Ideas to mitigate the problem of economies running out of people

[TheFlemishDuck]

same employment per construction point + cheaper construction points through tech + more investment = too much employment in the end game

Thats why the bandaid would aim specifically at the metric "employment per construction point".

If we introduce say housing that say has a average 600 construction point cost but then maybe employs at maximum 10 people as opposed to the 1000+ that would remain in any factory even after automation and we induce the system to build roughly as much housing as industry in construction point coast then we will be potentially significantly impacting the pace of growth, though that would require that the ROI of housing is significantly lower than that of industry too.

My mod will include different types of housing that increase exponentially in cost where the most expensive housing will only be build in volume once society approaches it's maximum attainable wealth per capita. With other words, the more you grow and the richer you would get, the more growth would slow down as the construction pool is forced to build buildings with lower ROI that employ practically noone but take an increasingly longer time to build.

By the end i would like to balance that out with pop growth, so that the housing provides less jobs that pop growth creates pushing for small volumes of unemployment that occasionally push the construction pool to add another factory. one of the main functions of this would also be to "allow the construction sector to keep going" and utilise its supplying industry when there is no room to expand on industry which might otherwise happen if you hit the limit and translate in reinvestment piling up unused. Functionally that should push more for the sort of S curve with diminishing returns to the end as i described before.

 

[PedroLuiz]

Thats why the bandaid would aim specifically at the metric "employment per construction point". If we introduce say housing that say has a average 600 construction point cost but then maybe employs at maximum 10 people as opposed to the 1000+ that would remain in any factory even after automation and we induce the system to build roughly as much housing as industry in construction point coast then we will be potentially significantly impacting the pace of growth, though that would require that the ROI of housing is significantly lower than that of industry too. My mod will include different types of housing that increase exponentially in cost where the most expensive housing will only be build in volume once society aproaches it's maximum attainable wealth per capita. With other words, the more you grow and the richer you would get, the more growth would slow down as the construction pool is forced to build buildings with lower ROI that employ practically noone.

My counterpoint is that that solution feels unsatisfactory

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

My counterpoint is that that solution feels unsatisfactory

Okay, elaborate? What solution would feel satisfactory?

 

[PedroLuiz]

Okay, elaborate? What solution would feel satisfactory?

A combination of far fewer jobs for higher tiers of PM, Urban centers using up construction points as "housing" and requiring Construction to change PMs would have a more integrated feel and have more or less the same effect

 

[PedroLuiz]

This creates bizarre incentives. For example, why make a ton of farms if you know you can just have terrible subsistence farms soak up labor until you get more factories and mines in place?

Because you at some point need those peasants to move to somewhere else, mostly mines

 

[Secret Master]

Because you at some point need those peasants to move to somewhere else, mostly mines

Not in all cases.

A great example was my last game as Austria. Kept getting migration to Bohemia that I was using to fuel factory expansion there. My owned mines (and oil fields!) were for the most part topped off for labor, so I just wanted the POPs to move to a few keys states (Bohemia being one) to fill up factories.

But the farms in Bohemia were not hiring. So, if I didn't have subsistence farms for those POPs to sit on, they'd be unemployed and angry while factories finished building. It's only a few weeks here and there, but for those few weeks, migration stopped and POPs got mad. Having the subsistence farms there tied them up so migration to Bohemia could continue while the POPs were "employed" enough to not be angry.

Basically, subsistence farms are a way to permanently end transition unemployment.

 

[Superdark33]

Not in all cases.

A great example was my last game as Austria. Kept getting migration to Bohemia that I was using to fuel factory expansion there. My owned mines (and oil fields!) were for the most part topped off for labor, so I just wanted the POPs to move to a few keys states (Bohemia being one) to fill up factories.

But the farms in Bohemia were not hiring. So, if I didn't have subsistence farms for those POPs to sit on, they'd be unemployed and angry while factories finished building. It's only a few weeks here and there, but for those few weeks, migration stopped and POPs got mad. Having the subsistence farms there tied them up so migration to Bohemia could continue while the POPs were "employed" enough to not be angry.

Basically, subsistence farms are a way to permanently end transition unemployment.

Bohemia is an absolute powerhouse state to do this with.

I played a communist HRE game and moved my capital to Bohemia, getting mass migrations there back to back or its neighboring states, i could barely outpace the pop growth and immigration with construction if it wasnt for the subsistance farms soaking them up.

I shouldve saved screenshots, those states got HUGE by the endgame.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

A combination of far fewer jobs for higher tiers of PM, Urban centers using up construction points as "housing" and requiring Construction to change PMs would have a more integrated feel and have more or less the same effect

I'm not sure if that gives me a good picture of how that would work.

