Much has been said on the topic in the title. Economies running out of peasants is not realistic, factories competing for laborers (and not the other way around) is not realistic, and structural unemployment basically doesn't exist in this game. It's a big simulational problem and besides creates very weird gameplay incentives of migration meta or 'conquer China to cannibalize for workforce' meta.
Historically of course lacking people to fill jobs wasn't really a problem, because there were constant small-scale technological improvements ('throughput bonuses' or 'production methods') which allowed factories to produce more and with smaller workforce. Factories were constantly laying people off. People were desperate to take jobs even for awful salaries. That's the simulation outcome that I think we should strive for.
Here's a few ideas how can this be addressed. This is meant as a discussion-starter post, not necessarily a set of specific suggestions.
1) Balance the game to be MUCH more aggressive in deleting unprofitable buildings.
Right now there is the 'autonomous downsizing' mechanic but it's slow to act and IIRC can't remove the last building level. As such in a late-game high-pop state (where the player and the private queue have built a lot of random businesses over the years) there are usually a handful of good big businesses, and many level-1 buildings that are barely getting by and not hiring because they can't compete for wages. If some of the buildings haven't been privatized, there can even be high-level empty buildings: the inv.pool doesn't buy up unprofitable stuff; example - you ordered 10 levels of steel foundry, nobody went to work there because there is enough steel elsewhere, they didn't produce anything and were never privatized, you never deleted the building because why would you, and autonomous downsizing never did either because it was never privately owned.
As a result, by late game, when pops have equilibriummed themselves into best workplaces, there is usually a huge pool of empty buildings that are not productive right now but do vacuum any unemployed or migrants should they spawn. This basically prevents unemployment entirely.
The game should force factories to be deleted once they are bankrupt. You have no cash reserves, negative balance, and the building that owns you (e.g. a financial district) doesn't want to send cash either - lights out. Downsize yourself, including the last level if we're at that point.
Vic2 had an intermediate 'closed' state for bankrupt factories but I think it would be harder to simulate in Vic3 just due to the way buildings and levels are organized.
If buildings are rebalanced to become unprofitable much more often, and that results in actual closedowns and layoffs, that would create an actual consistent source of unemployed, making it a persistent category that you never seem to catch up to eliminating (unlike now where unemployment represents a few poor fellas who didn't have a gametick just yet to be rehired).
At any rate, this will force the players to be much more mindful when building stuff. Imagine building a factory for a year as some Wallachia or whatever, to find out that you've misjudged whether it'd be productive; and then it's gone - at least requiring some additional capital investment to be reopened - that's a yearly budget of construction goods vaporized. I feel like Vic3 is lacking in this 'hard consequences for the player' aspect right now.
1.1) Just make construction less potent.
Regardless of the political system or who's in power, the player's ability to build stuff is unchecked. Conservative IGs can't react to the government plopping down 100 universities which would create a dramatic societal shift in favor of intelligentsia, undermining the conservatives' power. American slavers, even if they are in power right now, don't seem to mind when the player surreptitiously empowers northern industrialists by building only in northern states.
That's the main way the player currently, well, plays Vic3, so I don't think it should be removed. However, the government-sponsored (player-clicked) rapid industrialization (including via easily abused mechanics like growing your GDP and debt ceiling faster than you accumulate debt) produces ahistorical outcomes. It's just too easy to start industrializing from day 1. Every 'middle of nowhere' 1-state nation can outpace Stalin's Russia if you know where to click.
Some ways to nerf construction could be thought of, even beyond merely tweaking numbers. For example, industrial buildings may demand construction as ongoing input good (to simulate maintenance, repair, amortization, etc.).
Edit: LF could ban player construction outright (except for military buildings, railways, etc.). That will create an actual downside to it.
2) Make efficiency PMs also be labor-saving PMs.
