Unemployment at 1.1%!!!!

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irfanahmed1979
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Unemployment at 1.1%!!!!

Post by irfanahmed1979 »

My unemployment is alarmingly low and production is suffering. I have kept the spending on all sectors (social, cultural, medical, etc.) at the maximum since the start of the game. Also I have been researching all medical and social techs as fast as possible.

Are there any further steps that I can take to get out of this situation or shall I wait for a year and hope that my population increases?
PyongYang
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Re: Unemployment at 1.1%!!!!

Post by PyongYang »

Annex someone.
mattpilot
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Re: Unemployment at 1.1%!!!!

Post by mattpilot »

I have kept the spending on all sectors (social, cultural, medical, etc.) at the maximum since the start of the game.

Thats your "problem".

As i found out in the 1936 game (same engine, so applies here) , your social spending slider is basically your "economy" slider. If you have low spending, your gdp will drop, your inflation will decrease, your unemployment will increase.

Spend a lot, and you got "positive" effects. (all relative, man)

This slider seems to be the only thing affecting those factors. Lots of "rumours" around but who really knows - BG isn't talking facts. See my 1936 "economy / gdp" thread for the test i did (and to reproduce it) to observe these effects.



But what does it matter if its low? Not like it has any effect (again, rumours abound, but BG isn't talking facts). You can build as many (or as few) production plants as you like - it wont affect yoru employment % one bit.

Your "Production is suffering" most likely because your GDP is high, no? 2 ways i found to reduce that ... either spend less in social sector, or somehow make sure your population does NOT fulfill its consumer good need. Notice this is NOT the same thing as increasing taxes so they buy less. All that matters here is the % of unfulfilled demand. In other words - dont produce goods and dont import goods -> will make your GDP drop.

If your asking for logical explanations as how this makes for good gameplay -> i dont have one.
barkhauer
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Re: Unemployment at 1.1%!!!!

Post by barkhauer »

You have overbuilt, and overspent. Set your spending sliders to recommended (overspending shows severely diminished returns in most categories) other than infrastructure, which it may be worth overspending on.

Finally, scrap your excess production facilities for commodities which aren't profitable for export, or which are only marginally (say, 10% or less) profitable for export. What you will find is that if you close down those timber mills and power plants that you don't need, that suddenly your consumer goods facilities become more productive. It is also very easy to build, say, 60 consumer goods facilities when you only have the population to support 40, and not understand why production is remaining stagnant. Try using the build screen under the commodities tabs to disable some facilities, and watch the production totals for a couple of days. If you shut some down, and the total barely changes, you've overbuilt and need to throttle back.

EDIT: Another direct way to get a huge number of workers freed up is to reduce the size of your military, it's the largest single manpower sink in the game. Go to the defense minister and reduce your salary slider.
Last edited by barkhauer on Jan 27 2014, edited 1 time in total.
barkhauer
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Re: Unemployment at 1.1%!!!!

Post by barkhauer »

mattpilot wrote:
I have kept the spending on all sectors (social, cultural, medical, etc.) at the maximum since the start of the game.

Thats your "problem".

As i found out in the 1936 game (same engine, so applies here) , your social spending slider is basically your "economy" slider. If you have low spending, your gdp will drop, your inflation will decrease, your unemployment will increase.

Spend a lot, and you got "positive" effects. (all relative, man)

This slider seems to be the only thing affecting those factors. Lots of "rumours" around but who really knows - BG isn't talking facts. See my 1936 "economy / gdp" thread for the test i did (and to reproduce it) to observe these effects.



But what does it matter if its low? Not like it has any effect (again, rumours abound, but BG isn't talking facts). You can build as many (or as few) production plants as you like - it wont affect yoru employment % one bit.

