Advanced Tips for economy

[Specter]

So, as a casual player, i wonder how i can improve my economic gameplay further.
This is how i play normaly:
I look up what goods are expensive and just build accordingly. Grain expensive? More grain fields it is.
Is also I try to go colonies as early as possible to get tea and rubber etc.
And yeah, thats pretty much it.

Is there more to the economic gampeplay? Does it make sense to specialise States and build grain only in a few? What goods are general good for trading?

And im only talking about the economic aspect of the game. Of course laws and military are a thing as well.

[Kayeka]

Playing whack-a-mole with market prices is a good way to get started, but the next step is to look at productivity numbers, IE how much money a given business makes per employee. Open up a state buildings screen, and look at the number topright of each icon. That's the productivity of the business. If the number is green, it is more productive than the global average. Red means it's below global average. Build more buildings that are green, and see what you can do about the ones that are red.

[Specter]

Originally posted by Kayeka:

Playing whack-a-mole with market prices is a good way to get started, but the next step is to look at productivity numbers, IE how much money a given business makes per employee. Open up a state buildings screen, and look at the number topright of each icon. That's the productivity of the business. If the number is green, it is more productive than the global average. Red means it's below global average. Build more buildings that are green, and see what you can do about the ones that are red.

Okay, thx, i will look into that.
Business makes money if they sell for a good price, but i also want to lower the prices for the pops. Am i mistaken here?
lets say grain price is high, i will asume that the grain farms i have do have a good productivity and make money. If i build more, i will have better garin prices, but the productivity for the grain farms i have will go down.
Do i just have to find a nice balance? Or how can i give my pops very cheap grain for example?

Thx again for the answer

[lurkathon]

Don't forget other goods can be a substitute for grain. The pops just want cheaper food, grain price is usually shown in their requirements because it's the most available food type.

I prefer to avoid building grain farms as much as I can, and go for Groceries, and develop grain farms, fishing, meat etc to feed that industry.

Even just going for fish over grain is preferable to me, the pops may prefer grain to fish but I prefer having labourers over farmers in my nation. Makes the politics easier for my usual "modernise asap" play style :P

[✠ Sigmar ✠]

Most importantly: Don't just "look up what goods are expensive" in the market/goods tab. Go to "population" in the left outliner and open the "needs" display, especially the one of the lower strata. There you can see what goods those people spend most of their money for. If you go through those, it tells you which of their basic needs are above market price. That is what you need to improve, either by domestic production (i.e. building more factories or researching/switching to a more efficient production method) or by imports (in significant numbers). This is essential to improve the quality of life of your majority population, which both makes your states attractive to immigration - and prevents them from becoming radicals and start to rebel, or getting turmoil debuffs.

Also, you need that sweet exponential economic growth going, so you have to balance the development of your consumer industries (as described above) and the expansion of your construction sector including the production of the input goods for the construction (which depend on your current production method for that one), so your capacity to build things builds things that can build more things, if you catch my meaning.

To be clear: These are not really "advanced tips", as you put it. Vic3 economy is actually pretty complex. If you want something more in-depth, I would recommend the tutorial videos by the YouTuber Generalist Gaming. Some of his videos are outdated because they were made on the basis of an earlier version of the game, but if you put some hours into studying his lectures (yes, I would go so far as to calling them that), your understanding of the game will skyrocket fast.

[Madzap]

Your strategy is a good starting point and generally works well as a broad heuristic for beginner game play. Of course, if you want to go deeper the rabbit hole is quite deep.

For starters, you have to consider MAPI (market access price impact) which, particularly in the early game, is quite significant. What this essentially means is that prices in every province are unique. The overall market has an impact on the local prices, but the local prices can vary significantly. In the early game, you ideally want to construct buildings that take advantage of the natural resources within a given province. So, for example, if there is a shortage of tools, you ideally want to build tools where there is a local source of iron. Even better if there are also local sources of wood and fabric. The tooling workshop then has cheaper input costs, making it more profitable, but also the local demand from the tooling workshop for iron, wood, and fabric increases the profitability of those local base materials businesses, creating a feedback loop that dramatically increases the wealth and competitiveness of that province versus provinces that have to import the inputs. Provinces that have rivers which improve MAPI make for ideal manufacturing hubs as the cost of importing and exporting goods is improved for those provinces. Etc.

