Here's a video idea, what if you took a user submitted save of their run that they're struggling with, and point out where they messed up and how they can turn it around? I'd be curious to see specific examples of mistakes like these in action.
I forgot to emphasize that exporting fertilizer importantly makes grain farms less profitable (it's an input) which discourages the autoqueue from building them. EDITS: @pelaya pointed out that trade centers actually do have dividends, they're just located in a different place in the UI. Because the trade centers will automatically expand routes until they're at an equilibrium where they're barely profitable though, these dividends will never be particularly large, unless you are having a convoy shortage. However, they don't cost any construction (just admin and convoys) so there are some more nuanced things to talk about re trade centers. Beyond the scope of this video tho. @crazyorc brings up that exporting coal is inconsistent (also w/ an edited comment realizing that I wasn't clear) highlighting how I wasn't clear about something in the video. You're import coal to make ai COUNTRIES not the ai AUTOQUEUE build more coal. It's beyond the scope of the video, but I think that always exporting sulfur is decent, and that the best strategy for the other ores is likely to oscillate between importing and exporting at different phases of the game to smooth out price, based on tech and construction center PMs. Overall I think importing all game gives you a better game experience, and swapping around is pretty marginal.
Love your Victoria videos, a lot of great, useful information. I have to point out one thing that bothers me, and it is pronunciation of one word: Mercantilism. The correct way is accent on the first syllable, not the second, like in 'Merchant'. Sorry if I'm getting nit-picky. Anyway, keep up the great work and I'll keep listening.
@@mikepott8576 really trying to emphasize the "CAN'T" though. More seriously, I think the way I pronounce it now is pretty engrained in my mind. If I think of it I'll probably try to pronounce it correctly, but also usually I'm trying to think about other things when I'm saying it. My brain only has so much horsepower. We'll see.
thanks man, i really appreciate your videos and the way you take your time explaining the concepts in depth. I feel like I've gotten way better at the game after watching some of your videos
"example of how tariffs work" needed to be reworked. it's impenetrably incoherent. changing words "raising-- lowering the import-- export tariff that I pay-- they-- the trade centers pay" It's very clear that YOU know what you're talking about, and I trust that you do. It's not so clear to ME, the average part-time casual gamer listener, what you're talking about. to make it constructive: write a script ahead of time, don't just go off the dome
This is a really nice and complete treatment of this complicated subject. My own shorthand in practice is quite a bit simpler but quite effective. My goal is always to get Free Trade as early as possible for two reasons: a) to increase supply of strategic inputs when I am building up a new building (or PM in a building) and need an input I haven't yet secured in my own buildings. In this case, I always backfill to produce the item myself, and once I do, the trade route becomes unproductive and I can cancel it. The other reason is to very temporarily create demand (aka sell orders) for a new item before I have had the chance to build up the other buildings that will use that item. In other words, to jumpstart production of, say, oil before I have the PMs myself that will use much oil. By the time the game gets to rubber and oil, however, I am almost always ready to convert to protectionism, because my overriding goal is to limit exports of important input goods (like oil) without having to resort to embargoes. In other words, for me it's mostly dictated by production, not tariffs or the like. Bravo for creating this great content for the community.
Thank you! I should probably take a closer look at protectionism, but I think my main interest would be keeping people from importing the arable goods I'm trying to depress the price of, more so than protecting my oil.
You are so welcome! Yeah, I mean they're still "bad," but it's not too important, and leaving a route on that is unprofitable, because you want it to pick up later, is fine.
Tariffs would be universally bad if convoys were unlimited. However, particularly for smaller nations in the early game convoys are VERY limited. This means that very often your most profitable import trade routes can support large tariffs with no effect on the supply into your market because the limitation on that trade route growing in size are your convoys, NOT the profitability of the route.
Great explanation of the trade mechanics, I learnt a lot! You also make an excellent argument for not using the autonomous investment pool; since you cannot tell it anything except, "build whatever is most profitable" I find it extremely useless and prefer to manage construction myself. If there ever comes a more nuanced version that for example lets us exclude construction of agricultural buildings, or focus on the construction chain, it would become a lot more interesting. One thing I missed in this video is the power of trade to increase your population, through adding nations to your Customs Union. Here it can be interesting to start the smallest of profitable routes, because these will increase relations with your trade partner. As the US I get most of South-America in my Customs Union within 15 years, and it is very powerful as it brings in lots of migrants before the mass migrations kick off.
Good summary. I tried to wrap my head around this topic as well and one peculiar, but probably not very important, niche side effect I found is that you can actually use convoy shortages to shift profits from farms/plantations to your trade routes. Which essentially means shifting investment pool from farmers to capitalists. As long as a trade route has convoys it will continuously grow and with that reduce its own profitability. However if you simply force it to stay small and the price gap between import and export nation becomes bigger and bigger so will the margins for your trade route. And even if you keep building more and more farms and plantations the trade route will stay the same size but become more and more profitable. Very interesting interaction I found although only ever useful if you want to do some challenge or meme "agrarianism" kinda thing. But I think it's neat nonetheless how a supposedly bad thing can actually become useful.
That's interesting. I imagine that just trying to make the rural stuff profitable would still be more efficient for IPT, but I'm not sure. You can make rural goods a lot better if you sweat throughput a lot, but that's difficult/annoying now with the autoque and LF combined, making so you can't downsize farms that are auto built.
So correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it so far, when you convert a business from privately owned to publicly traded, you actually reduce the power of the Capitalist class because you're redistributing ownership and profits to the common people. You also increase your dividend revenue since private companies don't pay dividends but corporations do.
Actually, importing coal goes against the logic you generally explained in the video. I still agree it's good to do though, because even when importing it you will often have a deficit of it. Edit: I actually understand why I thought you were being inconsistent. I thought you were always referring to your countries investment pool queue when talking about "AI", but for things like hardwood and iron you instead mean the non-player countries when saying you want to encourage the AI building them. Just a heads up, because things like that might have more people confused that don't figure it out on their own.