Your "Production is suffering" most likely because your GDP is high, no? 2 ways i found to reduce that ... either spend less in social sector, or somehow make sure your population does NOT fulfill its consumer good need. Notice this is NOT the same thing as increasing taxes so they buy less. All that matters here is the % of unfulfilled demand. In other words - dont produce goods and dont import goods -> will make your GDP drop.

If your asking for logical explanations as how this makes for good gameplay -> i dont have one.

I understand that you're frustrated. However, I've also read a couple of posts by you, and they are a combination of pointless rant/demand of the devs (and nobody else) to "explain themselves", and at the same time are hopelessly vague, almost impossible to answer questions without writing a novel in response. The one time I did answer you was completely ignored. There are some very smart players on this forum, some of whom have been playing this game and its predecessors for many years at this point, and I can assure you that the economy works, though it needs adjusting right now due to the shift in era.

Here's what you need to do to get help: ask targeted, specific questions. Why/how does GDP/c matter? How do I raise it? How do I lower it? How do I combat unemployment? I'm playing as USA, why am I losing money? Etc. Don't expect gameplay critique from red names, they're focused on feature implementation and bug squishing. Watch out for names like Fistalis, Aragos, Barkhauer, tkobo, zuikaku, etc. We do most of the new guy helping around here.
mattpilot
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Re: Unemployment at 1.1%!!!!

Post by mattpilot »

I suppose its all a matter on how you see things.

Yes, i rant -> but one must wonder what fostered that.

I did not ignore your post in the 1936 thread -> it just didn't add any value to the thread or answer the question. YOu stated logically how the economy *should* work. Fact is, it does not work like that in the BG world.

Even your advice in this thread, while sound in the real world, has no bearing on the BG world. Just do a simple test -> Take a small country, sell ALL your production facilities with all other things unchanged *and locked* -> and magically watch your unemployment decrease. You'd expect it to increase.. .afterall, the people have no jobs now?? That test alone tells me the amount of production facilities on the map has no effect on your employment levels (the gov't spending during the building process *might* have an effect on it). Does employment level have any effect at all? During the same test, after all production facilities are sold, simply adjust your spending slider from one extreme to the other, and watch the magic work.

I've played the game(s) long enough too -> i've listened to all kinds of player advice, only to find out in the course of playing the game that its total speculation and often downright false. Its frustrating (which is one source of my rants, i suppose). So the solution is NOT to ask more advice of players who just have more theories and real world examples. I want (yes, i "demand") the actual game mechanics. I've also asked the same on how combat works a long time ago. All i got was player theories and speculation. It seems this game's main feature is *hokus pokus*. As long as the player *thinks* everything is working as planned, everyones happy, eh?
barkhauer
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Re: Unemployment at 1.1%!!!!

Post by barkhauer »

mattpilot wrote:I suppose its all a matter on how you see things.

Yes, i rant -> but one must wonder what fostered that.

I did not ignore your post in the 1936 thread -> it just didn't add any value to the thread or answer the question. YOu stated logically how the economy *should* work. Fact is, it does not work like that in the BG world.

Even your advice in this thread, while sound in the real world, has no bearing on the BG world. Just do a simple test -> Take a small country, sell ALL your production facilities with all other things unchanged *and locked* -> and magically watch your unemployment decrease. You'd expect it to increase.. .afterall, the people have no jobs now?? That test alone tells me the amount of production facilities on the map has no effect on your employment levels (the gov't spending during the building process *might* have an effect on it). Does employment level have any effect at all? During the same test, after all production facilities are sold, simply adjust your spending slider from one extreme to the other, and watch the magic work.