Then you need to also consider things like arable land. The more agricultural buildings you build, the less arable land. The less arable land, the less migration attraction you get, penalties to your financial districts, increased pollution, etc. So you generally don't want to build agriculture in your manufacturing focused provinces, for example.

Then you also need to consider what populations you are encouraging to grow in your country by building associated industries, and the political impact that might have. If you are building a lot of agriculture, for example, you are going to strengthen landowners and rural folk, which may or may not be in your interests. By contrast, if you focus on industrial buildings and rely on importing your grain instead, you can strengthen the industrialists and weaken the aristocracy, which can help your country modernize more quickly.

And on that note, you need to consider what the trade potential of a given resource is. Can you get away with ignoring it by relying on trade instead, and, if so, who are your trading partners? Are they likely secure trading partners who you can depend on and who you aren't likely to end up in a war against, thus creating a shortage? Trading heavily with another nation will increase their economic dependence on you, and bring them closer to your power bloc and increase relations, so that needs to be considered as well.

Also, you need to consider whether high prices might be a good thing in some cases, as high prices generally increase the profits of an industry and make their respective populations richer while reducing the wealth of their respective consumers. If you are making luxury items, perhaps there is a case to be made that keeping the prices high serves your interests, as it will help to enrich the lower and middle class workers in those business, which increases their standard of living and encourages them to consume more, benefiting the other businesses in your economy. Generally, focusing taxes on the rich is a good strategy for improving the overall economy, but taxes aren't the only way to redistribute wealth. By keeping luxury items pricey, you can afford to build more textiles and furniture buildings that have split outputs, keeping the prices for the middle and lower classes low, employing more people, and subsidizing this process by making sure the high end products remain pricey. Follow?

It all gets very complicated very quickly once you start to scratch beneath the surface.

[Specter]

Originally posted by Madzap:

Your strategy is a good starting point and generally works well as a broad heuristic for beginner game play. Of course, if you want to go deeper the rabbit hole is quite deep.

For starters, you have to consider MAPI (market access price impact) which, particularly in the early game, is quite significant. What this essentially means is that prices in every province are unique. The overall market has an impact on the local prices, but the local prices can vary significantly. In the early game, you ideally want to construct buildings that take advantage of the natural resources within a given province. So, for example, if there is a shortage of tools, you ideally want to build tools where there is a local source of iron. Even better if there are also local sources of wood and fabric. The tooling workshop then has cheaper input costs, making it more profitable, but also the local demand from the tooling workshop for iron, wood, and fabric increases the profitability of those local base materials businesses, creating a feedback loop that dramatically increases the wealth and competitiveness of that province versus provinces that have to import the inputs. Provinces that have rivers which improve MAPI make for ideal manufacturing hubs as the cost of importing and exporting goods is improved for those provinces. Etc.

Then you need to also consider things like arable land. The more agricultural buildings you build, the less arable land. The less arable land, the less migration attraction you get, penalties to your financial districts, increased pollution, etc. So you generally don't want to build agriculture in your manufacturing focused provinces, for example.

Then you also need to consider what populations you are encouraging to grow in your country by building associated industries, and the political impact that might have. If you are building a lot of agriculture, for example, you are going to strengthen landowners and rural folk, which may or may not be in your interests. By contrast, if you focus on industrial buildings and rely on importing your grain instead, you can strengthen the industrialists and weaken the aristocracy, which can help your country modernize more quickly.

And on that note, you need to consider what the trade potential of a given resource is. Can you get away with ignoring it by relying on trade instead, and, if so, who are your trading partners? Are they likely secure trading partners who you can depend on and who you aren't likely to end up in a war against, thus creating a shortage? Trading heavily with another nation will increase their economic dependence on you, and bring them closer to your power bloc and increase relations, so that needs to be considered as well.

