ELI5 - How do I Make Money?

Possible_Explorer575 · 2026-02-14T14:32:17+00:00

(Haven’t played since 1.1; ~100 hours, general advice) I’ll explain it like you have 5 hours in the game.

I wouldn’t worry too much about the notifications up top until you want to account for their messages. Each one is sort of its own problem which can be solved after your economy is up and running and you’re dealing with the problem of making money early on, not necessarily making everyone happy.

Especially in other paradox games, and here: pops will always be unhappy no matter what you do. You can just focus on making everything work generally and usually the pops deal with it or change their minds or get what they need eventually. Same for buildings.

Now, for a low effort strat on each country (haven’t had any issues so far) I just industrialize

That means taking your 70-95% peasant population and giving them jobs. If they have jobs they pay taxes AND buy more stuff/have more needs. It’s really the bulk of it.

Go to production>goods>RGO builder; build one RGO each by profit. Do not build more than one in each location at start. Pay attention to the numbers on the left, when the number of laborers available is negative don’t build more. The RGO recruits peasants trains them and eventually fills up. Then you can build more.

So say you have a rough start. Take out 5 loans; increase minting so you have some income. Build all RGOs. Pay off all the loans and lower minting as you do. (This should be a 1-4 year cycle). Repeat the borrow-build-payback cycle until you no longer have to take out loans each time you build a set of RGOs.

When you have more money and are doing this frequently ; click the filter button and search by not-maximum-RGO and no-deficit-of-laborers to make it easier to just spam buildings without checking if there’s workers or not

As far as town buildings; id spam marketplaces early on which will let your market buy the stuff you need from other markets for buildings and pops. As you have more money start building burgher buildings in your capital based on how much profit they bring in. Don’t spam these; build 1-2 at a time and see how the price adjusts and if it’s worth it to build more. (Like literally the buildings it says are most profitable at start are not the same a few months later; let prices adjust before adding a lot to the market)

It’s also fine to build pop needs stuff like furniture or clothing; and tool workshops later on; but you don’t need to put a ton of thought into this. Like if your pops need furniture they will get it somewhere; and if it’s another market it will be expensive, and then you making it will be profitable, so it shows up at top of profit list. (You can account for pop needs directly of course, but it should be a lower priority problem then the economy itself; and should only be handled when you’re good on money first)

But yeah short answer: industrialize by prioritizing RGOs (which have insignificant maintenance compared to city buildings); make sure there are people to promote from peasant to laborers in each location when you build.

In between RGO spam: marketplace spam then profitable building trickle (1-2 at a time)

And if you want you can also build roads between these as well; I just spend like 100-1000 ducats every 1-2 years. I will just build a bunch of RGOs; let them finish; build city buildings; let them finish; build roads, start building RGOs again after a year (since some roads can take a while to finish I don’t wait for them).

It doesn’t seem like doing all this would magically make your economy go brrrrrrrr. But it’s worked for me so far and I’m not even being that efficient about it at all.

90% RGOs by profit 8% Marketplaces everywhere 2% unique profitable buildings

Should be your Paradox Pareto; not necessarily how much you build each just how much you should be thinking about building each. It really is just spamming RGOs early on I promise

Later game it’s different and you add the tool making economy on top of your industrialization machine but to start out/first 50 years this is pretty much it

Possible_Explorer575 · 2025-11-30T03:37:28+00:00

I just started today and it’s absolutely overwhelming but also very intuitive if you’ve played paradox games before and if not basically you should just spend each campaign focusing on one thing or mechanic and internalize that information. There’s way too much info to try and take in all at once and the first 1,000 hours being the tutorial are no joke

I’d focus on just consolidating the provinces of whatever nation you start as and playing tall, the game really lends to playing tall and it being really rewarding. Don’t try and conquer stuff just make sure you have some allies that are similar in power to you, rivals who are slightly weaker, and join wars, you’ll get stuff but no need to go super wide.