I've played the game(s) long enough too -> i've listened to all kinds of player advice, only to find out in the course of playing the game that its total speculation and often downright false. Its frustrating (which is one source of my rants, i suppose). So the solution is NOT to ask more advice of players who just have more theories and real world examples. I want (yes, i "demand") the actual game mechanics. I've also asked the same on how combat works a long time ago. All i got was player theories and speculation. It seems this game's main feature is *hokus pokus*. As long as the player *thinks* everything is working as planned, everyones happy, eh?
This is incorrect. Global unemployment tends to correct almost instantly, due to a HUGE number of factors, most of which are beyond your control, and beyond your observation without loading as other regions via multiplayer, etc. Examples include:

Underfunded health care/family subsidy: population decline due to deaths exceeding births, unhappy people emigrating > less workers.
Overfunded anything: workers absorbed by service sectors > less workers.
Lower taxes > happy people, service sectors expand, immigration increases, > more workers, but not as many as you might expect without experience/analysis.
Increased military salaries > working age people leave factories in droves for higher paying defense jobs > less workers
Decreased military salaries > more workers, but decline in GDP stimulates emigration

Your problem is that you want to tweak X and get Y. The economic simulation is set up so that A, B, C, D... on through X all factor into Y. We can give you guidelines, we can elaborate on specific questions, but in order to understand the entire economy, you need to test almost all of the entire facets of the game to see all the effects, and even then you'll never see them ALL. There are just too many combinations.

Let me toss out another example, this time with a formula. Production efficiency is based on technology, loyalty, and supply level. It looks something like this (unless Battlegoat has changed something under the hood and we haven't caught on yet):

((0.5*supply level) + (0.5*is_loyal) + (cumulative_production_bonii))*base_output=effective_output

Let's say you have a widget factory. It is located in occupied territory that you conquered from a neighbor. The local supply level is 62%. It's theoretical output is 187 widgets per day. Since it is conquered, "is_loyal" has a value of 0. We have no tech bonii to widget production, as we are not yet far enough into the tech tree (also, widgets are not in the game and are made up for this example.) Plug in our numbers, we get:

((0.5*.62) + (0.5*0) + (0.5*0))*187 = 57.97 widgets per day.

Now, let's say I built the same widget factory a short distance outside my capital. The hex will be loyal, and I can expect higher supply levels, say 90%.

((0.5 * .90) + (0.5 * 1) + (0.5 * 0))*187 = 177.65 widgets per day.

Now, note that my second example carries the same manpower/employee requirement as the first, and as it is closer to my capital where supply is higher, will likely have lower infrastructure costs as well. The difference in efficiency is staggering, meaning I will have all at once much higher output, slightly lower costs, vastly greater profits, and quite likely higher sustained GDP/c. Once you understand this, you see that you want to always have every single unit of production possible on loyal territory rather than on occupied, unless you literally have no other choice. It does not take long for it to be profitable for you to scrap captured consumer goods factories and use the industrial goods recover to rebuild the factory back in home territory.

This also leads to an interesting strategy choice when considering annex/liberate/colonize. Colonies only get land that is loyal to them. You can begin construction in a colony, and they will complete it if they have the money and industrial goods to do so. They will give you anything they produce which is surplus to their needs. What this means is that you can conquer land, build on it, then get the full value of the production rather than the nerfed disloyal output, and the colony eats the production costs. This means that one of the fastest, surest ways in the game to get filthy stinking rich is to acquire and industrialize your colonies to provide your people with expensive goods that you didn't have to pay for.
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number47
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Re: Unemployment at 1.1%!!!!

Post by number47 »

One thing you should all have in mind is that there is whole "private" sector that influents employment not just your production facilities. Destroying all production buildings will not make all your people unemployed...the private sector is still alive...unfortunately :lol:
There were times I experimented on how to "kill" the private sector so I could employ those people in more important industries but haven't found the magic formula...still :lol:
"If everyone is thinking alike, someone isn't thinking."
- General George Patton Jr
PyongYang
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Re: Unemployment at 1.1%!!!!

Post by PyongYang »

mattpilot wrote:You can build as many (or as few) production plants as you like - it wont affect yoru employment % one bit.
Well you've been playing a different game to me, then.
Hundane
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Re: Unemployment at 1.1%!!!!

