Fix the "Automated Irrigation" PM eating up the entire world's supply of Engines

[Amina144]

Right now the "Engines" good has terrible balance throughout the game. When it is unlocked you only need it in small quantities as railways overall consume little. But then suddenly the entire world wants it when they unlock the "Automatic Irrigation" PM for plantations, meanwhile you don't get the next tier of Engines for quite some time. I hope this can be fixed with the new Trade Rework, otherwise entire world market will demand Engines for random plantations instead of actual railway infrastructure.

Honestly Automatic Irrigation should either be removed or be changed to be an automation PM at minimum. Current balancing for Plantation goods is also wack and that production method ruins it.

 

[Froonk]

I really do hope they do a balance pass on production methods with these world trade changes. Plantations already needed some tuning because frankly most plantation goods weren't in enough of a demand especially crops like coffee and tobacco but with changes to world trade there will be an entirely different dynamic for supply and demand worldwide so all goods need to be checked throughout eras.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

Right now the "Engines" good has terrible balance throughout the game. When it is unlocked you only need it in small quantities as railways overall consume little. But then suddenly the entire world wants it when they unlock the "Automatic Irrigation" PM for plantations, meanwhile you don't get the next tier of Engines for quite some time. I hope this can be fixed with the new Trade Rework, otherwise entire world market will demand Engines for random plantations instead of actual railway infrastructure.

Honestly Automatic Irrigation should either be removed or be changed to be an automation PM at minimum. Current balancing for Plantation goods is also wack and that production method ruins it.

But specialization in engines is so much FUN! i'm litteraly conciously going about conquering country's and releasing them with pumpjack tech so they will buy loads of my engines, you vertically integrate that stuff with companies like your steel and engines factory in a province with atleast iron and coal and possibly rubber too like say in Benin its mmm juicy! It works great by releasing specific country's that have no minerals by which they would effeciently build such engines themselves and are hence likely to buy all the engines from you, like Etheopia is a classic in this but you can take large bites out of China too, it's a way by which country's can come specialized in highly productive industry's with high paying jobs, and having agricultural vassals buying your engines and returning loads of agricultural goods in return means its pretty much all cheap and you can do away with your own farming.

You are currently experiencing problems as to how you would best manage your engine industry, i can see how such things can be the case but your wrong that they have a "terrible balance throughout the game" as optimized car factory's can be highly productive. Even that the upgraded PM takes some time to unlock by tech is not such a big issue and heck cars can be unlocked well before 1900 if you focus a lot on tech too. Throughput and cheap enough inputs are critical sure but with propper verical integration things start to "add up".

I really do hope they do a balance pass on production methods with these world trade changes. Plantations already needed some tuning because frankly most plantation goods weren't in enough of a demand especially crops like coffee and tobacco but with changes to world trade there will be an entirely different dynamic for supply and demand worldwide so all goods need to be checked throughout eras.

I dont think the trade rework will nessecarily change the matter so much for many country's. demand for coffee and tobacco is SOL driven, though much more so for coffee than tobacco but then there are also substitutes like liqour and opium. Country's like Brzil for example might still find it hard to compete as suppliers versus country's like Portugal if they cant compete in terms of low labor prices.

In fact, perhaps rather than having much tobacco flowing from the rest of the world to Europe, we might see much more liqour flow from Europe to the rest of the world. We will have to see.

Not that i'm skeptical of the changes, i think it will be great, but the more fundamental element in trade is competitive advantage and thats mostly a matter of low labor cost vs highly effecient production.

 

[Delterius]

I dont think the trade rework will nessecarily change the matter so much for many country's.

It won't necessarily, but it should. A world market already allows countries like Brazil, with lots of arable land and province modifiers, to compete with advantages. What is lacking overall is demand. Britain's industry, for an instance, should hunger for cotton to the point where it could demand textiles from Egypt, India and the US all at once. Going by how the game works I'd be surprised if Britain couldn't make do with a third of India.

