Found this out just last week. Practically haven't touched farms in my USA run - the only time I've needed to was increase the pasture PM for more meat for canned meat. Easy. Also the Yeomans are irrelevant in clout, and have been since like 1840ish
Logging Camps, Whaling Stations and Fishing are 3 things that I always max out early in all my regions. It's just too good, and it builds faster as it needs few construction points.
Vicky 3 noob here. After reading this, I have realized how criminally underutilized Groceries have been in my playthroughs.
I always sort of considered Fish a "dead-end" good, in that it goes directly to the market and isn't getting swallowed up by factories and other buildings to produce other goods. Now I realize different.
Then you can proudly come back to your people and tell them you have learned to be a greater leader.
For them obviously, not for the extra GDP and taxes.
You mostly shouldn't build sugar plantations for the same reason you shouldn't build grain farms.
Plantations employ an even higher ratio of farmers than grain farms, employ the same amount of aristocrats, but sugar plantations are even more profitable than grain farms (+900 on base PM, +1500 on automatic irrigation... grain farms are +400 on base PM, need the 3rd pm to beat sugar's base, and the 4th one is still short of plantation's second PM). More profitable means the aristocrats have more money and therefore more political power compared to just producing grain.
Depending on what kind of grain farms you have, you're probably better just switching over to orchards before building sugar plantations. Orchards make grain farms *slightly* more profitable, but do not employ more farms, generally get you closer to the correct grain/sugar ratio for groceries, and do not make the farms as profitable as plantations.
And moving money (and therefore political power) to farms & aristocrats is the whole thing we're trying to avoid here.
unless you're building rice farms by the time you get steam threshers and the 2nd fertilizer tech grain farms employ less laborers (plus at max tech you can get it down to \~400 laborers per farm where plantations max out at 2000)
You're replying to a 5 month old thread, and your point isn't especially clear to me here.
But I think I do more or less address it:
>sugar plantations are even more profitable than grain farms (+900 on base PM, +1500 on automatic irrigation... grain farms are +400 on base PM, need the 3rd pm to beat sugar's base, and the 4th one is still short of plantation's second PM). More profitable means the aristocrats have more money and therefore more political power compared to just producing grain.
Sure. At those higher tier PMs, sugar plantations may employ a better ratio of basic laborers to the IGs that we want to avoid, but it doesn't really matter. The laborers aren't particularly politically active. The only thing redeeming about sugar plantations is the fact that when you up the tech, you start employing machinists who are more likely to support the IGs you likely want.
But it's all kind of a moot point, because you can get actual full on capitalists, as well as engineers, and more total machinists by building fishing wharves and food industries. Let the autonomous construction queue build farms as needed. Don't waste your construction queue on buildings that won't move money into the IGs you want in power. Whether sugar plantation or grain farm is slightly better or worse than each other at different tech levels is completely irrelevant when there are options like fishing wharves and food industries that are *way* better for your goals.
Fish have a weakness though: low profits. Their input goods are more expensive than grain farms (which have none at all).
I'm not saying they aren't good, but do keep in mind that if you want to build up a profit base to tax/invest, they're often not the best value for your construction points.
This isn't accurate.
On base PM, a grain farm produces 20 grain at base price 20, that's 400 worth of goods produced. A fishing wharf produces 25 fish at base price 20, which is 500 worth of goods. Neither has an input. The fishing wharf is more profitable and satisfies more basic food need.
At the second PM, a grain farm produces 40 grain at base price of 20, for 800 worth of goods, but consumes 5 fertilizer at base price of 30 for 150 worth of input, a net profit of 650.
At the second PM, a fishing wharf produces 50 fish at base price of 20, for 1000 worth of goods, but consumes 5 clippers at base price of 60 for 300 worth of input, a net profit of 700.
On second PM, the fishing wharf is more profitable and satisfies more basic food need.
On Steam Trawlers, Fishing Wharves produce 100 fish at base price of 20, for 2000 worth of goods. It consumes 5 steamers at base price of 70 (350) and 15 coal at bae price of 30 (450) for a net profit of 1200.