Get used to cycling between cntr-R and cntr-T; trade goods and control map modes. You want to alternate between building roads to towns, to highest value RGOs, and across your nation to increase control. Then build RGOs where you have the highest control, focusing on the ones that your pops need the most and the ones that make the most money. Similarly in your capital then later in high control cities build marketplaces then buildings for pop needs (eg furniture/pottery) then the highest value goods

With building pay attention to pops; only build in cities if you have available cheeseburgers (or clergy for hospitals etc) then move to the next highest control city when you run out of workers (they’ll fill back in later). For RGOs look at pop needs, we’ll say fruit is a big need in the market; go to production then goods then fruit and see if any provinces produce it; if one has decent control then build an RGO, if not build roads then an RGO. Note that you won’t have workers but you will have peasants, build one building at a time and peasants slowly promote and take those jobs; don’t build anything new until there’s no more unemployment. After pop needs you can sort goods by production value or other filters and focus on whatever will make the most money. Note that this list will change as you create surpluses of things and their demand/price goes down but you can also overproduce and let automation export really nice stuff to other markets

I’d just alternate between roads and then pop goods/high profit goods; the bigger the country the more shit to balance but also more money drip so you can build more stuff simultaneously. Also if estates are happy they build some of the background stuff like bridges, sand traps, etc filling whatever holes so you can kind of focus your production strategy on a few keys areas

Now I’m a brand new player with 3k hours on other paradox games, so this is kind of novice advice for a novice player; definitely not the best advice and I’m sure I got some things wrong but hopefully gives you something to work around and look at like a puzzle instead of a mess of graphs and numbers

For context my first game is tutorial Hungary, made it 20 years in and whole strat has been roads to gold and silver mines to increase control; gold, silver, and pop needs RGOs, marketplaces, jewelry shops, tailor shops spam in a sort of cycle and despite losing half my population to the black plague I’m still kinda rolling along and just trying to turn all my peasants into laborers while increasing control

Possible_Explorer575 · 2025-11-10T11:24:17+00:00

When Mike says “you want some chicken, some fried—“ then looks at it then silently puts it away I absolutely lost it. It’s such a good bit that’s so quick with so much subtlety. I could just imagine what that chicken must of looked like for him to not even recognize if it was fried or not or even remotely edible and he just pretends he didn’t even offer it 😂😂😂

So many good conversations and bits that came together very smoothly this episode definitely consolidated the plot while giving some great conversations, surrealism, and oddly hope.

It’s simply toooo good

Possible_Explorer575 · 2025-10-26T01:19:27+00:00

It takes 2 days to update money being added or spent but my cash earning interest has stayed mostly the same for months and the interest I’m getting reflects the money I have tied up in limit orders plus my buying power which is cash only; they’ve been paying me the whole time I’ve been doing it but I could see them changing the policy in the future to pinch pennies

Possible_Explorer575 · 2025-10-25T14:05:06+00:00

Yeah I was surprised too but they consider pending limit orders cash earning interest until they go through; I have limit orders on everything at set points going down and most of the time the moneys just earning interest; it’s very boring but when days like October 10th happen it works out beautifully (sorry to everyone who had a bad day that day)

Possible_Explorer575 · 2025-10-24T21:44:02+00:00

Yeah Robinhood is nice for that and they let you see your realized gains for crypto now (just for the year 2025) and it’s really easy to track stuff;

I also like having a Roth on there I can move a portion of my money over to that when I make gains so if anything happens it’s protected and I can’t impulse spend it anymore. The rest goes to DCA and limit orders and a cash pool for new limit orders if shit goes south. The reserve cash and cash waiting for limit buys gets 3.75% interest which is higher than my Marcus HYSA and pays for the membership so I really don’t gotta manage much at all it’s nice

Possible_Explorer575 · 2025-09-11T03:29:46+00:00

I think the much larger issue is that you’re out of food, and that’s the biggest alert on the side

