With this video I am not trying to suggest that you should shoot for *exactly* the equilibrium price, independent of other considerations entirely. For example: -Lumber mills will still depeasant pops faster than steel mills, increasing consumption and profitability of consumer good industries. -You still care about capitalist ownership w/ a GDP under 800m, and should have a higher price than otherwise suggested for aristocrat buildings. -As some people have pointed out, a depressed construction good price can make sense (relative to the market goods, but I don't think each other). However, posts I read on Reddit suggest this is way overdone (esp w/ Steel), and when your construction goods are super cheap you should probably add construction (and then they're not cheap anymore). A bit to unpack here. -You can affect prices w/ trade, in addition to building things. Notably, there are also multiple equilibriums where price is higher or lower than the figures given. The equilibriums are relational between goods, not absolute. What I'm saying here is that the contexts where you're trying to build softwood and steel to the *exact* same percent price modifier are going to be extremely rare (technically they pass each other when what you care about is swapping) due to the nature of the PMs. If you try to evaluate everything simultaneously in Victoria 3 it can be both difficult to mathematically model and also difficult to actually look at the effects of the individual thing you're looking at. Understanding that there is a theoretical equilibrium informed by the quality of PMs, and what it is that you care about (labor vs construction), helps to make better decisions when looking at market prices as a *cue* of what to build.
Quality of content is insane, it's absolutely a new level. This is much deeper and more precise than what other content creators are trying to do. Thank you as always
Would love to see a tutorial about that "recomping" stage and how to deal with running out of peasants! Also now I'm curious about how well an AI could do solving for those equilibriums on the whole market haha
Prioritize more effective PMs, lower taxes, import consumer goods. These raise SoL promoting immigration and also increase consumption increasing prices and feed into each other.
I actually kinda want to know , what is better in long-term perspective - have very loyal devout (they give birth rates at high loyalty) , and basically stack all possible birth rates modifiers , or do the same thing , but with migration attraction instead ? I mean , obviously, migration attraction is better , but what to do when you are overpopulated? I think in this situation birth rates might be better
@user-no4fq3dt7d multiculturalism + migration or ethnostate + max birth rate modifiers, choosing second metod only when doing some role-playing runs mostly on bigger countries. And keep in mind, the more literate your pops, the less devout has attraction, so keeping them powerful is kinda challenging on the late game
Tbf, there is actually a logical difference between these two statements. If I deleted coal from the sheet, but kept the engine pump PM on iron, the first statement would still be true (I do, in fact, use iron, wood, tools, and steel in this theoretical market) but the second statement would not be true, because I am also using coal, but coal is no longer present. The first statement allows for the existence of goods that I use but are not in the theoretical market. Rephrased: Of the goods here, you use all of them. vs Of the goods you use, all of them are here.
We'll see - I'm updating the spreadsheet and have more in this vein planned, but they are taking a lot more time to put out than most of the other ones.
Dude you are awsome, me and probably most people here really appreciate your work. I was so bad at the game and if it wasn't for your videos i doubt i would have learned the game so fast. Keep up the good work dude, you are a gem.
I tend to use the in-game price hints a lot: In the beginning go for highest revenue per construction, later transition to highest per capita efficiency.
There are three levels of understanding when it comes to the Vicky 3 economy. The first level is that you basically just play like an AI-you underbuild construction and just look at whatever seems most profitable to build at any given moment and build that. Sometimes you may hyperfocus on one particular good and export a lot of it if it seems profitable to do. The second level is where you build specifically to snowball your GDP and construction sector. You understand the different resource loops and how demand is generated. You will build enormous amounts of construction which allows you to profitably build up more of your core industries which raises your gdp which lets you build more construction. This loop also lets you depeasant in the process, which increases SoL and generates more demand for consumer goods, and so on. The final level is the spreadsheet rabbit hole, where you realize that not every good should be cheap, and you start obsessing over equilibriums and labor efficiency. For the longest time I was on level 2, but now I have fallen all the way into the spreadsheet rabbit hole thanks to you.
Love what you've got planned around mid game upcoming tutorials. I wanna be able to determine what price eq I should be seeking with my mid game when I run outta pops, and when capitalists no longer matter as much!
A cheaper steel price means cheaper construction and more construction sectors you can operate at once. In terms of value per construction of the building, Steel Mills are far better than indicated as they lower the cost of every single building you build after it. Same thing applies to iron before Steel-framed Buildings.