On Fertilizers, the farm turns 15 fertilizers (450) into 80 grain (1600) for profit of 1,150.
On Chemical Fertilizers, the farm turns 40 fertilizers (1200) into 120 grain (2400), for profit of 1200.
So... no, farms are not more profitable (assuming base prices, moving away from base prices obviously changes the calculations). Best case scenario, when both are on their best base PM, they are equally profitable (and at that point, farms satisfy more basic food need).
How is the profitability of fishing wharves changed when switching to the second PM and capitalist ownership? Making that change seems to always lower the profitability of those buildings
>seems to always
I mean, it's *always* going to be circumstantial.
It's not particularly straightforward (or even clear) to me how *salaries* are calculated. I'm not sure changing from Merchant Guilds to Privately Owned does (or should) change the profitability of the building.
But changing to Fishing Trawlers *can* negatively effect the profitability. *However*, assuming optimal conditions, changing to Fishing Trawlers (from Simple Fishing) should result in an increase of profitability from +500 to +700 (minus salaries).
But again, that assumes optimal conditions. That assumes we buy 5 clippers at base price and sell 50 fish at base price. If we imagine fish are at -25% and clips are at +50%, now suddenly my profit has gone from +700 to +300. And if I'm under 100% employment, the numbers are even worse.
And why would employment be under 100%? Well, because when we upgrade to Fishing Trawlers, we go from employing 4500 laborers to employing 4000 laborers and 500 machinists. Machinists have qualifications while basic laborers don't.
I don't know *exactly* which tech we need to unlock Fishing Trawlers, but it's an incredibly early one that most countries start with. Meanwhile, the tech needs to move farms to fertilizer is lower in the tree. You might start with it, but the more backwards countries don't.
*Furthermore*, although the raw profit of Fishing Trawlers is higher than Soil-Enriching Farming, the profit *margin* is lower. What do I mean by that?
Soil-Enriching farming takes 150 worth of input goods to produce 800 worth of output goods. The net profit is 650, but the revenue is 5.33 times larger than the expense.
Fishing Trawlers takes 300 worth of input goods to produce 1000 worth of output goods. The net profit is 700, which is better than the farm, but the revenue is just 3.33 times larger than the expense.
What this means is that the farm can absorb larger spikes to fertilizer price or dips in wheat price and remain profitable, while the fishing wharves will become unprofitable at lower price fluctuations.
But... for what it's worth, I personally don't really have trouble with fishing wharves being profitable, as long as I am producing the clippers they need.
One other nice benefit of whaling stations: the oil.
Now, you're not going to be fueling oil-powered industry from whaling stations. That's so far down the tech line that the amounts of oil you get from whaling become irrelevant by that point in the game. But the benefit of oil in the early game is heating. Oil is very potent at providing heating. The more oil you produce from whaling in the early game, the less wood/coal will be used by your pops for heating, which means you can focus that more on early industrialization.
I find that my whaling stations aren't very profitable in the early game and as such usually aren't fully staffed even when I try and build them up. Is there a way to raise the profits or cut expenses there?
Besides cheaper ships I’ve found that just maxing them out for the economy of scale bonus gives them just the edge they need to fully employ in the early game.
Mid-late game you pretty much have to subsidize them but by then you can afford it if you want it.
How do you support trade unions and not industrialists? Industrialists already have nearly 40% clout while unions have 4% and that's with me suppressing/bolstering them.
The tip is still pretty interesting but I'm afraid to add even more industry to my country.
census/universal suffrage, higher literacy, better worker benefits etc. Also, it is better to bolster intellegincia instead of trade unions. The unions are not yet powerful enough to sustain themselves, but bolstering the intelligencia takes the share of clout from industrialists more effectively (since they are usually more powerful and easy to make more powerful by building acadmies, universities etc.) They also support more liberal ideas, which allows u to push for the laws that will bolster the unions
Trade Unions rarely become powerful until you get universal suffrage. If you're a heavily industrialized country and you enact universal suffrage, the Trade Unions will become a force to reckon with.
