Workforce??

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mattpilot
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Re: Workforce??

Post by mattpilot »

Please explain.

What makes you think you have a worker shortage?

The Unemployment % value, or an actual ingame effect?


I have NEVER seen anything related to workforce shortage. Having a low unemployment % does not prevent you from building any new buildings. It does not decrease the amount of goods your factories produce. It MAY have an effect at the rate of military reserves you gain, but then again, how does it compare to actual military salary spending? We dont know.

Not quite sure how unemployment affects the amount of money you can spend on your people. Please elaborate.


One could argue that Unemployment % affects GDP, thus decreasing the effectiveness of your economy. But observable effects are exactly the opposite. GDP affects Unemployment %, not the other way around.



I'm thinking we have never seen any actual formulas relating to this or any thorough explanations, because quite frankly, the formulas are so fudged they make no sense. You can argue the opposite, but unless you actually have formula's that are used in the game, you are guessing just as much as the rest.
Fistalis
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Re: Workforce??

Post by Fistalis »

mattpilot wrote:Please explain.

What makes you think you have a worker shortage?

The Unemployment % value, or an actual ingame effect?


I have NEVER seen anything related to workforce shortage. Having a low unemployment % does not prevent you from building any new buildings. It does not decrease the amount of goods your factories produce. It MAY have an effect at the rate of military reserves you gain, but then again, how does it compare to actual military salary spending? We dont know.

Not quite sure how unemployment affects the amount of money you can spend on your people. Please elaborate.


One could argue that Unemployment % affects GDP, thus decreasing the effectiveness of your economy. But observable effects are exactly the opposite. GDP affects Unemployment %, not the other way around.



I'm thinking we have never seen any actual formulas relating to this or any thorough explanations, because quite frankly, the formulas are so fudged they make no sense. You can argue the opposite, but unless you actually have formula's that are used in the game, you are guessing just as much as the rest.
The only major effect i'm aware of is an increase to your production costs. But only at very low unemployment rates.. yes i'm too lazy to search through the old 2020 discussions to find it. :P

And given the scale of production costs in 1939 (as compare to 2020) its probably not even a factor in most goods.
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mattpilot
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Re: Workforce??

Post by mattpilot »

Fistalis wrote: The only major effect i'm aware of is an increase to your production costs. But only at very low unemployment rates..

How do you know and how can you be sure?


Could not the chain of causation be that your GDP rose because you increased spending, which in turn increased production cost and reduced unemployment % ?

How do you know the Unemployment % is an actual cause, and not just an indicator of other causes?
Inzann
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Re: Workforce??

Post by Inzann »

mattpilot wrote:
Fistalis wrote: The only major effect i'm aware of is an increase to your production costs. But only at very low unemployment rates..

How do you know and how can you be sure?


Could not the chain of causation be that your GDP rose because you increased spending, which in turn increased production cost and reduced unemployment % ?

How do you know the Unemployment % is an actual cause, and not just an indicator of other causes?
There is an ingame message when you go below 3% unemployment rate that warns you about productivity dropping if you go lower. Not sure if its all lies or not but thats the reason I want to increase my unemployment rate, so I can keep expanding and building new factories to boost the economy. :P
CarljCharles
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Re: Workforce??

Post by CarljCharles »

This is purely observational from my own game experience, but there is some logic to be drawn from what I have observed and the strategy I tried to follow with my economy.

I play sandbox and have played as a number of countries large and small but so far prefer USA or Japan.
I keep a close eye on a number of factors mainly:
Population growth -> from Immigration/emigration and Birth Rate vs Death Rate.
Employment Rate -> Building any type of building seems to really affect this as well as Social policy
Inflation -> Aim to try and get this down as low as possible (2-3%)

Reason being...>> Population growth provides more available workers (without country take over)-> More workers creates higher unemployment and allow production increase by more buildings -> Higher unemployment seems to be the main factor to bring down inflation -> Low inflation % SHOULD mean the cost to produce goods goes up slower and increases the gap between the commodity production cost and the world market price. So greater profit when you sell surplus and make it more cost effective to produce yourself so you don't need to Buy from the world market.

So I would guess that, low unemployment causes more commodity demand which pushes up prices which raises inflation, which means the cost of producing goods goes up meaning its cheaper to buy from the world market, which means you are then forced to buy from the world market at prices you don't control.

