Grand Strategy Victoria 3

[Malakal]

Lovely, this could finally make lower POP nations at least somewhat competitive in terms of industry.

 

[Norfleet]

The real question is: Are YOU expected to make all of these decisions yourself? Are you always expected to make these decisions yourself, or only in command-based economics? If the decision-making process will be taken from you under laissez-faire economics, will the decisions made by the AI actually be good, sensible ones, or will this be like Vicky 2 where it was better to be Commieland because that maximized your control over the process, and thus the efficiency thereof?

 

[Delterius]

Non subsidized Interventionism was better in Vicky 2 than state capitalism or laissez faire. State Capitalism / Planned Economy is good even necessary for jumpstarting a late industrialization, Laissez Faire is good for those few early industrial powers. But Interventionism makes it so you don't have to babysit smaller states with worse infrastructure (the capitalists will constantly try to build something in them, and probably fail) while you can constantly expand factories in an exploding economy with lots of pops like most anyone with healthcare from midgame onwards, India or China. Relying on capitalists to expand factories with Indian levels of workforce is a recipe for revolution. Doing it yourself with Chinese levels of workforce is not even enough to stave off said revolution. Interventionism also safeguards players who have yet to reach number 1 spot from supply issues by a sudden war on Europe: as in you can subsidize industry during world war, no problem. You can also subsidize tank factories and such.

Likewise Liberals being ok for countries that start the game already developed and with all industrial needs inside their borders but completely and utterly destroying any other economy is a traditional quirk of Victoria 2 and I hope it stays in. Which is why I'm in favor of bringing back the capitalist AI.

 

[Nutria]

If I'm understanding the screenshot correctly, textile mills in Louisiana are making more money than textile mills in Massachusetts. This may seem like a petty gripe, but it's at the heart of my problem with Paradox games. Massachusetts was in many ways the most technologically advanced place on Earth at the time. There was a big textile industry there because its unique geology made it perfect for the kind of hydro power that could be exploited with mid-1800s technology. There was not a big textile industry in Louisiana. Like has anyone heard of the fucking American Civil War? What pisses me off is there's two ways to solve this problem:

First option: Do some fucking research beyond whatever you were taught in Sweden. There's no better example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect than people from countries where they think they know the world so well, but when they get more than 2000km from Stockholm they just say none of it matters. America, Japan, China... who cares about insignificant places like that? Maybe if Paradox got a couple of people who weren't 110% Eurotrash to work for them, they wouldn't fuck up like this.

Second and better option: Don't try to set your games in the real world. Make it abstract. You will never properly simulate the real world divided into tens of thousands of cells, so make a game that captures the spirit of those times. Imperialism is the obvious example of how a game was made on this topic that was vastly superior and more true to the historical setting than Vicky. And it's been done in other settings, like the original Tropico or Hidden Agenda if you're a true boomer.

But that will never happen because the market for people who actual care about history is very niche. And the market for people who are... on the spectrum... and think that bigger numbers make a game better is actually less niche.

 

[Delterius]

There was not a big textile industry in Louisiana.

i'm going to conquer louisiana as cuba and make it the most populous and developed place on earth second to the mogadishu steelyards

 

[Joggerino]

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Buildings to explore Production Methods. These determine the functions of the building, its inputs and outputs, and what employee types it requires to operate.

Many management games let you upgrade a building to increase its efficiency or expand its functionality. In these games, after the upgrade investment has been paid the impact is permanent and nearly always superior in every way to the building's previous functionality. But in Victoria 3 there are no actions without reactions, and novel innovations don't just make buildings better with no side effects. Improving industrial processes over time is to be expected, but in some cases those improvements might require goods as input that the country has scant access to, while others permit the output of a new type of end product at the expense of the old one. As a result, buildings in Victoria 3 require more flexible upgrade paths than what's afforded by permanent, linear, “no-brainer” improvements.