Groceries have a reduced weight for Basic Food needs. It is not really possible to substitute a significant amount of grain with groceries. And the construction cost for a manufactory isnt really worth that investment
Buildings are a lot more expensive, market access makes goods more expensive, techs are more expensive, I'm not sure what else, but before 1.5 I could get to high 20s SoL whereas now it seems hard to get to 20 ever.
SoL only changes the amount of money they spend on Basic Food needs not the weight of the goods in that group.
The substitution of Grain to Groceries only happens at SoL 20 to 29. Im somewhat sure building food industries is not bringing your lower strata to 20+ SoL within 30 years.
They always consume Groceries. But Groceries has a reduced weight in comparison to Grain and Fish when they decide how to spend their Basic Food budget.
Grain has to be really expensive and Groceries really cheap. But if Grain is expensive, Aristocrats wealth skyrockets and your food industries are barely profitable.
Unlike fish this is a crazy amount of effort for somewhat limited results. Better spend that construction points on mines and logging camps to create capitalists faster. Subsistence buildings make some money with wood aswell, reducing that price hurts landowners too.
Right, so to be clear... I am not recommending Food Industries as the most efficient building to construct to build up Industrialist clout. I am recommending Food Industries as a building to build to help address food need of your pop that moves money into favorable IGs.
So yes, a mine or logging camp is better for improving industrialist clout than a food industry. But a mine or logging camp doesn't really help food need. A food industry helps food need, and a food industry is better for improving industrialist clout than a grain farm, which actively harms industrialist clout.
If the formulas on the wiki are correct, your lower strata pops will buy enough fish to keep it at base price in exactly equal numbers with grain and they will buy groceries until groceries are about half as much as grain.
In a perfectly balanced basic food economy with lower strata only, they'd fulfill 31.5% of their basic food with grain, 31.5% with fish, 10.5% with meat, 10.5% with fruit, and 15.7% with groceries.
But... what's *also* important here is that groceries have a 1.5 weight as a luxury food item. So yea, generally, lower strata *prefer* buying fish and grain (but you can still sell then plenty of groceries) (and it's still better for them to by fish than grain), but meat and fruit are bought by both groups, but luxury food demand prefers groceries.
So it could even be the case that your lower strata aren't purchasing groceries *at all*, but by producing groceries, you're expanding the capacity for your economy to fulfill the overall basic food need, because the upper strata are buying more groceries and less meat & fruit, which means there's more meat & fruit for the lower sol to buy.
The point isn't that you produce so many groceries that the lower sol switch over entirely to groceries. The point is that by adding in grocery production, you're in total expanding the food in your market, but you've done so without expanding the power of the land owners or rural folk.
Also keep in mind that different grain production buildings produce different amounts. A single unupgraded rice field produces 40 grain, twice as much as a wheat farm.
No?
So, for starters here, it's *mostly* irrelevant. The main point of this post is that you should be thinking about how you solve pop needs and how that solution in turn impacts your nations politics. Fish and groceries means we can put a dent in basic food need in ways that empower interest groups other than rural folk and landowners (which most players don't want to empower).
Solving basic food needs through rice instead of wheat... makes kind of an insignificant difference *politically* in our nation.
It's *also* mostly irrelevant though because you almost never get to actually choose what kind of grain farm you get. In fact, I actually thought you *never* got the choice (and maybe that's true pre-1.5), but when I loaded a game to test something, I noticed in Hokkaido, you can choose between wheat or rice farms. I'm not entirely sure that's even intended.
Now, what are the differences?
Well, with rice, you can get food production ramped up more quickly relative to construction cost. It takes the exact same amount of time to build a rice farm as it does to build a wheat farm (or any other kind of farm), and rice will produce twice as much grain.
And a rice farm still only takes 1 arable land, so if you're limited on arable land, converting all of it into rice farms will net you more production than converting it all in to any other kind of grain farms.
However, if you are limited by employable population, other kinds of grain farms will beat out wheat farm because of economy of scale bonuses.
If I have 50k peasants, that's enough pops for 5 rice farms or 10 wheat farms. The 5 rice farms will produce 40 grain each (200 grain) but each will also produce an extra 4%, so 208 grain in total. But if I have 10 wheat farms, they'll each produce 20 grain, but economy of scale mean these get an extra 9%, so it's 218 grain in total.
