Ideas to mitigate the problem of economies running out of people

[Desseabar]

Agreed.

An obvious solution would be to reduce the number of employees per building.

Although this will slow down the game progression. How the government could get more revenues? Maybe with the trade rework, tariffs can get this spot.

I believe the game will improve if the overwhelming no brain loop peasant->automation is not the only way forward and other more interresting deep economic game play is also required to make it work.

Eg. Taxing Business profits requiring business to increase margins and making it more difficult for any building to make money without throughput bonuses. Having industrial policies and worldwide competition.

To this point: Vic3 makes a conscious decision to shift jobs from urban services to factories themselves.

E.g., the entire British shipbuilding industry in 1900 – which make 70% of the world's ships – only employed ~200k people, or 50 levels in-game.
Realistically, a lot of that employment should shift over towards urban services: shopowners, minor tooling shops, doctors, etc instead. However, I think the "indirect multiplier" is probably less satisfying for the player than directly employing them, so I get the decision even if it's unrealistic.

A great source on wages in the US by occupation type: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015002738212&seq=609


Strongly agree on the need for more aggressive downsizing. With the trade rework, I think this actually becomes more feasible, because you have trade as a backstop; but setting up a domestic manufacturing industry should be difficult and require lots of protectionism. Given the emphasis on subsidies and tariffs, it will feel unbalanced if we aren't incentivized to focus on fewer, more competitive industries.

 

[daveduif12]

As promised, I tweaked some of the files so now all buildings only employ 1/5 of their original workforce:

Steam Workshop::Less employment in buildings

steamcommunity.com

I left all government buildings, urban centers, trade centers and of course subsistence farms alone for balance/obvious reasons. I'd say download the mod, play around with it, and see if this mod makes any meaningful changes.

Some first observations before unpausing the game:
- All production buildings (especially plantations/agriculture in general) are extremely productive, since wages are now only 1/5th of what they used to be.
- The upper strata are richer because of this, and because I included Financial Districts and Manor Houses in my mod, now bigger earnings are paid out to less owners, meaning that the effect is enhanced even further.
- Lower starting national budgets across the board because of lower income taxes because of fewer workers.
- France and Britain start with welfare laws and are already feeling the strain of unemployment.

What does everyone think?

 

[Desseabar]

Maybe one more thought on this.

A big challenge is that manor houses and financial districts reinvest their money into the private sector.
In reality, bonds – both domestic and international – should also compete for their funds, slowing down construction growth. Only the petite bourgeoisie buy bonds today.

A great chart from NBER on British securities by year below.
In 1853, fully 3/4 of publicly traded assets were government bonds (domestic+overseas); by 1920, this was still about half of investment. That clearly crowded out a big chunk of private investment we see today, and leads to exponential growth by 1936.

Of course, adding in government bonds would require a massive rebalancing of the game, or else it would dramatically slow economic growth. But it's something I'd love to see in game, especially with last year's ownership revamp.