Product group classification

Currently there're only two options for 'service' sector, namely 'service' and 'military service'. In my opinion, these are vague names which fail to give players an idea of how well their economy transits from a developing country to a 'developed country' which relies more on tertiary industry than on primary and secondary industries. Also, the classification system, I'm uncertain about which category, secondary or tertiary industry, to place for 'construction' and 'utility'. The term 'high tech industry' is also terribly ambiguous.

I always want to know how an economy evolves to depend more on services, which would hopefully mirror the reality - as you know developed countries usually have around 60% of their GDP contributed by services instead of agriculture or various kinds of industries.

Is it possible what you are looking for is already described elsewhere? When you are looking at the product groups and find services there, that category containing the services and military services corporations does not encompass all of the tertiary sector you are looking to compare it too. Have you considered that your country builds and runs hospitals that encompass the Health sector? General government, education, cable tv, and telephone are likely part of that sector too. I could be missing stuff but I think you get it. What would you change?

Your next point about some type of transition a country experiences does not occur in Simcountry in the way that you describe or occurs very quickly. A brand new country must quickly build up its health and education indexes/sectors to meet standards the population expects and train the workers you need. That could be the transition you are looking for but is generally done within a few weeks of registration.

It is possible to lead your country through stages of development in other ways though. One example is that your country generally benefits from a transition for predominately state-run corporations to more successful private and public (especially truly-public) corporations. Private and public corporations can produce a higher quality product while using less workers than a comparable stare corporation.

You should also take the time to read a post titled "Wage Study Sim-Citizen and Economic Data" that I posted on the LU forum. It highlights an often overlooked aspect of countries where I show it is possible to increase consumer demand/consumption with higher worker compensation. Wages are the most obvious way to increase this but also work on increasing the size if your people's investment fund can add to personal income that the country and corporations don't have to budget for each month. Advancement in the buying power of your citizens leads to interesting possibilities to profit off of their demand by utilizing contracts or stocking up things they use at a low price as well as adds directly to country income in the form of personal tax/edu/health contributions.

Transitioning to a successful private/public economy and advancing citizen income through strengthening investment funds are two of the things I think of when I consider the difference between a newer Simcountry economy and one that is more "developed".

Thanks Aries. Perhaps this game is not always mimicking the real world. Right now most corps in my country belong to public. Tried private-only strategy but did not yield as much profit as public corps. My monthly net profit is around 41-44B (total population 48130331). Is that reasonably high? Anything I can improve on to max. my profit? Thanks!

When looking for assistance, it is best to add your country name and world. Making sure the your current secrecy settings do not hide your financials is best too. With the numbers you have provided, you likely have a ways to go to progress to a "developed" Sim-country.

Also, make sure not to confuse a state corp with a private one. A state corp is one that is fully owned by a country. A public corp has more than one owner and the controller is determined by share holdings. It is likely that you mean that you have mostly state corps.

Country name: Lam Kingdom
Golden Rainbow

I have most corps as state controlled public corps (IPOed)

First thing I always look at is if you are optimizing indexes for welfare index. In this way, you maximize your benefit to this important index without overpaying. Looking at your indexes, you are doing a good job of this. In fact, you have taken it to about the highest level you can.

There is a trade-off to this however. In doing this you have set health index very high, at 140. My preference is a lower setting for health, about 120, with other indexes optimized around this value, for welfare index. A higher health index will lead to an older population.

Average age is the value to watch. This leads to more retired and a smaller workforce relative to your population. It also affects population growth. Indeed, you are loosing population when you are not purchasing it. I see you are purchasing population and this has its own drawback in this situation as purchased population matches your current age demographic. This means with your current policy of a high health index, you are looking at a pattern of purchasing population, losing it gradually, and then purchasing some more.

As to your corporations, you have a nice mix of product types and have adeptly avoided building corporation with a more unstable market price outlook. Your wages are fair and your corporations are benefiting from your very high welfare index. I browsed a few corporations and, overall, I see a nice balance of supply quality to produce the right quality of product.