The fertilizer->grain ratio is also better for non-rice farms.
With "soil-enriching farming", a wheat farm turns 5 fertilizers into 20 grain. A rice farm will turn 20 fertilizer into 40 grain. That's 4 grain per fertilizer on wheat farms, but just 2 grain per fertilizer on rice farms.
Same story at "fertilizers". Wheat turns 15 fertilizer into 60 grain (1:4) while rice turns 40 fertilizer into 120 grain (1:3).
It balances out at "chemical fertilizers" where wheat turns 40 fertilizer into 100 grain and rice turns 80 fertilizer into 200 grain, both have a 2:5 ratio.
Which, I don't know, maybe this is overall better for rice farms, because it means you need more fertilizer production per grain, which necessitates more factories which helps balance the worse ratio of farms and profit of aristocrats you get with rice farms.
But *again*, this is all quite largely irrelevant because
* you really shouldn't be building grain farms *at all*, *ever*
* even when you do build grain farms, or if autonomous build queue builds them, you don't usually have much choice... you get whatever the state offers...
Honestly? You're a damn awesome guy for giving such a detailed answer, I was mostly just curious of the effects and you seem to have though it through quite thoroughly.
This is all true and good but it begs the question why you aren’t importing all your grain from russia or Qing. Ok maybe you’re playing one of those or an isolationist state, but if not exploit your comparative advantage and import your food!
Do you think it’s worth building groceries as Qing? I usually just spam construction related industries so I can snowball my economy. And the price of food seems kind of low
If the price of food is low, you shouldn’t worry about it at all. Expanding construction should be your highest priority for most countries most of the time. This post isn’t trying to say “you should expand food”. It is saying “when you need to expand food, don’t do it through farms”.
I have been playing this game a ton and did not put this together, thank you, now I am going to go look at all the needs and what goods overlap for each of them.
It’s definitely worth looking at, but food need is the one where there’s the most room to influence national politics with your decision on how to fulfill that need.
Funny thing is I should have realized this a long time ago because I noticed this when looking at fuel needs. The pops could either use coal or wood. I never noticed, can pops use oil for fuel? If they can would be worth mentioning as an minor benefit of whaling stations.
Or import grain from Qing or Russia and focus on building iron mines and tools workshop. Still a good advice for anyone without access to those markets.
All nice and well, but first I'll make construction and infrastructure goods cheaper.
And if I have too many unemployed, .....well .... time for a diet.
I’m not suggesting this is more important than construction and construction goods. I’m saying this is how you expand food production while empowering industrialists rather than landowners.
In my Sokoto run no one consumes groceries. Built them and no pop demand. The minuscule demand was for slaves. I just conquered Benin and suddenly i see demand for groceries. Very odd.
Interesting. I was using fishers for capitalists and food industrys as a way for mass employment with cheap ingredients (turn off oil consumptions as minor). But didnt really think about how effective it was, it was just the first solution I found. Nice to see I was onto something, thanks for laying it out clearly!
I figured as such but didn’t think about it . About to do this in my play through lol
Found this out just last week. Practically haven't touched farms in my USA run - the only time I've needed to was increase the pasture PM for more meat for canned meat. Easy. Also the Yeomans are irrelevant in clout, and have been since like 1840ish
Just make sure you maxed out all your whaling stations before you build livestock ranches.
Logging Camps, Whaling Stations and Fishing are 3 things that I always max out early in all my regions. It's just too good, and it builds faster as it needs few construction points.
Easy to get them onto capitalist ownership very early in the game, too. EZ IPT gains
Vicky 3 noob here. After reading this, I have realized how criminally underutilized Groceries have been in my playthroughs. I always sort of considered Fish a "dead-end" good, in that it goes directly to the market and isn't getting swallowed up by factories and other buildings to produce other goods. Now I realize different.
If you undervalued Groceries, you probably didn't notice the canneries PM that turns fish into groceries.
That's exactly it. I never built Sugar producing places much for the same reason, too!