My concern is things like fewer jobs for higher tier Pm's by itself for example would only "delay the issue", you get 2x more output per worker if they used half the labor and consequently could be getting significantly more income and ability to fund more construction sectors. Such a thing might only extend the time a bit before exponential growth would hit its growth ceiling based on available labor.

Housing on the urban centers might be a pretty neat idea, as the need would grow with urbanization and hence could simulate a growing infrastructure maintainance cost. I dont think there is somethign as a negative construction modifier yet in the game though,so i dont see how you could technically mod that in. Construction speed modifiers perhaps? i guess you could just give each level of urbanization a very small negative to construction speed that starts to add up but then thats not going to hit as hard in low pop states as it would in high pop ones.

 

[Prob32]

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.

I’ve got a thread on this up in Reddit.


TLDR: It's nothing to do with pop balance or amount of folks employed- it's that capital costs of buildings are static, which means they are way to cheap relatively late game.

Quick Example:

Blister Steel mill in 1836 costs you 200 construction points. Producing an output of 65 per 200 construction points or a output of (.325*50) =16.26 $

Open Hearth Steel mill 1890 costs you 200 construction points. Producing an output of 120 per 200 construction points or a output of (.6*50) = 30 $

This is an 84% increase in your (dollars/pounds) output unit per construction point AND your output per POP efficiency.

Here's what a blister steel plant looked like https://smallworkshop.co.uk/2017/11/02/blister-steel/
Compared to a Open Hearth Process https://steelmuseum.org/steelmaking_exhibit_2016/open_hearth.cfm

Productivity gains should be derived as they currently are from PM's being more efficient - but the capital costs should also go up. So in practice we should see a 84% increase in POP efficiency but only 5-10% efficiency in output per construction point.

Also keep in mind even this example is understated because newer construction methods are massively more efficient than earlier ones.

Full suggestion:

Have buildings construction costs be dynamic to the PM they're built and become fixed to that PM with so a Blister steel would be 200 construction points and a open hearth would be 300 construction points.

This would have many positive follow on effects where you need to make strategic investment decisions about when to invest in what building types based on the PM's available to it. It would mean that newer developing economies like Japan could get an advantage over older economies having a better mix of more efficient PM's for steel by example IF they could find the necessary capital to plop down a modern steel industry.

This would also give a meaningful distinction between interventionalism & LF as well as accurate purpose to a 'recession' in game where under Interventionalism you could partake in some national gardening where you nationalize and delete old buildings on old PM types, whereas on LF you need to rely on a market down turn to have this happen.

Also this would allow for foreign invested buildings to have your most up to date PM - Hello pumpjacks on my foreign dye plantations with steel railroad cars!

LINK: https://www.reddit.com/r/victoria3/comments/1k29zto/v3_could_use_a_rebalance_of_the_importance_and/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

I’ve got a thread on this up in Reddit.


TLDR: It's nothing to do with pop balance or amount of folks employed- it's that capital costs of buildings are static, which means they are way to cheap relatively late game.

Quick Example:

Blister Steel mill in 1836 costs you 200 construction points. Producing an output of 65 per 200 construction points or a output of (.325*50) =16.26 $

Open Hearth Steel mill 1890 costs you 200 construction points. Producing an output of 120 per 200 construction points or a output of (.6*50) = 30 $

This is an 84% increase in your (dollars/pounds) output unit per construction point AND your output per POP efficiency.

Here's what a blister steel plant looked like https://smallworkshop.co.uk/2017/11/02/blister-steel/
Compared to a Open Hearth Process https://steelmuseum.org/steelmaking_exhibit_2016/open_hearth.cfm

Productivity gains should be derived as they currently are from PM's being more efficient - but the capital costs should also go up. So in practice we should see a 84% increase in POP efficiency but only 5-10% efficiency in output per construction point.

Also keep in mind even this example is understated because newer construction methods are massively more efficient than earlier ones.

Full suggestion:

Have buildings construction costs be dynamic to the PM they're built and become fixed to that PM with so a Blister steel would be 200 construction points and a open hearth would be 300 construction points.

This would have many positive follow on effects where you need to make strategic investment decisions about when to invest in what building types based on the PM's available to it. It would mean that newer developing economies like Japan could get an advantage over older economies having a better mix of more efficient PM's for steel by example IF they could find the necessary capital to plop down a modern steel industry.

This would also give a meaningful distinction between interventionalism & LF as well as accurate purpose to a 'recession' in game where under Interventionalism you could partake in some national gardening where you nationalize and delete old buildings on old PM types, whereas on LF you need to rely on a market down turn to have this happen.

Also this would allow for foreign invested buildings to have your most up to date PM - Hello pumpjacks on my foreign dye plantations with steel railroad cars!

