Construction sector in Victoria III

Building design is so different in Victoria III compared to other games and can directly affect your weekly budget. I’ve put together a few tips for you to follow when building in Victoria III that I follow myself.

If you are interested in specific tips on how to work more efficiently with the construction sector in Victoria III, click on 🏗️ Tips for efficient building construction in Victoria III in the following table. The previous sections of the article describe a bit more theory and where to find out things.

How does building in Victoria III work?

First of all, you need to have the construction sector buildings built. This can be found in the Buildings > Construction tab where you can see the capacity (marked in red), the current level (marked in green) and the planned construction of buildings (marked in blue).

Building capacity affects how many buildings will be built. In the figure above you can see that on average 20 capacity builds 1 building. So if I have a capacity of 114 I can build about 5.7 buildings at a time. Of course this is not all that affects the other major part is the construction sector budget.

In my case here the construction sector affects about half of my spending as you can see below. The construction sector consumes construction goods which they have to buy from the market.

If your building materials are expensive, the construction sector will have to buy them from the market and this means that your construction will be significantly more expensive and may lead to you losing money.

If you click on the amount detail, you can see how much the construction sector is currently spending on what resources. Monthly expenses can go up when materials become more expensive or when you build more construction buildings.

How to set the right budget for building?

You can influence how much the construction sector will cost you through the budget. In the budget tab, you can set what raw materials it will consume and how fast it will work. If you have problems with the budget (due to war) you can immediately pause the construction and this will immediately turn off the construction costs.

Otherwise, you can work with different budget levels. In total, there are 4 budget levels in the game between which you can switch and which consume different resources…

• Wooden Buildings (2 points of construction)
  • 25 fabric
  • 75 wood
• Iron-Frame Buildings (5 points of construction)
  • 10 tools
  • 20 fabric
  • 40 wood
  • 50 iron
• Steel-Frame Buildings (10 points of construction)
  • 20 tools
  • 40 glass
  • 50 steel
  • 🧨 10 explosives
• Arc-Welded Buildings (20 points of construction)
  • 40 tools
  • 50 glass
  • 90 steel
  • 🧨 20 explosives
  • 40 electricity

More about 🧨 Explosives in Victoria 3

… and each switch changes the distribution of money in your market (as different raw materials are needed). So in the early stages it makes sense to focus on Iron-Frame Buildings, have enough iron intake and build. In my experience, iron is the most expensive thing you have to pay for in the beginning.

Maybe just a question of whether to give a “pause” on the build. In my experience, I don’t try to choose that option because then everything stops and once I don’t build more buildings I can’t improve my economy. So I’d always rather raise taxes or cut the pay of officials/army. But I reach for the buildings last.

When to improve the construction sector?

As for upgrading the construction sector, I always try to add at least 2 more factories at the beginning of the game to speed up my build. Of course, you need to be careful to make sure you have room in your budget for this. You can see if the additional factory “fits the build” from the following overview.

There you can see how much the costs will increase if you build another construction sector. So you can see that the cost of one sector in the game above where I play for the USA adds another 4,5k to my cost so with a budget of +15k I could theoretically build 3 more construction sectors.

It is essential that you make sure that you have enough employees in a given place to make the sector work on full images and build the necessary buildings. That’s why I try to make a list in advance of where I want to build and then build the sector where it makes sense.

At the same time, every country has a budget and in theory you can go about building buildings “on credit”. In the picture below you can see that my country has a budget of 309k and every month 15,7k will be added so in case I don’t build more than 3 factories I won’t get into debt.

But in case I would build for example 6 factories to build so I will get into debt and there I can go into the negative up to 15,6M. So in some countries it may make sense for me to get into the negative for a while by building – to speed up construction – to start earning more and increase my income.

But in case I fail to do so there will be a debt that I will have to repay with 8% interest and that can be very expensive.

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🏗️ Tips for efficient building construction in Victoria III

1. Reduce the price of inputs for the construction sector
2. Expand the construction sector wisely
3. If you need a kick go into debt – but be careful to pay it off

To know how much goods you’ll need before you start expanding your sector, do the calculation in our Victoria III Building Cost Calculator. Make a copy before you use it.

Step 1: Reduce the price of inputs for the construction sector

In case you build a new construction sector in the Iron-Frame Building level you need to have +50 iron in stock otherwise the price will increase.

At the same time, in case you want to switch the sector settings, make sure you have enough material for the building in question. Because otherwise it will lead to a problem.

Step 2: Expand the construction sector wisely

As I wrote above with the price of the input material. Expand the building sector continuously and calculate how many buildings can be built. Or you can always build 2 buildings – compare input prices and then expand the sector further.

However, this route is very volatile and may not work 100% for you. So be really careful. The more construction sectors you build the more the price will go up so expand really carefully.

Step 3: If you need a kick go into debt – but be careful to pay it off

I think it’s perfectly fine to go into debt if you’re not worried about being able to pay it back. But if the debt gets out of hand, another country can buy your debt. By paying off the debt for you, it gets obligation on you, which it can then use on you if you don’t want it.

Or rather, thanks to the obligation, you’ll have to agree. If you get into a lot of debt, it’s okay to suspend the construction just until you pay off the debt – or at least reduce it a lot so the interest doesn’t grow.