Specialty production with tariffs vs autartic production

[IsaacCAT]

Have you thought about very high tariffs to guide autonomous queue to build what you want and specially not build what you do not want to avoid having workers being used in other industries?

Free trade is very efficient but it does not allow to play with tariffs. What is your preferred law for tariffs? Interventionism or mercantilism?

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

Have you thought about very high tariffs to guide autonomous queue to build what you want and specially not build what you do not want to avoid having workers being used in other industries?

ABSOLUTELY

I can even do "the no industry building" challenge pretty well with this. Its a gamestyle where i stick to only building bureaucracies and construction sectors and ports and universities, the things only government can build, but i let the Ai build the economy and i "steer them" trough pricing policy to build more of what i want evne micromanaging specialty production trough application of PM's.

And what does the AI tend to build more when construction materials are cancerously high? You guessed it, construction materials.

So i'm buffing my income by having resource prices high, im buffing the reinvestment rate by having resources at high price, i'm even buffing GDP and minting in come and dividend income when resources are at a very high price, and the AI will focus more on building resources. in a way, it has the advantage that rather that you would be trying to hard build a resource industry for your construction sectors early on as the state, you rather just build construction sectors to drive the price of construction materials high and let the Ai take over and graduatly nationalise the very profitable resource buildings they build while you keep adding construction sectors so that they can build even more with their constantly buffed reinvestment rate. its more of a way where you kick construction faster into gear because your using your limited early construction pool for construction sectors rather than to delay the construction of more construction sectors with having to build things like forrestries or cotton plantations or mines or tool shops in between. You get to a larger construction pool faster for the Ai to build with it starts to churn out more buildings earlier that you cna nationalize.

For specialization its more of a matter of promote industry here and boycot one there. If i have a province with coal and iron and another where i dont have that and the AI builds me steel mills in both then the 1st one does get improved production methods but does not have to pay the cost for automation if that is cheaper for it and vice versa the other gets an outdated production method but does get to pay for more things driving its profit margin way lower than the competition in the minerals province and thus pushing the Ai to build its steel more in provinces with coal and iron, for example. you can do this with most industry's in your country.

Clothing and furniture can be interresting too with their production methods especially if you go all full on the luxuries. if all furniture factory's are set to produce maximim luxury furniture and with pm's that leave it with relatively few ordinary furniture then you tend to get a constant undersupply of furniture driving prices up and a constant oversupply of luxury furniture driving the price very low. The furniture factory can often cope to produce profitable with this because the increased price of furniture in the right proportion can make up for the tanked price of luxury furniture, but you now have driven these prices to such an extreme that import trades for ordinary furniture are very profitable and the same might be true for export trades of luxury furniture, so that too is a way to use PM's to force the conditions by which you will have a higher trade flow.

Free trade is very efficient but it does not allow to play with tariffs. What is your preferred law for tariffs? Interventionism or mercantilism?

Well i stll need to determine if thats really tru even, that free trade does not allow you to play with tariffs. i still need to test this one:

The way that im reading this is that if im leader of a power bloc and have this active while having free trade that i still collect 20% tariffs on both imports and exports, but then i do get the incrreased competitiveness and the reduced bureaucracy cost? i mean ...

Otherwise, i tend to prefer mercantilims for now because i can easily juice up the price of what i'm strategically importing and ealry on i have bigger volumes to buy than to sell.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

Have you thought about very high tariffs to guide autonomous queue to build what you want and specially not build what you do not want to avoid having workers being used in other industries?

Oh another note on guiding the AI, company's are superb.

Like say you are overbuilding iron construction sectors for high material prices, and you drop an iron company early. Well since your iron prices are very high, that company is very profitable, and as a result it will add proportionally more iron mines to the private construction queue because it has a lot of money for investment in relation to other private businesses. Iron company's will only add iron mines in the queue if thats their sole thing, but they will build with a 66% construction speed increase because they are a company. Having the high iron prices turbocharges these companies too, and what you do is you let them hold 1 or 2 levels of a state controlled mine and they add some throughput for your dividends to enjoy too.

Unlocking company's early has become a rather important thing now, especially for the purpose of guiding the Ai to build say a tonload of iron mines fast.

 

[Don_Quigleone]

A) you didn't address convoy cost at all. If you're running 64 trade routes, there's no way you'll have land borders with more than a handful.

B) You didn't address the fact that this phenomenon does not scale. Tactics like this are pointless if they can't take you past 50 million gdp.

Otherwise re your Portugal example. In monetary terms you might think you had good results, but your GDP only went up by 33%, from 3 million to 4 million in 9 years, and this is with a hefty bonus to reinvestment you get at low GDP. 33% in 9 years is pathetically low, and that may have just come from conquering something or other. At that rate of growth you'd never reach high numbers.

What matters is the number of buildings you can build per year, that's economic growth in victoria 3 terms. You have not shown any evidence that any of these shenanigans result in more buildings being built compared to a standard approach.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

A) you didn't address convoy cost at all. If you're running 64 trade routes, there's no way you'll have land borders with more than a handful.

Ah you want it like that?

Clippers are a 60£ good. They are surprisingly easy to ship, they typical hold of a single convoy can carry 4 clippers no less. it takes 0.25 convoys for selling 3.5 clippers. The nominal worth of 3.5 clippers to draw the tariff from is 210£. A 15% tariff on 210£ yields 30.5£ . The global average cost of a 1 convoy is about 5£, and thus it costs 1.5£ in convoy to have this trade running. The tariffs way outstrip the convoy cost. it does not outstrip the bureaucracy cost though if its all minimal trades, so this works only with negative bureaucracy.

Otherwise re your Portugal example. In monetary terms you might think you had good results, but your GDP only went up by 33%, from 3 million to 4 million in 9 years, and this is with a hefty bonus to reinvestment you get at low GDP. 33% in 9 years is pathetically low, and that may have just come from conquering something or other. At that rate of growth you'd never reach high numbers.

Show me what you got with portugal in 9 years? Both in terms of GDP and the resulting income from minting and your general government balance. because if your going to make the claim that this is inferior, well perhaps you should take up the job of playing 9 years of the game and showing your Portugal.

And look, i didnt even nessecarily play optimal for just that comparison, as if i had i would have unlocked atmospheric engines right away too. I'm sure i can do even better than this, showing that it was optimal play was not even the bloody point it was showing the potential for having large volume trade and tariffs early in the game.

What matters is the number of buildings you can build per year, that's economic growth in victoria 3 terms. You have not shown any evidence that any of these shenanigans result in more buildings being built compared to a standard approach.