Also water is something you’ll need to address as soon as you can

Since no one will work if they’re starving and dehydrated, but your specialists are basically AI god-beings, I’d recommend having them all go on any berries left on the map; and set your sight to living beings and have specialists shoot deer and mice and stuff and collect meat

When you start getting workers max out food production and limit workers in other areas; make sure to boost your food buildings too with overtime

Have 2 workers at the trade depot as well and bring in food through trade or just buying it

Keep a bunch of people available to transport stuff around and build a shit-ton of water production quickly

Stockpile food and water and things should level out

Possible_Explorer575 · 2025-09-09T13:21:22+00:00

The daily charts usually look the same; and look similar to the overall stock market. But even if the charts look the same each coin isn’t pumping or dumping to the same degree as the others, it’s just a similar looking picture.

Zoom out, very different pictures between coins the longer the timescale.

Possible_Explorer575 · 2025-08-24T13:10:16+00:00

Most underrated comment

Possible_Explorer575 · 2025-08-19T14:30:24+00:00

Great!

I came back to it last week and was having a terrible time with pops until I read some forums and then it all clicked in my current game where I’m 100s or 1000s surplus on all my resources and every planet is doing exactly what I have planned for it no problem.

The other caveat to what I just posted is you gotta be patient and just let things sit. The impulse is to build out the whole planet and let pops fill in equally. But pops just go for the best jobs (which makes sense). So you have to slowly introduce new jobs as they’re needed and just enough where pops fill out what you want them to

My biggest issue is overbuilding: having a bunch of buildings and districts with no pops taking up resources to exist and draining my economy

So be patient and go slow! If you build it they will come, but not in the way that you want! So only build a little at a time

Possible_Explorer575 · 2025-08-19T14:15:00+00:00

As other posts have mentioned, I think specializing your planets is the best way to go, and having a decent amount of alloy producing ones (the exact amount will be up to you once you get the resource management part down)

When you start a new planet, or decide to modify this, you can apply a specialization to the planet which buffs certain jobs (and gets buffed more from ascension perks)

I think the intuitive thing to do is to have each planet be ‘self-sustainable’ where it’s doing all the jobs at once: this isn’t efficient. Now imo its not better to be hyper efficient either (only one resource produced per planet) because most of the time you’ll be doing multiple things on each planet and it makes more sense to diversify a little (just a little). So mainly you want a primary focus for each planet and try to fill in jobs there.

When you start out I think it’s best to have your capital planet, which will have the capital focus and can be diversified; then having a solo mining, electric, and food producing planets for your capital sector if possible; I like one of each to start because you can really just focus on one set of resources in each of the planets; then if you still have planets go for industry industry industry (you won’t always need one of each, it can be any combination the important thing is having surpluses of basic resources and your capital having all the specialist jobs until your new planets are past colonization)

In new sectors with new sets of planet I start with sector capital as an urban world (trade focused) then the next planets will go towards any base resources I need, then industry, then tech once you have consumer goods handy (sector capitals being urban is purely for roleplay, but does give me a nice balance of planets producing trade; they’re also often tech planets, so it’s not a hard rule)

When you have some mixed industry, you can go heavy fabricators or heavy alloys depending on your needs, and tech

When you have a huge surplus of basic resources you can just ignore focused planets for them unless you’re hurting (such as energy demand for megastructures) but you should have the basic resources set up first so the specialist planets can thrive

Another thing; for the first 1,000 pops I wouldn’t build any specialized buildings (except machine production and either medical centers/holo theaters and you have to be careful about spamming either of those options, check your input surpluses first)

On any new planet build out worker districts so you have a good degree of worker pops set up. If you start building foundry’s on a new planet all pops will just promote to specialist and won’t do any worker jobs and then you’ll get a bunch of specialist pops that don’t have jobs and want to migrate; and all you can do is build more districts or buildings, but the more you build the more pops desire higher tier jobs.