Yeah, I'm so used to "ai" just refering to enemy countries in most game I failed to make the distinction here, and that's my bad. I think the strategy regarding ores is probably a little complex and involves switching back and forth. The sulfur PM is really efficient, so exporting that all game is probably fine. Importing coal/iron, so you can focus on steel, which is pretty efficient early, might also make sense. But exporting them super early might be better, as it's hard to create a large demand for steel. The conversation is a bit beyond the scope of the vid, and I don't have definitive conclusions. Always importing will smooth out prices throughout the game, as well as encourage ai countries to build it, so this is what I do, but I think there are good arguments it's not 100% optimal.
Depends on your goals imo. When you got lots of welfare and minimum wage policy you want those Jefferson’s to be used to buy goods from your market hence protectionism becomes mandatory. On top of that you always want to keep high Export Tarifs on resources like coal and iron so your manufactories will always have access to cheap resources.
On the first point, I generally think it's better to stimulate the economy through construction rather than welfare, but super late, yes, protectionism becomes good again. On the second point I disagree (to the extent I'm arguing for free trade - protect domestic feels situational/neutral imo) - mainly because it's pretty easy to create enough buy orders for the resource goods such that no one can profitably import from you anyways. And, if they somehow can, it probably means you have a lot of them, and their imports will greatly boost profits.
I feel that this video misses a very important fact about trade though, which is gold flow. Merchantilism originally was invented precisely because of this issue. Namely that exports bring gold in the country, while imports take it away. Gold is important in this game too. The list of goods that any pop group will demand is dependent on how much gold they have. If that list is more expensive that their income their gold will start to drop, until their sol drops. That sol has a different cheaper list, until the point that the equilibrium is reached. So going too heavy on imports has assosiated risks. Gold mines are great for that reason too, less exports are necessary.
I don't mean this in a standoffish way, but the economic philosophy of mercantilism was pretty strongly repudiated by Adam Smith, and doesn't feature prominently in the modern economic theory that informs this game. As far as I can tell, there is no benefit to accumulating gold (quite the opposite really) or running a trade surplus/deficit in the game mechanics.
@@generalistgaming merchantilism was wrong in the fact that it promoted the idea that any means where good to reduce the trade deficit. An example is a policy that still exists in the US, that foreign sugar is to be tariffed to ensure that there is domestic supply. But sugarcane farming is much less efficient than what tropical countries do. If these workers were employed in other parts of the economy more wealth would be created, so that both the other country and the US are better off(the politicians who get rebates are not ofc). I think Oreo left because of that policy. Other than that a growing economy needs a growing amount of gold. That will happen naturally as the AI will start trade routes with you, to give y that gold. The reason such trade routes are profitable are because of the reduced supply of gold(if the economy had more gold there would be more demand and exports would naturally be less, for example the people working there would move to other industries more profitable now that would produce stuff for the people of the country, with effing tea being the most troublesome late game). I just thought that mechanic could be mentioned although a player doesn't need to take it into consideration usually. If y try a max sol run you can see what I mean. Tea is a major roadblock as it keeps increasing in value and y need sufficient farming locations. Btw having open borders multi culti is not beneficial for such a run.
@@fileleutheros2577 I don't think Victoria 3 works that way. There are no currencies, which means there is no foreign exchange market, so no trade surpluses or deficits to worry about. In a proper 19th century economic simulation you would need to simulate what you are talking about, and it would be relevant. But Victoria 3 has a single global currency, so it doesn't matter. Money and goods don't actually exist in Victoria. Gold mines don't produce gold. They "produce" Minting (which increases your balance) and consume labour, tools, coal, explosives etc. with the production methods. They pay workers a wage. But they're no different really to any other type of building. Government administration buildings produce +Bureaucracy; Gold mines produce +Minting. Money in the game doesn't have anything to do with the gold good produced by gold mines. Goods in general can't actually be stockpiled or owned in any real sense. They are 'produced' in the sense that the 'sell order' number is increased and 'consumed' in the sense that the 'buy order' number is increased. But if there's an input shortage there isn't actually a shortage of goods, instead there's just a penalty applied to the throughput of the buildings. It's quite different in Victoria 2, where some of the stuff you are talking about was relevant. Yet even in that game there was a single global currency.
@@milesrout You have not researched the game enough. Check out the wiki about standard of living. You will find out that pops accumulate wealth. In short at each moment in every country in the world there is a certain amount of gold. Some of it is in the "bank accounts" of the pops, some in the accounts of buildings and the rest are either in the treasury or in the investment pool. So when the value of exports is lower than that of imports gold flows out, which drops the sol of the pops. Doing it early game to import construction materials is ok if possible, but as the game goes on it restricts the sol. Actually because sol influences prices demand etc you don't have to plan around it that much, but it's good to take it into account. Gold minting is the only way to increase the wealth of a country other than exports. So gold mines are very powerfull buildings to increase sol. I generally try to build the goods i import if possible with some exceptions when i have nothing great to build, even if other building would be more profitable. Cloth is the only exceptions as it gets stupid cheap in most saves for me, so building plantations never works.
Indefinitely don't agree with your preference to free trade. Maybe in theory if you build everything right you are better off as can reduce input costs more and export more goods out, but imo that is a delicate balance. Easier just to adjust tariffs as needed. This is especially true when you own most of the market.
If you know which ones you want to prioritize, the decreased admin cost, route priority, and route volume are all really valuable. I don't find myself every really swapping from a ton of import routes to export routes or vice versa
Great video. While I've heard you say most of it before, your presentation here made it all click. Since I'm playing with Qing at the moment, I suspect the dynamics would be different in the early game? Because of the special landowners, you actually want to export agricultural stuff because of the 20% contribution to the pool under agrarianism?
So in case we play a conservative country, and are unable to go for free trade, protectionism would be a good second pick to discourage other countries importing our goods and thus influencing the autoqueue...interesting. I do find the tip to just use extra bureaucracy for idle trade routes in case they become profitable very helpful, I usually just canceled everything the alert told me is unprofitable. Will stop that 😅
If you are playing a conservative country, then you go for Corn Laws, you choose the new leader in the event change, and you go Free Trade anyway xD Yeah, it's not optimal, but it does make for smoother gameplay. I do a lot of speed 4-5 play and I find it helps a lot.
