Why the China hate?

[JoeGiavani]

Lots of people on this forum like to complain about China being a "micro nightmare". This is a view point I don't understand, I recently played up to 1870 as China and I found it very fulfilling. In the end I gave it up because I was fast running out of national POPs to convert and there aren't really any strong countries around to start a fight with (not that they'd have a change anyway).
Anyway being as I have a compulsive sort of personality, I recorded data throughout my game to chart my progress. I recorded, at 2 year intervals, exports, coal production, steel production, military score and population.
It was interesting, to say the least. I had the initial rush of techs in an agricultural revolution, then a massive growth of industry, and after that my still relatively low tech level (I was making about 1.2 RP a month but with a massive backlog) meant I was lagging behind in industry, and stuck on level 2 railroad so I struggled to continue economic growth. Interestingly by the time I gave up the UK had bigger exports than I did, probably because they inherited India and had advanced industry techs.
Here is my chart of export growth, which is a pretty good indicator of economic growth:

You can clearly see the two separate periods of growth.

Does anyone else record data like this? If so I'd be very interested in seeing what other people have done.

 

[Raph]

Well, China is a lot of work, but you'll get insanely powerful and it's fun to plan out your crazy industrial expansion.

I've never collected data like that though, very cool! Would be awesome if we had some application to generate economic statistics like that, for AARs if nothing else.

Is exports really that good a indicator of economic growth though? I guess that's export in quantity, rather than value? That'd just most likely show that you produce fewer units of all goods, but instead more valuable goods?

 

[JoeGiavani]

Fair points, but Vicky doesn't model quality of goods, only quantity-hence why RGO values differentiate; some parts of the world have higher-quality coal, other parts of the world have low-quality coal. Also since I was producing goods out of resources I was producing myself anyway, an increase in exports is purely down to industrialisation. So the export value of a unit of steel is greater than the combined value of the iron and coal that go into it.
I agree there should be some way of automating it, hopefully in Vicky 2 we'll see GDP growth charts

 

[Jingles]

I know what you mean, JoeGiavani.

I am currently playing a game as Russia with the latest version of VIP:R.

It is now 1898, and my economy is absolutely roaring. Due to some extremely costly wars and oppresive demographic policies, I was lagging technologically and economically. I also made some bad choices with the State and Government tech, such that I got the -50% capitalist income bonus. My country is only now half covered in steel railroads. I just conquered half of China, and my capis are now building factories in Central Asia. My plan is to convert Chinese craftsmen and have them migrate to Central Asia, along with my excess European POPs.

I am currently at about 5,400 industrial score. The closest to me is Germany with about 4,000. Railroads are being built so fast that I all I ever hear is the whooshing sound. Inventions are firing off constantly, exports have increased from about 4,000 per day to 6,500 in a few short years.

The provinces I just took from China yielded me about 110,000,000 people. The Chinese still have 650,000,000 left.

 

[unmerged(94581)]

My plan is to convert Chinese craftsmen and have them migrate to Central Asia, along with my excess European POPs.

Don't you need a Full Citizenship party for that?