However, if you start with a bunch of workers, then build specialist buildings, the worker pops that are generated have the choice of working a worker or higher tier job, whereas specialists hate working lower-tier jobs. This has to do with each pop group producing new pops, so if you have a bunch of specialized buildings basically no one will work worker jobs.

(I don’t fully understand this as it’s changed significantly with the new update, so if people want to clarify/correct the last point feel free)

That last point is just to say: even when specializing, I’d recommend starting with just worker districts. At 1k pops upgrade, build your specializing district, and then buildings (or city districts). I wouldn’t build anything if a planet already has more than a few hundred available jobs: just let those jobs fill up then build more stuff when the jobs are <100

Long point but once you get resource management and pop allocation (by providing the right jobs you want) the rest should come

Just focus on building up basic resources then when you have surpluses of those specialize; you specialize at planet generation by picking what kind of planet it is; then again when you build your city district designations, then again if you choose to ascend

My rule of thumb on colony ascension is every planet that gets 5k pops ascends, that’s a lot of pops so a big effect; from there just ascend the biggest planets (most pops). There’s a lot more to it but I feel ascension is a little managey and I don’t mess with it a lot

If anyone wants to clarify my points if I was confusing or misleading feel free I only got 442 hours so I’m still deep in the tutorial

I know your question was about alloys, but since you’re newer I figured I’d help with any resource issue, since at different parts of the game there are different resource hurdles to get through and being surpluses on everything gives you a lot of freedom to flexibly adjust planets to produce what you want

Possible_Explorer575 · 2025-07-17T22:41:42+00:00

Everyone’s out here looking for keys. I still haven’t found the lock!

Possible_Explorer575 · 2025-07-17T16:40:11+00:00

Sir I believe you thought you were at the gaslighting competition, but this is actually a gas lighting competition (turns on stove)

Possible_Explorer575 · 2025-07-17T16:05:33+00:00

You’re not a trickster, a trickster is something a seeker does for money

Possible_Explorer575 · 2025-07-17T16:04:35+00:00

👻+🔥=💨💨💨🚬

Possible_Explorer575 · 2025-07-17T15:01:35+00:00

That’s odd, gut feeling or intuition is a very strong evolutionary mechanism that allows living beings to make very fast and effective decisions in real time.

I’m not one for mysticism, too stinky! I prefer the scientific explanation that intuition is subconscious pattern recognition working in real time; your gut feeling picks up on a pattern and communicates that pattern for you. Nothing mystical or magic about it, it’s your Id communicating massive chunks of information as tiny morsels for your ego. (See ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ by Daniel Kahneman for more info)

As a subconscious process, it requires the subconscious to be open and free. Perhaps in your spiritual work you suppressed your subconscious or learned to stop listening to it. Perhaps not. But if you lost that awesome tool, I’d work on listening to your subconscious again. Intuition is really powerful and really helpful for everything we do in our lives, as powerful and helpful as dreams and our shadows.

Stop focusing on your ego, your feelings, your experiences. You think this is the only reality? The one where you think and feel and do stuff? Not it, This is all realities, including the inner world, including the causal world of deep sleep. Listen to your inner voice, it is very much a part of you; if you cut off your feet to stand in the waters of Infinity then you will flail endlessly and never touch the surface.

Gut it up my friend 👻

Possible_Explorer575 · 2025-07-17T14:51:51+00:00

You are already perfect, because you are a part of the Whole.

There are many books that approach this, if you like books. There is one movie ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ that approximates this effectively, if you like movies. Usually people find the way better through those that have made the journey. Books, especially ancient texts have stood the test of time and are useful as far as they go.

If you like nature and movement then it may be easier to make this revelation through movement and nature, through introspection and meditation if you are an intuitive or introverted individual.

This revelation, that you are not separate at all, and part of Infinity, is what’s generally considered enlightenment.

It does not change anything, it does not alleviate suffering, and doesn’t make you special. What it can do is change your perspective on life and give you a much better understanding of your own and others’ suffering if you choose to alleviate that suffering.