Switching steel from Blister to Bessemer reallocates 500 Laborers to 250 Machinists and 250 Engineers. It could just remove 500 Laborers, for example, or produce a smaller number of advanced professions than now (say, 150 of each). That would force layoffs every time a PM is switched and create unemployment (and yes, radicals too). Lore-wise, it will simulate better how efficiency improvements typically meant 'higher output with smaller workforce' rather than 'higher output with the same workforce'.
3) Create a 'migration pull'-like mechanic for peasants to willingly become unemployed urban residents.
When news of new factory reach countryside, there is likely to be more second sons, local hobos or just poor farmers interested in signing up than what the economy immediately needs in laborers.
As such, when there are 5 thousand new places at a factory, say 10 thousand people could migrate to the city hoping to work there. The 'extra' 5k people become unemployed (living presumably off charity, welfare, or sporadic work) and generate unrest, which could fuel labor movements and etc., something the game currently lacks (unless you deliberately try really hard to ruin SoL, you're never seriously threatened by a communist revolution).
4) Make repeasanting incredibly unlikely.
Although it's already a rare occurrence, an unemployed pop may be 'employed' as a peasant on subsistence farms through ordinary jobseeking mechanics. The game believes it's better than being unemployed. This pop then gets a wage and presumably doesn't hate their life.
That is a process that should be very unfrequent, basically non-existent under normal conditions. Consider that, no matter which agriculture law a country might have, becoming a peasant requires one to not only abandon the big city life, but also to purchase a plot of land, or go back to being a slave/serf/tenant farmer (basically an indentured servant) with low-to-no income, who eats what they produce and doesn't make enough excess to buy stuff. Urban residents should not want to do that in a 19th century economy.
A simple mechanical solution is to add a flat SoL malus to peasants that makes being one really awful.
4.1) Kill off subsistence farms in mid-game by getting them outcompeted with organized agriculture.
A subsistence farm should also be allowed to go bankrupt and get 'closed down'. In every other respect the game treats it as any other business. It shouldn't be a very quick process (building 2 grain farms shouldn't immediately bankrupt all noble estates in the country) but in a rapidly industrializing economy they just have no place at some point. All their workforce then become unemployed.
Historically of course lacking people to fill jobs wasn't really a problem, because there were constant small-scale technological improvements ('throughput bonuses' or 'production methods') which allowed factories to produce more and with smaller workforce. Factories were constantly laying people off. People were desperate to take jobs even for awful salaries. That's the simulation outcome that I think we should strive for.
Here's a few ideas how can this be addressed. This is meant as a discussion-starter post, not necessarily a set of specific suggestions.
1) Balance the game to be MUCH more aggressive in deleting unprofitable buildings.
Right now there is the 'autonomous downsizing' mechanic but it's slow to act and IIRC can't remove the last building level. As such in a late-game high-pop state (where the player and the private queue have built a lot of random businesses over the years) there are usually a handful of good big businesses, and many level-1 buildings that are barely getting by and not hiring because they can't compete for wages. If some of the buildings haven't been privatized, there can even be high-level empty buildings: the inv.pool doesn't buy up unprofitable stuff; example - you ordered 10 levels of steel foundry, nobody went to work there because there is enough steel elsewhere, they didn't produce anything and were never privatized, you never deleted the building because why would you, and autonomous downsizing never did either because it was never privately owned.
As a result, by late game, when pops have equilibriummed themselves into best workplaces, there is usually a huge pool of empty buildings that are not productive right now but do vacuum any unemployed or migrants should they spawn. This basically prevents unemployment entirely.
The game should force factories to be deleted once they are bankrupt. You have no cash reserves, negative balance, and the building that owns you (e.g. a financial district) doesn't want to send cash either - lights out. Downsize yourself, including the last level if we're at that point.
Vic2 had an intermediate 'closed' state for bankrupt factories but I think it would be harder to simulate in Vic3 just due to the way buildings and levels are organized.