Demand for plantation goods should massively increase overall and this DLC is the best opportunity to do it. If we remain in a situation where nobody needs tobacco because they have liquor and you need 20+ or 25+ living standards across the board for anything outside Opium to be profitable then all future DLC will be as jeopardized as the Brazil one currently is.

The South America DLC is probably a first in paradox history, where a region was given further attention by the devs except it wasn't buffed. It was nerfed. Industrial strategies were purposefully hurt in the name of the historical paths those countries took. Infrastructure is bad across the board, mineral resources are scarce and great MAPI states are rare. To say nothing of construction maluses in the Amazon and the Andes. It made the game more interesting but it is not yet fully realized because plantation goods straight up suck.

Moreover considering this year's focus on monopolies then the River of Coffee entry should truly lead to the 'money giving tree' bonus. This is the period where Brazil goes from producing a plurality to the vast majority of the world's coffee supply. Currently that's not even desirable.

 

[ThePastfinder]

The problem isn't that specific tech, it's that PMs are even a thing. Plantations gradually using more advanced equipment makes sense. Every plantation in the country instantly switching to automatic irrigation at zero cost is absurd. The human player ends up with another tedious micro-optimizing task (picking specific states to change) and AI gets another way to bungle things.

PMs should either be a proportion that shifts for construction points, or even just get replaced by separate building types altogether. Either way would solve this silly reason for a vast market disruption. Plus it would improve foreign investment, since it wouldn't be stuck at the local technology level.

 

[Aloraand]

Also, I'm not sure if the automated irrigation is meant to be some steam powered sprinkler system, but wasn't irrigation mostly done through a lot of digging to get the water closer to the fields and then onto fields mostly by gravity?

 

[Delterius]

Also, I'm not sure if the automated irrigation is meant to be some steam powered sprinkler system, but wasn't irrigation mostly done through a lot of digging to get the water closer to the fields and then onto fields mostly by gravity?

I think its both meant to represent center pivot irrigation as well as a general purpose usage of pumping to divert rivers and maintain reservoirs/canals.

 

[praftd]

The problem isn't that specific tech, it's that PMs are even a thing. Plantations gradually using more advanced equipment makes sense. Every plantation in the country instantly switching to automatic irrigation at zero cost is absurd. The human player ends up with another tedious micro-optimizing task (picking specific states to change) and AI gets another way to bungle things.

PMs should either be a proportion that shifts for construction points, or even just get replaced by separate building types altogether. Either way would solve this silly reason for a vast market disruption. Plus it would improve foreign investment, since it wouldn't be stuck at the local technology level.

One fundimental problem of the game is that construction is slow but conversion is instant. The reality is, a non-industrialized toolshop should be near instantaneous to build. You could literally set one up in your garage within a month. And yet it takes ages to build them? Steel mills which are part of industrialized tech makes sense. But basic farms? Tool shops?

Many buildings should be near instant to construct but be very slow to increase production after being built. PMs should be progressive and take time to convert, and have a cost. If productivity was more gradually ramped up instead of buildings coming online and instantly producing, or switching PMs instantly doubling output, then there wouldn't be these massive price swings of goods.

Early non-industrialized buildings = fast to build, high worker count, low productivity, low productivity growth
Mid-to-late industrialized buildings = medium time to build, medium worker count, medium productivity growth, medium productivity
PM Switches = Progressive to implement, Costs money, decreases worker count, increases productivity growth, increases productivity. (All based on the PM)

At the end of the day, industrialization should be a progression were productivity goes up, worker cost goes down, and efficiencies depends on certain factors. It should not be the long-drawn out process of building queues followed by instant flipping of PMs.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

It won't necessarily, but it should. A world market already allows countries like Brazil, with lots of arable land and province modifiers, to compete with advantages.