But your putting up a goalpost to which i could never deliver data unless you present the competitive difference. Again, if YOU claim that this is inferior, show the data to back up your claim. I made a point that trade and even generating tariffs early on in volume is possible, and that point stands on its own for a number of questions that were asked. And youll have to allow me to do a re run just for optimalisation, because i wasnt even going for that for the purpose of comparison too. Really your talking well beyond the matters that are chiefly even discussed here.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

On another note of price per convoy, this is the Khalsa Raj

Khalsa Raj is what you can call a landlocked country. We dont have ports, we have convoys free of charge. Our vassals have ports, and since they open up connectiosn for trade and i am their overlord i get part of their ships and trade trough them.

Annex country, build ports, release country as vassal. Cheesy.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

n monetary terms you might think you had good results, but your GDP only went up by 33%, from 3 million to 4 million in 9 years,

Well GDP went up over the next 4 years with 50%, which isnt too shabby

but there is something more interesting to note at this junction for the purpose of the thread.

There is a revolt in bengal, and i can capitalise on it. I am importing 227 opium from bengal and Kalat combined at a 45% import tariff, and of this 227 opium i sell 104 opium to China. This is trough trade, were in part just shipping opium from Bengal to china utilizing the advantage of our treaty port, and these are very profitable trades as such they have kept grown until my convoy capacity came used up.

227 opium at a nominal 50£ is a 11350£ trade, of which we collect 45% which brins it to 5100£ of tariff income. With the aformentioned cost of 4£ per convoy and 10£ per bureaucracy we have a cost of 1350£ on shipping and 450£ on bureaucracy, which means we retain a profit of about 3300£.

So, a trade opportunity caused by a rebellion, on which one can capitalise when looking out for trading opportunities in the current build.

I'm not saying i'm not pumped for the trade rework, but sometimes its less credit given than what you can do with it if you know when to capitalize on it. I could expand my ports, and this trade would grow, and the profit per port build would be pretty good as long as this bengal stays alive. China has a large opium demand and the supply has mostly dried up from Brittain which leaves a huge market for me.

 

[Don_Quigleone]

Well GDP went up over the next 4 years with 50%, which isnt too shabby

but there is something more interesting to note at this junction for the purpose of the thread.

View attachment 1273038

There is a revolt in bengal, and i can capitalise on it. I am importing 227 opium from bengal and Kalat combined at a 45% import tariff, and of this 227 opium i sell 104 opium to China. This is trough trade, were in part just shipping opium from Bengal to china utilizing the advantage of our treaty port, and these are very profitable trades as such they have kept grown until my convoy capacity came used up.

227 opium at a nominal 50£ is a 11350£ trade, of which we collect 45% which brins it to 5100£ of tariff income. With the aformentioned cost of 4£ per convoy and 10£ per bureaucracy we have a cost of 1350£ on shipping and 450£ on bureaucracy, which means we retain a profit of about 3300£.

So, a trade opportunity caused by a rebellion, on which one can capitalise when looking out for trading opportunities in the current build.

I'm not saying i'm not pumped for the trade rework, but sometimes its less credit given than what you can do with it if you know when to capitalize on it. I could expand my ports, and this trade would grow, and the profit per port build would be pretty good as long as this bengal stays alive. China has a large opium demand and the supply has mostly dried up from Brittain which leaves a huge market for me.

FYI, I'm fairly sure your treaty port with China does nothing because you're a lower power rank then China.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

An Overview of the trades and incomes of Portugal in 1872:

At 31K tariffs, and 13.5k dividends, these 2 roughly match the incomes derived from income tax, poll tax and consumption tax combined. Norma tax setting, consumption tax on services and opium.

Now its fairly obvious that i went and conquered Sindh by now to build a big opium plantation there and sell it at high tariff to China. because of the size that the trade was approaching, i came to the point where it was opportune to switch to protectionism. We levy 30% export tariffs usually on our exports, or 30% import tariffs on imports, whatever tends to be the biggest flow between incoming and outgoing. A part of our trade and tariff income is also derived from trough trade, where we buy products in country A and sell the same products in country B with ought our own market having so much to do with it., as we can see in the next picture:

Were selling Opium, and also buying a paltry amount from Kalat, there is a total of something like 2K Opium supply in my little empire and 1.8K consumption, so very significant an import it is not. Better examples can be seen with with dyes and coffee. We buy 135 coffee from Merina Kingdom and sell 162 coffee to Austria at a 30% tariff and there is a big productivity gap between those trades who are both at positive productivity, aka we can take a fair margin in between that. The same is true for an extent for dyes, were selling about 325 dyes combined and buying 175 dyes from China and Merina kingdom combined, again at a 30% export tariff. I really havnt been upping the supply of my dyes too much myself in part because its a market that some day will dry up, but for the moment thats a nice trade making some extra "out of nowhere" for me. Wood and cloth arnt big tickets anymore, now iron has become a larger ticket for tariffs as we switched to iron production some time back.

tariff breakdown:

Still making some money on the import on extra construction materials, Portugal has iron but its southern mining province has too few manpower and infrastructure to expect one can exploit its fullest potential by now, some mining can be done in the colonies but that also takes effort to get online due to lack of professions there and need for education decrees. At this point though we have switched far more to exports than imports, and the big ticket item afcourse is about 15.5K in opium tariffs, though tariffs on dyes and coffee dont look too bad either.

on the matter of ranking and GDP i dont think i'm doing too bad either. One has to take in mind it's Portugal, and were only 37 years into the game. i'm ahead of Spain in GdP at this point, and close to the GDP of Belgium, which isnt too bad in my book at this point. Portugal doesn't have the most easiest of starts, given its negative budget at start as a result of all its port costs. i'm mostly focusing now to bring up my universities to about 30 of them so to be guaranteed of having great tech by the end of the game with literacy leaving a fair enough innovation cap for the moment. However, so as to adress @Don_Quigleone his concerns here i now would like to make a few points about the investment pool, the reinvestment rate, then compare that to other country's and make an somewhat quantifiable assessment of the efficiency of investment pool use versus the costs of the materials and the general validity of a strategy where one uses the income of tariffs to nationalize industry build by the Ai so to "juice the investment rate".

Now as one can see here i have a huge amount of money siting dormant in the investment pool, and i have a 164K reinvestment rate. Why am i not even using it all, why am i sitting on this excess? the simple truth is that the 25 or so iron construction sectors i have to run here already take up 125K of my active laborpool, and i'm already fully depeasanted as this somewhat expanded Portugal at this point. Tech is simply running behind what this sort of reinvestment rate would be capable of even if i research 1 tech per year at max innovation, because this reinvestment rate is PROPERLY PUMPED. One has to do comparisons with other country's to even be able to put this in proportion, so lets do that:

Here is Qing China. at its 106 million GDP it has about 5x the GDP of Portugal in 1872. It's reinvestment rate is a paltry 35.5k, thats about a fifth compared to my Portugal which has but a fifth of China's GDP, meaning China has 25 TIMES less reinvestment per million GDP.