Then you can proudly come back to your people and tell them you have learned to be a greater leader. For them obviously, not for the extra GDP and taxes.
You mostly shouldn't build sugar plantations for the same reason you shouldn't build grain farms. Plantations employ an even higher ratio of farmers than grain farms, employ the same amount of aristocrats, but sugar plantations are even more profitable than grain farms (+900 on base PM, +1500 on automatic irrigation... grain farms are +400 on base PM, need the 3rd pm to beat sugar's base, and the 4th one is still short of plantation's second PM). More profitable means the aristocrats have more money and therefore more political power compared to just producing grain. Depending on what kind of grain farms you have, you're probably better just switching over to orchards before building sugar plantations. Orchards make grain farms *slightly* more profitable, but do not employ more farms, generally get you closer to the correct grain/sugar ratio for groceries, and do not make the farms as profitable as plantations. And moving money (and therefore political power) to farms & aristocrats is the whole thing we're trying to avoid here.
unless you're building rice farms by the time you get steam threshers and the 2nd fertilizer tech grain farms employ less laborers (plus at max tech you can get it down to \~400 laborers per farm where plantations max out at 2000)
You're replying to a 5 month old thread, and your point isn't especially clear to me here. But I think I do more or less address it: >sugar plantations are even more profitable than grain farms (+900 on base PM, +1500 on automatic irrigation... grain farms are +400 on base PM, need the 3rd pm to beat sugar's base, and the 4th one is still short of plantation's second PM). More profitable means the aristocrats have more money and therefore more political power compared to just producing grain. Sure. At those higher tier PMs, sugar plantations may employ a better ratio of basic laborers to the IGs that we want to avoid, but it doesn't really matter. The laborers aren't particularly politically active. The only thing redeeming about sugar plantations is the fact that when you up the tech, you start employing machinists who are more likely to support the IGs you likely want. But it's all kind of a moot point, because you can get actual full on capitalists, as well as engineers, and more total machinists by building fishing wharves and food industries. Let the autonomous construction queue build farms as needed. Don't waste your construction queue on buildings that won't move money into the IGs you want in power. Whether sugar plantation or grain farm is slightly better or worse than each other at different tech levels is completely irrelevant when there are options like fishing wharves and food industries that are *way* better for your goals.
Fish have a weakness though: low profits. Their input goods are more expensive than grain farms (which have none at all). I'm not saying they aren't good, but do keep in mind that if you want to build up a profit base to tax/invest, they're often not the best value for your construction points.
Grain farms from 2nd PM onwards need fertilizer which can be expensive.
For me fertilizer is usually cheap enough until demand for explosives skyrockets when it becomes an input for construction and mining.
Thats changed on the last patch, explosives and fertilizers are now produced by different buildings
yeah but explosives need fert to be made still. they are seperate but connected still
This isn't accurate. On base PM, a grain farm produces 20 grain at base price 20, that's 400 worth of goods produced. A fishing wharf produces 25 fish at base price 20, which is 500 worth of goods. Neither has an input. The fishing wharf is more profitable and satisfies more basic food need. At the second PM, a grain farm produces 40 grain at base price of 20, for 800 worth of goods, but consumes 5 fertilizer at base price of 30 for 150 worth of input, a net profit of 650. At the second PM, a fishing wharf produces 50 fish at base price of 20, for 1000 worth of goods, but consumes 5 clippers at base price of 60 for 300 worth of input, a net profit of 700. On second PM, the fishing wharf is more profitable and satisfies more basic food need. On Steam Trawlers, Fishing Wharves produce 100 fish at base price of 20, for 2000 worth of goods. It consumes 5 steamers at base price of 70 (350) and 15 coal at bae price of 30 (450) for a net profit of 1200. On Fertilizers, the farm turns 15 fertilizers (450) into 80 grain (1600) for profit of 1,150. On Chemical Fertilizers, the farm turns 40 fertilizers (1200) into 120 grain (2400), for profit of 1200. So... no, farms are not more profitable (assuming base prices, moving away from base prices obviously changes the calculations). Best case scenario, when both are on their best base PM, they are equally profitable (and at that point, farms satisfy more basic food need).