I am playing France, have built shit of iron wood grain and coal, i have free trade, and now basicaly everyone is stealing my raw resource from me... Making my prices and construction sector go up... I thought it was good first for the bureaucracy and trade volume but now i don't really understand why i should stay on it just to have my things stolen from my pops ?
Clearly trade is the fast track to economic dominance. However, it depends on good relations with exporters. So your strategy of building dependence on trade for supply of basic input goods is vulnerable to wars/alliances with parties that are key to your supply of those goods. I suppose this could be mitigated by trading with far off countries and avoiding trade with noisy neighbors. It could also be mitigated by sufficient military power. Also, what if your location is far away from basic resource production [Japan?]. Wouldn't distance raise import prices of basic goods? Not clear in the video.
I bet you've gone over this a couple of times in your videos, but what mods do you use, if any during your play throughs? Thanks for all the helpful videos!!
I play vanilla, because I think that's what viewers would prefer. Thinking about a UI mod that takes buildings off the map when they're being constructed, for performance reasons, though
I prefer protectionism to ensure the cost of the base goods for my factories is low. I try to over-produce iron, coal, wood, cotton, etc to make my factories more profitable. then i just encourage export on the finished goods. i dont care about the tariffs, its about being able to produce more at a cheaper cost in order to export so the AI doesnt try to build those goods on their own (due to me exporting to them). This is especially true with autos and electronics (radios, telephones), as i immediately export to uk, america, germany, austria, france even if it loses money cause at some point theyll see they have the good cheap and will create their own demand for it, but never produce the supply for it. So what ends up happening is I become the only producer of those goods in the world. which makes winning late game wars even easier. TLDR: I use protectionism to increase my own GDP, while exporting to others to prevent them from producing as much themselves, thus keeping their GDP low. It also artificially raises their SoL (cheaper goods), which makes their worker wages higher, which makes them even less competitive, which allows me to export even more.
It's worth noting that low iron, coal, and wood prices make the buildings that produce them less profitable, and that these buildings are capitalist owned, and this depresses their contribution to the IPT.
I like to follow a few rules: 1) industries = good; farms = bad (it's stupid I know) 2) low prices of raw material and agricultural products by IMPORT *** 3) increase the profits of capitalists by EXPORTING industrial products DONE, you have a good economy. *** watch out to not be dependable of one market only, have a lot of partners!!
By the way, if you want to learn this at very well, I recommend you to play as Paraguai without war. No raw materials, just industries. Of course, you need to be in a market nearby you to trade with the world, but it doesnt matter!!
you are assuming the investment pool AI is wise in picking what to and where to build the new buildings, often they made dumb buildings in dumb places and effectively wasting the money, e.g.. arts academy in undereducated and unmanned colonies and they like to scale up the buildings although the buildings do not have enough qualified labor. Therefore it is always better to have the money in the treasury than in the investment pool.
Thank you, you are so helpful! Do you have any advice on bureaucracy and convoys in regards to trade on how to ideally manage those number or should we just make sure to be above 0?
Just be above a deficit for the most part. You def want to make sure you have enough convoy buffer in your trade routes (as in your routes are using them but they could not be) to support your troops overseas if you need to. Often if you know you're going to get raided heavily in a war you can add a bunch of ports at the start too.
Trade centres do give dividend income now. They also add a huge amount to your credit limit. A hidden benefit of trade centres is they increase urbanization helping you make more services/ services more efficiently. They also give a +25% migration attraction which is huge. I've found playing as a arbitrage trading nation eg Portugal/Netherlands very viable especially after you get industrial ports and you have treaty ports giving you access through tariffs other nations don't have.
I think I might have a correction about the dividends in the pinned comment. Usually, if you're building a decent amount of convoys, they won't be that substantive. The urbanization is okay. The migration attraction, yes, is huge. Might be trying an arbitrage run for 1.3 to get Amish Paradise.
What if I am lets say japan or Qing and waste most of my tax money. Since my business being profitable doesn't mean so much yet would it make sense if I focus on tarrifs until I fix it?
I havent played Qing yet and japan starts with isolationism but what i have noticed that tariffs are way smaller in games i have played after 1.2 patch that personally I would not focus on them.
On Japan/China specifically you actually want to import arable goods even more, because the Subsistence Rice Farms employ twice as many pops (and have nearly double the output), and when you build a farm over them it fires the pops and can lead to pretty big unemployment - you want to discourage your queue from doing that as much as possible. I'm not sure, but I have a suspicion that the autoqueue mechanics fail to account for destroying the subsistence farm when deciding to build agriculture.
@@generalistgaming I was mostly asking about tarrif income itself. Like lets say I am importing grain while encourging exports (%40 import tarrifs) I agree about autobuild stuff by the way I allways get too much radicals as japan while making everyone 2 times richer than before it is impossible :D
just as a note as qing and japan don't try to build up admin buildings at the start to deal with taxation capacity, only to get positive bureaucracy. you end up losing more money in government wages than you get back from taxes
@@pelayla yea learned that long ago 🤣 I mean... I guess its momey that doesnt disappear from economy now and gives jobs with better income to my pops so its still possitive?
do you suggest auto building or no? I understand managing a HUGE area its probably best, but it seems like its hurting me sometimes... like what you described in trading.
So, having a more nuanced discussion, tools might be okay to not import, but it's important to do early on if you're specializing in tools, in order to create demand to allow you to push a throughput bonus that is larger, because economies of scale throughput bonuses have increasing marginal returns up until the cap. But if you have a bunch of 51 tooling workshops, then yeah, I'd bite on not exporting tools (after you are also picking up more efficient pms for other stuff and tools is still just steel). Steel has generally pretty efficient PMs, and exporting it is good, but there's not enough demand to specialize it early. When you export, you increase the price/profitiability, which will cause more buildings and ability to build it - so the increase is temporary. When you spike your steel/tools demand subsequently, it will decrease the size of your trade routes. You pay a little more up front, but you pay less when you increase demand. I think it's closeish to a wash on that front, but it will increase the proportion of your economy that is tools/steel/industrial or w/e, which is the main point.
