must create demand for whatever your paying for then they can support themselves.

[redchocobo623]

Increase the value of the thing they make and try to only activate subsidies on items that you don't mind losing money on like grain or military equipment.

[Harakon]

Increase the demand for the goods you are subsidizing or lower the cost for the goods you need to produce it.

[OneNineDeepSilence]

I never do it. If can't work without, then can fail. But usually things are fine with some smart management. Actually that's not true, it's nothing smart, just knowing how things work in the game (quite complicated stuff).

Edit: about the others also said: "increase demand" for the stuff, that's done by
1. produce a bit less than needed (like 5-10% less) and keep an eye on this, if have to, lower production until is lower than the demand
2. increase demand for that stuff or decrease it when it demand it's too high and isn't profitable to keep it high (in some cases it is), by switching production methods and other stuff (these produce some other shock and unwanted effects, but you have to pick one bad vs. the other bad, so the final result is economic survival and improvement, with larger ups and smaller downs)

[Stewchops]

Keep your industry in the green and you will have no need for subsidies. I usually keep art buildings subsidized near the beginning of the game just to get them employed so I have those juicy academic pops to get my intelligentsia going. I used to keep railroads subsidized as well, but taht's not really necessary with how they redid construction as the railroads will take care of themselves now.

[HRE Billygoat]

Thanks for the advice big dogs. However I've noticed that buildings I subsidize fluctuate, so if I'm subsidizing my coal mines, there comes a time where my subsidy isn't required, but then suddenly something volatile happens in the market and the coal mines cost 10 to 20k to keep afloat, and you need your coal to keep afloat I'd you want some of your other industries to keep afloat, but they can't now, so you subsidize them, because once something small happens my entire internal industry just fails. Which I used to import a lot, I just stopped because everything I tried to take some small country, the countries I'm importing from go haywire and decide to stop trading making my markets plummet in the middle of war with some power from Europe while I'm in south america

[teron]

Railroads are really the only thing I use subsidies for, since I never want those to staff down and cause an infrastructure deficit.

For unprofitable buildings, it is either exporting the finish good or importing source materials (and tariff income vs subsidies expense).
Good example of this is my first motor industry I start an export route to a GP to get them staffed up. While I start building up railroads to increase my internal demand which increase demand for motors in my market which will start making the export trade route less profitable, which will eventually level down causing less motors to be exported.

Or mass construction to fix the issue. E.g. to much wood, time for furniture factories mass building.

Plus some products since they fill multiple needs, their prices can be fluctuate hard if a new good is introduced. Good example is luxury drinks (tea, coffee, wine). Where if you have a market with high tea/wine demand but no coffee, introducing coffee will eventually reduce the demand of tea/wine as pops shift their demand to coffee to meet that need.

[Ole "Slim Jolo" the Hobo Hero]

Me, I don't do it cuz I don't understand the economy.

[alexander.julian.erhard]

Usually, any building where the prices of the input goods and output goods have a rather similar relative price, should be reasonably profitable and not require subsidies.

A building where the input prices are relatively expensive and the output prices are relatively cheap
(for example +20% input and -20% output, or +60% input and +30% output, or -10% input and -60% output)
will have problems though.

Usually, I think you should react by taking at least one of the following actions:

1. Stop buillding more of that building
2. Make/Buy more of the input goods to reduce their price (especially if input goods are expensive)
3. Use/Sell more of the output goods to increase their price (especially if output goods are cheap)
4. Revert to an older production method, which can sometimes make a building profitable again, because less demand reduces input price per unit and less output increases output price per unit.

5. Only if none of these are viable, subsidize if possible or accept having an unprofitable building.



Because a lot of people mention Railroads:
For Railroads, the problem is that the population demand of Transportation usually is too low.
The only realistic option to make Railroads profitable is to increase transportation demand by using the automation methods of buildings like Mines, Logging Camps and Plantations.
Yes, even though it angers the fired Laborers, and might reduce the profit of the building, if Laborer wages were rather low.
But money saved on subsidies is money you can spend elsewhere, and while the profit of a building might have gone down, the profit per person ususally tends to go up if the prices are well balanced.



Weapons Factories might be a good example for option 4:
Leave them at lower level production methods during peacetime, change to higher production methods in wartime if trade alone isn´t enough to balance prices.

[Midas]

You are missing a game mechanic. Workers payment.
A building getting subsids is paying the maximum to get the workers full. This makes wages pressure on the Rest of the market. To fix this, dont subsidi them. You have plenty of options to get used of transportation, and this starts to get obsolete with cars, telefones because its counted as public transport (emigration). and communication. So yes you can pressure the market with advancing to much, so you need to make demand + get more, richer pops and controle the market.

Your city centers can make a good demand on transportation, and save you money, so a win win situation.

[Bibliophylax]

alexander.julian.erhard is the most accurate i should say

The scale effect on throughput help to keep your building profitable even with high input goods price and you have some decrees you can play with.

Also the one building you should subz is the weapon factory, especialy when you have a big army. You have a sccale effect between the price of equipement and the subsz cost.
And it help to planned in advance the +60%+40% mobilization requirements for weapons.

[Midas]

The beta will change that, cause you have "less" controle of where you build, you can still build and build tall, but the AI will also build for themself, which is quiet nice they do their best but sadly dont stack buildings so much :D

[Many-Named]

i only subsidize when they dont want to work, otherwise they're on their own lol

[Luigi]

the game tell me I can't subsidize and I need to do a law, I did intervenism but still it didn't let subsidize why???? :((((