What advantages? A few % more throughput on their plantations? Sure its something, but critically its not enough on its own to compete with low cost producers. If Brazil could out compete its competitors at start it would have a pretty big market for it to sell coffee and tobacco too, the reason that doesn't tend to work is because there are country's in Europe running colonies with colonial exploitation where these goods can also be produced in volume and at faaaar cheaper prices. So Portugal just for one steals much of the potential market from Brazil, and the only way Brazil is actually going to compete is if it can build up more competitive advantages but notably with far lower wages too. Which is possible actually as Brazil starts with debt slavery, but there's the choice which most players wont take to turn much of the Brazilian pops into slaves and work to significantly reduce the upkeep cost of those slaves to then produce goods very cheap and arguably in "a wastefull way" for the mere purpose of making it big on tariff revenue. Its understandable that the strategy required to make Brazil successful as a big agricultural producer is also one where Brazil has to become a exploitative banana republic which in many ways does not favor its future, especially in regard to getting immigration.

Yes, in real life Latin America exported lots of cash crops and agricultural products, but in many cases that was also build on historical exploitation, a player playing Brazil cannot "have its cake and eat it" in that regard, and thats fair imho. The tools are kinda in place to make Brazil a big coffee and tobacco exporter even in the current version but the vast majority of players playing Brazil wont take the required measures to achieve it part because its a complicated and not so well know strat and part because they follow a more classical path of development that otherwise works for most nations, aka employ your people then make them richer and succeed, why would many players step away from that strategy just to focus on a low earnings per pop industry just for the sake of selling coffee and tobacco? A journal entry perhaps?

What is lacking overall is demand. Britain's industry, for an instance, should hunger for cotton to the point where it could demand textiles from Egypt, India and the US all at once.

I assume that if you make that argument, that your speaking from actual historical knowledge, and so you can back that up? I dont know about that, i'm not saying your wrong either just interrested to read up on that.

Demand for plantation goods should massively increase overall and this DLC is the best opportunity to do it. If we remain in a situation where nobody needs tobacco because they have liquor and you need 20+ or 25+ living standards across the board for anything outside Opium to be profitable then all future DLC will be as jeopardized as the Brazil one currently is.

Its a sort of somewhat proximity based trading system where you wont be stopping substitutes coming into your nation lest you dissuade it with a tariff policy, so by norm i think every country will roughly get every substitution within their market even if they didnt ask for it.

Intoxicant demand is high early on, you can sell loads of tobacco and/or you can have your own pops consume load of it but that also depends whether they can dominate a market with ought substitutes being around. The thing is that liqour production can easily be ramped up high in Europe to the point of it having fairly cheap cost that their market will only demand limited amounts of tobacco as substitute and only at rather cheap prices, so its still ok and lucrative if you can produce tobacco to -75% market price and be profitable which Portugal by default can and which Brazil by default cant, it will take effort from Brazil to be able to produce at such cheap rates. However etiehrway the intoxicant market is huge so if you can produce cheap it has loads of potential as is. The luxury drink market has far less intitial demand and takes longer to ramp up but the there are many country's who are very limited if not unable to produce any luxury drinks themselves and these markets can proof very important for exporters of these goods, to the point where you might conquer them and release them with better tech and boost their economy just so that their pops will buy your stuff and from you alone.

The South America DLC is probably a first in paradox history, where a region was given further attention by the devs except it wasn't buffed. It was nerfed. Industrial strategies were purposefully hurt in the name of the historical paths those countries took. Infrastructure is bad across the board, mineral resources are scarce and great MAPI states are rare. To say nothing of construction maluses in the Amazon and the Andes. It made the game more interesting but it is not yet fully realized because plantation goods straight up suck.

I get that point, i get how the trade rework could potentially be a bit of a dissapointment for Brazil players who think this will solve all their issues. I doubt it. I think it will be great and certainly a step forward, but otoh i think most Brazil players kinda simply never achieve to do what it takes to actually make Brazil a viable large coffee and tobacco exporter with the tools that are actually available to them. Its a multifaceted thing, sure you can acknowledge some of the shortcommings of the game but you cant blame it all on the game when it comes to "skill issues".