Very insightful. But you have to have some kind of balance, right? If you just focus on very inefficient trade routes for agrarian, you will run too much deficit for trading buildings?
Yeah, generally all the routes you run should be profitable. I'm more saying that it's not the end of the world if they're not, and sometimes, for reasons of convenience (ie, not optimal play) leaving them on is fine. It's not what's most important, which is I think what a newer player might think.
Are you sure? They do not display dividends, and the wages of the lower tier employed will ratchet up proportionally to the capitalist. If this is the case they still, because of the split with the shopkeepers, give proportionally less than a fully capitalist building, but this might have larger implications, as it implies that ALL capitalist wages contribute to IPT.
@@generalistgaming you can see it in your video at 10:36, there's a weekly balance below the trade routes part, hover over that and you should see reinvestment amount (if it's profitable, of course)
@@pelayla you're correct, I see now. That's so weird that they format it differently for different buildings. I compared it to a few buildings and the reinvestment seems incredibly small (about 1/7th dividends, I assume because the mix, but it should be closer to 1/10th if the building were proportionally split among the owners, so there's something weird going on there), so there's that. I don't think that affects the overall strategy. Overall the balance is pretty small too, for even the #1 trade center in the world.
@@generalistgaming if you're on mercentalism then it's owned by shopkeepers, but if you're on free trade or protectionalism then capitalists get the dividends and they reinvest it at same rate for other buildings (for example, london trade center at game start gets 12k balance, and reinvests 2.43k of it (20%)
Often to help boost my SoL when I have a cash surplus, I'll often import as many consumer and luxury goods as I can productively bring into my market. By doing this, am I discouraging my Autobuild queue to construct industries & plantations that would produce those goods at home?
Generally it is, but there are exceptions to the rule. Notably early on it lets you push economies of scale bonuses, but export is a bit worse generally in the current iteration of 1.5 on the beta
Hey just started playing the game. What i got from this video (correct me if im wrong). Is that i should only import non capitlist related goods and ideally export capitalist's related goods?
That’s roughly correct, except at some point you’ll need to shift towards importing resources (wood, minerals) to fuel your factories/as your factories become a larger proportion of your GPD than mines/logging, even though these resources are capitalist owned. Extremely early though you can actually focus on resources and export them, since, on a per construction basis, they’re very efficient in the early game, esp if you have a state bonus that doesn’t have a construction malus.
Unbelievable that I cannot use fertilizer on top of enemy soldiers in the battlefield, and instead I have to sell it for cheap to foreigners. Paradox pls
You try to conquer and expand in such a way earlier on to prevent this I suppose. It's not as bad now in 1.2 though, as the ai will build a lot more of the resources.
This is an error on my part (because the ui puts it in a different place than in other buildings). Someone commented and I checked. As long as you have a decent amount of convoys the dividends will be extremely low though, as the route size will increase to an equilibrium where it's barely profitable. Overall the strategy is unchanged, but I need to edit my pinned comment.
i have a question, im trying a run as switzerland on a redo, since i have a clothes factory, should i export as much as i can so that can help them expand? & likewise import fabric, which would help if i want to expand construction
Yes! Because economies of scale has increasing marginal returns, and your autoque won't take that long term consideration into account. By exporting you can make your buildings profitable, even if you're specializing
I really appreciate your expertise, but I think the "livestream of consciousness" format is a bit clunky, leading to very long videos with many tangents. I think you could stand to condense your explanations with some focused editing and planning.
I've run a lot of polls on this and the opinion seems mixed. I'd be able to release maybe 1/5 or less of the videos if I do edits. Still, it's a consideration.
you can't it's part of their law unless if there's a revolt in your country, AI might deletes some building in occupied states depends on their economic system
Lots of them don't change at all. Trading for tariffs was already bad before 1.2, still bad now. Also, most people play with it on now because it's like you're actually playing a game with a somewhat free market, instead of every country being a Nazi Germany with a collectivised economy.
I think a lot of my points stay the same, and you can force industrial goods even harder if you have complete control, and be more specialized. The agrarian PMs are very efficient in terms of net outputs, even if they aren't in terms of net output*IPT. The biggest change is that you export for profits initially until it's no longer profitable.
Here's a video idea, what if you took a user submitted save of their run that they're struggling with, and point out where they messed up and how they can turn it around? I'd be curious to see specific examples of mistakes like these in action.
There's a post in the community tab now where I give an email for accepting disaster saves.
I forgot to emphasize that exporting fertilizer importantly makes grain farms less profitable (it's an input) which discourages the autoqueue from building them.
EDITS:
@pelaya pointed out that trade centers actually do have dividends, they're just located in a different place in the UI. Because the trade centers will automatically expand routes until they're at an equilibrium where they're barely profitable though, these dividends will never be particularly large, unless you are having a convoy shortage. However, they don't cost any construction (just admin and convoys) so there are some more nuanced things to talk about re trade centers. Beyond the scope of this video tho.
@crazyorc brings up that exporting coal is inconsistent (also w/ an edited comment realizing that I wasn't clear) highlighting how I wasn't clear about something in the video. You're import coal to make ai COUNTRIES not the ai AUTOQUEUE build more coal. It's beyond the scope of the video, but I think that always exporting sulfur is decent, and that the best strategy for the other ores is likely to oscillate between importing and exporting at different phases of the game to smooth out price, based on tech and construction center PMs. Overall I think importing all game gives you a better game experience, and swapping around is pretty marginal.
Love your Victoria videos, a lot of great, useful information. I have to point out one thing that bothers me, and it is pronunciation of one word: Mercantilism. The correct way is accent on the first syllable, not the second, like in 'Merchant'. Sorry if I'm getting nit-picky. Anyway, keep up the great work and I'll keep listening.
@@mikepott8576 really trying to emphasize the "CAN'T" though.
More seriously, I think the way I pronounce it now is pretty engrained in my mind. If I think of it I'll probably try to pronounce it correctly, but also usually I'm trying to think about other things when I'm saying it. My brain only has so much horsepower. We'll see.
thanks man, i really appreciate your videos and the way you take your time explaining the concepts in depth. I feel like I've gotten way better at the game after watching some of your videos
Thank you! I'm glad they've been helpful!