The number 2 on this aspect in the game is the UK, see screenshot below

Now thats a bit better than China, but its still lower than the 165K reinvestment rate in Portugal, for a country that is more advanced and has about 3.5x the GDP of Portugal. However per matter of quantification one can note here that the Uk's investment pool is currently spending 133k for 238 points of construction while my Portugese are spending 111k on 121 points of construction so there is a fair gap in the efficiency by which the Uk constructs in comparison to i. We pay something like £915£ per 1 construction point and the Uk is spending 560£ per construction point, a significant reduction owning to the simple fact that the Uk is reasonably just more advanced than Portugal even at this point, the Uk is on steel frame construction and i am 5 weeks from unlocking steel frame construction. Yet it simply also has to be noted that the Uk here is generating 2030£ reinvestment per million of GDP, whereas my Portugal is generating a whooping 7600£ in reinvestment for the Ai to spend per 1 million GDP. The sheer efficiency of reinvestment generation in my country greatly outstrips the loss of some spending efficiency within the construction sector, and is a product of me being able to nationalize key industry in part trough income derived from tariffs on expensive construction materials payed by a juiced up reinvestment rate. hence its a sort of cycle, in which you capitalize on the investment pool in tariffs to nationalize and buff the reinvestment rate so to speed up the pace by which he AI can build your economy by itself, hence also why i'm already easily de-peasented as portugal by 1872 too. i could easily fund double the construction i have currently with my reinvestment rate and the sheer reserves my investment pool has but again i just dont have the manpower or necessarily much things of importance to build at this point even when doing so would actually juice up the income i derive from iron imports further, i mean i could just opt to tax the crazy amount of money that is just lying around there, its simply logical that due to this sheer investment rate i'm pacing fast to a point where even if i could host much more construction i need to find or take new places to build in first.

Now, breaking down Portugals reinvestment rate will show some details of where all this juice is comming from

Consider, that i as the state of portugal own maybe 10% of all buildings in my country, it's the profitability of what i own that matters. One can see that in proportional terms, for the fact that the manor houses and the financial districts own the other 90% of the economy they dont get close as to contribution to the investment pool as items like my "part ownership" in Opium plantations and logging camps does. And even in that aspect take some notion of the contribution of company headquarters which is also significantly lower despite the fact that these company's own about half of the Opium plantations and logging camps that the state owns. These state industries can be seen in more detail below:

the opium plantation in Sindh, of which i own half and works at 115% throughput with the help of various modifiers and this opium company supporting it. its profit is nearly 1000£ per level of plantation build, which is a huge ROI and is very much part of why the investment pool gets so jacked. this is as a result of the low labor costs associated with colonial exploitation aswell as its throughput bonus, in combination with boni given by the province of Sindh. Though the profit margins on the forestry in Angola are even better:

This forestry is at 1225£ in profit per level. Even when a country is in debt, if it doesnt suffer from a very high interest rate nationalizing this and thereby putting oneself further in debt would typically have a positive effect on the budget as the cost of interest would be outstripped by the dividend gained. It is somewhere around 1000£ per level of plantation or forestry, and more for factories since they have triple the cost. But its this half ownership, or basicly owing 6 forrestry's here and 23 opium plantations in Sindh, that contributes something like 75% of the reinvestment rate, coupled with a few highly profitable cotton plantations and factory sweatshops utilizing cheap labor in colonies.

At this point, i feel entirely right in propagating the merrit of this method, even to import construction goods at high cost and raising tariffs on it. What matters having say -40% investment pool utilization efficiency, if the incomes generated from tariffs and later dividends can be strategically used to buff the reinvestment rate by orders of 350% of what of what the reinvestment rate per million of GDP would be in a country that is technologically more advanced? It's nice tariffs income adding to the budget, it's nice dividends too adding to the budget directly. it's a perfectly viable strategy to juice the Ai's abbilety to churn out buildings, and rather than that your so much focussed early on to hard building resource industry to supply your construction sectors you can just pump out construction sectors trade for the materials collect more income and use it to juice the AI's abbilety to pay for more construction materials and tariffs by buying highly profitable buildings that also contribute a fair amount to dividend income.

And i think this is all very "vintage Portugal", i'm trading and getting rich, building colonies for the purpose of trade. Now one can say opium is an obvious one but what of it? Heck i'm trasnporting it from Portugal to China half across the world and that takes a fair amount of transports but if you break down that cost its but about 30% of the revenue made on opium tariffs, other trades are often cheaper when they are closer or run mostly overlland for their size. I have taken a little treaty port on Madagascar and you can see me part exploiting the monopolistic access that gives me to their market to buy goods from them and sell goods to them in a fashion where i'm trough trading their goods to other nations, a simple proof too imho of the things you can do so as to generate tariff income trough the ownership of a tiny treaty port on a isolationist country.

And i think i have delivered proof against @Don_Quigleone his objections, there is a very strong argument to be made that importing expensive construction materials at a high tariff was a very sound choice with the potential of reinvestment buffing in mind.

So i think i'm perfectly right to propagate the merrrit of these sort of trade related strategy's, adn it shows that a country like portugal can have a fun immersive game in being a trade oriented nation too. As another matter of note, i have no railways in my provinces despite they demadning a fair amount of infrastructure, its all covered by ports. Most players would be paying to subsidize their railways once heavy labor competition comes around, i pay for those ports by default but i'm getting triple the return on the convoys trough the tariffs so my infrastructure providers are generating money for me.

Give it another decade, and i will be selling a 1000 units in regular clothing to China too, i know that huge market is comming around soon enough, its part of market trends in the game. Though granted i know only so much yet about market trends in the game, i know a fair bit about the typical evolution of China and the things she comes to demand as well as a number of goods with the GP's and then there are also various tricks to use one puppets with their own markets and trough treaty ports with isolationist country's. A killing can be made on things like engines sales with the likes of say a puppeted Ehteopia that has managed to get to pumpjacks, which can be either forced by releasing them as puppet once you researched it yourself or wait till much later but the point is that as a country like Ethopia does not have the minerals to build engines themselves but has tonloads of plantations it will buy lots of them if that means that the added productivity it gives their plantatiosn can find a profitable market, which means you then get a ton of agricultural goods to buy from them that are produced at rather competitive prices for export.

I feel like being a trading nation takes a fair amount of hoops and skill but it can be done even in the current build and so much to ones advantage that it practically serves as a good enough guide for a Portugal trading playtrough. This is a fairly valid fashion in which to play Portugal imho, and one that is fun. A bit dastardly even with such tricks as exploiting treaty ports for monopolistic access.

 

[Don_Quigleone]

An Overview of the trades and incomes of Portugal in 1872:

View attachment 1274218

At 31K tariffs, and 13.5k dividends, these 2 roughly match the incomes derived from income tax, poll tax and consumption tax combined. Norma tax setting, consumption tax on services and opium.