 

[Amina144]

In my opinion plantation economy should be very land & workforce intensive, I dont think it should have any advanced PMs beyond the basic one. This will be much better for balancing and gameplay, it will make land much more valuable and you will need low wage workforce to work them. Otherwise size 10 plantation could literally supply your entire industry as it is now. Also I dislike how easily you can make everyone wealthy through out entire production chain.

Hopefully devs can fix this because it can tackle two issues with one, the problem with plantation balancing, and how entire supply of engines are used for sprinklers.

 

[Delterius]

If Brazil could out compete its competitors at start it would have a pretty big market for it to sell coffee and tobacco too

The current problem is not one of competition. There simply are no markets to compete in. Brazil has arable land, Slave Trade, state modifiers and journal event modifiers. You could add further advantages to the mix with Company bonuses or state decrees. You could even mod the game outright to improve Brazil's bonuses to coffee, cotton, tobacco and so on. None of it matters. The simple fact is that right now if people have liquor, they don't need tobacco. Britain doesn't need a whole lot of cotton. And coffee is too much of a luxury for most people.

I mean its really not that hard to outcompete the AI. You can right now start as any number of countries and take over a massive share of the Opium market. You don't need slavery. You don't have to be Britain or China. You can do it as Colombia or Iran. The reason you can make money with Opium and not with Coffee is because Opium is in demand, Coffee isn't. Cotton isn't. Sugar isn't. Tobacco isn't. Meat isn't.

I think you're arguing from the intentional design of the game, which does not necessarily correspond with the reality things:

Yes, in real life Latin America exported lots of cash crops and agricultural products, but in many cases that was also build on historical exploitation, a player playing Brazil cannot "have its cake and eat it" in that regard, and thats fair imho. The tools are kinda in place to make Brazil a big coffee and tobacco exporter even in the current version

Who are you talking to here? Not me. I didn't ask to 'have my cake and eat it too'. I am, in fact, exploiting my population. I'm even growing slavery all the way to the final colonization of Africa's decentralized nations. It just doesn't really matter.

I get that point, i get how the trade rework could potentially be a bit of a dissapointment for Brazil players who think this will solve all their issues.

I don't think it's just big a disappointment to Brazil players. Its an indictment of the DLC as it stands, sure. But it is a much bigger problem than that. It is an issue with the base of the economy. Industrialization starts in the hinterlands. To have textiles you start with enclosures. Imperialism in this era is a conduit through which growing commodity prices in industrializing Europe can be brought under control. Britain didn't invest in cotton harvesting from the Americas to their colonies in Africa and South Asia just because. They did it because they had to. Because it was in their interests to. Currently its not even in your interest to bother feeding Britain. Cotton King fails not because Britain has diversified investments, but because it doesn't need to.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

In my opinion plantation economy should be very land & workforce intensive, I dont think it should have any advanced PMs beyond the basic one.

Hardly would make sense from a historical sense though, as in a way it was the "agricultural revolution" that kinda enabled the industrial revolution. Productiity and mechanisation in agriculture allowed more of a labor surpluss that could then fill the factory's. Its more like tis isnt felt proportionally very hard in Viky 3, arguably pushing people in the factory's early on should make food prices rise high early on to the point that it limits you, and sooner than it would limit you now trough rising food prices, so that something like pumpjacks would become rather imporant towards further industrialisation.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

The simple fact is that right now if people have liquor, they don't need tobacco.

and yet you can still sell fairly large volumes afaik, its justa matter of being able to bring the price much cheaper than that of liqour, which does often starts relativly cheap but seldomly will be sold at such low prices.