"example of how tariffs work" needed to be reworked. it's impenetrably incoherent. changing words "raising-- lowering the import-- export tariff that I pay-- they-- the trade centers pay"
It's very clear that YOU know what you're talking about, and I trust that you do. It's not so clear to ME, the average part-time casual gamer listener, what you're talking about.
to make it constructive: write a script ahead of time, don't just go off the dome
This is a really nice and complete treatment of this complicated subject. My own shorthand in practice is quite a bit simpler but quite effective. My goal is always to get Free Trade as early as possible for two reasons: a) to increase supply of strategic inputs when I am building up a new building (or PM in a building) and need an input I haven't yet secured in my own buildings. In this case, I always backfill to produce the item myself, and once I do, the trade route becomes unproductive and I can cancel it. The other reason is to very temporarily create demand (aka sell orders) for a new item before I have had the chance to build up the other buildings that will use that item. In other words, to jumpstart production of, say, oil before I have the PMs myself that will use much oil. By the time the game gets to rubber and oil, however, I am almost always ready to convert to protectionism, because my overriding goal is to limit exports of important input goods (like oil) without having to resort to embargoes. In other words, for me it's mostly dictated by production, not tariffs or the like. Bravo for creating this great content for the community.
Thank you!
I should probably take a closer look at protectionism, but I think my main interest would be keeping people from importing the arable goods I'm trying to depress the price of, more so than protecting my oil.
Why did you write a) for your first point but never follow up with b)?
never let them know your next move
So helpful. I've been very scared of the red numbers being in the right 2 columns. Thanks for helping me learn to stop worrying so much about those.
You are so welcome! Yeah, I mean they're still "bad," but it's not too important, and leaving a route on that is unprofitable, because you want it to pick up later, is fine.
Once I tried free trade
People started taking motors from my market my motors were very expensive I had shortage in some railways
Tariffs would be universally bad if convoys were unlimited. However, particularly for smaller nations in the early game convoys are VERY limited. This means that very often your most profitable import trade routes can support large tariffs with no effect on the supply into your market because the limitation on that trade route growing in size are your convoys, NOT the profitability of the route.
I enjoy learning from your content. Your channel deserves to blow up.
Thank you!
This video is absolute gold! It's so natural to focus on trading for the largest green number, but your approach is so much more useful
Glad it was helpful!
Great explanation of the trade mechanics, I learnt a lot! You also make an excellent argument for not using the autonomous investment pool; since you cannot tell it anything except, "build whatever is most profitable" I find it extremely useless and prefer to manage construction myself. If there ever comes a more nuanced version that for example lets us exclude construction of agricultural buildings, or focus on the construction chain, it would become a lot more interesting.
One thing I missed in this video is the power of trade to increase your population, through adding nations to your Customs Union. Here it can be interesting to start the smallest of profitable routes, because these will increase relations with your trade partner. As the US I get most of South-America in my Customs Union within 15 years, and it is very powerful as it brings in lots of migrants before the mass migrations kick off.
Good summary. I tried to wrap my head around this topic as well and one peculiar, but probably not very important, niche side effect I found is that you can actually use convoy shortages to shift profits from farms/plantations to your trade routes. Which essentially means shifting investment pool from farmers to capitalists. As long as a trade route has convoys it will continuously grow and with that reduce its own profitability. However if you simply force it to stay small and the price gap between import and export nation becomes bigger and bigger so will the margins for your trade route. And even if you keep building more and more farms and plantations the trade route will stay the same size but become more and more profitable.
Very interesting interaction I found although only ever useful if you want to do some challenge or meme "agrarianism" kinda thing. But I think it's neat nonetheless how a supposedly bad thing can actually become useful.
That's interesting. I imagine that just trying to make the rural stuff profitable would still be more efficient for IPT, but I'm not sure. You can make rural goods a lot better if you sweat throughput a lot, but that's difficult/annoying now with the autoque and LF combined, making so you can't downsize farms that are auto built.
studying for my AP econ exam, this helped alot thanks!
Best of luck!
So correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it so far, when you convert a business from privately owned to publicly traded, you actually reduce the power of the Capitalist class because you're redistributing ownership and profits to the common people. You also increase your dividend revenue since private companies don't pay dividends but corporations do.
Thanks for the vid. Very informative.
Will use this knowledge on my next run to see if it makes noticeable difference.
Hope it helps!
I had to revise most of my knowledge on how to play this game upon discovering this channel.
Actually, importing coal goes against the logic you generally explained in the video. I still agree it's good to do though, because even when importing it you will often have a deficit of it.
Edit: I actually understand why I thought you were being inconsistent. I thought you were always referring to your countries investment pool queue when talking about "AI", but for things like hardwood and iron you instead mean the non-player countries when saying you want to encourage the AI building them. Just a heads up, because things like that might have more people confused that don't figure it out on their own.
I had this same confusion before I went oh right AI countries are dumb in the middle of the vid.
Yeah, I'm so used to "ai" just refering to enemy countries in most game I failed to make the distinction here, and that's my bad.
I think the strategy regarding ores is probably a little complex and involves switching back and forth. The sulfur PM is really efficient, so exporting that all game is probably fine. Importing coal/iron, so you can focus on steel, which is pretty efficient early, might also make sense. But exporting them super early might be better, as it's hard to create a large demand for steel. The conversation is a bit beyond the scope of the vid, and I don't have definitive conclusions. Always importing will smooth out prices throughout the game, as well as encourage ai countries to build it, so this is what I do, but I think there are good arguments it's not 100% optimal.
This opens up my eyes.
Depends on your goals imo. When you got lots of welfare and minimum wage policy you want those Jefferson’s to be used to buy goods from your market hence protectionism becomes mandatory. On top of that you always want to keep high Export Tarifs on resources like coal and iron so your manufactories will always have access to cheap resources.
On the first point, I generally think it's better to stimulate the economy through construction rather than welfare, but super late, yes, protectionism becomes good again.