Also, you need to consider whether high prices might be a good thing in some cases, as high prices generally increase the profits of an industry and make their respective populations richer while reducing the wealth of their respective consumers. If you are making luxury items, perhaps there is a case to be made that keeping the prices high serves your interests, as it will help to enrich the lower and middle class workers in those business, which increases their standard of living and encourages them to consume more, benefiting the other businesses in your economy. Generally, focusing taxes on the rich is a good strategy for improving the overall economy, but taxes aren't the only way to redistribute wealth. By keeping luxury items pricey, you can afford to build more textiles and furniture buildings that have split outputs, keeping the prices for the middle and lower classes low, employing more people, and subsidizing this process by making sure the high end products remain pricey. Follow?

It all gets very complicated very quickly once you start to scratch beneath the surface.

Okay, very interesting.
I loke the idea of keeping the prices of some goods up, so lower worker earn more, makes sense.

In my latest game (wich also resulted in a lot of salt on my behalf because of the war system this game has) i had way to many rebels. I have always checked the population tab and looked for prices and tried to lower them, for all of them.
But somehow half my coutry had pops living under expected minimum. I had no idea why.
I than cheked the states individuell and for some reason, some lower pops are indeed poor.
And those are a problem. Everyone else, the upper pops expecialy, are doing fine.
i have yet to undertsand why so many people have a low SoL. Not because of the prices.

Man, the economy aspect of the game i realy like. If the war system would not be so incredible bad, we would have a hell of a game here.

[✠ Sigmar ✠]

Originally posted by Specter:

I than cheked the states individuell and for some reason, some lower pops are indeed poor.
And those are a problem. Everyone else, the upper pops expecialy, are doing fine.
i have yet to undertsand why so many people have a low SoL. Not because of the prices.

If prices are mid and SoL is still bad for some people, it is probably either because of low wages - or those people are actually peasants in an inefficient subsistence lifestyle. Build to get them out of their peasant status, and then take care for the profitability of your buildings so they can pay a decent wage to everyone.

Another factor is taxes. If you lower them, people will have more money left to buy what they need, improving their SoL.

Apart from this general principle, there are some random events that will temporarily put a negative SoL modifier on certain pops, such as discriminated minorities or "the lower strata" in a certain state. Read the tooltips of each decision you can make during an event carefully, it will tell you about the effects.

[Shampoo]

To increase standard of living, you need:

1) Max level welfare/social security institution (old age pension).

2) Civil rights laws that do not discriminate cultures. Discriminated cultures cannot get better jobs and therefore have a low standard of living.

3) Less consumption taxes and tax in general. If you have a lot of money coming in, drop those consumption taxes and do not tax grain.

4) Get graduated taxation because taxing the poor makes increasing the standard of living more difficult.

5) Subsidize all agricultural farms and all fishing buildings. Only the lowest tier of society works in the game’s agricultural farms (laborers, farmers) (no offense to real life farmers, this is just how this works in game), by subsidizing all agricultural farms, you are ensuring the lowest tier pops are fully employed and receive competitive wages so they can consume more things in your market and increase their standard of living and you make more money from taxes.

6) Get the max level worker rights institution to increase minimum wage and standard of living.

7) Get the max level health institution to increase standard of living. (Public health insurance)

8) Get Compulsory Primary Schools and max level education institution so pops can get educated and get better jobs.

9) Make sure you have enough Government Administrations in all states so you get 100% tax from them and also have a positive bureaucracy to have no tax waste. You need 100% tax from all states because you don’t need to put any more consumption taxes if you get enough money from your current consumption taxes.

10) Incorporate all states so the pops benefit from your welfare institution.

11) Become a recognized power if you aren’t already recognized for low interest rates.

12) Abolish slavery because slaves have a fixed standard of living of 8 I believe which is obviously not helping the purpose of increasing standard of living.

13) Do not build anything unless you don’t have that good then build that building to get things started, but otherwise only build things in states with high predicted productivity when the market price is gold just to turn it blue because you want your pops to make a profit from whatever they are making so driving the price down too much is bad.