I mean its really not that hard to outcompete the AI. You can right now start as any number of countries and take over a massive share of the Opium market. You don't need slavery. You don't have to be Britain or China. You can do it as Colombia or Iran. The reason you can make money with Opium and not with Coffee is because Opium is in demand, Coffee isn't. Cotton isn't. Sugar isn't. Tobacco isn't. Meat isn't.

China has an obsession for Opium right? The issue with coffee is the SOL level onto which demand will start, but tobacco afaik doesnt have that isse. You can create that demand for tobacco when selling cheap enough, it would be harder to achieve the same with coffee and might be similarly so for sugar. Tobacco is an intoxicant afterall, the quantity's of intoxicants sold on the world market are far larger than that of luxury drinks.

I think you're arguing from an imagined reading of the game that does not correspond with reality:

i think i was speaking from experience, ill boot up Brazil in a game maybe tomorrow and test it and show my results. As to making insinuations as to another persons level of fancifulll immagination i think ill refrain from returning that onto your person. Because is that really nessecary as a way to which we would emphasize or own perspective or oppinion according to our different experiences?

 

[lukesilveira]

One fundimental problem of the game is that construction is slow but conversion is instant. The reality is, a non-industrialized toolshop should be near instantaneous to build. You could literally set one up in your garage within a month. And yet it takes ages to build them? Steel mills which are part of industrialized tech makes sense. But basic farms? Tool shops?

Many buildings should be near instant to construct but be very slow to increase production after being built. PMs should be progressive and take time to convert, and have a cost. If productivity was more gradually ramped up instead of buildings coming online and instantly producing, or switching PMs instantly doubling output, then there wouldn't be these massive price swings of goods.

Early non-industrialized buildings = fast to build, high worker count, low productivity, low productivity growth
Mid-to-late industrialized buildings = medium time to build, medium worker count, medium productivity growth, medium productivity
PM Switches = Progressive to implement, Costs money, decreases worker count, increases productivity growth, increases productivity. (All based on the PM)

At the end of the day, industrialization should be a progression were productivity goes up, worker cost goes down, and efficiencies depends on certain factors. It should not be the long-drawn out process of building queues followed by instant flipping of PMs.

While I completely agree with your points, I think some early production methods should be separate buildings altogether rather than just distinct PMs, which would address the problems you mentioned. Then, if a province already has the earlier building, give a small bonus for constructing the next tier to represent conversion.

PMs and their evolution work well in many cases (like plantations or adding specific products to boost efficiency), but sometimes the entire operation would be completely overhauled, especially with automation or electrification. And as you noted, an industrial workshop should cost significantly more than an artisanal one.

Additionally, since right now PMs can be changed freely, considering the limitations of the game engine, balancing the costs of changing PMs, and AI constraints, separate buildings seem more realistic than the developers revising the entire PM system.

 

[47pik]

As many have pointed out, this is a consequence of the “all-or-nothing” approach to PMs. It’s really not ideal, but I don’t see the system changing any time soon, and honestly it’s not exactly the top priority for new systems IMO (overhauls for trade, logistics, diplomatic plays, navies and war are all higher priorities. Building/PM reworks probably come after that to me).

But yeah, ideally switching PMs both requires an investment to do, and can be done slowly over time so there aren’t these massive swings in the market for input goods.

 

[Delterius]

and yet you can still sell fairly large volumes afaik, its justa matter of being able to bring the price much cheaper than that of liqour, which does often starts relativly cheap but seldomly will be sold at such low prices.

China has an obsession for Opium right? The issue with coffee is the SOL level onto which demand will start, but tobacco afaik doesnt have that isse. You can create that demand for tobacco when selling cheap enough, it would be harder to achieve the same with coffee and might be similarly so for sugar. Tobacco is an intoxicant afterall, the quantity's of intoxicants sold on the world market are far larger than that of luxury drinks.

i think i was speaking from experience, ill boot up Brazil in a game maybe tomorrow and test it and show my results.