Perhaps oddly, Inflation does not seem to be affected much if at all by changes you can make in domestic prices. So perhaps inflation is more about the cost of goods to the country rather than price inflation for the population.

I currently have Japan at 4.8% unemployment and inflation at 3.2% - I am almost self sufficient in nearly all commodities after the take over of Indonesia, the Thai peninsular, and very recently China!

Shame the Annex/Liberate/Colonise bug appeared before I completed the take over of China as I now have a large oil shortage to address!!
Fistalis
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Re: Workforce??

Post by Fistalis »

mattpilot wrote:
Fistalis wrote: The only major effect i'm aware of is an increase to your production costs. But only at very low unemployment rates..

How do you know and how can you be sure?

Because myself and others have had this conversation with BG years ago. :wink:
Now its completely possible george has redone that portion of code since then. But not that i'm aware of. *Edit: according to george on the first page of this thread he hasnt redone this code for 36.

http://www.bgforums.com/forums/viewtopi ... ent#p19977

Again though since the base production costs of everything in 36 are so low the increase is probably not even a factor in most goods.
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Athene
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Re: Workforce??

Post by Athene »

Didn't they greatly reduce unemployment and inflation effects on the economy in CW? I remember them saying that was the reason for not showing them in the UI.

Unemployment has been bugged since Cold War anyway, almost impossible to raise it once it's very low even if you close all factories, raise taxes to 100% and lower social spending to 0%.
Fistalis
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Re: Workforce??

Post by Fistalis »

Athene wrote:Didn't they greatly reduce unemployment and inflation effects on the economy in CW? I remember them saying that was the reason for not showing them in the UI.

Unemployment has been bugged since Cold War anyway, almost impossible to raise it once it's very low even if you close all factories, raise taxes to 100% and lower social spending to 0%.
you do all that and people are more likely to migrate out than sit around unemployed lol

But yes the effects of both were negligable in CW for the same reason they are in 36. the original code was based on 2010/2020 prices . and production costs are so low in 36 and CW that a 30% increase would be like 1$ for most commodities lol (dont know the actual formula used 30% was just an example)


Only reason they added those back to the UI in cold war was US bugging them about it. :lol:
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Indecisive
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Re: Workforce??

Post by Indecisive »

Fistalis wrote:
Athene wrote:Didn't they greatly reduce unemployment and inflation effects on the economy in CW? I remember them saying that was the reason for not showing them in the UI.

Unemployment has been bugged since Cold War anyway, almost impossible to raise it once it's very low even if you close all factories, raise taxes to 100% and lower social spending to 0%.
you do all that and people are more likely to migrate out than sit around unemployed lol

But yes the effects of both were negligable in CW for the same reason they are in 36. the original code was based on 2010/2020 prices . and production costs are so low in 36 and CW that a 30% increase would be like 1$ for most commodities lol (dont know the actual formula used 30% was just an example)


Only reason they added those back to the UI in cold war was US bugging them about it. :lol:

I did some testing with the Supreme Ruler trainer, which by the way, is really useful even when not cheating -- it shows values to eight decimal places, so you can actually see whether the values are going up or down even if the changes are too small to display (like with inflation/employment, which normally only displays one decimal place).

Employment does work correctly. However, it has a hard cap on fluctuations -- no matter how much employment you eliminate or create during a day, it will only move up or down so many points per day (less than 0.1%). So it may appear as if it doesn't work, but in truth that's just because the impact can take weeks or months to have full effect.

Inflation works, but the in-game display is pretty useless because it has a massive time delay; I suspect it's actually just the average inflation over the last 365 days, or some other large timespan, which is why its so slow to update to your real/current inflation rate.

To see a much more accurate value for your inflation, use the right-click menu and looking at the cost of railways. The basic cost is around $100, so it acts like a CPI basket (a baseline with which you can compare current prices to those in the past). This method displays inflation changes instantaneously, and to a very accurate six decimal places. So if a railway costs about $100 at the game start, and $140 today, you know you have to spend 40% more than you did at the beginning of the game to buy stuff. You can also keep the menu open as the next day ticks past to see the inflation on a per-day basis.
Routing garrisons can be frustrating, but in a good way. Like trying to open a carton of ready-made custard for your rhubarb crumble, knowing that the rewards will be all the sweeter for the effort.
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