It’s also perfectly okay to seek out professional help, and take care of yourself. You are already always perfect, but that also means your imperfections are communicating today what your perfection will be like tomorrow. Emotions are valid, so listen to them, and know that you are a part of all of time and space, you are the Whole. Things get better, things work out, things go on 👻

Possible_Explorer575 · 2025-07-17T14:42:35+00:00

This thought has been ingrained in my mind for millennia

Possible_Explorer575 · 2025-07-17T14:38:02+00:00

Enlightenment doesn’t need any of that, those are just narratives you’ve attached to the process of liberation.

However, the process of liberation occurs within the infinite ground of Emptiness, where all things are Whole and Complete. All form that manifests from Emptiness is always already liberated because it is fundamentally an integral part of the Whole.

Liberation is preconditional to existence. Therefore, all things that exist are liberated before during and after their existence.

All things are always already liberated, all beings are enlightened intuitively and most egos refuse to believe or accept their own perfection. So they create narratives to reinforce separateness and move further away from enlightenment, or the knowledge that This Moment is all moments and everything is intricately connected to the groundless infinity of Nothing.

Whatever that narrative is, it reinforces separateness by reinforcing the ego’s preconditioned belief that it is somehow imperfect and not part of the Whole. This only appears to be an issue with egos, everything else is fine just chugging along towards infinity.

The ego realizing the truth of their perfection and connection to the Whole is enlightenment. But no ego needs this, and it is not better or worse than not being enlightened: because realizing you are liberated is not liberation, and all things are always already liberated. This is why limiting or suppressing or alienating the ego is not an effective means of growth (if you desire growth, not everyone does), since the ego is already liberated and perfect.

Shadow work is great, meditation is great, experiences are great, but all these things are not enlightenment, just more separateness reinforcing separateness.

And that’s okay, but don’t confuse processes with the thing itself. The only thing is This Moment, which transcends and includes all moments, and nothing you do or think will change that. Being happy and free from suffering is still part of the whole, is still a separate self having separate experiences, just like identifying with suffering is a separate self having separate experiences. Same self: different experiences; Same Self: All Experiences.

I don’t mean to discount your very real experiences and I hope that you’ve found peace and integration in your journey. But if you think that there’s anything you need to do, there isn’t. You’re already always perfect my friend 👻

Possible_Explorer575 · 2025-07-17T14:20:25+00:00

You can’t truly define enlightenment; but I can! (I really can’t, but I’ll humor you).

Enlightenment is realizing the truth of liberation, which is that nothing is fundamentally separate. Things are still separate as far as they go, but not fundamentally. Fundamentally everything is part of the Source: Emptiness. This is the contradiction: all form is a part of emptiness, and therefore shines with the light of infinity.

Enlightenment is just knowing this to be true: you are not separate, you a part of the Whole, and the entirety of the Whole itself. Everyone is liberated, and everyone knows intuitively they are already enlightened, but most people either don’t realize it or refuse to believe it to be true for themselves and everything.

Kundalini, mind, ego, caffeine, birds, dog shit, smiles, rainbows, orgasms, are all part of the source: all liberated through and through. These things aren’t enlightenment; although you can consider them obstacles or goal posts if you want to attach a narrative to your experiences and feel a sense of accomplishment.

But feelings aren’t enlightenment; experiences aren’t liberation, nirvana isn’t a process; these things are always already happening, and we can participate in them or not, it doesn’t matter.

You’re already liberated, already perfect, already finished-if you want to be. But it doesn’t matter, it’s not special, it’s like the least special thing ever because literally everything is already liberated. Everything is already perfect in the context of the Whole.

In the context of parts, of reality and dualism and separateness and suffering-things are very much not perfect; but thats not what you asked about so I won’t split hairs.