All buildings have several categories of Production Methods, usually between 2 and 5. Only one is active at any given time in each category. Most categories fall into one of these types:

Base: governs the general "tech level" and efficiency of the building, produces goods typical for the building type
Refining: reduces output of typical goods in favor of output of specialized or luxury goods, sometimes adding a special input
Automation: adds industrial goods as input to reduce the building's unskilled workforce requirement
Ownership: determines who owns shares in the building; typically governed by Laws

With the right technologies Food Industries can make Groceries from both Grain (Bakeries) and Fish (Canneries). They can also refine Grain and Sugar into Liquor (Distilleries). With advanced technologies Food Industries can be partially automated, drastically reducing the need for unskilled labor. Simple Food Industries are operated by Merchant Guilds (Shopkeepers), while more advanced and profitable Food Industries are owned by Capitalists who reinvest some of their dividends.

As one example, an Iron Mine's base Production Method determines if miners use only picks and shovels or if they also use some sort of engine-driven pumping mechanism. There are several different pumping technologies which also determine what fuel is used. The more advanced the pumping mechanism the more deposits can be accessed and the faster Iron can be mined, but the more Coal or Oil is used in the process. With higher tech pumps comes a requirement for more Engineers and Machinists to be on-site to control and oversee its operation. This creates more demand for qualified workers and also opens up a number of better paid positions to those Pops who meet the qualifications.

The revolution in chemical sciences of the era also enabled the use of explosives in mining, which is a secondary Production Method category used only in mines. Once Nitroglycerin is invented, it can be used in mines to generate even more minerals, at the expense of Explosives produced by the Chemical Industry but also with a higher rate of workplace accidents. By researching less volatile Dynamite, even more minerals are extracted at the expense of even more Explosives, with the additional benefit that far fewer workers will blow themselves up on the job.

Once invented, portable Steam Donkey engines can be deployed at mining sites to drastically reduce the amount of manual labor required just for hauling. This costs the building some money in the form of Coal and Engines, but reduces the amount of money they have to pay in wages. Perhaps more importantly it frees those Laborers up to do other work in other buildings if the state is running low on workers. But if wages are already very depressed it might not be a great idea to purchase expensive industrial goods just to increase the unqualified labor pool further, so this might not be a no-brainer decision for a player to make.

In most countries, simple mines are owned and operated by Merchant Guilds at game start. These are small-time purveyors of the goods produced represented by Shopkeepers. Once mines start to industrialize, Capitalists step in to take over ownership. In most cases these Capitalists will come from Shopkeepers promoted to these newly created positions, but some might come from other Pops in the state, even other Capitalists in buildings not quite as lucrative as these new mines. There are fewer Capitalists than Shopkeepers but they draw a higher wage, and more importantly they will reinvest some of their earnings into the country's expanding industry depending on how much profit their workplace is generating for them. As new ideas spread across your society you might be able to make the mining industry publicly traded instead of privately held, and later on in the game perhaps even nationalize them to be run by government bureaucrats or turn them into cooperatives where profit is split between workers.

Production Methods aren't limited to consuming and producing goods. Government Administrations employ Bureaucrats and Clerks who use Paper to produce Bureaucracy, one of the game's Capacities that let you govern more people and extend more state services to them. Railways consume Engines and a fuel such as Coal to produce both Transportation and Infrastructure, the former which is sold on the market and the latter which allows the state to support more buildings without loss of Market Access. Universities employ Academics that let the state guide research and development of new technologies and ideas. Virtually any kind of currency, modifier, or effect can be produced by Production Methods in buildings and can be applied in a variety of ways to the country, state, or even the building itself.

A basic Government Administration consumes 10 Paper and produces 50 Bureaucracy per fully-staffed level, but each additional level beyond the first adds a +2% Throughput bonus due to economy of scale. This increases both consumption of Paper and output of Bureaucracy, yielding more productivity from each of the Pops that work the building.