They're going to be better sometimes, but I'm not sure I'd bite on "far better". There's a lot going on - in the conversation here I definitely wanted to be focused on the equilibrium, which conceptually is about a precise balance and I thought listing a bunch of reasons to focus one thing or another would detract from the main points. But sure, building a little more iron/steel can make sense for this consideration, but I think people often overdo it - I often hear people talking about getting steel to even prices early game which I think is a big mistake. If you're on picks and shovels the PM is so bad that even though you want cheaper iron you'd prefer to import and build wood because the equilibrium is over +75%. It's possible the strategy is to actually import steel while you care about construction efficiency, and then export it when you care about pop efficiency, that way you're getting to proportionately increase your building share that is more profitable. You also have to consider the opportunity cost of building 4x lumber instead of 1x steel when on steel frame. The value of depeasanting 12k pops is difficult to quantify, but it will boost your GDP significantly more than this equilibrium suggests because the pops will demand 10x consumer goods and this has a cascading effect. This analysis doesn't consider the value lost by losing sub farm output, so there is a leak there that actually makes steel look a little bitter overall. Steel notably is extremely inefficient, and I think a lot of players are more likely to make the error of building too much of it than too little. It's pretty hard to decrease the price w/o crushing your profit on the building.
A big reason to overbuild steel super early on, relative to the equilibrium, is companies though, as a lot of good ones are gated behind having a bigger chunk of steel than you would normally.
People care too much about money. Everything you spend ends up recycled back into the economy anyway. Time & Pops are the two most important resources in the game.
This is my feeling as well, but I don't know of an easy way to verify this mathematically. I could be mistaken re getting the construction goods cheaper is overrated (but ofc I don't think I'm mistaken)@@metaflight9495
@@generalistgaming Considering the fact that all wealth is created by accelerating the velocity of money, since wealth is incomes being greater than consumption & higher wealth means more consumption, I suspect higher prices are effectively always better as long as it doesn't cause you to go into shortage or default. Also suspect that there are situation where the knock on effects of admin and military spending increase gdp more than they cost precisely because they employ without producing. Also that the goal of building should be to consume goods to raise prices.
Thanks for the guide Generalist. If I'm understanding this correctly, the goods with extremely high efficiency (500%+) you should absolutely spam out, as even if the price drops to -75% they will still make a profit, and reducing the cost of those goods will help boost other industries. Obviously construction and workers plays into this, but generally speaking you can't go wrong with spamming them out. Things like Dye, Cotton, Rubber are perfect for this as they are used in a lot of other processes, and will still be profitable at -75% price, whilst boosting the profit of other industries.
Not quite - if those buildings have large efficiency, but low net, you don't want to focus on them in the later game as they're not pop efficient - you'd want to import the goods instead. In the early game you also care about capitalist ownership a lot and wouldn't want to spam agri buildings (they also only have good nets after pumpjacks). Also -75% is reaaaally a more extreme figure than +75% for affecting net. 1/4 instead of not even 2x.
It looks like you could potentially do the simultaneous math with matrix algebra. After all, construction efficency is just a function of the input and output prices, which is just a system of equasions.
THE TIME AFTER THE WARNING WAS TOO SHORT! My child saw the spreadsheet, now what do I do? I kept them away from my factorio-sessions (that end up in complicated excel-orgies without even opening the game...). But now they're ruined. Either they'll be traumatized or become nerds like me. And you. And whoever reads this. What a fate :(
Always happy to see one of your guides, planning to try a big China run after I'm done this work project so this is good prep. Gonna hit that Patreon once I get paid!
I can make pigs fly in Excel. If you would like, send the workbook to me and what you want to do with it… I will send it right back with the changes. Genuine offer. Love your tutorials
I'm for it to a mild degree, but also notably once construction is added then they are no longer "overbuilt" - I generally think that if tools or clothes are significantly more profitable then you should build those instead of trying to collapse steel price though.
Thank you for the video! I have a couple questions, I don't understand the necessity to make all the key good buildings equally efficient so that you don't care what you build later on. 1) What do you mean by not caring what I build later on? 2) What is construction efficiency? Amount of productivity you get per construction points? Amount of profits you get per construction points? And if so, why is it relevant? I find that, and please take this as constructive criticism, you've overexplained some things in your video and did not explain some things enough. On multiple occasions you've emphasized on the importance of wood being cheap and steel being expensive, and demonstrated how their "ideal" prices make the construction efficiency roughly equal, but I don't understand why I would care about that. I also realize that you've assumed we knew about the spreadsheet beforehand but I'm afraid I don't, so I understand little of it. A little elaboration would be much appreciated!
If one doesnt want to constantly update a spreadsheet is it possible to just go off the displayed productivity values? For construction efficiency we would weigh productivity relative to construction cost (we would divide the priductivity of an iron mine by 2 before comparing to a logging camp) and for pop efficiency just use the raw productivity since that is what productivity measures in the first place.
@generalistgaming if you ever need one for the construction example table (maybe for larger tables or quicker calculations) just add a cell calculating the sum of the absolute differences between each cell K and the average of cells K. Minimize that output cell by letting solver change cells H. Add parameters that cells in column I are between -75% and 75%.
Tbh electricity is pretty fubar w/ how the ai interacts w/ it. You gotta build in a place where you have labor and qualifications, and even then sometimes the queue still goes ballistic.