On the second point I disagree (to the extent I'm arguing for free trade - protect domestic feels situational/neutral imo) - mainly because it's pretty easy to create enough buy orders for the resource goods such that no one can profitably import from you anyways. And, if they somehow can, it probably means you have a lot of them, and their imports will greatly boost profits.
I feel that this video misses a very important fact about trade though, which is gold flow. Merchantilism originally was invented precisely because of this issue. Namely that exports bring gold in the country, while imports take it away. Gold is important in this game too. The list of goods that any pop group will demand is dependent on how much gold they have. If that list is more expensive that their income their gold will start to drop, until their sol drops. That sol has a different cheaper list, until the point that the equilibrium is reached. So going too heavy on imports has assosiated risks. Gold mines are great for that reason too, less exports are necessary.
I don't mean this in a standoffish way, but the economic philosophy of mercantilism was pretty strongly repudiated by Adam Smith, and doesn't feature prominently in the modern economic theory that informs this game. As far as I can tell, there is no benefit to accumulating gold (quite the opposite really) or running a trade surplus/deficit in the game mechanics.
@@generalistgaming merchantilism was wrong in the fact that it promoted the idea that any means where good to reduce the trade deficit. An example is a policy that still exists in the US, that foreign sugar is to be tariffed to ensure that there is domestic supply. But sugarcane farming is much less efficient than what tropical countries do. If these workers were employed in other parts of the economy more wealth would be created, so that both the other country and the US are better off(the politicians who get rebates are not ofc). I think Oreo left because of that policy. Other than that a growing economy needs a growing amount of gold. That will happen naturally as the AI will start trade routes with you, to give y that gold. The reason such trade routes are profitable are because of the reduced supply of gold(if the economy had more gold there would be more demand and exports would naturally be less, for example the people working there would move to other industries more profitable now that would produce stuff for the people of the country, with effing tea being the most troublesome late game). I just thought that mechanic could be mentioned although a player doesn't need to take it into consideration usually. If y try a max sol run you can see what I mean. Tea is a major roadblock as it keeps increasing in value and y need sufficient farming locations. Btw having open borders multi culti is not beneficial for such a run.
@@fileleutheros2577 I don't think Victoria 3 works that way. There are no currencies, which means there is no foreign exchange market, so no trade surpluses or deficits to worry about. In a proper 19th century economic simulation you would need to simulate what you are talking about, and it would be relevant. But Victoria 3 has a single global currency, so it doesn't matter. Money and goods don't actually exist in Victoria. Gold mines don't produce gold. They "produce" Minting (which increases your balance) and consume labour, tools, coal, explosives etc. with the production methods. They pay workers a wage. But they're no different really to any other type of building. Government administration buildings produce +Bureaucracy; Gold mines produce +Minting. Money in the game doesn't have anything to do with the gold good produced by gold mines. Goods in general can't actually be stockpiled or owned in any real sense. They are 'produced' in the sense that the 'sell order' number is increased and 'consumed' in the sense that the 'buy order' number is increased. But if there's an input shortage there isn't actually a shortage of goods, instead there's just a penalty applied to the throughput of the buildings.
It's quite different in Victoria 2, where some of the stuff you are talking about was relevant. Yet even in that game there was a single global currency.
@@milesrout You have not researched the game enough. Check out the wiki about standard of living. You will find out that pops accumulate wealth. In short at each moment in every country in the world there is a certain amount of gold. Some of it is in the "bank accounts" of the pops, some in the accounts of buildings and the rest are either in the treasury or in the investment pool. So when the value of exports is lower than that of imports gold flows out, which drops the sol of the pops. Doing it early game to import construction materials is ok if possible, but as the game goes on it restricts the sol. Actually because sol influences prices demand etc you don't have to plan around it that much, but it's good to take it into account. Gold minting is the only way to increase the wealth of a country other than exports. So gold mines are very powerfull buildings to increase sol. I generally try to build the goods i import if possible with some exceptions when i have nothing great to build, even if other building would be more profitable. Cloth is the only exceptions as it gets stupid cheap in most saves for me, so building plantations never works.
Indefinitely don't agree with your preference to free trade. Maybe in theory if you build everything right you are better off as can reduce input costs more and export more goods out, but imo that is a delicate balance. Easier just to adjust tariffs as needed.
This is especially true when you own most of the market.
If you know which ones you want to prioritize, the decreased admin cost, route priority, and route volume are all really valuable. I don't find myself every really swapping from a ton of import routes to export routes or vice versa
Great video. While I've heard you say most of it before, your presentation here made it all click. Since I'm playing with Qing at the moment, I suspect the dynamics would be different in the early game? Because of the special landowners, you actually want to export agricultural stuff because of the 20% contribution to the pool under agrarianism?
So in case we play a conservative country, and are unable to go for free trade, protectionism would be a good second pick to discourage other countries importing our goods and thus influencing the autoqueue...interesting.
I do find the tip to just use extra bureaucracy for idle trade routes in case they become profitable very helpful, I usually just canceled everything the alert told me is unprofitable. Will stop that 😅
If you are playing a conservative country, then you go for Corn Laws, you choose the new leader in the event change, and you go Free Trade anyway xD
Yeah, it's not optimal, but it does make for smoother gameplay. I do a lot of speed 4-5 play and I find it helps a lot.
Ah yes, the almighty corn laws xD
I am playing France, have built shit of iron wood grain and coal, i have free trade, and now basicaly everyone is stealing my raw resource from me... Making my prices and construction sector go up... I thought it was good first for the bureaucracy and trade volume but now i don't really understand why i should stay on it just to have my things stolen from my pops ?
Clearly trade is the fast track to economic dominance. However, it depends on good relations with exporters. So your strategy of building dependence on trade for supply of basic input goods is vulnerable to wars/alliances with parties that are key to your supply of those goods. I suppose this could be mitigated by trading with far off countries and avoiding trade with noisy neighbors. It could also be mitigated by sufficient military power. Also, what if your location is far away from basic resource production [Japan?]. Wouldn't distance raise import prices of basic goods? Not clear in the video.
this legit blew my mind, thanks a lot
Glad it helped!