This of course adds a tremendous capacity for modding in new Buildings and Production Methods! Embassies that increase your Influence, but which can also be configured to consume Wine and Meat at state expense to increase the speed at which you Improve Relations? Shantytown Temples that can only be built on coastlines, that consume Fish and create jobs for pops qualifying for the Deep Ones profession, increasing state mortality but also the weekly rate of the global cthulhu_rising counter? We can't wait to see what madness you unleash!

If tweaking multiple Production Methods across several categories on every single building in the game sounds a bit complex compared to linear building upgrades - you're right! Thankfully we've built a number of tools to help with this process. Foremost among these are the Buildings panel, where you can get an overview of all buildings in your country organized by major and minor type. For example you could get an overview of all Rural buildings, or all Furniture Manufactories, or all Ports. If you have buildings of the same type in several different states, you can break it down further to view the individual building. On each level you can see how profitable the building is and adjust its Production Methods. You can even set all Production Methods for a certain building type to a specific setting all across your country with one click.

From the Buildings panel you can get a birds-eye view of all industries in your country and see at a glance how they’re doing financially. You can change Production Methods on an individual building or on all of them at once. You can even expand buildings directly from this screen if you so choose, or click on one to get an in-depth view of its balance sheet and workforce.

To minimize the requirement for mental math we have also created prediction tools that give you a breakdown of what to expect from choosing a certain Production Method, based on profitability predictions taking adjusted production and consumption into account, and summarizing which new job positions will be created and which will disappear. While it may on the surface seem obvious to just enable the Production Methods that make the buildings more profitable, keep in mind the societal effects as well - are there enough Pops in the state that qualify for the more advanced jobs this new process requires? Will the wage for these new jobs be sufficient to entice those Pops to switch professions? Will you inadvertently create a whole new class of well-to-do Machinists that may have pro-labor union sentiments? Or will the increased profits not lead to higher wages in the building because they're already competitive and fully employed, and will simply result in more dividends for the shareholders which will be funneled into increased luxury consumption? Which you choose might depend on your population’s social mobility, what politics you favor in your country (a socialist uprising may not be in your plans!) and whether you're able to supply luxuries yourself without benefiting your rival. More profitable domestic industries are never bad, but should be far from the only consideration when building your society.

Predictive tooltips will explain the anticipated impact on the building’s Balance as a result of changes in production, consumption, and wage requirements, as well as the changes in employment that could also impact the country’s politics over time. You will also be forewarned if there aren’t enough qualifying Pops to take on any new professions created, as this could limit your industry’s effectiveness.

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lachek · Jun 24, 2021 at 18:00

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That is all for this week. We will return to discussing more economic intricacies later, but for the next little while we'll be exploring domestic politics - starting next week when Martin will be presenting Interest Groups!

Very nice

 

[Space Satan]

Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #6 - Interest Groups

• Thread starterWizzington
• Start dateToday at 18:00

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As mentioned, Interest Groups are fundamentally made up of Pops - all individuals in all Pops are either members of an Interest Group or Politically Inactive, with the ratio in each based on factors such as Profession, Wealth, Literacy etc. Individuals inside Pops contribute Political Strength to their Interest Group of choice, with the amount they contribute again dependent on multiple factors, the main ones being their material Wealth and the status (and/or votes!) they are offered under the nation’s power structure.

For example, a single wealthy Aristocrat in an Oligarchy will provide hundreds or even thousands times the political strength of a poor laborer. The total Political Strength of all Pops in an Interest Group is what gives it its level of Clout - the amount of political weight it can assert on the country and the government. It’s important to note though that Pops are not unified in which Interest Groups they support - individuals within Pops are the ones who decide their Interest Group, and a single Pop can potentially have individuals supporting every Interest Group in the game (in different numbers).

Some Pops have no political strength at all, usually due to being disenfranchised under the nation’s laws (such as people of a religion or culture that is discriminated against, or women in countries that haven’t instituted women’s suffrage). These Pops are ‘outside the system’ so to speak, unable to demand reform through the regular political system of Interest Groups, and instead having to rely on other methods to put pressure on the government, but we won’t focus on those today.