Now its fairly obvious that i went and conquered Sindh by now to build a big opium plantation there and sell it at high tariff to China. because of the size that the trade was approaching, i came to the point where it was opportune to switch to protectionism. We levy 30% export tariffs usually on our exports, or 30% import tariffs on imports, whatever tends to be the biggest flow between incoming and outgoing. A part of our trade and tariff income is also derived from trough trade, where we buy products in country A and sell the same products in country B with ought our own market having so much to do with it., as we can see in the next picture:

View attachment 1274219

Were selling Opium, and also buying a paltry amount from Kalat, there is a total of something like 2K Opium supply in my little empire and 1.8K consumption, so very significant an import it is not. Better examples can be seen with with dyes and coffee. We buy 135 coffee from Merina Kingdom and sell 162 coffee to Austria at a 30% tariff and there is a big productivity gap between those trades who are both at positive productivity, aka we can take a fair margin in between that. The same is true for an extent for dyes, were selling about 325 dyes combined and buying 175 dyes from China and Merina kingdom combined, again at a 30% export tariff. I really havnt been upping the supply of my dyes too much myself in part because its a market that some day will dry up, but for the moment thats a nice trade making some extra "out of nowhere" for me. Wood and cloth arnt big tickets anymore, now iron has become a larger ticket for tariffs as we switched to iron production some time back.

tariff breakdown:
View attachment 1274221

Still making some money on the import on extra construction materials, Portugal has iron but its southern mining province has too few manpower and infrastructure to expect one can exploit its fullest potential by now, some mining can be done in the colonies but that also takes effort to get online due to lack of professions there and need for education decrees. At this point though we have switched far more to exports than imports, and the big ticket item afcourse is about 15.5K in opium tariffs, though tariffs on dyes and coffee dont look too bad either.

View attachment 1274222

on the matter of ranking and GDP i dont think i'm doing too bad either. One has to take in mind it's Portugal, and were only 27 years into the game. i'm ahead of Spain in GdP at this point, and close to the GDP of Belgium, which isnt too bad in my book at this point. Portugal doesn't have the most easiest of starts, given its negative budget at start as a result of all its port costs. i'm mostly focusing now to bring up my universities to about 30 of them so to be guaranteed of having great tech by the end of the game with literacy leaving a fair enough innovation cap for the moment. However, so as to adress @Don_Quigleone his concerns here i now would like to make a few points about the investment pool, the reinvestment rate, then compare that to other country's and make an somewhat quantifiable assessment of the efficiency of investment pool use versus the costs of the materials and the general validity of a strategy where one uses the income of tariffs to nationalize industry build by the Ai so to "juice the investment rate".

View attachment 1274224

Now as one can see here i have a huge amount of money siting dormant in the investment pool, and i have a 164K reinvestment rate. Why am i not even using it all, why am i sitting on this excess? the simple truth is that the 25 or so iron construction sectors i have to run here already take up 125K of my active laborpool, and i'm already fully depeasanted as this somewhat expanded Portugal at this point. Tech is simply running behind what this sort of reinvestment rate would be capable of even if i research 1 tech per year at max innovation, because this reinvestment rate is PROPERLY PUMPED. One has to do comparisons with other country's to even be able to put this in proportion, so lets do that:

View attachment 1274226

Here is Qing China. at its 106 million GDP it has about 5x the GDP of Portugal in 1872. It's reinvestment rate is a paltry 35.5k, thats about a fifth compared to my Portugal which has but a fifth of China's GDP, meaning China has 25 TIMES less reinvestment per million GDP.

The number 2 on this aspect in the game is the UK, see screenshot below

View attachment 1274227

Now thats a bit better than China, but its still lower than the 165K reinvestment rate in Portugal, for a country that is more advanced and has about 3.5x the GDP of Portugal. However per matter of quantification one can note here that the Uk's investment pool is currently spending 133k for 238 points of construction while my Portugese are spending 111k on 121 points of construction so there is a fair gap in the efficiency by which the Uk constructs in comparison to i. We pay something like £915£ per 1 construction point and the Uk is spending 560£ per construction point, a significant reduction owning to the simple fact that the Uk is reasonably just more advanced than Portugal even at this point, the Uk is on steel frame construction and i am 5 weeks from unlocking steel frame construction. Yet it simply also has to be noted that the Uk here is generating 2030£ reinvestment per million of GDP, whereas my Portugal is generating a whooping 7600£ in reinvestment for the Ai to spend per 1 million GDP. The sheer efficiency of reinvestment generation in my country greatly outstrips the loss of some spending efficiency within the construction sector, and is a product of me being able to nationalize key industry in part trough income derived from tariffs on expensive construction materials payed by a juiced up reinvestment rate. hence its a sort of cycle, in which you capitalize on the investment pool in tariffs to nationalize and buff the reinvestment rate so to speed up the pace by which he AI can build your economy by itself, hence also why i'm already easily de-peasented as portugal by 1872 too. i could easily fund double the construction i have currently with my reinvestment rate and the sheer reserves my investment pool has but again i just dont have the manpower or necessarily much things of importance to build at this point even when doing so would actually juice up the income i derive from iron imports further, i mean i could just opt to tax the crazy amount of money that is just lying around there, its simply logical that due to this sheer investment rate i'm pacing fast to a point where even if i could host much more construction i need to find or take new places to build in first.

Now, breaking down Portugals reinvestment rate will show some details of where all this juice is comming from
View attachment 1274230

Consider, that i as the state of portugal own maybe 10% of all buildings in my country, it's the profitability of what i own that matters. One can see that in proportional terms, for the fact that the manor houses and the financial districts own the other 90% of the economy they dont get close as to contribution to the investment pool as items like my "part ownership" in Opium plantations and logging camps does. And even in that aspect take some notion of the contribution of company headquarters which is also significantly lower despite the fact that these company's own about half of the Opium plantations and logging camps that the state owns. These state industries can be seen in more detail below:

View attachment 1274232

the opium plantation in Sindh, of which i own half and works at 115% throughput with the help of various modifiers and this opium company supporting it. its profit is nearly 1000£ per level of plantation build, which is a huge ROI and is very much part of why the investment pool gets so jacked. this is as a result of the low labor costs associated with colonial exploitation aswell as its throughput bonus, in combination with boni given by the province of Sindh. Though the profit margins on the forestry in Angola are even better:

View attachment 1274233

This forestry is at 1225£ in profit per level. Even when a country is in debt, if it doesnt suffer from a very high interest rate nationalizing this and thereby putting oneself further in debt would typically have a positive effect on the budget as the cost of interest would be outstripped by the dividend gained. It is somewhere around 1000£ per level of plantation or forestry, and more for factories since they have triple the cost. But its this half ownership, or basicly owing 6 forrestry's here and 23 opium plantations in Sindh, that contributes something like 75% of the reinvestment rate, coupled with a few highly profitable cotton plantations and factory sweatshops utilizing cheap labor in colonies.