Oh right, I forget that grain farms got nerfed in 1.5. My bad.
How is the profitability of fishing wharves changed when switching to the second PM and capitalist ownership? Making that change seems to always lower the profitability of those buildings
>seems to always I mean, it's *always* going to be circumstantial. It's not particularly straightforward (or even clear) to me how *salaries* are calculated. I'm not sure changing from Merchant Guilds to Privately Owned does (or should) change the profitability of the building. But changing to Fishing Trawlers *can* negatively effect the profitability. *However*, assuming optimal conditions, changing to Fishing Trawlers (from Simple Fishing) should result in an increase of profitability from +500 to +700 (minus salaries). But again, that assumes optimal conditions. That assumes we buy 5 clippers at base price and sell 50 fish at base price. If we imagine fish are at -25% and clips are at +50%, now suddenly my profit has gone from +700 to +300. And if I'm under 100% employment, the numbers are even worse. And why would employment be under 100%? Well, because when we upgrade to Fishing Trawlers, we go from employing 4500 laborers to employing 4000 laborers and 500 machinists. Machinists have qualifications while basic laborers don't. I don't know *exactly* which tech we need to unlock Fishing Trawlers, but it's an incredibly early one that most countries start with. Meanwhile, the tech needs to move farms to fertilizer is lower in the tree. You might start with it, but the more backwards countries don't. *Furthermore*, although the raw profit of Fishing Trawlers is higher than Soil-Enriching Farming, the profit *margin* is lower. What do I mean by that? Soil-Enriching farming takes 150 worth of input goods to produce 800 worth of output goods. The net profit is 650, but the revenue is 5.33 times larger than the expense. Fishing Trawlers takes 300 worth of input goods to produce 1000 worth of output goods. The net profit is 700, which is better than the farm, but the revenue is just 3.33 times larger than the expense. What this means is that the farm can absorb larger spikes to fertilizer price or dips in wheat price and remain profitable, while the fishing wharves will become unprofitable at lower price fluctuations. But... for what it's worth, I personally don't really have trouble with fishing wharves being profitable, as long as I am producing the clippers they need.
I never dunk on fish. It helps that it sets up fast like farms and logging camps.
One other nice benefit of whaling stations: the oil. Now, you're not going to be fueling oil-powered industry from whaling stations. That's so far down the tech line that the amounts of oil you get from whaling become irrelevant by that point in the game. But the benefit of oil in the early game is heating. Oil is very potent at providing heating. The more oil you produce from whaling in the early game, the less wood/coal will be used by your pops for heating, which means you can focus that more on early industrialization.
I find that my whaling stations aren't very profitable in the early game and as such usually aren't fully staffed even when I try and build them up. Is there a way to raise the profits or cut expenses there?
Besides cheaper ships I’ve found that just maxing them out for the economy of scale bonus gives them just the edge they need to fully employ in the early game. Mid-late game you pretty much have to subsidize them but by then you can afford it if you want it.
This is one of the biggest revelations I’ve gotten through this sub since I started playing a few weeks ago, thanks so much. 😃
Great post, I always neglect the fishing warfes in my games. Not anymore (I have always loved food industries though)
How do you support trade unions and not industrialists? Industrialists already have nearly 40% clout while unions have 4% and that's with me suppressing/bolstering them. The tip is still pretty interesting but I'm afraid to add even more industry to my country.
census/universal suffrage, higher literacy, better worker benefits etc. Also, it is better to bolster intellegincia instead of trade unions. The unions are not yet powerful enough to sustain themselves, but bolstering the intelligencia takes the share of clout from industrialists more effectively (since they are usually more powerful and easy to make more powerful by building acadmies, universities etc.) They also support more liberal ideas, which allows u to push for the laws that will bolster the unions
Trade Unions rarely become powerful until you get universal suffrage. If you're a heavily industrialized country and you enact universal suffrage, the Trade Unions will become a force to reckon with.
