Factories

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Last updated on December 1st 2025

• Factories are placed in provinces, not states. There is a limit of 8 (by default) factories per province. Factories hire workers from their province (see Employment. As capitalists start to develop a certain province, workers will migrate there for higher wages.
• Factories don't get vanilla bonuses to adjacency (no matter what tooltip says). This bonus is represented by the local economy and non-100% efficiency of trade.
• Economy of scale: Factories get +1% throughput for each level.
• National industry specialization reduces inputs required for factories.
• Factories have fractional levels (floats). As a result, expansion is a smooth process which uses actual profitability to calculate how much expansion is actually needed. It declutters projects UI, leaving the screen only to new factories. On top of that, government and factory owners can expand factory at the same time, so poor capitalists who barely afford construction don't block players from expanding same factories simultaneously.
• Factories are no longer expanded with projects. Instead, each factory invests part of its profits towards expansion.
• Factories pay competitive wages to their employees and hire pops of different education levels (see Employment).

Factory refit. Player can refit factories from one type into another from Factories list in Production window (instead of deleting old ones and placing new ones) with an arrow up button. AI does not use this feature.

Refit goods cost = (TO type construction cost) - (FROM type construction cost) + (0.1f * TO type construction cost)

Conditions to refit factory from one type into another:

• The nation is civilized
• This si not a colonial state
• The technology requirements to construct the factory are met (factory always available or a tech unlocking the building is researched)
• The factory is not already being upgraded
• OR:
  • Ruling party allows building factories
  • Old and new types have the same inputs or the same outputs

The last conditions means that in truly democratic and capitalist economies the government represented by the state cannot break the private property laws and make capitalists change the production line of their factory.

Factory subsidies. Try to avoid factory subsidies as they essentially remove the factory from economic suppy-demand feedback cycle. Subsidized factories grow infinitely reducing prices below their equillibrium until soon your whole economy starts to operate at a loss providing extremely cheap goods to neighbouring countries through exports.