Game Systems/Economy

Production and industry

Last updated 2026-08-28

There are two kinds of producer in Grand Century: resource sites (RGOs), which extract raw goods from a province, and factories, which consume inputs and turn them into manufactured goods. Both run on the weekly pass, and both pay their workers out of what they earn.

Resource sites#

A resource site employs 4,200 people per level and pays out most of what it makes: 80% of revenue goes to wages and 12% to the owner pops. Raw output carries a 50% boost on top of the base rate — a deliberate correction, because without it raw-good supply (food above all) could not keep pace with a century of population growth once factories started consuming inputs in earnest.

Factories#

A factory has a level, which is effectively its number of storeys, capped at 10. Each level provides 2,300 jobs, of which up to 20% can be clerks.

Each week a factory:

Buys its inputs from the market.
Produces output, subject to how much of its input it actually got and how many workers it actually has.
Sells that output into the market.
Pays operating costs, wages, and finally profit.

Wages take 45% of the value. That share is high on purpose: with factories consuming real inputs, the value has to reach the craftsman, clerk and labourer pops who buy the food, rather than pooling in capitalist and aristocrat pops. An industrial economy whose wages are too low starves its own workforce and then loses it.

Operating costs are a base charge plus a per-level charge, so a large plant costs more to keep open than a small one. A factory that cannot run still bleeds 10% as an idle loss — mothballed capacity is not free.

Getting paid: why output does not equal income#

This is the most important thing to understand about the economy, and it is easy to get wrong.

Producing a good does not pay you for it. Production registers supply and records what the output would earn if all of it sold. Only after buyers have had their turn does the game settle up, scaling every producer's claim by the fraction of that good which actually sold, and only then moving money.

The alternative — paying producers in full at the moment of production — was tried and abandoned. It created money from nothing for goods nobody bought. At one measured seed the market was paying producers 7.5 times what buyers actually spent within five years of the start, minting millions a year and growing. The consequence was an economy where nobody was ever money-constrained and prices sat at roughly twice base for a century.

So: if you build capacity nobody buys from, you do not get paid for it. Overbuilding an industry does not enrich you; it produces unsold goods, unpaid claims, and a plant that starts losing money.

Expansion and downsizing#

Factories grow out of their own success rather than automatically.

To add a level, a factory must have been profitable for 26 consecutive weeks and hold enough cash: a base amount plus more per level it already has, so the bar rises as the plant grows. Expansion spends 80% of the reserve it has built up.

Going the other way, 6 weeks of losses trigger downsizing.

This replaced an earlier model where expansion needed only 10 profitable weeks and a flat cash figure, which meant every plant climbed to the level cap and then sat there losing money. Growth now has to be funded by the plant's own trading.

Subsidies#

You can subsidise factories from the national budget. A bankrupt nation's subsidies are honoured at a reduced rate rather than draining a treasury that cannot pay — a subsidy that impoverishes the state without saving the plant helps nobody.

What this means in play#

Build for demand, not for capacity. Unsold output does not pay.
Input chains matter. A factory short of inputs produces less, earns less, and eventually downsizes. Secure the raw goods before scaling the plant.
Profitability compounds slowly. 26 profitable weeks is half a year of sustained trading before a plant earns its next storey. Industrial growth is a long game.
Watch idle plants. Capacity that cannot run still costs 10%.