If buildings are rebalanced to become unprofitable much more often, and that results in actual closedowns and layoffs, that would create an actual consistent source of unemployed, making it a persistent category that you never seem to catch up to eliminating (unlike now where unemployment represents a few poor fellas who didn't have a gametick just yet to be rehired).
At any rate, this will force the players to be much more mindful when building stuff. Imagine building a factory for a year as some Wallachia or whatever, to find out that you've misjudged whether it'd be productive; and then it's gone - at least requiring some additional capital investment to be reopened - that's a yearly budget of construction goods vaporized. I feel like Vic3 is lacking in this 'hard consequences for the player' aspect right now.
1.1) Just make construction less potent.
Regardless of the political system or who's in power, the player's ability to build stuff is unchecked. Conservative IGs can't react to the government plopping down 100 universities which would create a dramatic societal shift in favor of intelligentsia, undermining the conservatives' power. American slavers, even if they are in power right now, don't seem to mind when the player surreptitiously empowers northern industrialists by building only in northern states.
That's the main way the player currently, well, plays Vic3, so I don't think it should be removed. However, the government-sponsored (player-clicked) rapid industrialization (including via easily abused mechanics like growing your GDP and debt ceiling faster than you accumulate debt) produces ahistorical outcomes. It's just too easy to start industrializing from day 1. Every 'middle of nowhere' 1-state nation can outpace Stalin's Russia if you know where to click.
Some ways to nerf construction could be thought of, even beyond merely tweaking numbers. For example, industrial buildings may demand construction as ongoing input good (to simulate maintenance, repair, amortization, etc.).
Edit: LF could ban player construction outright (except for military buildings, railways, etc.). That will create an actual downside to it.
2) Make efficiency PMs also be labor-saving PMs.
Switching steel from Blister to Bessemer reallocates 500 Laborers to 250 Machinists and 250 Engineers. It could just remove 500 Laborers, for example, or produce a smaller number of advanced professions than now (say, 150 of each). That would force layoffs every time a PM is switched and create unemployment (and yes, radicals too). Lore-wise, it will simulate better how efficiency improvements typically meant 'higher output with smaller workforce' rather than 'higher output with the same workforce'.
3) Create a 'migration pull'-like mechanic for peasants to willingly become unemployed urban residents.
When news of new factory reach countryside, there is likely to be more second sons, local hobos or just poor farmers interested in signing up than what the economy immediately needs in laborers.
As such, when there are 5 thousand new places at a factory, say 10 thousand people could migrate to the city hoping to work there. The 'extra' 5k people become unemployed (living presumably off charity, welfare, or sporadic work) and generate unrest, which could fuel labor movements and etc., something the game currently lacks (unless you deliberately try really hard to ruin SoL, you're never seriously threatened by a communist revolution).
4) Make repeasanting incredibly unlikely.
Although it's already a rare occurrence, an unemployed pop may be 'employed' as a peasant on subsistence farms through ordinary jobseeking mechanics. The game believes it's better than being unemployed. This pop then gets a wage and presumably doesn't hate their life.
That is a process that should be very unfrequent, basically non-existent under normal conditions. Consider that, no matter which agriculture law a country might have, becoming a peasant requires one to not only abandon the big city life, but also to purchase a plot of land, or go back to being a slave/serf/tenant farmer (basically an indentured servant) with low-to-no income, who eats what they produce and doesn't make enough excess to buy stuff. Urban residents should not want to do that in a 19th century economy.
A simple mechanical solution is to add a flat SoL malus to peasants that makes being one really awful.
4.1) Kill off subsistence farms in mid-game by getting them outcompeted with organized agriculture.
A subsistence farm should also be allowed to go bankrupt and get 'closed down'. In every other respect the game treats it as any other business. It shouldn't be a very quick process (building 2 grain farms shouldn't immediately bankrupt all noble estates in the country) but in a rapidly industrializing economy they just have no place at some point. All their workforce then become unemployed.
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