It’s the Economy Stupid
written by King
When we came to look at the economy we had four goals. These were to make the economic system more realistic, to make the economic policy of your government more relevant, make the game more fun to play and to see if we could shut off some of the exploits in the current system.
From the initial screen shots most of you probably spotted that it is now not always possible to build a factory, so let’s start by telling you all what has replaced it. The system now works around Capitalists, they accumulate money and then (depending on the economic policy) they’ll build factories and railways. The up shot of this is two things. Firstly if you promote a large amount of Capitalists, what will happen is that none of them will accumulate enough money to build anything and your industrial growth will stall. Secondly tariffs are no longer free money. The higher your tariffs are the less money your Capitalists will accumulate each day, therefore it will take them longer to build factories and railways with. Thus the slower your industrial growth will be (now before you go up in arms about this and point out how many countries industrialised behind a high tariff wall, you’ll see a bit later why this is still true).
Now let’s look at the effects of economic policy on Capitalists. If you are Planned Economy your Capitalists will never build anything. On each other policy your Capitalists will build railways and Factories. As you move from State Capitalism, through Interventionism to Laissez-Faire your Capitalists require steadily less money to build something, thus build quicker. Also if you are Laissez-Faire you cannot build any economic improvements. Under Interventionism you can expand factories and build railways. Under the other two economic policies you have full control. The economic policy of your government can really swing how you’ll play the game. Elections can make a huge difference to your game plan.
As a consequence of this, Laissez-Faire together with Free Trade can lead to some pretty impressive industrial development. In fact if you have some spare cash and want use import subsidies, your Capitalists can really start building. Under Interventionism the dreaded monopoly structure suddenly becomes very tempting (I prefer it myself).
Now back to the tariff question, low tariffs are not always useful. Remember Capitalists earn money from the export of goods, if you have a low industrial base your Capitalists will accumulate money very slowly. Comparing Austria and Prussia is a very good example of this fact in action. Looking at the two countries at the start of the 1836 scenario, Prussian Capitalists will build much more than Austrian Capitalists over any set period (if both countries have the same economic policy). For Austria it could actually be better to go for State Capitalism, use high tariffs to finance the building a few factories yourself, before letting your capitalists take over. Otherwise Prussia is going to own you on the economic front.
So now for the 64 thousand dollar question, what do capitalist build? We spent a lot of time thinking about this, and coming up with a system that works. Capitalists will build virtually any factory that your tech allows them to. However they prefer to build consumer goods factories, (i.e. factories that produce products that your pops will buy). Here is an example of what they build:
Despite being interventionist for most of the game I have not done anything to the factories in Westphalia. So this gives you a flavour of what Capitalists like to build.
Now I know what you are thinking, what happens if I want to build a huge industrial base, to conquer the world with. Well if you to avoid things like the British shell crisis of 1915 your going to have to intervene in your economy.
One thing worth mentioning, if you don’t like the factory you’re Capitalists are building, well delete it and sooner or later they’ll build another. It’s not like it’s costing you any money.
19/06/2006, 10h26
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