I think you're capable of proving my point masterfully. The way you've chosen to tackle this issue is the same I chose, and it tells us all we need to know: what needs to be done vis a vis something like the Brazil journal entry is to push the economic simulation to its limits. The only way to move large volumes of most agricultural commodities at all is to push your prices as close to the -75% cap as possible. Now that is a legit strategy that I've applied myself and reaped rewards from. In fact I'll be the first to say that demand for agricultural goods has improved slightly since Colossus of the South came out. I'd go even one step further: with the upcoming system of subventions and tariffs, to push your prices down as much as possible is the intended play to achieve global monopoly status. The point I'm trying to make is more nuanced than that: it is that this should not be the beginning or the end of how the economic life of this game works. Because if it is, then the result is really, really wonky in terms of how people behave and consume.

What makes it possible to move volumes of Opium even if you don't push the game to its limits? Because its demand is structural to the game's economic life. China's obsession combined with mid/late military needs means the game creates hard demands for Opium that should exist for all agricultural goods. Opium is unique in the sense that it is the only agricultural good that behaves, price wise, in the same vein as industrial goods do. You can't industrialize without Iron, Coal, Lumber and so on. So there's a hard demand for all of these goods. You either make more of them, import them or die in the water. Likewise, Opium will always be in demand relative to its current supply.

The very same experience should apply to the entire agricultural economy. For the industrial revolution to start, as it historically did, in the farms and fields you must have a structural demand for agricultural commodities. What we have today is a situation where, well, you can't make Clothes without Cotton. But Cotton is so plentiful compared to current demands that one wonders why an agricultural revolution was even warranted in the first place. Sure, you can argue that a historical British Empire had access to cheap plentiful labor for Cotton from places like Egypt and India. The former being the main beneficiary of the American Civil War's disruption of the American's South cottonculture. But you don't have to play Britain to have that experience. As Brazil, right now, you have good Cotton states. And you should just ignore them. Import the good just as you import Silk. You don't need an agricultural revolution even as a hyper industrial Brazil. You just need India to keep churning much more Cotton than the world needs.

Agricultural consumer goods suffer twice over because they are only indirectly related to the industrial chain. Goods substitution means that there is no growing demand for a breadbasket of foodstuffs unless you have very rich industrial workers in the first place. As a result, you have a situation where the people of Victoria 3 are bereft of the simple, toxic pleasure of drinking and smoking at the same time because a successful player has to displace Liquor in the name of Tobacco. Factory workers don't need stimulants to stay alert because they need to make enough money to buy luxurious Coffee for their homes. And since all demand is driven by pops reaching high SoL then it doesn't matter how big Urban Centers get. There's no artisanal services economy. No one opens a cornerstore, a boutique, a restaurant, a bakery or a coffehouse. All the market stalls need to service is a source of lighting and glasses for their empty showcases. The weirdness just keeps going.

That's the vein of what I'm talking about. Plantation goods should be better integrated into the industrial production chains. Stimulants for factory workers, greater demands for industrial textiles and bakeries, and a series of hard, structural demands for every post-peasant economy regardless of how well distributed its incomes are. Something has to be added to the game to bridge the gap between Staple and Luxury Goods because this is the time period when many of those 'Luxury Goods' are not just for rich people any more. Tobacco and Coffee are two examples of inelastic demand, with the growing urban population demanding both in droves even when prices rose over time.

In short, any country that is industrializing and urbanizing to any degree needs to massively drive up the demand for most plantation goods. Either indirectly (for an example, because factories need a ton of Cotton to keep up with Clothes demand), or directly, because luxury goods like Sugar, Coffee, Wine and Tobacco are not just for the wealthy.

 

[Secret Master]

What this thread really demonstrates is that the "problem" of plantations is multifaceted.

1) Luxury drinks only get demand at SOL 15. So, coffee and tea are not good bets for heavy early game investment.