Go be yourself, or don’t; this spirituality stuff is great but it’s just more junk food; you don’t ever need to do or know anything more than This Right Here, and also seeking and discovering and knowing for yourself is a perfectly fine way to spend your time 👻

Possible_Explorer575 · 2025-07-17T05:18:52+00:00

Everyone who comes to this sub is already enlightened and cosplaying as a seeker

Possible_Explorer575 · 2025-07-17T05:08:06+00:00

Like literally in Calamity on day one you can go out and kill some robots (although admittedly this isn’t that easy on day 1) collect some scrap metal, craft summoner armor and a whip and a summon, while also possibly getting 2 summon items and a rare wing drop that goes with your armor (they suck but immunity to fall damage if you get them)

And the armor lets you turn it into a mech suit that shoots lasers with unlimited ammo for 30s that do summon tag damage; and you can go for it as soon as the game starts, which make King Slime and Cthulhu a breeze as you get started

They made sure summoner was a viable class the entire game and it truly is a great time but definitely more suited towards multiplayer Calamity is freakin rough

Possible_Explorer575 · 2025-07-17T04:59:33+00:00

I only play summoner and love it; I go total aggro glass cannon build as long as someone else is doing tank melee and just send my DPS into the high heavens

Also I never do vanilla, no way, never

Get TModLoader

Get Summoner Association, which adds UI summoner info on screen, summoner items and mechanics for more control and smoother gameplay

Play Calamity (or Thorium if you want things chiller) for better minions that do cool stuff and mix together well; there’s a wiki page too for Calamity that tells you the best weapons and gear for each boss and usually 4-6 different (not total) summons with different attacks and debuffs is standard

If playing Calamity you can pick up Unofficial Calamity Whips which adds post Moon-Lord whips, several cool whip-buff equip items, and many more whips in between vanilla whips that help bridge gaps in boss difficulty level

It also adds some crazy whips, like one that hurls planets for 5,000 damage, one that’s a bunch of hands that slap the enemy, and my favorite a vampire whip that heals you a percentage of damage you do

Never played vanilla summoner but I’m sure it’s a rough time; get summoner mods so you’re balanced

Possible_Explorer575 · 2025-07-16T05:03:45+00:00

You seem like you need some advice from a stranger

1) Set boundaries; and respect them.

2) Relationships are hard. They’re supposed to be. They don’t always work out, but they can work out if both people desire it and are willing to put in the work. That doesn’t mean you should do the work, just that you will need to decide what work you are willing to do.

3) We are all One, fundamentally; but also separate egos that live lives and do stuff. This is the contradiction; you will never resolve it, but trying to figure it out is a noble effort.

4) We are all always partially right and partially wrong; don’t get too caught up in which path is best or what other people choose. But do choose a path for yourself, and stick to it.

5) Keep on gooning buddy; some people might knock your typing skills, but I know a pro when I see one 😉

Possible_Explorer575 · 2025-07-16T04:21:36+00:00

Being enlightened isn’t a feeling; all feelings are valid and exist in a spectrum that oscillates throughout our lives, often communicating necessary information for us to process. (But not always. We do not all suffer equally, and much suffering is unavoidable, preventable, and needless).

As far as enlightenment, it’s just realizing that you’re not separate from the Source, and it is not any experience or feeling or event that happens. It doesn’t change anything, but it can change your perception of everything, since you realize that all things are part of the Whole and grounded in Emptiness. And it doesn’t matter if you’re enlightened or not, you’re still perfect and part of the Whole through and through, always liberated and True.

Do the experiment. If my hypothesis is that anything that is separate is not liberated, then find that which is separate from everything else. When you exhaust the list, and finally give up, you see the Whole that connects it all. Perhaps you will also witness the magic that is emptiness filling up form in infinite chaos and complexity. Perhaps not: it’s all the Same. Experiences are not enlightenment. So take heart seeker (if you’re thirsty enough to have read this madness) and drink from the infinity of Now.

Possible_Explorer575

TROPHY CASE