At this point, i feel entirely right in propagating the merrit of this method, even to import construction goods at high cost and raising tariffs on it. What matters having say -40% investment pool utilization efficiency, if the incomes generated from tariffs and later dividends can be strategically used to buff the reinvestment rate by orders of 350% of what of what the reinvestment rate per million of GDP would be in a country that is technologically more advanced? It's nice tariffs income adding to the budget, it's nice dividends too adding to the budget directly. it's a perfectly viable strategy to juice the Ai's abbilety to churn out buildings, and rather than that your so much focussed early on to hard building resource industry to supply your construction sectors you can just pump out construction sectors trade for the materials collect more income and use it to juice the AI's abbilety to pay for more construction materials and tariffs by buying highly profitable buildings that also contribute a fair amount to dividend income.

And i think this is all very "vintage Portugal", i'm trading and getting rich, building colonies for the purpose of trade. Now one can say opium is an obvious one but what of it? Heck i'm trasnporting it from Portugal to China half across the world and that takes a fair amount of transports but if you break down that cost its but about 30% of the revenue made on opium tariffs, other trades are often cheaper when they are closer or run mostly overlland for their size. I have taken a little treaty port on Madagascar and you can see me part exploiting the monopolistic access that gives me to their market to buy goods from them and sell goods to them in a fashion where i'm trough trading their goods to other nations, a simple proof too imho of the things you can do so as to generate tariff income trough the ownership of a tiny treaty port on a isolationist country.

And i think i have delivered proof against @Don_Quigleone his objections, there is a very strong argument to be made that importing expensive construction materials at a high tariff was a very sound choice with the potential of reinvestment buffing in mind.

So i think i'm perfectly right to propagate the merrrit of these sort of trade related strategy's, adn it shows that a country like portugal can have a fun immersive game in being a trade oriented nation too. As another matter of note, i have no railways in my provinces despite they demadning a fair amount of infrastructure, its all covered by ports. Most players would be paying to subsidize their railways once heavy labor competition comes around, i pay for those ports by default but i'm getting triple the return on the convoys trough the tariffs so my infrastructure providers are generating money for me.

Give it another decade, and i will be selling a 1000 units in regular clothing to China too, i know that huge market is comming around soon enough, its part of market trends in the game.

If you're sitting on so much investment pool, why not sign a bunch of investment treaties, and then allow your pops to build overseas?

If you're at full employment, you can have your pops working as capitalists rather then as lowly workers.

I'm pretty sure I could outdo your results, what conditions would you set? Obviously, I can't conquer too much territory.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

If you're sitting on so much investment pool, why not sign a bunch of investment treaties, and then allow your pops to build overseas?

i have build up my millitary in before forcing myself into Sindh, and i'm further accumulating millitary strenght to invade other important isolationist country's like Siam who still have a fair bulk of low class troops, i can take a treaty port on them and puppet them while giving them their own market and it gives me investment rights, same as it does with Madagascar. Investment into other country's even if say France or Germany might not be the optimal choice anyway, at the end of the day those investments also have a certain productivity to them and not all are the same, in things like foreign investment the manor houses are less efficient per labor used than financial districts and they are less efficient per labor used than companies however all their productivity is strongly determined by the profit margins of industry and those are significantly increased by the element of low labor cost trough colonial exploitation, so i take preference to adding more land to colonially exploit where it can give me interesting products for global trade. I would likely be more served with immigration rather than foreign trade, While Sol doesnt look so high for the empire it's high enough in Portugal to start attracting immigrants but a few laws could make that better.

If you're at full employment, you can have your pops working as capitalists rather then as lowly workers.

I'm pretty sure I could outdo your results, what conditions would you set? Obviously, I can't conquer too much territory.

Again, yes though there are a bunch of caveats attached, you make it simpler as it sounds. But you are also shying away from recognizing the merrit of the combination of importing construction materials at a high tariff in order to supply more funds for nationalization which can be used to juice the investment pool generation rate which can be used to make the AI spend more money on tariffs importing more building materials. i'm simply proving it as an effecient loop if the conditions are right, yes my investment pool is somewhat less effecient in cost per construction point but otoh proportionally the investment pool is juiced up to a far greater extend that this simply outweighs the extra cost and proves it as a valid strategy that will provide more funds for investment at a more rapid rate.

And i mean, why dont you prove something, why havnt you booted up your game to make some points like me rather than just comming to an argument of "arbitrary judgement of sub-optimal strategy where you claim you can do better"? i can only roduce my side to show, absent of anyone else playing the game to this point to atleast giving me something to compare ican neither produce the contrary result myself, so there is nothing to further talk over other than a bold claim withought data attached that it is sub optimal to which no argument can be made, a claim you made twice but you never booted up the game to play a few decades of Portugal either and "show me". And heck even ii am not necessarily claiming to play the most optimal strategy as even tech choices and law changes are a big factor to consider and i was very late in say enacting per capita tax and that will always matter to a degree too, so hard to make arguments on comparative gaming but i imho have proven MY point with numbers that underpin the validity of it. Afterall the real topic of the thread is on specialty production versus autartic gameplay, well this is clearly not so much the type of autartic gameplay where we would be providing for our own resources like construction materials or where we would be so much selling all our output for our domestic market. And it feels really disapointing that you cannot admit that i'm right on certain objections you made. And this Portual is even on a relative metric not doing bad, being number 7 in rank and number 12 at economy in 1872 well ahead of Spain aswell is all considered pretty good, maybe its not necessarily the best Portugal but this is again imho pretty valid even as a show case on how you can play a trading Portugal to arguably good result in a fashion that feels immersive as a trading focussed empire rather than playing as an autartic centered economy. Is it so hard to see what this future Portugal beholds? Conquest, more colonies, more exploitation more trade more tariffs, and in the meantime we can easily fund lots of universities with our excess in incomes and expand on our millitary and navy. i should probably reconquer Brazil just for the fun of it, even if that woudl arguably neither nessecarily be the optimal choice. Although ... but anyway like how far does a person have to go to prove his point, when even when the data is so clearly presented and impressive when you consider the factor of "investment rate per million gdp", something i'm sure few players even ever took so much attention too but which in your maxim of "the more construction the better" should be a often considered factor for discussion given that there is a spread of a x25 multiplier in this metric between Portugal here and Qing China for example. As if a country wouldnt have more of a future for itself in being able to build out economy if it can generate such huge amounts of reinvestment that it gets hard to even spend it all withought driving most of the workforce in construction sectors hahahaha.

it would be different if it were Russia or China, yeah they can build themselves far more of an economy that floats on its own demand and if you juice the reinvestment rate accordingly as to how i did it here that just means far more construction capacity to convert the masses of manpower that you have, though with jacking the investment rate like this you'd be surprised how short a time that might take Russia using such strats especially knowing that Russia has unincorporated states upon which it can put colonial exploitation, you can make your Polish sweatshops or Siberian mines and forests as the engine of a rapidly expanding economy. Obviously you would play Russia and China autartic to a great degree, but the notion of what can be done with nationalization as to buff the country's growth rate and the story of investment rate per million of GDP should not be underestimated, not if the spread can be so extreme along different modes of ownership and the profitability of industry in particular circumstances.