LINK: https://www.reddit.com/r/victoria3/comments/1k29zto/v3_could_use_a_rebalance_of_the_importance_and/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

I agree that the construction cost for upgraded buildings are too low, i always argued that any factory having it's PM upgraded should be put back in the construction pool so that the upgrade has a cost, or atlernativly you have to buildthem wholely new as someone else suggested and let the old ones devolve.

What i dont agree on is that this on itself is a sollution to the issue of running out of people, unless you make everything so expensive that noone could realistically reach full employment. If you increase the cost, you will extend the time before full employment is reached, butt hat doesnt mean that full employment hence will never be achieved by itself.

 

[Prob32]

What i dont agree on is that this on itself is a sollution to the issue of running out of people, unless you make everything so expensive that noone could realistically reach full employment. If you increase the cost, you will extend the time before full employment is reached, butt hat doesnt mean that full employment hence will never be achieved by itself.

You're always going to be growth bottlenecked by either capital or pop - you either have so much capital you build till you have noone left or you can't possibly build out the entire world in 100 years because there's not enough capital.

In our world today and this time period it was always the later - given enough capital you could always find more productive ways to deploy it.

This doesn't mean the game has to 'feel bad though' you can still have high gdps, high re-investments and high amounts of building going on as well as smiliar amounts of consumption. It just means you will reach full employment much much later. I mean arguably large parts of the world still had peasants into the earlier 1900's

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

The issue is "of an exponential nature" in my perception, trying to solve it with measures that are of a linear kind imho wont work. Exponential growth needs curbed by "exponential slowdown". The issue imho of many proposed sollutions is that they would only slow down exponential growth and thus "stretch it in time"', not end the exponential nature of it.

If for example you double the construction cost then the time before people run out of pops will take longer, though it wont take "double the time" far less actually because the "last doubling" is always of a faster nature than the "first doubling" on an exponential curve. At some point, construction points that work to expand industry need to start decreasing at an exponential rate, but then only roughly when "halfway on the growth curve" and proportional to the exponential increases.

 

[Prob32]

If for example you double the construction cost then the time before people run out of pops will take longer, though it wont take "double the time" far less actually because the "last doubling" is always of a faster nature than the "first doubling" on an exponential curve. At some point, construction points that work to expand industry need to start decreasing at an exponential rate, but then only roughly when "halfway on the growth curve" and proportional to the exponential increases.

Yes but it does get a bit more complicated when you lock down the building type to the constructed type. So consider for example you'll need to essentially re build your entire steel industry from the ground up if you built out under blister steel and want to convert over to open hearth at 100% the cost. These types of decisions will make what and when you build feel very meaningful and you will care less about whether or not you own every single level as long as the levels being built are efficient. So you might want foreign investment to get better PM blends in your steel industry.

So it's not just a flat 50% transition to 100% based on tier of tech for construction but also the need to re-build you current stock. I think this would go a long way to pushing back 'full employment'. To your larger point we probably would still hit 'full employment' when pushing our growth as hard as possible, which I think is fine but it needs to happen close to 1910+ rather than 1880.

The exponential growth in the game comes from technology giving 50-100% gains over a few levels of PM's which leads to snowballs- I think this is kind of the point, economic growth was compounding during this period for the most part

Frankly speaking it's also a bit of a complex issue in that the game has felt a bit 'empty' until more recent patches. After 1.9 and after we get the naval re-working, I'm hoping there will be plenty to do for the player at most points in the game so slowing the pace of snowball down won't make the game feel boring.

 

[Aloraand]

The issue is "of an exponential nature" in my perception, trying to solve it with measures that are of a linear kind imho wont work. Exponential growth needs curbed by "exponential slowdown". The issue imho of many proposed sollutions is that they would only slow down exponential growth and thus "stretch it in time"', not end the exponential nature of it.

The solution is imo in:
1. Making pms into fixed capital which gets actually destroyed with competition. (I buy an expensive machine that makes labour 8 times more efficient e.g. spinning jenny, your factory will close as I crush you on price)
2. This competition (they will crush us, we have to innovate) leading to overproduction(we are all suddenly producing 8 times the amount, who buys it?) and hence falling rate of profit towards 0 inside industries, until some factories close.
3. This shifting of profit to 0 causing growth in industries to be logistic given static demand.

Just making pms cost money won't fix it, but it's the first step in shifting the growth curve. Your idea is good as well and housing is interesting, but fixed productive capital also offers a path to monopolies and business cycles, which are much more interesting in an economic sim. What's best, we can have both and housing need doesn't have to be unrealistically too exponential.

Then, if we go back to realistic pop curve (I really want it as a game option), you'd finally see systemic unemployment and late game poverty.