I bet you've gone over this a couple of times in your videos, but what mods do you use, if any during your play throughs? Thanks for all the helpful videos!!
I play vanilla, because I think that's what viewers would prefer. Thinking about a UI mod that takes buildings off the map when they're being constructed, for performance reasons, though
Some politicians need to watch this video
I get it, but if the goal of importing is to depress the price of something, why not just produce more of it in your economy?
This is an old video, but one of the reasons you want to depress the price is so that the auto queue produces less of a building
A huge portion of this video is basically the reason why I use directly controlled investment pool option instead of the "new" autonomous option...
I think autonomous adds more texture to the game, personally
I prefer protectionism to ensure the cost of the base goods for my factories is low. I try to over-produce iron, coal, wood, cotton, etc to make my factories more profitable. then i just encourage export on the finished goods. i dont care about the tariffs, its about being able to produce more at a cheaper cost in order to export so the AI doesnt try to build those goods on their own (due to me exporting to them). This is especially true with autos and electronics (radios, telephones), as i immediately export to uk, america, germany, austria, france even if it loses money cause at some point theyll see they have the good cheap and will create their own demand for it, but never produce the supply for it. So what ends up happening is I become the only producer of those goods in the world. which makes winning late game wars even easier.
TLDR: I use protectionism to increase my own GDP, while exporting to others to prevent them from producing as much themselves, thus keeping their GDP low. It also artificially raises their SoL (cheaper goods), which makes their worker wages higher, which makes them even less competitive, which allows me to export even more.
It's worth noting that low iron, coal, and wood prices make the buildings that produce them less profitable, and that these buildings are capitalist owned, and this depresses their contribution to the IPT.
The fact you have to say “boom booms” instead of explosives is insane in a “free society”
your videos are amazing. i'm really trying to like this game, i just dont understand it. your video helps a lot!
Glad you like them! I still feel like I'm learning a lot in this game too, so I feel you
I like to follow a few rules:
1) industries = good; farms = bad (it's stupid I know)
2) low prices of raw material and agricultural products by IMPORT ***
3) increase the profits of capitalists by EXPORTING industrial products
DONE, you have a good economy.
*** watch out to not be dependable of one market only, have a lot of partners!!
By the way, if you want to learn this at very well, I recommend you to play as Paraguai without war. No raw materials, just industries. Of course, you need to be in a market nearby you to trade with the world, but it doesnt matter!!
I think this is a good (oversimplified) ruleset, yeah.
Encouraging the AI to construct coal by importing it is big brain.
you are assuming the investment pool AI is wise in picking what to and where to build the new buildings, often they made dumb buildings in dumb places and effectively wasting the money, e.g.. arts academy in undereducated and unmanned colonies and they like to scale up the buildings although the buildings do not have enough qualified labor. Therefore it is always better to have the money in the treasury than in the investment pool.
The ai is sometimes catastrophically stupid, but is generally intelligent.
Thank you, you are so helpful! Do you have any advice on bureaucracy and convoys in regards to trade on how to ideally manage those number or should we just make sure to be above 0?
Just be above a deficit for the most part. You def want to make sure you have enough convoy buffer in your trade routes (as in your routes are using them but they could not be) to support your troops overseas if you need to. Often if you know you're going to get raided heavily in a war you can add a bunch of ports at the start too.
Question regarding trade centre subsidisation. What does that actually do? When is it good to subsidise a trade centre and when is it not?
I don't have a clue what i'm doing but I am playing anyway, hopefully I will figure it out
So... the capitalist in the trade center don´t contribute to the investment pool ? Emosido Engañado
They do, it's just in a different place in the ui. I mention it in the pinned comment.
Trade centres do give dividend income now. They also add a huge amount to your credit limit.
A hidden benefit of trade centres is they increase urbanization helping you make more services/ services more efficiently.
They also give a +25% migration attraction which is huge.
I've found playing as a arbitrage trading nation eg Portugal/Netherlands very viable especially after you get industrial ports and you have treaty ports giving you access through tariffs other nations don't have.
I think I might have a correction about the dividends in the pinned comment. Usually, if you're building a decent amount of convoys, they won't be that substantive. The urbanization is okay. The migration attraction, yes, is huge.
Might be trying an arbitrage run for 1.3 to get Amish Paradise.
What if I am lets say japan or Qing and waste most of my tax money. Since my business being profitable doesn't mean so much yet would it make sense if I focus on tarrifs until I fix it?
I havent played Qing yet and japan starts with isolationism but what i have noticed that tariffs are way smaller in games i have played after 1.2 patch that personally I would not focus on them.
On Japan/China specifically you actually want to import arable goods even more, because the Subsistence Rice Farms employ twice as many pops (and have nearly double the output), and when you build a farm over them it fires the pops and can lead to pretty big unemployment - you want to discourage your queue from doing that as much as possible.
I'm not sure, but I have a suspicion that the autoqueue mechanics fail to account for destroying the subsistence farm when deciding to build agriculture.
@@generalistgaming I was mostly asking about tarrif income itself. Like lets say I am importing grain while encourging exports (%40 import tarrifs)
I agree about autobuild stuff by the way I allways get too much radicals as japan while making everyone 2 times richer than before it is impossible :D
just as a note as qing and japan don't try to build up admin buildings at the start to deal with taxation capacity, only to get positive bureaucracy. you end up losing more money in government wages than you get back from taxes
@@pelayla yea learned that long ago 🤣
I mean... I guess its momey that doesnt disappear from economy now and gives jobs with better income to my pops so its still possitive?
do you suggest auto building or no? I understand managing a HUGE area its probably best, but it seems like its hurting me sometimes... like what you described in trading.
I fully agree with you, except for one thing, don't you want to import (or a least not exporting) steel and tools for making construction cheaper?
So, having a more nuanced discussion, tools might be okay to not import, but it's important to do early on if you're specializing in tools, in order to create demand to allow you to push a throughput bonus that is larger, because economies of scale throughput bonuses have increasing marginal returns up until the cap. But if you have a bunch of 51 tooling workshops, then yeah, I'd bite on not exporting tools (after you are also picking up more efficient pms for other stuff and tools is still just steel). Steel has generally pretty efficient PMs, and exporting it is good, but there's not enough demand to specialize it early.