 

[Don_Quigleone]

i have build up my millitary in before forcing myself into Sindh, and i'm further accumulating millitary strenght to invade other important isolationist country's like Siam who still have a fair bulk of low class troops, i can take a treaty port on them and puppet them while giving them their own market and it gives me investment rights, same as it does with Madagascar. Investment into other country's even if say France or Germany might not be the optimal choice anyway, at the end of the day those investments also have a certain productivity to them and not all are the same, in things like foreign investment the manor houses are less efficient per labor used than financial districts and they are less efficient per labor used than companies however all their productivity is strongly determined by the profit margins of industry and those are significantly increased by the element of low labor cost trough colonial exploitation, so i take preference to adding more land to colonially exploit where it can give me interesting products for global trade. I would likely be more served with immigration rather than foreign trade, While Sol doesnt look so high for the empire it's high enough in Portugal to start attracting immigrants but a few laws could make that better.



Again, yes though there are a bunch of caveats attached, you make it simpler as it sounds. But you are also shying away from recognizing the merrit of the combination of importing construction materials at a high tariff in order to supply more funds for nationalization which can be used to juice the investment pool generation rate which can be used to make the AI spend more money on tariffs importing more building materials. i'm simply proving it as an effecient loop if the conditions are right, yes my investment pool is somewhat less effecient in cost per construction point but otoh proportionally the investment pool is juiced up to a far greater extend that this simply outweighs the extra cost and proves it as a valid strategy that will provide more funds for investment at a more rapid rate.

And i mean, why dont you prove something, why havnt you booted up your game to make some points like me rather than just comming to an argument of "arbitrary judgement of sub-optimal strategy where you claim you can do better"? i can only roduce my side to show, absent of anyone else playing the game to this point to atleast giving me something to compare ican neither produce the contrary result myself, so there is nothing to further talk over other than a bold claim withought data attached that it is sub optimal to which no argument can be made, a claim you made twice but you never booted up the game to play a few decades of Portugal either and "show me". And heck even ii am not necessarily claiming to play the most optimal strategy as even tech choices and law changes are a big factor to consider and i was very late in say enacting per capita tax and that will always matter to a degree too, so hard to make arguments on comparative gaming but i imho have proven MY point with numbers that underpin the validity of it. Afterall the real topic of the thread is on specialty production versus autartic gameplay, well this is clearly not so much the type of autartic gameplay where we would be providing for our own resources like construction materials or where we would be so much selling all our output for our domestic market. And it feels really disapointing that you cannot admit that i'm right on certain objections you made. And this Portual is even on a relative metric not doing bad, being number 7 in rank and number 12 at economy in 1872 well ahead of Spain aswell is all considered pretty good, maybe its not necessarily the best Portugal but this is again imho pretty valid even as a show case on how you can play a trading Portugal to arguably good result in a fashion that feels immersive as a trading focussed empire rather than playing as an autartic centered economy. Is it so hard to see what this future Portugal beholds? Conquest, more colonies, more exploitation more trade more tariffs, and in the meantime we can easily fund lots of universities with our excess in incomes and expand on our millitary and navy. i should probably reconquer Brazil just for the fun of it, even if that woudl arguably neither nessecarily be the optimal choice. Although ... but anyway like how far does a person have to go to prove his point, when even when the data is so clearly presented and impressive when you consider the factor of "investment rate per million gdp", something i'm sure few players even ever took so much attention too but which in your maxim of "the more construction the better" should be a often considered factor for discussion given that there is a spread of a x25 multiplier in this metric between Portugal here and Qing China for example. As if a country wouldnt have more of a future for itself in being able to build out economy if it can generate such huge amounts of reinvestment that it gets hard to even spend it all withought driving most of the workforce in construction sectors hahahaha.

it would be different if it were Russia or China, yeah they can build themselves far more of an economy that floats on its own demand and if you juice the reinvestment rate accordingly as to how i did it here that just means far more construction capacity to convert the masses of manpower that you have, though with jacking the investment rate like this you'd be surprised how short a time that might take Russia using such strats especially knowing that Russia has unincorporated states upon which it can put colonial exploitation, you can make your Polish sweatshops or Siberian mines and forests as the engine of a rapidly expanding economy. Obviously you would play Russia and China autartic to a great degree, but the notion of what can be done with nationalization as to buff the country's growth rate and the story of investment rate per million of GDP should not be underestimated, not if the spread can be so extreme along different modes of ownership and the profitability of industry in particular circumstances.

I said I was willing to do it myself.

I was asking what the conditions were.

Can I conquer whatever I want?

What would constitute me "beating" you? Using more conventional methods of course.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

I said I was willing to do it myself.

I was asking what the conditions were.

Can I conquer whatever I want?

What would constitute me "beating" you? Using more conventional methods of course.

But what are you even trying to prove, that would be relevant to the purpose of this thread?

I mean, you could do an "autartic run", where you dont trade as i do but you gather your own resources for your own use and you sell your output to your own market, avoiding to have to pay for ports and all that. And i guess some impression could be gotten what could be had from an autartic run, providing you dont conquer places beyond what i did just to add to your GDP like that. I guess instead of a 2 million pop Sindh for the purpose of your autartic run you'd rather add a colony of similar size that gives you iron and coal or such. There is still the difference of what techpaths you optimally choose and what good laws one might get before the other, but go at it i wouldnt mind seeing what you can with Portugal by that point trough an autartic fashion. It would be one way to try compare and try evaluate playstyles between autartic and specialized.

That said it wouldnt discredit the main point of the thread, although i rather have you show something than to keep making claims that you dont back up afcourse.

Its part you who are moving the goalpost with all of this, as in an earlier point you claimed that because i was importing my construction materials at a high tariff i was playing suboptimal, yet i did disprove your argument there and you fail to acknowledge even that. It is as if the merrit of my ardous work here should be disproven by the single metric of GDP by a certain year as a metric of optimal play whereas the thread didt make the claim to have taken all the optimal routes in all cases other than presentign the merrit of a trade empire and what it CAN do. Yet i'm still wondering where you will be by that point in the game, because Portugal isnt necessarily the easiest nation at start either. So anyway, if you must then you actually showing something for your claims is a 1000 times more preferable than you just claiming it and making it a super lazy argument as such to which i could never "disprove", so "the one who makes the claim has the burden of the proof", after all the effort i put to convey all this information i feel you owe that to me if your going to take such a dismissive arbitrary position.

If we are going to do comparative for the purpose of trying to find a "more optimal system", then fine you can do your run and i can even do a rerun and if that rerun is even better than yours then thats valid too i guess, just saying because i wouldnt argue i nessecarily played optimal perhaps for the style and that even another player might be better at non-autartic play. Thats how much we can keep adding frames of reference just to say, as even the experience of playing portugal for a few runs will make us better at it.