 

[Prob32]

I've kicked the tires on a housing type mechanic - It's a dousey to do - though it's something you'd want to consider if you wanted to a banking DLC imo. But yeah for now I think fixed cost production methods being added to buildings based on build type would go a long way and solve a few other issues with foreign investment.

But if you were going to do this it might make more sense to do with a tech re-work which would require more balancing of PM's and add more PM's in general

 

[Secret Master]

Dumb question for those wanting to include housing.

Is the goal to create a continuous "tax" on construction points where the amount of housing creates an unquenchable demand for construction points? Or is the goal to have housing be finite and it's possible to build enough or too much?

 

[Prob32]

Dumb question for those wanting to include housing.

Is the goal to create a continuous "tax" on construction points where the amount of housing creates an unquenchable demand for construction points? Or is the goal to have housing be finite and it's possible to build enough or too much?

I’m honestly not quite sure what everyone’s idea is- I’ve seen some folks say that it should be a good of some sort. Honestly I think just accounting for housing as a POP need by itself is rather un-interesting - since it would be a 1-1 and require re-balancing for not a lot of mechanical gain.

My suggestion is if you were to do housing would be for a complete labor market re-work where pops live in houses and supply labor to a market place to set wages. Then from here houses become container units for their strata’s savings accounts.

 

[PedroLuiz]

The issue is "of an exponential nature" in my perception, trying to solve it with measures that are of a linear kind imho wont work. Exponential growth needs curbed by "exponential slowdown". The issue imho of many proposed sollutions is that they would only slow down exponential growth and thus "stretch it in time"', not end the exponential nature of it.

If for example you double the construction cost then the time before people run out of pops will take longer, though it wont take "double the time" far less actually because the "last doubling" is always of a faster nature than the "first doubling" on an exponential curve. At some point, construction points that work to expand industry need to start decreasing at an exponential rate, but then only roughly when "halfway on the growth curve" and proportional to the exponential increases.

Real life economic growth is still exponential so I don't think we need those kinds of limitations for a 19th century game

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

Dumb question for those wanting to include housing.

Is the goal to create a continuous "tax" on construction points where the amount of housing creates an unquenchable demand for construction points? Or is the goal to have housing be finite and it's possible to build enough or too much?

It should turn accelerating growth into decelerating growth at a certain crosspoint.

-Growth (pop growth excluded) is mainly a function of moving workers into more productive jobs, either by the buildings itself or the Pm's within.
-Accelerating growth is mainly a function of the feedback loop, where giving your people more productive jobs accelerates the rate at which you can give people more productive jobs.
-"slower growth" can be a function of workers being forced to build industries that have relative low productivity per worker and perhaps only a competitive one when the price is high, the point with housing is that you can control this demand trough SOL which is mostly a product of productivity per worker.
-Decelerating growth can be a function where, as productivity per worker increases beyond a certain point, the capacity to put more workers in jobs with higher productivity per worker starts to decrease, this could be controlled by the sheer amount of housing demand that higher ranges of SOL could create especially when said housing hardly employs anyone to begin with.

For the main purpose of getting decelerating growth, housing would hence become very construction point heavy for the relative small amount of people they employ and small revenue it generates but in a "exponential fashion" depending on their "wealth type". it can still be fairly or highly profitable, just be exceedingly expensive in terms of construction points. One can compare many buildings in Vicky 3 as to how much revenue they can generate at full employment for the amount of construction points spend, something which is within a certain limited range pretty comparable to eachother, in that aspect housing would be particularly "constrction point heavy" as society gets more rich. You would basicly get lower growth per construction point invested and also less employment.

PERHAPS this can be even so balanced, on average, that most provinces would be left with 2 to 3% unemployment or peasants at all times, that basically some added housing demand would always kick in before you get to full employment and the queue would push form more factories again when unemployement rises further. Granted if the player builds a lot and factories only then he might mitigate it but perhaps that can be a strenght for late game interventionism against Laisse faire.

 

[daveduif12]

Interesting discussion. My main takeaways from your guys' point of view are that economic growth is too quick, which means the investment pool expands too quick, which leads to exponential growth too quick, which leads to nation-wide labor shortages too quick.

Proposed solutions are:

1. Make modern (non-subsistence) buildings employ way less people, either by reducing the base amount of employees, or by drastically improving the automation PM's/base PM's will now also save labor.
2. Make qualifications harder to get.
3. Add costs to improving on existing PM's.
4. Add a housing system that will essentially "clutter" the private investment pool to slow down growth.

While solution 3 and 4 are outside my abilities to mod and imagining workarounds, 1 and 2 could actually be interesting solutions. I'm gonna try and mod these solutions in when I get home and share results. My main concerns are:

• How will the AI handle switching PM's with the reduced qualifications?
• How will the AI handle unemployment in East Asia, where building rice farms already reduces the amount of rural jobs?