14) Get Interventionism, Commercialized Agriculture, Graduated Taxation, Private or Public Health Insurance, Compulsory Primary Schools, Any trade law that isn’t Isolationism, Racial Segregation or better civil rights laws, Old Age Pension, all the laws I mentioned above to get higher standard of living.

15) You don’t need to subsidize Power Plants, the only things you need to subsidize are railroads and all agricultural farms and fish producing buildings.

16) Constantly upgrade your production methods, if you don’t have something, don’t use that production method, for example if you have a shortage of oil and can’t make more, do not use production methods that use it.

17) Privatize all buildings, except for oil rigs, whaling buildings, and rubber plantations. You want your pops to own all of the other buildings so they make more money and spend more in your market increasing their standard of living. The reason why I personally keep oil rigs, whaling, and rubber plantations government owned because they are endgame resources that is profitable to hold.

Basically this strategy is to pay people to make their standard of living better and in turn, you get more money from them.

[✠ Sigmar ✠]

Shampoo, there are some good points in there, but guaranteed minimum wage, maxed out welfare in combination with high immigration from otherwise optimized SoL leads to an economical death spiral in this game. You should look into that.

Also, it is not always optimal for SoL to select the newest production methods. Labour saving pms are counterproductive in this regard when you still have a lot of peasants (or unemployed). First priority is always getting the peasants out of their dirt huts, which can mean putting off production methods that would let fewer people work in a building.

[RascalQc]

Look at the impact meter under your balance in the market tab.
1. The further the blue line goes left, you under-supply your market causing :
Standard of living decrease, if consume by pops
and/or
More profit for building who produce it
Less profit for building who consume it

2. The further the golden line goes right, you over-supply your market causing :
Standard of living increase, if consume by pops
and/or
Less profit for building who produce it
More profit for building who consume it

3. In the beginning of the game, build a solid base of basics goods.
Grain, Furniture and Clothes for pops
Iron, Coal, Tool and Wood for industry (later when the big factory rush arrive (mid-game 1860-1880, mostly), you will least be affected since you will have a strong raw goods industry
So the balance of goods will hit smoother on price

4. Change those production method. Increase SoL and Gdp

5. Homemade the goods you can
Import goods if you cannot produce at home and using import to balance impact on economy
Export the goods you have in surplus.

[Ole "Slim Jolo" the Hobo Hero]

Originally posted by Shampoo:

To increase standard of living, you need:

1) Max level welfare/social security institution (old age pension).

2) Civil rights laws that do not discriminate cultures. Discriminated cultures cannot get better jobs and therefore have a low standard of living.

3) Less consumption taxes and tax in general. If you have a lot of money coming in, drop those consumption taxes and do not tax grain.

4) Get graduated taxation because taxing the poor makes increasing the standard of living more difficult.

5) Subsidize all agricultural farms and all fishing buildings. Only the lowest tier of society works in the game’s agricultural farms (laborers, farmers) (no offense to real life farmers, this is just how this works in game), by subsidizing all agricultural farms, you are ensuring the lowest tier pops are fully employed and receive competitive wages so they can consume more things in your market and increase their standard of living and you make more money from taxes.

6) Get the max level worker rights institution to increase minimum wage and standard of living.

7) Get the max level health institution to increase standard of living. (Public health insurance)

8) Get Compulsory Primary Schools and max level education institution so pops can get educated and get better jobs.

9) Make sure you have enough Government Administrations in all states so you get 100% tax from them and also have a positive bureaucracy to have no tax waste. You need 100% tax from all states because you don’t need to put any more consumption taxes if you get enough money from your current consumption taxes.

10) Incorporate all states so the pops benefit from your welfare institution.

11) Become a recognized power if you aren’t already recognized for low interest rates.

12) Abolish slavery because slaves have a fixed standard of living of 8 I believe which is obviously not helping the purpose of increasing standard of living.

13) Do not build anything unless you don’t have that good then build that building to get things started, but otherwise only build things in states with high predicted productivity when the market price is gold just to turn it blue because you want your pops to make a profit from whatever they are making so driving the price down too much is bad.