 

[Don_Quigleone]

But what are you even trying to prove, that would be relevant to the purpose of this thread?

I mean, you could do an "autartic run", where you dont trade as i do but you gather your own resources for your own use and you sell your output to your own market, avoiding to have to pay for ports and all that. And i guess some impression could be gotten what could be had from an autartic run, providing you dont conquer places beyond what i did just to add to your GDP like that. I guess instead of a 2 million pop Sindh for the purpose of your autartic run you'd rather add a colony of similar size that gives you iron and coal or such. There is still the difference of what techpaths you optimally choose and what good laws one might get before the other, but go at it i wouldnt mind seeing what you can with Portugal by that point trough an autartic fashion. It would be one way to try compare and try evaluate playstyles between autartic and specialized.

That said it wouldnt discredit the main point of the thread, although i rather have you show something than to keep making claims that you dont back up afcourse.

Its part you who are moving the goalpost with all of this, as in an earlier point you claimed that because i was importing my construction materials at a high tariff i was playing suboptimal, yet i did disprove your argument there and you fail to acknowledge even that. It is as if the merrit of my ardous work here should be disproven by the single metric of GDP by a certain year as a metric of optimal play whereas the thread didt make the claim to have taken all the optimal routes in all cases other than presentign the merrit of a trade empire and what it CAN do. Yet i'm still wondering where you will be by that point in the game, because Portugal isnt necessarily the easiest nation at start either. So anyway, if you must then you actually showing something for your claims is a 1000 times more preferable than you just claiming it and making it a super lazy argument as such to which i could never "disprove", so "the one who makes the claim has the burden of the proof", after all the effort i put to convey all this information i feel you owe that to me if your going to take such a dismissive arbitrary position.

If we are going to do comparative for the purpose of trying to find a "more optimal system", then fine you can do your run and i can even do a rerun and if that rerun is even better than yours then thats valid too i guess, just saying because i wouldnt argue i nessecarily played optimal perhaps for the style and that even another player might be better at non-autartic play. Thats how much we can keep adding frames of reference just to say, as even the experience of playing portugal for a few runs will make us better at it.

My point wasn't that trade is a bad thing.

My point was that your shenanigans with tariffs and keeping construction costs high is counterproductive. Any money you're making in tariffs you're losing from having excessively high construction costs. I don't think you've proved anything on that point.

Likewise, I think it's a waste of money to go buying up private industry when you could spend that on just building new buildings.

The only trade it's worth tariffing is opium.

Also, I'd say you've been nowhere near aggressive enough with expansion.

I'm quite sure I'd achieve a higher GDP if I was to play it out. I just haven't had the time in the previous few days.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

My point was that your shenanigans with tariffs and keeping construction costs high is counterproductive. Any money you're making in tariffs you're losing from having excessively high construction costs. I don't think you've proved anything on that point.

I absolutly did, i showed you that the sheer reinvestment rate that this strategy allowed me to buff has been buffed to such a degree that the matter of increased construction costs are trivial in comparison, there is far more for a gain to it than there is a detriment to it and thats has been quantify ably proven.

The only trade it's worth tariffing is opium.

Thats just some "out of the blue" unproven claim with Zero to back it up, and which can in fact easily be disproven. indeed i already showed you that i can also make a fair amount of income on things like dyes and coffee, and besides a bit later in the game i will be able to sell more than a thousand units of clothes to China too. You have again nothing to back up your claim, its contrary to what i have already proven. it's easy to make claims out of nowhere and never having to back it up, as if "it is how i say it is, simply because i say so" but you just come across as willfully not wanting to see it.

Also, I'd say you've been nowhere near aggressive enough with expansion.

I'm quite sure I'd achieve a higher GDP if I was to play it out. I just haven't had the time in the previous few days.

These are all hollow boasts, that really fall short in contrast to my well documented arguments and tests. Like you cant find the time to boot up the game to play a few decades in the game, but you can return here to dismiss the merrit of what i want to show on the unproven claim that you can do so much better to which no reference is given but you keep claiming it. Thats just frustrating. Whats even the point of your most recent reply, you asked conditions before for a comparative game and i gave you some pointers and yet you still dont bring me something functional to even start comparing with.

 

[Don_Quigleone]

I absolutly did, i showed you that the sheer reinvestment rate that this strategy allowed me to buff has been buffed to such a degree that the matter of increased construction costs are trivial in comparison, there is far more for a gain to it than there is a detriment to it and thats has been quantify ably proven.



Thats just some "out of the blue" unproven claim with Zero to back it up, and which can in fact easily be disproven. indeed i already showed you that i can also make a fair amount of income on things like dyes and coffee, and besides a bit later in the game i will be able to sell more than a thousand units of clothes to China too. You have again nothing to back up your claim, its contrary to what i have already proven. it's easy to make claims out of nowhere and never having to back it up, as if "it is how i say it is, simply because i say so" but you just come across as willfully not wanting to see it.



These are all hollow boasts, that really fall short in contrast to my well documented arguments and tests. Like you cant find the time to boot up the game to play a few decades in the game, but you can return here to dismiss the merrit of what i want to show on the unproven claim that you can do so much better to which no reference is given but you keep claiming it. Thats just frustrating. Whats even the point of your most recent reply, you asked conditions before for a comparative game and i gave you some pointers and yet you still dont bring me something functional to even start comparing with.

As you can see I achieved almost double your GDP in the same amount of time. Some notes:

1. I conquered Baluchistan, Sindh, the Boer States and Gaza. If I played more normally I would have conquered significantly more, but I didn't want to be dramatically bigger then your run.

2. My reinvestment is (slightly) lower then yours, but that's largely because I have a lower reinvestment multiplier because my GDP is higher. Yours is 2.1, mine is at 1.5, so my buildings are generating about 33% more reinvestment then yours.

3. I only nationalized buildings in the states I conquered (because there's a big discount when you do so).

4. In the last 5 years, my GDP flatlined because I ran out of pops, and I didn't adequately take measures to draw further migration. I probably would have a much higher GDP if I had conquered more or adopted more pro migration laws earlier.

5. In terms of building, I mostly let the investment pool do it's thing, except that I built a robust construction industry to keep construction costs down.

6. In the last 10 years, I adopted Laissez Faire and Free Trade. I didn't change any other laws. Certain law changes (no migration controls in particular) would have signficantly improved my final GDP.

7. For most of my run, my debt was manageable, it only started growing when I ran out of pops (so my debt limit stopped growing).

8. If I had adopted Proportional taxation earlier (which I normally would do) my deficit would have been 60k lower.

9. As you can see my CP was triple your CP. My credit limit was 1.5x yours (44 vs 28)

10. France bailed me out of debt once, which certainly helped. On the other hand, I never once took war reps, which I usually use in most runs to boost my growth significantly.

