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Personal opinion I guess, but I will do anything and everything I can to get rid of petro power plants as soon as I can. They are just so inefficient and costly. I have an AAR that actually documents the savings when you get rid of petro power plants, they are substantial in the money department.

Coal is very cheap to import in all time frames of the game and for every Coal Power Plant you build it produces more than twice the electricity of a Petro Power Plant. Additionaly it means you need less Petro to use domestically and may be sold world wide for larger profits than you would save by using it for electricity.

These are my thoughts, does not make them right or wrong, just how I see it. The game allows for a very wide range of play styles.

So to get this right, are Petrol plants worse then other energy plants? I always assumed it was Other energy<petrol<coal<hydro<nuclear<fusion. I simply perfer nuke plants since you get more energy for your hex space and I assume that hydro and fusion are better since they require no raw materials.

In my playing, yes. There is a thread around here somewhere that lists the energy producing plants in order of efficiency (money invested vs output). Petro is right at the bottom. But you do not have to search for it, start a game as any large country that has a lot of petro plants. Let game run for one day, pause, note electrical cost. Scrap half of, or all of them, let game run for another day. Look at your savings. That does not even take into consideration the petro you save which can be used for other things.

If memory serves, coal is the cheapest to use at start. In my games this has also been the case.

Only George really knows, (hopefully), but I suspect getting rid of Petro plants also affects other things in game, such as DAR/UN/World opinion and perhaps environmental and tourism.

NOTE: These are assumptions on my part, since no one has ever layed out what each and every thing does behind the scenes.

Greetings.

GIJoe597

Thank you very much for replaying to my doubts. It has helped me understanding the mechanics of the production costs and benefits acquired by such facilities. Now would you be so kind to show me the link to your AAR?, i am interested on reading such subject. But since i have no spare time to look through the forum. I am unable to find it.

Thank you very much once again.

Unfortunately I cannot remember which one it is and a search brings 16 pages of hits. I think it would be much easier to test it yourself, would only take 5 minutes to do as I suggested in a previous post.

Good luck.


NOTE: here is one of the previous threads about this issue.
viewtopic.php?f=45&t=13033&hilit=Electrical+cost


EDIT: Here is one that lists some numbers when petrol plants are scrapped. It is not an in depth look, but will give you an idea. Scroll down to Nov 2021 and later to see some effects of scrapping Petro Power Plants. viewtopic.php?f=54&t=15617

Thank you very much.

This will do it.

Just realised I did not include the link to my edit. Adding it in previous post now...

Oh noes!

I am falling in the same problem again, with the market price.



So, i believe i am flooding the market with my goods. So, how do i do to pressure the market prices? Should i stop accepting incoming diplomatic agreements on the goods that are more expensive to produce?
I am not building any facilities, scraped petrol and high tech facilities. But even so the market price on water is going down also consumer goods falling like a rock.

Are you making money overall? If yes, ignore individual commodity prices. Unless the point of your game is to play ecomomics? I very rarely pay any attention to prices of items and mostly let the minister deal with trades. Although I do lock the ai out of everything else.

As long as I can produce and field a military I am happy.

I noticed in your original post, this thread, you typed you had a GDP over 53K and it was rising fast. This is one reason your production costs are so high. The production costs include wages. When your GDP/c rises your people expect better things in life and they want a pay raise to buy those things. Obviously I do not know what your economy looks like other than the few things you have typed here, but try raising the domestic price of Consumer Goods. Balance that price so that your GDP/c starts lowering and your Domestic Approval Rating is hovering at no less than 25%.

What is your Unemplyoyment % at? The higher it is the lower your production costs. More people out of a job means more people competting for available jobs equals less you have to pay in wages. Try to get it to 5%-6% and see what effect that has.

Taxes can play a role in this also, specifically Sales Tax and Low Income Tax. There are so many ways to manipulate the economy no one person could type all of them here and make this a reasonable post.

I do think you are spending an inordinate amount of time worring about these things though Just build an army and lay waste to your enemies, you would be suprised how much of an impact on GDP/C it has when you absorb a third world country.


EDIT: What county are you playing as?

Hi there GI, again.