Post by Hundane »

Your problem is that you want to tweak X and get Y. The economic simulation is set up so that A, B, C, D... on through X all factor into Y. We can give you guidelines, we can elaborate on specific questions, but in order to understand the entire economy, you need to test almost all of the entire facets of the game to see all the effects, and even then you'll never see them ALL. There are just too many combinations.
One reason I like this game. You do something to A then B thru X will change. Some changes are really noticeable while others will take days or months to see the end result and go unnoticed unless your looking to see if your change caused any down the road effects.
If you have low spending, your gdp will drop,
Heres is quote from Balthagor on the 2010 forums back in 2006.
GDP/c (what is shown in game) is affected by all spending in your region. Increase military salaries and research and you'll having higher GDP/c. That does not mean you'll have a larger treasury...
irfanahmed1979
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Re: Unemployment at 1.1%!!!!

Post by irfanahmed1979 »

Wow, that's a lot of input, thanks guys. So in conclusion, if I slash military salaries, I might get new workers for my factories but I'll also start more emigration, right. If I annex a country I shouldn't build any facility there till they're loyal to me (does loyalty increase over time in an annexed region?). It is better to colonise than annex a region, right?
barkhauer
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Re: Unemployment at 1.1%!!!!

Post by barkhauer »

irfanahmed1979 wrote:Wow, that's a lot of input, thanks guys. So in conclusion, if I slash military salaries, I might get new workers for my factories but I'll also start more emigration, right. If I annex a country I shouldn't build any facility there till they're loyal to me (does loyalty increase over time in an annexed region?). It is better to colonise than annex a region, right?
They will never become loyal. Move the factories back to your homeland by scrapping the one you capture (which will recover the industrial goods) and building an identical factory at home in a high supply location.

If you cut military salaries, but time it so that it happens right about the time the new factories open, you will mitigate (though not eliminate) the emigration. if your GDP/c stay about the same, you have succeeded.

Colonize is best if you want money. Liberate is best if you want allies, and also results in the least reputation impact. Annex is best if you need population more than you need anything else (for example, if you need more soldier, or if you've overbuilt and inflation is out of control.) However, annexation has significant long-term penalties, and if you're doing it to increase your economy, you're better off going the colonization route.
irfanahmed1979
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Re: Unemployment at 1.1%!!!!

Post by irfanahmed1979 »

I need population so I have annexed 3 regions already and my unemployment is now 1.5%.
barkhauer
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Re: Unemployment at 1.1%!!!!

Post by barkhauer »

irfanahmed1979 wrote:I need population so I have annexed 3 regions already and my unemployment is now 1.5%.
Which regions? What was your net population gain? After wars, there is usually elevated emigration. Etc, etc.

Let me know if you want to Skype or TeamSpeak or something sometime, I will answer questions in real time that way.
irfanahmed1979
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Re: Unemployment at 1.1%!!!!

Post by irfanahmed1979 »

barkhauer wrote:
irfanahmed1979 wrote:I need population so I have annexed 3 regions already and my unemployment is now 1.5%.
Which regions? What was your net population gain? After wars, there is usually elevated emigration. Etc, etc.

Let me know if you want to Skype or TeamSpeak or something sometime, I will answer questions in real time that way.
The initial 2 regions were not that heavily populated (Israel and Jordan) and I also inherited a colony from Jordan (Palestine). Then as I already had most of south America I annexed Bolivia. Currently the unemployment rate is 1.6. For a short while the consumer goods and industrial goods demand and production came back to normal and then for some reason I again started having a problem with the production and demand of these two commodities. That was the only reason why I posted on this forum. I have played this self-modded scenario before and I reached an unemployment level of 1.4% without any problems. But this time round the commodities were giving me a problem.

The reason for over building and over spending (I cheated) was to be self-sufficient in atleast most resources. However now I've reached a level where the power's demand is almost matching the production and some other resources are falling short.
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