2) Except for obsessions, there is no real need to get serious about investing in certain intoxicants. Liquor can be made on rye farms that are quite common and in factories. Why would I make the effort to secure tobacco? And while wine is a plantation good, it can be produced all over the map, so, again, there's no need to get super invested in it as a good.

3) Some plantation goods have multiple sources. I've already mentioned liquor, but we can't really forget fabric. And let's be clear: fabric comes from livestock ranches. As far as I know, livestock ranches are the only type of agriculture building that can be built anywhere. Sugar is another one. I can get sugar from farms all over the planet. While the plantation buildings are far more efficient at producing these things, there isn't a driving 16th Century desire for massive sugar plantations as such. And that doesn't even address dye.

4) Goods substitution in the game means that POPs care less about prices than you think. From the wiki:

Notice that prices are not important here. It's market share. This leads to bizarre outcomes like this:

Why is coffee in such high demand despite lower prices on wine? Because of market share. This is Austria, by the way, so this isn't a case of obsessions skewing results or something. POPs could buy more wine to replace coffee demand, but they won't due to market share. I picked this screenshot specifically because it's the exact opposite of what people are reporting in this thread with coffee. I have a ton of demand for high priced coffee... Despite prices making wine look better.

Even worse, wine can get demand from other buy packages, so why aren't they drinking more? Goods substitution.

Bonus points for tea:

Yeah, those POPs could be drinking more tea, too. But they aren't.

All that being said, I'm not 100% convinced that plantations are in a bad place right now.

Much virtual ink has been spilled talking about plantations should be more or have more demand or be more profitable. But I'm reminded that during the period, there were plenty of situations where plantation style agriculture simply didn't make that much money. The example that always comes to mind is during the ACW. The Confederacy's attempt to make "Cotton King" was a miserable failure. Britain simply got cotton from other sources.

Sugar is another one where economic pressures made a plantation style economy less viable over time. Unless my sources are wrong, beet sugar accounted for 2/3 of sugar production in 1899. And the process of converting over to beet sugar was started before Vic3 starts (Napoleonic Wars).

Plantation style agriculture wasn't magic. It had to face economic pressures just like everything else in the period. I'm not sure I dislike its current place in Vic3. It's certainly not historical at game start (tobacco, sugar, and coffee really should be more valuable), but these things also shouldn't be dominating the world market for decades on end, either.

To be honest, I think what's really going causing these issues is a combination of factors.

1) It's too easy to conquer a colonial empire that has those products super early in the game.
2) Goods substitution doesn't do the market any favors in these situations.
3) There is no differentiation between cotton and wool.

While I'm not too concerned about plantation goods in Vic3, if these three issues were addressed, it would probably make the situation better.

 

[Hansatron]

There’s nothing wrong with demand leading supply. When you first get PMs that need rubber or oil, you can easy outstrip the existing world supply. Engines are no different - you just… build more motor industries.

The only real problem here is that automatic irrigation is the only production upgrade for plantations, so you get a massive jump to +100% output (for most goods.) For just 5 engines, this is an absolute steal; even with expensive engines and cheap plantation goods it is generally worth it.

I would much rather have 3 plantation base PMs instead of 2 so this jump could be a bit buffered. I also think engines should be part of some of the mining base PMs instead of only tools + fuel. Because the single most important tech early game is atmospheric engine and water tube boilers, allowing you to massively increase mineral output for little cost at the start. You barely need industry to support industrialized mining.

And that would help make motor industries a little more balanced early on, instead of 1 level = expensive engines, 2 levels = poverty because railroads barely use any.

 

[PedroLuiz]

Additionally, since right now PMs can be changed freely, considering the limitations of the game engine, balancing the costs of changing PMs, and AI constraints, separate buildings seem more realistic than the developers revising the entire PM system.

Well yes, but that will have a hefty performance cost

 

[lukesilveira]

Well yes, but that will have a hefty performance cost

I suggested adding some buildings types instead of reforming how Production Methods works. Why do you think it would have heftier performance cost than the alternative?