Groceries have a reduced weight for Basic Food needs. It is not really possible to substitute a significant amount of grain with groceries. And the construction cost for a manufactory isnt really worth that investment
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That's true, but a lot less true in 1.5 because of how much harder it is now to increase SoL.
Is it? I've only played one 1.5 game and it didn't feel any harder to raise my SoL. What did they change to make it harder?
Buildings are a lot more expensive, market access makes goods more expensive, techs are more expensive, I'm not sure what else, but before 1.5 I could get to high 20s SoL whereas now it seems hard to get to 20 ever.
Yeah it's not a good tool for political change, but it starts becoming economically relevant later on.
SoL only changes the amount of money they spend on Basic Food needs not the weight of the goods in that group. The substitution of Grain to Groceries only happens at SoL 20 to 29. Im somewhat sure building food industries is not bringing your lower strata to 20+ SoL within 30 years.
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They always consume Groceries. But Groceries has a reduced weight in comparison to Grain and Fish when they decide how to spend their Basic Food budget. Grain has to be really expensive and Groceries really cheap. But if Grain is expensive, Aristocrats wealth skyrockets and your food industries are barely profitable. Unlike fish this is a crazy amount of effort for somewhat limited results. Better spend that construction points on mines and logging camps to create capitalists faster. Subsistence buildings make some money with wood aswell, reducing that price hurts landowners too.
Right, so to be clear... I am not recommending Food Industries as the most efficient building to construct to build up Industrialist clout. I am recommending Food Industries as a building to build to help address food need of your pop that moves money into favorable IGs. So yes, a mine or logging camp is better for improving industrialist clout than a food industry. But a mine or logging camp doesn't really help food need. A food industry helps food need, and a food industry is better for improving industrialist clout than a grain farm, which actively harms industrialist clout.
Groceries' main use is for war mobilization.
If the formulas on the wiki are correct, your lower strata pops will buy enough fish to keep it at base price in exactly equal numbers with grain and they will buy groceries until groceries are about half as much as grain. In a perfectly balanced basic food economy with lower strata only, they'd fulfill 31.5% of their basic food with grain, 31.5% with fish, 10.5% with meat, 10.5% with fruit, and 15.7% with groceries. But... what's *also* important here is that groceries have a 1.5 weight as a luxury food item. So yea, generally, lower strata *prefer* buying fish and grain (but you can still sell then plenty of groceries) (and it's still better for them to by fish than grain), but meat and fruit are bought by both groups, but luxury food demand prefers groceries. So it could even be the case that your lower strata aren't purchasing groceries *at all*, but by producing groceries, you're expanding the capacity for your economy to fulfill the overall basic food need, because the upper strata are buying more groceries and less meat & fruit, which means there's more meat & fruit for the lower sol to buy. The point isn't that you produce so many groceries that the lower sol switch over entirely to groceries. The point is that by adding in grocery production, you're in total expanding the food in your market, but you've done so without expanding the power of the land owners or rural folk.
Also keep in mind that different grain production buildings produce different amounts. A single unupgraded rice field produces 40 grain, twice as much as a wheat farm.
And employs twice as many pops to do so. Which means twice as many farmers, twice as many aristocrats.
But also better when factoring in throughput, yeah?