14) Get Interventionism, Commercialized Agriculture, Graduated Taxation, Private or Public Health Insurance, Compulsory Primary Schools, Any trade law that isn’t Isolationism, Racial Segregation or better civil rights laws, Old Age Pension, all the laws I mentioned above to get higher standard of living.

15) You don’t need to subsidize Power Plants, the only things you need to subsidize are railroads and all agricultural farms and fish producing buildings.

16) Constantly upgrade your production methods, if you don’t have something, don’t use that production method, for example if you have a shortage of oil and can’t make more, do not use production methods that use it.

17) Privatize all buildings, except for oil rigs, whaling buildings, and rubber plantations. You want your pops to own all of the other buildings so they make more money and spend more in your market increasing their standard of living. The reason why I personally keep oil rigs, whaling, and rubber plantations government owned because they are endgame resources that is profitable to hold.

Basically this strategy is to pay people to make their standard of living better and in turn, you get more money from them.

Actually super helpful and straight to the point, thanks! Trying again with 1.8.3 and liking how interest groups etc have been expanded since 1.7 and its nice seeing all this plainly listed

[✠ Sigmar ✠]

Originally posted by Ole "Slim Jolo" the Hobo Hero:

Originally posted by Shampoo:

To increase standard of living, you need:

1) Max level welfare/social security institution (old age pension).

2) Civil rights laws that do not discriminate cultures. Discriminated cultures cannot get better jobs and therefore have a low standard of living.

3) Less consumption taxes and tax in general. If you have a lot of money coming in, drop those consumption taxes and do not tax grain.

4) Get graduated taxation because taxing the poor makes increasing the standard of living more difficult.

5) Subsidize all agricultural farms and all fishing buildings. Only the lowest tier of society works in the game’s agricultural farms (laborers, farmers) (no offense to real life farmers, this is just how this works in game), by subsidizing all agricultural farms, you are ensuring the lowest tier pops are fully employed and receive competitive wages so they can consume more things in your market and increase their standard of living and you make more money from taxes.

6) Get the max level worker rights institution to increase minimum wage and standard of living.

7) Get the max level health institution to increase standard of living. (Public health insurance)

8) Get Compulsory Primary Schools and max level education institution so pops can get educated and get better jobs.

9) Make sure you have enough Government Administrations in all states so you get 100% tax from them and also have a positive bureaucracy to have no tax waste. You need 100% tax from all states because you don’t need to put any more consumption taxes if you get enough money from your current consumption taxes.

10) Incorporate all states so the pops benefit from your welfare institution.

11) Become a recognized power if you aren’t already recognized for low interest rates.

12) Abolish slavery because slaves have a fixed standard of living of 8 I believe which is obviously not helping the purpose of increasing standard of living.

13) Do not build anything unless you don’t have that good then build that building to get things started, but otherwise only build things in states with high predicted productivity when the market price is gold just to turn it blue because you want your pops to make a profit from whatever they are making so driving the price down too much is bad.

14) Get Interventionism, Commercialized Agriculture, Graduated Taxation, Private or Public Health Insurance, Compulsory Primary Schools, Any trade law that isn’t Isolationism, Racial Segregation or better civil rights laws, Old Age Pension, all the laws I mentioned above to get higher standard of living.

15) You don’t need to subsidize Power Plants, the only things you need to subsidize are railroads and all agricultural farms and fish producing buildings.

16) Constantly upgrade your production methods, if you don’t have something, don’t use that production method, for example if you have a shortage of oil and can’t make more, do not use production methods that use it.

17) Privatize all buildings, except for oil rigs, whaling buildings, and rubber plantations. You want your pops to own all of the other buildings so they make more money and spend more in your market increasing their standard of living. The reason why I personally keep oil rigs, whaling, and rubber plantations government owned because they are endgame resources that is profitable to hold.

Basically this strategy is to pay people to make their standard of living better and in turn, you get more money from them.

Actually super helpful and straight to the point, thanks! Trying again with 1.8.3 and liking how interest groups etc have been expanded since 1.7 and its nice seeing all this plainly listed

Do NOT follow his advice without critical thinking and adapting to your situation. Do NOT, I repeat, do NOT try to have minimum wages and welfare at the same time. Your economy will tank.