@@generalistgaming Hahaha yes, I figured as much too. My strategy currently is to only produce as much electricity, as I consume per state, so that the price equi is always a little bit higher but all the demands are covered. However, I feel like thats still not optimal. Electricity works even worse than the infrastructure/tickets system now. Thanks for the tip!
The PM for ele, esp the first one, is really bad so technically the equilibrium would be underproduction I think, even if you care about pop efficiency@@Konsti18K
btw thx for vids, before this point i felt kinda lost at how i should build no matter how much i played, what is like your top 5 recommended vids to go though btw?
Probably the 3 w/ the stonks guy on the cover, which amounts to like 2 hrs of tutorial (Beginner/Early Game Economics and Mid Game transition), which is probably more tutorial time than you're asking for.
Your "efficiency" metric makes me think of price elasticities. Seemingly, Steel is highly elastic with regards to price, wood is highly inelastic with regards to price. Would you say that's a good comparison to an IRL concept?
I really don't understand local prices. If I try to have my logging camps/iron mines in a different state to where I'm building tools, the cost of tools goes up by an absurd amount. It's been like this ever since they added local prices and I have no idea what I'm doing wrong. It basically halts my economy in place.
How I solved this was to pick the states with at least timber, iron and coal (plus sulphur and lead if possible) and industrialise these first. They still need enough peasants as well though. This situation makes some states considerably more valuable than others.
Is there a spreadsheet for per 100 workers efficiency on more buildings/pms? So to have a better understanding what industires i should invest in a late game if im running out of labour
Three games in a row I've ended with billions unspent in the investment pool. On Interventionism and Laissez Faire at various points in my runs it feels like it either isn't being allocated properly in my construction queue or something is bugged? Playing with the autonomous investment default setting. I've been considering swapping to turn that setting off if that is the problem. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I'd love those billions injected into my economy than sitting in the investment pool unused.
So there is a lot to unpack with the investment pool, firstly the total investment pool number isn't what it says it is- it is both the total of all queued private construction costs and also the total amount of actual available funds the capitalists or other POPs have saved up. This means if it would take 5 billion pounds to pay for the next 40 weeks of construction the AI has queued up and the actual investment pool only has 500 million pounds saved up for future construction, the total investment pool would tell you that it has 5.5 billion pounds in it. If you have 3000 construction and the AI is using 75% of that on LF, your total investment pool number is always going to look massive even if it is actually all being spent. It is a very poorly communicated concept/number by the game but that's how it works.
A major factor can be the AI won't build where you don't have infra. Try overbuilding infra in places you want to build and see if that helps out. There are other factors and things you can do, but this is the most straightforward.
Hello! I have a quick question: could it be that they changed the migration? In my current run I have multiculturalism and complete separation, China has broken into its components and I have all these countries in my customs union but the migrants come everywhere just don't from there. Is there any new update?
@@generalistgaming Maybe I´m asking too much, but could you make a Word/PDF version of your tutorials for us? This would be good for me and another non english natives to understand somethings better and would be good for everyone when we want review some concept and dont want to going search in the video (and text would be easier to update than video when the game changes or add a mechanic)
While dividends is significantly better in the early game because of IPT, the net will contribute to both dividends and wages, and both will stimulate and add value to the economy. The fact that sub farms have an output and I'm not considering it in value added is probably the biggest leak in this analysis (as far as I can tell), but it would require introducing 7+ more goods. I think most of the effects of having a larger or smaller wage multiplier for non ownership pops are outside the scope of the of the discussion here unless I'm missing something.
What I am trying to say is that trying to compare how labor efficient different PMs are is complicated by the fact that you can't actually choose where pops are employed, beyond choosing to build different buildings or deleting buildings. So because of this you should make a comparison between cost of labor vs net instead of labor vs net.
I mean I think this effect will be relatively small during this phase of the game (I don't think it's moving the equilibrium more than 2%, say), and then pretty big when places are at breakeven levels. I can't really model it that well because labor costs aren't static though - I can only show the avg wage multiplier or total wage multiplier, but w/o the normal wage I can't really do an exact value for how it will affect pops from one place stealing from another. MAPI and sub farms are other variables not modeled here.@@Ylistalo
But you do know how many people of each profession PM takes and wage multipliers for professions. Therefore you know how many labourer-equivalent wages each PM will have to pay for. You can then see how high pay each PM can pay for labourer when breaking even and this can give an idea how they can compete with other buildings for labour. Also this will start to take effect before you run out of people, it starts to take effect when you start running out of qualifications.@@generalistgaming
I seem to really struggle early game not going bankrupt I generally start off quite well then in about 20 years my tax revenue turns to ass and I go into a death spiral because I need to keep building to fuel my iron industry. Resulting in bankruptcy and not really being able to climb out of it.