My mistake, my ongoing game is with PRC, my GDP/c is around 12500 (increasing by 1 or 2 per day). I do make money, i am earning 4.000 M Daily, with a surplus of 120000 millions per year, my nominal GDP is 17.200.000 M and rising by 2.000 or 3.000 M daily. My unemployment is static at 3.9% of 1.463.600.000 inhabitants. My inflation is 6.2% and i think going down since i pike at 8.6% when building facilities, currently i am not building any, because i do not need to do so. I am self sufficient in all commodities.
Now, regarding my doubts, i clicked the export window of each of the following items, then i payed attention to bulk sales. I raised the price for water, agriculture, con goods, oil and energy. Been water an cons good the most problematic. I had set the price to the minimum as some one suggested me a wile ago, all the way down (to the left) and after i set the price for the above mentioned items water went up very fast, so i let the slider at 3% for those things. Now There was a very little change in production price of oil, meaning that now it costs 83 dollars to produce such item in comparison to the 82 dollars prior to changes. For water i think it went down, cheaper. But Consumer goods keep been a pain in the head, the market prices is rapidly decreasing by 3 dollars each day.

Now you have said that you let the ministers do that job, that means that if you lock the minister using the LOCK button it will control the import-exports anyways, (of course if the slider is automated slider is above 0%)? Because as i said before i went with the strategy of moving all commodities bulk sales sliders way left (i got this answer for the question regarding the market price changes; where i was moving those sliders every two or three days to be competitive in the global market, so someone suggested keeping those down). I did it, for a while, lets say 2-3 years i was a good idea from that point o view (not concerning about the global exchange of goods), but now i am running the year 5 and i find this idea not useful anymore.

Thanks again GI. If you want me to upload an specific picture let me know.

Production Window


1. The icon to lock or unlock the minister from this commodity. Try leaving it unlocked as it shows in this picture.

2. The price for items you sell to your own people. The minister will handle this. (I keep low taxes so I tend to set this high when I manually set this, which is very rarely. Low taxes mean people have more money in their pocket to spend.)

3. The % of factories you have producing. The minister will handle this.


Imports




4. The price you are willing to pay to purchase FROM the World Market on daily trades. Minister will handle if unlocked. Generally it is at max since he will only purchase when you have a shortfall. He/she will only purchase what you need to make it through the day.

5. The minister will not alter the #units he/she will only alter the Max $ you are willing to pay. If you want to make a larger buy than what you need for one day, use this. For example, you want to stock up on Military Goods because there is a war coming and you do not want to be caught short. You can see there are plenty of countries selling this commodity as the Availability is Excellent.



Exports


6. The minister will attempt to sell any surplus of items you have on a daily basis TO the World Market. He/she sets it at max % of surplus to maximize daily income.

7. Automated Bulk Sales TO the World Market. #6 is for daily sales, as needed, this one is to sell off large quantities at once to generate a large sum of money immediately. Notice the AI is trying to sell 332,624 units at $24,271. But conditions are Unfavorable. This means the market is saturated, there is NOT a huge demand for this commodity. (notice in the IMPORTS Window it shows Maket Availability as Excellent) If you were in a money crunch and needed to generate a large amount very fast, move the Min $ / U to around $20,000. The World Market AI would snap that up before any of the available NORMAL daily trades offered (see # 6). The price at $20,000 is still more than your production cost of $19,746. This will give you a large short term boost to your treasury depending on the quantity you have to sell.

If you over use this technique, you run the risk of flooding the market even more. So use only when necessary.

Very useful GI, i appreciate the time you have invested on replaying my topic, i will indeed try such technique to see what happens. As i have seen the world market is saturated with good because all the commodities with the exception of electricity displays UNFAVORABLE. Now talking about taxes if i do it is almost sure my DAR will see the negative, and considering the huge amount of people i have to maintain. Will it be enough to play with social services? because my taxes are high in areas like high income and enterprise.

Salutes.

I suggest you lower taxes. If you have a sizeable population, are self-sufficient in all or most areas, try lowering taxes across the board.

Specifically
10% Sales tax
2.9% Unemployment
2.9% Property
2.9% Pension

Give this at least 6 months to see how it affects the treasury. What you should notice is the domestic sales income increasing, this will offset any loss. Now granted I always max infrastructure and set the others on recommended. Most people disregard the max infra spending, which is a bad move in my opinion. Infra spending is not as clear cut as one would think. Among other things it includes money for spare parts, maintenance work to facilities, trucks etc. It gives you well maintained plants. Well maintained plants operate more efficiently and at a cheaper operating cost.

When you take into consideration loyalty you should always try to build your industrial facilities on your "home land". (Military facilities do not matter for loyalty.) Again, maximizing the production of your facilities.

Recap;
Large population, well supplied, self-sufficient or mostly so;

Low taxes, max infra.

Your DAR will be in the 40's. Also, also do not forget about all the techs that increase production/infrastructure or lower the cost of social programs.