When you export, you increase the price/profitiability, which will cause more buildings and ability to build it - so the increase is temporary. When you spike your steel/tools demand subsequently, it will decrease the size of your trade routes. You pay a little more up front, but you pay less when you increase demand. I think it's closeish to a wash on that front, but it will increase the proportion of your economy that is tools/steel/industrial or w/e, which is the main point.
@@generalistgaming ok i understand, you give me another perspective about those goods. thank you for taking the time to reply
i think you should get more construction sectors
Rip me, getting construction shamed T.T
Very insightful. But you have to have some kind of balance, right? If you just focus on very inefficient trade routes for agrarian, you will run too much deficit for trading buildings?
Yeah, generally all the routes you run should be profitable. I'm more saying that it's not the end of the world if they're not, and sometimes, for reasons of convenience (ie, not optimal play) leaving them on is fine. It's not what's most important, which is I think what a newer player might think.
trade centers do give reinvestment though, i just checked it in game
Are you sure? They do not display dividends, and the wages of the lower tier employed will ratchet up proportionally to the capitalist. If this is the case they still, because of the split with the shopkeepers, give proportionally less than a fully capitalist building, but this might have larger implications, as it implies that ALL capitalist wages contribute to IPT.
@@generalistgaming you can see it in your video at 10:36, there's a weekly balance below the trade routes part, hover over that and you should see reinvestment amount (if it's profitable, of course)
@@generalistgaming sorry, i would really have preferred to post a screenshot i took of it, but youtube doesn't let you post links in the comments
@@pelayla you're correct, I see now. That's so weird that they format it differently for different buildings. I compared it to a few buildings and the reinvestment seems incredibly small (about 1/7th dividends, I assume because the mix, but it should be closer to 1/10th if the building were proportionally split among the owners, so there's something weird going on there), so there's that. I don't think that affects the overall strategy. Overall the balance is pretty small too, for even the #1 trade center in the world.
@@generalistgaming if you're on mercentalism then it's owned by shopkeepers, but if you're on free trade or protectionalism then capitalists get the dividends and they reinvest it at same rate for other buildings (for example, london trade center at game start gets 12k balance, and reinvests 2.43k of it (20%)
This is the way
This is the way
This is the Way.
This is the way
Often to help boost my SoL when I have a cash surplus, I'll often import as many consumer and luxury goods as I can productively bring into my market. By doing this, am I discouraging my Autobuild queue to construct industries & plantations that would produce those goods at home?
Yes - in general I like the idea of importing the agriarian luxury goods and exporting the manufactured ones (clohtes/furn/porcelain).
Is it worth exporting tools even though they're inputs in most industrial buildings and are almost always at a deficit?
Generally it is, but there are exceptions to the rule. Notably early on it lets you push economies of scale bonuses, but export is a bit worse generally in the current iteration of 1.5 on the beta
Hey just started playing the game. What i got from this video (correct me if im wrong). Is that i should only import non capitlist related goods and ideally export capitalist's related goods?
That’s roughly correct, except at some point you’ll need to shift towards importing resources (wood, minerals) to fuel your factories/as your factories become a larger proportion of your GPD than mines/logging, even though these resources are capitalist owned. Extremely early though you can actually focus on resources and export them, since, on a per construction basis, they’re very efficient in the early game, esp if you have a state bonus that doesn’t have a construction malus.
Unbelievable that I cannot use fertilizer on top of enemy soldiers in the battlefield, and instead I have to sell it for cheap to foreigners. Paradox pls
Let. Him. Fert.
What do I do at end game where there are barely any resources left and every thing has been imported.
You try to conquer and expand in such a way earlier on to prevent this I suppose. It's not as bad now in 1.2 though, as the ai will build a lot more of the resources.
If I check the tooltips for trade centers weekly balance they do have dividends and reinvestment/IPT.
Are you sure they don't?
This is an error on my part (because the ui puts it in a different place than in other buildings). Someone commented and I checked. As long as you have a decent amount of convoys the dividends will be extremely low though, as the route size will increase to an equilibrium where it's barely profitable. Overall the strategy is unchanged, but I need to edit my pinned comment.
i have a question, im trying a run as switzerland on a redo, since i have a clothes factory, should i export as much as i can so that can help them expand? & likewise import fabric, which would help if i want to expand construction
Yes! Because economies of scale has increasing marginal returns, and your autoque won't take that long term consideration into account. By exporting you can make your buildings profitable, even if you're specializing
@@generalistgaming well for somereason they don’t make more money from exporting
several months later & still the case, trade just doesnt work
“Profits are temporary, but capitalism is forever” Amen brother 🙏🙏😩😩
It's a lifestyle
Thanks !
You bet!
Heresy! Everyone knows that isolationism is bliss!
lol most complicated game ever made
I really appreciate your expertise, but I think the "livestream of consciousness" format is a bit clunky, leading to very long videos with many tangents. I think you could stand to condense your explanations with some focused editing and planning.
I've run a lot of polls on this and the opinion seems mixed. I'd be able to release maybe 1/5 or less of the videos if I do edits. Still, it's a consideration.
How to delete buildings in laissez faire?
you can't it's part of their law
unless if there's a revolt in your country, AI might deletes some building in occupied states depends on their economic system
I understand that i dont understand shit about how the economy works
Construction go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
LET THEM TRADE!
Let him cook!
forget about university just learn this game... 😄
this is the way 🤣- for trade
This is the way.
Lots of your arguments vhange if you turn off autonomous construction q. I myself find it annoying and play without it.
Lots of them don't change at all. Trading for tariffs was already bad before 1.2, still bad now. Also, most people play with it on now because it's like you're actually playing a game with a somewhat free market, instead of every country being a Nazi Germany with a collectivised economy.
I think a lot of my points stay the same, and you can force industrial goods even harder if you have complete control, and be more specialized. The agrarian PMs are very efficient in terms of net outputs, even if they aren't in terms of net output*IPT. The biggest change is that you export for profits initially until it's no longer profitable.
This is the way