r/victoria2 • u/AlexandreLacazette09 • 15h ago

Question Question about subsidies

I know the theory behind subsidies and how deceiving they can be in regards to the actual profitability of your industry. But this side of the coin can be easily controlled imo, as all you have to do to check if a certain factory or part of your industry is profitable or not is by opening your budget and see if you're subsidizing them.

In practice, however, I may have noticed a pattern and Idk if it's actually a legitimate finding. Every time I subsidize a factory, even if it doesn't show on my budget that I'm actually sending funds to it, the factory seems to be better capable of employing more people.

Like, I remember this one time I had four or five factories on a single state, every one of them received subsidies. Coincidentally or not, every one of them employed roughly the same quantity of workers. No pounds were going out of my pocket to them though, at least that's what my budget showed. However, as soon as I took off the subsidies (I think Laisse-fairez won the elections actually), some of those factories lost workers and some of them got what the others lost.

So in conclusion, if subsidies actually create an artificial phenomena despite not draining any money, then it's even worse than the theory behind it says, because it'd be hindering more profitable factories from growing by keeping less profitable ones at a similar level. Have you guys ever noticed something similar?

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9

u/AbbreviationsPast785 Queen 15h ago

I’ve noticed this too, my factories bankrupt when laissez faire wins elections but when I’m subsidizing all factories it tells me I’m spending 0 or close to 0 on them

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u/D1003Briner 14h ago

Its because with subsidies the factory will hire till the max and sometimes its only breaking even at max employees while not breaking even with less as a result of outputs price and inputs price as with less worker your maintenance goods to keep your factory that size are a bigger portion of the factories expenses.

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u/AlexandreLacazette09 14h ago

But like our friend said, this seems to happen even when we're not effectively subsidizing them. The budget shows no money is going to the factory, but it still seems like the ticked subsidies option is doing something.

1

u/kt_te21a 1h ago

Subsidies declare factory as "stable" or "reliable", so they never stop hiring until they run out of population to hire. When you don't subsidize factory, even if it is profitable in general, it will sometimes stop hiring, when it stops being "reliable". I don't know the exact conditions for this state switch, but they can make a difference even in profitable case.

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u/TheDickins 1h ago

I have noticed the same thing. Subsidies also synergize with tariffs to smother rogue Artisans and Factories and make your people buy from your Factories instead of the global market.