The one thing you could look to build towards is to transition these public corporations to being truly public. You will notice your state-controlled public corporations are still limited to upgrading to 200/200. This means these corporations have the same limitations as state corporations with the added factor of you not receiving all profit payments of the corporation.

If you sell down your ownership to less than 25%, your corporations become "truly" public. This allows them to upgrade to 250/250 (the highest levels in the game) and produce a higher quality product using less workers. Your tax policy is currently set very low, and if you also drop profit sharing to 0 for these corps this will allow you to sell shares at a high price right now if you choose to start this process. Typically, investment funds, largely computer-controlled, will purchase these shares. Investment funds will never control a corp, regardless of the size of their share holdings.

Lastly, to overall country policy, I would recommend in the long term, after selling desired shares, to look at a high tax policy with so many public corps. This will ensure you receive sufficient state income and helps your finance index which helps your monthly spending limit.

Check the pages for special clinics and back-to-work schools. Make sure you do not have too many universities or hospitals assigned to this task as the number of workers you can recover has a cap.

Check your investment fund on your finance page and on the share page. Managing this fund well, and growing its value, adds to your worker income each month. This benefits you in many ways. Your fund is currently almost all cash which, unfortunately, does not bring any dividends. A growing fund will be mostly share holdings, 90%+, to maintain a steady dividend income to support worker payments.

When investing, look for deals (low market value) on corporations that are likely to be in a stable environment and steady dividends. Ones you run in another country (you cannot invest your fund in your own country) or enterprise are the safest followed by people you know/fed members etc.

Thanks for your advice. The effect is immediate - 45B monthly profit (from 39B to 40B)! :D

By the way, I've checked out the GDP formula on Wikipedia and calculated by myself. I still think GDP formula is a better estimation of my country's economic performance than total production value.

Calculating according to a more rigorous way (by expenditure), my country's nominal GDP is around the same as that of Japan in actual value, assuming that Sim Currency is the equivalent of USD.

Also, service, utility, government and recreational all belong to 'tertiary industry' according to my definition, after careful thinking upon all the information available. In view of this, the following shows the % contribution to total production value by sector:

Tertiary industry (as defined above) - 18%
Secondary Industry (industry sector) - 45%
Primary industry (mining + agricultural) - 22%
High Tech industry (mixture of secondary and tertiary but I think strictly speaking it doesn't belong to any of the traditional categories) - 11%
Construction (again not belong to any of them) -4%

Total production value is what I would look at. Big fan of using that as a key measure of a country. The only omission in this tool is the space category which corporations are currently absent from that production number.

If you wish to compare to the real world, I would additionally consider that a Simcountry world is about 10 times larger than Earth. The average world having a population of around 70 billion. Asset holdings are similarly inflated. If you were to start comparing yourself to your player peers, I would take the Simcountry values and divide by 10. Not doing so would lead to measuring the largest Simcountry players in terms of how many times bigger than the US they are.

Very good advice! Well, then my economy is only comparable to that of Norway or Belgium, sadly.

By the way, could comparison be made between countries belonging to two different worlds, such as Golden Rainbow and Little Upsilon, given their different profitability? I notice, for instance, that your country has 10 times that of my monthly profit - very astonishing. I tried quite some time improving my economy and yet Golden Rainbow seems a stagnant world compared to LU....

The data goes beyond that profit number. How does the size of my workforce compare? What does my average worker make a month? What is my monthly production? Government income? My country is the result of a lot of planning. My main country is nearly 600 game years, 1200 real days, old. Profit isn't even its sole focus as I treat every country as simply a tool to achieve my goals. You may notice I have 300 military units upgrading there, for example.

As a world, I think LU does have some advantages that my empire contributes towards. My wage and consumer spending thread on the LU forum touches on it. It is possible to build a comparably successful country on any world though.