11. Finally, your "strategies" only work at all on low GDPs, and they didn't even beat me playing mostly hands off. I was at 21 million GDP (your final GDP) in 1860, 12 years before you reached that GDP.

12. Nationwide SOL was 13. In metropolitan Portugal, it was 17.

I was generally being lazy on this run. as I just wanted to prove a point, and I was mostly letting the game run itself. If I had been focusing more, I probably could have reached 50 million+ GDP by 1870 as Portugal.

Edit: Here's my GDP graph:

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

View attachment 1274803

As you can see I achieved almost double your GDP in the same amount of time. Some notes:

1. I conquered Baluchistan, Sindh, the Boer States and Gaza. If I played more normally I would have conquered significantly more, but I didn't want to be dramatically bigger then your run.

2. My reinvestment is (slightly) lower then yours, but that's largely because I have a lower reinvestment multiplier because my GDP is higher. Yours is 2.1, mine is at 1.5, so my buildings are generating about 33% more reinvestment then yours.

3. I only nationalized buildings in the states I conquered (because there's a big discount when you do so).

4. In the last 5 years, my GDP flatlined because I ran out of pops, and I didn't adequately take measures to draw further migration. I probably would have a much higher GDP if I had conquered more or adopted more pro migration laws earlier.

5. In terms of building, I mostly let the investment pool do it's thing, except that I built a robust construction industry to keep construction costs down.

6. In the last 10 years, I adopted Laissez Faire and Free Trade. I didn't change any other laws. Certain law changes (no migration controls in particular) would have signficantly improved my final GDP.

7. For most of my run, my debt was manageable, it only started growing when I ran out of pops (so my debt limit stopped growing).

8. If I had adopted Proportional taxation earlier (which I normally would do) my deficit would have been 60k lower.

9. As you can see my CP was triple your CP. My credit limit was 1.5x yours (44 vs 28)

10. France bailed me out of debt once, which certainly helped. On the other hand, I never once took war reps, which I usually use in most runs to boost my growth significantly.

11. Finally, your "strategies" only work at all on low GDPs, and they didn't even beat me playing mostly hands off. I was at 21 million GDP (your final GDP) in 1860, 12 years before you reached that GDP.

12. Nationwide SOL was 13. In metropolitan Portugal, it was 17.

I was generally being lazy on this run. as I just wanted to prove a point, and I was mostly letting the game run itself. If I had been focusing more, I probably could have reached 50 million+ GDP by 1870 as Portugal.

Edit: Here's my GDP graph:

View attachment 1274804

its a good result, but you were playing for an optimal result for the purpose of comparison, you will have to grant me the chance to replay my own game via my own style for the purpose of maximization to see how far i can actually push it. But atleast its something to work with.

 

[Don_Quigleone]

its a good result, but you were playing for an optimal result for the purpose of comparison, you will have to grant me the chance to replay my own game via my own style for the purpose of maximization to see how far i can actually push it. But atleast its something to work with.

If I was to do a comparison again, it should be a larger country with no or limited conquest, so that :

A) you show that these strategies work when scaled up.
B) neither example runs out of pops (which obviously limits growth).

Personally I'd use France.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

If I was to do a comparison again, it should be a larger country with no or limited conquest, so that :

A) you show that these strategies work when scaled up.
B) neither example runs out of pops (which obviously limits growth).

Personally I'd use France.

Or perhaps even better Russia.

Anyway, this was from my run yesterday

42 million GDP, not too much of a difference with you. My reinvestment is slightly higher too, but thats counted with the modifier in mind.

GDP

I took roughly the same regions you took, atleast i presume so from what you said. In retrospect touching Transvaals goldmines is likely something you want to avoid for comparative gaming as there is a large random factor attached to it. But anyway, for the purpose of comparison it was also rational to take what you took. I took only half of Baluchistan, i did take Zulu though because they objected to me attacking Gaza. I was starting to feeling the presures and leveling growthrates of lack of a laborpool easily enough too at times, and indeed for a strategy that is meant to be about exponential growth its not too hard to hit that ceiling with Portugal if you do it well and have only so many avenues for expansion.

I'm pretty sure i maintained quite a bit less construction points all trough the game, I never went much above 250 afaik first 15 years i used practically solely wood construction sectors as befits the import strategy., as a result the investment pool sits on 93 million, which is afcourse significantly more than whatsits in your reserve. If you devide that by 42 years each 52 weeks then thats about 48.500£ of unused investment funds per week. And i was kinda only juicing it for the first five or 10 years, i never had the labor for so much construction to use it all, not in a fashion atleast that fits with certain strategy's i use for development. You have to admit its conspicuous, you used up all you got and went even deeper in debt. i'm pretty sure you and the Ai build perhaps 2 or 3 times the quantity i build, but i guess you had a similarly or greater rate of loss to devolution than i had.

 

[Don_Quigleone]

Or perhaps even better Russia.

Anyway, this was from my run yesterday

View attachment 1275444

42 million GDP, not too much of a difference with you. My reinvestment is slightly higher too, but thats counted with the modifier in mind.

GDP
View attachment 1275445

I took roughly the same regions you took, atleast i presume so from what you said. In retrospect touching Transvaals goldmines is likely something you want to avoid for comparative gaming as there is a large random factor attached to it. But anyway, for the purpose of comparison it was also rational to take what you took. I took only half of Baluchistan, i did take Zulu though because they objected to me attacking Gaza. I was starting to feeling the presures and leveling growthrates of lack of a laborpool easily enough too at times, and indeed for a strategy that is meant to be about exponential growth its not too hard to hit that ceiling with Portugal if you do it well and have only so many avenues for expansion.

I'm pretty sure i maintained quite a bit less construction points all trough the game, I never went much above 250 afaik first 15 years i used practically solely wood construction sectors as befits the import strategy., as a result the investment pool sits on 93 million, which is afcourse significantly more than whatsits in your reserve. If you devide that by 42 years each 52 weeks then thats about 48.500£ of unused investment funds per week. And i was kinda only juicing it for the first five or 10 years, i never had the labor for so much construction to use it all, not in a fashion atleast that fits with certain strategy's i use for development. You have to admit its conspicuous, you used up all you got and went even deeper in debt. i'm pretty sure you and the Ai build perhaps 2 or 3 times the quantity i build, but i guess you had a similarly or greater rate of loss to devolution than i had.

I think most of the difference is population. Your population is 16.1 million, mine was 14.6 million. That means your population was 1.1 times my population, and your economy was 1.13 times mine, a difference that could be just a small difference in tech.

You're in a better financial position then me, but I was also being careless. If I had passed better tax laws and done some other micro, I would have no deficit.

Finally, having lots of government owned industries only works well if your GDP is less then 45 million or so. Doing so at higher GDP will backfire.

I'd be willing to do the test again with Russia or France, but I'd caution that Russia is much more RNG dependent due to starting with absolutely awful laws. The person who gets off serfdom+agrarianism first will win automatically.