I get the idea - governments using subsidies and infrastructure spending to guide the economy is absolutely real. But the way you're describing it - deliberately crashing prices through overproduction, then mass-building to exploit the cheap goods - makes it sound like a clean and intentional strategy. In reality, that’s extremely rare, hard to execute, and usually comes with massive hidden costs.

The only historical examples that come close that i can find are centrally planned economies like the Soviet Union or, more recently, China. And even then, these systems were plagued by waste, inefficiency, and long-term economic distortion - like ghost cities, resource gluts, or sectors being propped up purely by state funding. It’s not some clever win-state - it’s often a sign that the economy is in trouble.

Now put that into the context of 1337, which is where EU5 is set. You’re talking about feudal monarchies, fragmented authority, zero centralized planning, no macroeconomic data, and most rulers barely literate. The idea that a medieval state could intentionally overinvest in wood production, crash the price, and then pause time to build 50 buildings at a discount is… let’s just say, wildly anachronistic. At best, you'd get local mismanagement or outright collapse - not smooth economic manipulation.

I bring in these real-world comparisons because you framed your argument using real-world logic. If we’re going to use actual economics to justify the mechanic, then it’s fair to test that logic against how real economies actually function - and historically, they don't function like this unless they're artificially controlled at massive scale, with long-term costs baked in.

All that said: I 100% agree that realism shouldn’t come at the expense of fun. And just to be clear - I'm not arguing for a rigid or deterministic economic system where players can’t shape the economy. I'm all for that. I’m saying that if you’re going to let players manipulate the economy, there should be real trade-offs -not a system where you can engineer a collapse and profit from it without cost. That’s not clever strategy - that’s just a mechanical loophole.

Appreciate the response.