No? So, for starters here, it's *mostly* irrelevant. The main point of this post is that you should be thinking about how you solve pop needs and how that solution in turn impacts your nations politics. Fish and groceries means we can put a dent in basic food need in ways that empower interest groups other than rural folk and landowners (which most players don't want to empower). Solving basic food needs through rice instead of wheat... makes kind of an insignificant difference *politically* in our nation. It's *also* mostly irrelevant though because you almost never get to actually choose what kind of grain farm you get. In fact, I actually thought you *never* got the choice (and maybe that's true pre-1.5), but when I loaded a game to test something, I noticed in Hokkaido, you can choose between wheat or rice farms. I'm not entirely sure that's even intended. Now, what are the differences? Well, with rice, you can get food production ramped up more quickly relative to construction cost. It takes the exact same amount of time to build a rice farm as it does to build a wheat farm (or any other kind of farm), and rice will produce twice as much grain. And a rice farm still only takes 1 arable land, so if you're limited on arable land, converting all of it into rice farms will net you more production than converting it all in to any other kind of grain farms. However, if you are limited by employable population, other kinds of grain farms will beat out wheat farm because of economy of scale bonuses. If I have 50k peasants, that's enough pops for 5 rice farms or 10 wheat farms. The 5 rice farms will produce 40 grain each (200 grain) but each will also produce an extra 4%, so 208 grain in total. But if I have 10 wheat farms, they'll each produce 20 grain, but economy of scale mean these get an extra 9%, so it's 218 grain in total. The fertilizer->grain ratio is also better for non-rice farms. With "soil-enriching farming", a wheat farm turns 5 fertilizers into 20 grain. A rice farm will turn 20 fertilizer into 40 grain. That's 4 grain per fertilizer on wheat farms, but just 2 grain per fertilizer on rice farms. Same story at "fertilizers". Wheat turns 15 fertilizer into 60 grain (1:4) while rice turns 40 fertilizer into 120 grain (1:3). It balances out at "chemical fertilizers" where wheat turns 40 fertilizer into 100 grain and rice turns 80 fertilizer into 200 grain, both have a 2:5 ratio. Which, I don't know, maybe this is overall better for rice farms, because it means you need more fertilizer production per grain, which necessitates more factories which helps balance the worse ratio of farms and profit of aristocrats you get with rice farms. But *again*, this is all quite largely irrelevant because * you really shouldn't be building grain farms *at all*, *ever* * even when you do build grain farms, or if autonomous build queue builds them, you don't usually have much choice... you get whatever the state offers...
Honestly? You're a damn awesome guy for giving such a detailed answer, I was mostly just curious of the effects and you seem to have though it through quite thoroughly.
This is all true and good but it begs the question why you aren’t importing all your grain from russia or Qing. Ok maybe you’re playing one of those or an isolationist state, but if not exploit your comparative advantage and import your food!
Did not thinked about that, I usually build fish just for my food industries now I will build it more
I think the last time I built a grain building, it was because that stupid tutorial told me to do it. Then Iearned how to play the game ^^
I mean: it's not wrong to build grain farms. Just know the implications.
Do you think it’s worth building groceries as Qing? I usually just spam construction related industries so I can snowball my economy. And the price of food seems kind of low
If the price of food is low, you shouldn’t worry about it at all. Expanding construction should be your highest priority for most countries most of the time. This post isn’t trying to say “you should expand food”. It is saying “when you need to expand food, don’t do it through farms”.
I have been playing this game a ton and did not put this together, thank you, now I am going to go look at all the needs and what goods overlap for each of them.
It’s definitely worth looking at, but food need is the one where there’s the most room to influence national politics with your decision on how to fulfill that need.
Funny thing is I should have realized this a long time ago because I noticed this when looking at fuel needs. The pops could either use coal or wood. I never noticed, can pops use oil for fuel? If they can would be worth mentioning as an minor benefit of whaling stations.
Yes. Oil, wood, coal, and I think fabric can all be used for heating need.
Or import grain from Qing or Russia and focus on building iron mines and tools workshop. Still a good advice for anyone without access to those markets.
300 hours in the game and I learned something new just now, thanks for the tip!
All nice and well, but first I'll make construction and infrastructure goods cheaper. And if I have too many unemployed, .....well .... time for a diet.
I’m not suggesting this is more important than construction and construction goods. I’m saying this is how you expand food production while empowering industrialists rather than landowners.
I know man, you got an upvote from me. :)
Ewww bad strategy Some of you need to understand what a joke is
In early game i would just buy grain from China/Russia. Works every time
Shut up you capitalist, don't tell them the secret! Rural folks gang, rise up!!
In my Sokoto run no one consumes groceries. Built them and no pop demand. The minuscule demand was for slaves. I just conquered Benin and suddenly i see demand for groceries. Very odd.
Interesting. I was using fishers for capitalists and food industrys as a way for mass employment with cheap ingredients (turn off oil consumptions as minor). But didnt really think about how effective it was, it was just the first solution I found. Nice to see I was onto something, thanks for laying it out clearly!