How do you get manufactured goods?

[RobC04]

I'm playing as Belgium and can't manage to get manufactured goods. To build something that produces manufactured goods you need 26 (which I don't have). It appears Luxemburg is producing 2 manufactured goods, but according to my Industry and Commerce window 2 are being used for unit maintenance.

Is there a way to determine what units need them for maintenance? Is there a way to not give the units the manufactured goods, or would I need to disband them? I wanted to build an Explorer unit so I can practice colonizing, but I need manufactured goods for that.

If I disband my military is that just asking to get attacked?

Edit: I did put a buy order in. It appears that I can only request 5 units of manufacted goods (from Cheasapeak).

Thanks

[Aphrodite Mae]

I'm playing as Belgium and can't manage to get manufactured goods. To build something that produces manufactured goods you need 26 (which I don't have). It appears Luxemburg is producing 2 manufactured goods, but according to my Industry and Commerce window 2 are being used for unit maintenance.

Is there a way to determine what units need them for maintenance? Is there a way to not give the units the manufactured goods, or would I need to disband them? I wanted to build an Explorer unit so I can practice colonizing, but I need manufactured goods for that.

If I disband my military is that just asking to get attacked?

Edit: I did put a buy order in. It appears that I can only request 5 units of manufacted goods (from Cheasapeak).

Thanks

One of the tools that you have available for managing your economy is the Economic Structures Information page. This is accessed with the F11 key.

The ESI page is very informative and versatile. One of its many uses is to idle production facilities which use specific resources, when you need to stockpile that resource.

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You can filter the page to provide a list of all production facilities which use or produce the resource(s) that you're interested in. In this example, we want to examine where manufactured goods are being used, so that we can idle non-critical production facilities.

First, I have performed a two step process to list only those facilities which use "Manufactured Goods". We want to filter out all resources from the list, and then add "Manufactured Goods". The first step is to click the "x" at the top left of the page, beside the "Filter Options" label; the tool tip will read, "unselects all merchandise filters". Doing so will deselect all of the merchandise icons, directly below. The second step is to simply select the "Manufactured Goods" merchandise icon.

Next, I have selected "Input" at the top right of the page. This will cause the ESI to list only those production facilities which use the resource in question. If we had selected "Output", then only those facilities which produced the resource would have been listed.

We now have a list of all production facilities which use manufactured goods.

You can quickly tell how many units of a resource are used, by hovering your cursor over the resource icons for that facility.

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Because we're wanting to stockpile Manufactured goods, we want to find those production facilities that use large amounts, and idle them. As you can see from the illustration, luxuries factories use two MfgGds for the factory's luxuries output, and so this seems to be a good candidate for idling.

In the lower left corner of the first illustration, you'll notice that I have the Maybach Luxuries Factory in Brandenburg idled. You can easily tell that it is idled, by the red status icon beside the name of the factory. I have idled the factory by clicking on the control lever that is beneath the status icon.

I'll respond to the rest of your questions in a subsequent post.

[RobC04]

I do thank you for the information and the reply. By the time I realized I was out of manufactured goods, the factory that used it as an input was already closed. So I guess I did have a building that used manufactured goods, but it didn't show up in my expenditures since it was closed. The UI you illustrated will be useful to find these buildings before I run out of the goods :-)

[Aphrodite Mae]

Another useful tool for providing information about where your resources are being manufactured, and in what quantities, is found in the Industry and Commerce page. This is accessed with F4.

[CENTER][/CENTER]

By hovering your mouse over the icon of the resource in question on the "production sites balance" line, you'll receive a wealth of data, as you can see in the illustration.

In this case, we can see all of the factories and facilities which produce manufactured goods, how many each factory produces, where it is, and the sum total of all production and usage for the resource. We can even tell if the facility is idled or not, since those that aren't currently operational will be listed in white text.

On the "Constructions and Various" line, we can see how the resource or commodity is being used.

[CENTER][/CENTER]

In the example that I've provided, you can see that 25% of my production is being consumed by my national and colonial markets. By right clicking on the manufactured goods icon on the "constructions and various" line, I'm able to decrease the percentage that I make available to my markets, by 5% for each click.

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Notice how decreasing the market allocation by 5% has provided 4 more manufactured goods for me to use elsewhere.

[Aphrodite Mae]

I'm playing as Belgium and can't manage to get manufactured goods. [...] according to my Industry and Commerce window 2 are being used for unit maintenance.

Is there a way to determine what units need them for maintenance?
Is there a way to not give the units the manufactured goods, or would I need to disband them?

All units need manufactured goods for upkeep. Thus, you cannot selectively "throttle" the flow of manufactured goods to specific units, except by disbanding units.

[...]
If I disband my military is that just asking to get attacked?

Generally speaking, yes. However, world opinion of your nation (as reflected by your diplomatic relations values) will affect the likelihood of this.

[...] Edit: I did put a buy order in. It appears that I can only request 5 units of manufacted goods (from Cheasapeak).

Thanks

One of my most used tools is the Asset Balance sheet, which is accessed with the "B" key. By hovering your mouse over a resource, you're able to see what markets have the resource that you need, how much is available, and what the demand is. It's also extremely useful for deciding where to sell your goods, and how much of them to sell.

[CENTER][/CENTER]

I hope my comments have helped you.

[RobC04]

Yes, thank you very much. Your posts have clarified the way some of the game works. I appreciate your help.

[SonOfAGhost]

FWIW, it's not just you.

I've yet to make it to the late stages of the game (HDD failure FTL) but from my early trials w/ the beta patches to the current game I've always found manufactured goods to be the bottleneck.

[Kensai]

Your mileage may vary. Other players swear it's the coal that runs out. I believe, most importantly, one shouldn't rush this game. Even when playing alone.

You can imagine what razor sharp pace we have in our MP game with 15 human players playing 16 different countries. The good thing is though, that we make literally "the world go round" by buying and selling stuff in huge quantities.

[SonOfAGhost]

I've seen coal mentioned by others, yes, and had less of other resources than I'd have liked at times as well. That's always a function of geography, and what it is varies nation to nation.

Goods on the other hand seem to be tight pretty much across the map, and much less likely to be on the market in any quantity either. Coal, iron, steel, various foods, etc. seem to always have several hundred, if not a couple thousand, units available somewhere if you run short. Most goods I've ever been able to buy across all markets in a single turn was 24 of 35 available.