u/GARGEAN

My humble opinions!

1. First and foremost - industrial automation methods SUCK.

They are not just mediocre - in most situations they are actively bad. IRL industries went trough automation not because benevolent capitalists wanted to employ as much people as possible in growing industries for those to have food on their plates - they did it because it was CHEAP. Even with abysmally small wages of workers of the time. In the game tho, while resource automation methods are generally good, and some are pretty great, industry ranges from having very poor ones to completely unusable ones.

Water-tube boiler is SOMEWHAT passable, Rorary Valve Engine is somehow agressively worse, despite being "more advanced", and Assembly Lines is HUGELY held back by oil availability. Some specialized ones, like Automated Blowers on Glass Industry, are basically unusable.

Screenshots show that well - I have max wage boosts, salary is low, but not dirt cheap, and tools are at -26% and electricity at -6%, so they are cheap to use. Yet, even COMPLETELY abandoning automation would make this building more profitable. Lower tier automation is much more efficient than higher tier in this case.

I really don't think this is how it should work. Automation should not be state-side trade-off between buildings profitability and ability to employ more industries with not enough workforce. I think it should be tradeoff between noticeable (as it was IRL) boost to productivity and push to employ more people, thus reducing peasants pool. Automated buildings should be more profitable in BY FAR most situations.

Meanwhile in the game I've seen few millions (!) unemployed crop up just because of some Flood making already barely profitable industries in the region to become less profitable, all due to automation being used.

I think there should be some significant rebalancings around those. Which - hard to say. Drastic reduction in automation inputs? Drastic increase in automation workforce reduction? Who knows! But currently it sucks that most methods are just barely usable and few are outright unusable, with higher tech ones often being flat worse than lower tech ones.

2. Investment pool.

It currently has two BIG handicaps, which are making it pretty bad and even detrimental to economy at later stages. I know, this example might look funny, but I saw it happening at MUCH lower and somewhat routinely achievable scales, within 1B GDP.

First handicap - building queue limit of 1000 buildings. It is currently a hard limit, and if Investment Pool exceeds ability to fund 1000 buildings constructed at once - all money getting into the pool above that are effectively deleted. Yes, it can be spent on privatization, but that is usually not that big of a portion and is never enough to efficiently drain late game IP. I've routinely seen it go into tens of billions, with millions in positive balance. Deleted money - sad.

Second handicap - even in ultra late stage, when there are no workers even with all (shitty) workforce PMs enabled, IP continues building! And since there is not much left to build, IP builds some absolutely idiotic stuff. We all saw those +540 levels of Furniture Manufactories or Arts Academies being built in a state with 800k population, 0 peasants and 7k unemployed.

Those two problems together mean that a lot of money late game get effectively deleted from the economy, limiting SoL increase and industries profitability growth.

I think there should be some logic to reduce reinvestment from pops dividents when IP achieves some level of fulfillment, something like 6 months of constuction spending, and above that pops receive full dividents as income to be spent. Alognside that general rework of building logic is LONG overdue. At the very least IP should not build industries with x5 workplaces than the population of the state they are building in, just because IP has money.

3)Resources in whole and ESPECIALLY rubber.

There are just not enough of those! And if with some, like coal, iron, more so sulphur and lead, it's on the level "it would be nice to have more), with others, like Oil and Rubber (especially Rubber) it's on the level of absurdity.

My company directly controls 71% of rubber plantations in the world, with 45% troughput bonus from company alone. Biggest producer states have Resource Extraction edicts. I import additional 25k on top of 105k of my own production. I actively limit my rubber usage, with some part of my tool industries using Steel Tools instead of Machine Steel Tools, none of Textile Mills using Elastics (despite those being widely more profitable at this stage of the game).

And I am still in the shortage! Rubber is not just expensive - it's on the level of penalties for my industries. That's not fun.

I think some work on resources would be nice. Blanket increase would work, but will be least interesting. Something like "project" to expand mines up to 50% for good chunk of money, and additional production PM for plantations (Tier 5 with added Fertilizer usage?) would go a long way. Current balance is fine and even fun for early to mid game, but late game it often actively hampers the fun.

4. Population growth and Workforce

Growth is ABYSMAL late game. I have it at 0.26% despite Food Company AND Food Standartization PB principle. Without those it's at 0.17%.

And it's not that huge of a problem in isolation, since devs have already said they are looking at rebalancing it towards better late game, but it ties into another problem which I think should be tackled separately - workforce ratio.

I have Womens Suffrage for like 40% at the end of the game. TUs were happy for half of century, if not more. So my Workforce ratio should be 50%.

Currently it is basically directly tied to the pop growth (more precisely pop replacement) speed. With low mortality and low birthrate workforce ratio is basically standing still. 20 years before the game end I already basically finished my conquest and had 1.09B people with ~37% workforce ratio. At the end date I am having 1.21B with ~38.7% workforce.

That's 1.7% ratio increase for 20 years! It is not JUST low - it makes workforce ratio practically irrelevant for higher SoL games.

I think that even with pop growth rework workforce ratio change should be rebalanced, to make it radically less tied to pop replacement logic. It is fine if it changes slowly. It is less fine if it has 25% promised increase from laws and bonuses but moves towards that value at less than 1% per decade.

Many of those can be argued as irrelevant, since they only apply to really big games, but I geniunely don't think so. I sawm all of those problems existing at <1B GDP runs, and sometimes at MUCH lower values. But indeed, big games would be the most benefitial from those. I like my big runs...

This is more than I need. Eight plants is enough to feed 45 dupes with Mixed Berry Pies. In case I would want to feed them Pepper Bread - easier but less economic option - I would need 14 plants.

I've definitely overbuilt my farms.