Individual members of a Pop can support different Interest Groups - or stay out of politics altogether!
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Wizzington · Jul 1, 2021 at 18:00

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As mentioned above, Interest Groups have a number of ideologies which determine their views on which laws the country should or should not enact. Different Interest Groups will have different ideologies (the Landowners are significantly more conservative than the Trade Unions, for example - shocking, I know!) but these are not entirely set in stone - they can change over the course of the game and will also vary based on the current leader of the Interest Group, who comes with his or her own personal ideology and view of the world. Additionally, some Interest Groups in certain countries have unique ideologies colored by their religion and culture, such as the Confucian Scholars Interest Group in Qing China who (unsurprisingly) espouse a Confucian ideology.

Interest Groups will generally favor laws that benefit them in some way

I mentioned previously that Interest Groups have a level of Clout based on the total Political Strength of their constituent Pops. Clout is calculated by comparing their Political Strength to that of the other Interest Groups in the country - if all the Interest Groups in Belgium put together have 100k Political Strength and the Landowners have 30k, they correspondingly get 30% of the Clout in Belgium. The Interest Group’s Clout will determine their classification - Powerful, Influential or Marginalized.

Interest Groups also have a level of Approval, which is based on factors such as how much they approve of the country’s laws, whether they are in government or in opposition, and how many of their individual members are Loyalists or Radicals (more on those in a later dev diary). There are numerous other factors that can affect Approval as well, such as how you react to certain events or decisions that you take.

Together, the classification and Approval of an Interest Group determines which Traits are active for an Interest Group at any given time, and how impactful they are. There are different traits, positive and negative, with positive traits being activated when an Interest Group is happy and negative ones when they are… not so happy. If an Interest Group is Powerful, the effects of any traits they have active (good or bad) are stronger, while an Interest Group that is Marginalized cannot activate traits at all, as they are too weak to exert an effect on the whole country.

Traits are, of course, not the only way that Interest Groups can affect a country, and it’s even possible for one (or several!) angry Interest Groups to start a civil war, potentially bringing in foreign countries to support them.

Keep the aristocracy happy, and they’ll be more willing to reinvest their ‘hard-earned’ money into the country

Now, something that’s been a hotly debated topic in the community in regards to Interest Groups is Political Parties and whether they will be a part of Victoria 3 so I want to briefly touch on this. What I can tell you for now is that we are currently looking into a solution where parties can form in certain countries as constellations of Interest Groups holding a shared political platform. This is something that’s by no means fully nailed down at this point though, so don’t take this as a 100% firm commitment to how they would function. What I can tell you for sure is that we will come back to this particular topic later!

That’s all for today, though we’ll certainly be coming back to the subject of Interest Groups and looking at the different types you will encounter in later dev diaries. With July and summer vacations coming up, we’re going to take a short break from Development Diaries, but we’ll be back on July 22nd as Mikael returns to continue talking about politics in Victoria 3, on the subject of Laws.

 

[M. AQVILA]

I wasn't expecting anything and I'm still let down.

 

[Sranchammer]

There will so much abolitionist interest group spamming that your eyes will bleed.

 

[Oberon]

tbh I'm skipping this one
I have hundreds of hours in EU3, EU4, CK2, and after a while the immersion is gone and you are faced with the fact that you are in an arena with a huge number retarded AI that get progressively worse as Paradox bloats the games with more half implemented mechanics until the project collapses under it's own weight.
That and pic related makes me suspicious that we might be getting the 2021 experience instead of 1821

 

[Sranchammer]

I have hundreds of hours in EU3, EU4, CK2

Yo, check out this n00bl3t lmaooooo

Yo blood, you need like minimum 20k hrs playtime to criticize Paradox.

 

[Malakal]

I wasn't expecting anything and I'm still let down.

Beats the random ass reform desire from Vic2

 

[Joggerino]

As long as they make a good framework we'll have mods that fix their pozzed shit. And it's looking pretty good so far.

 

[M. AQVILA]

Beats the random ass reform desire from Vic2

I actually didn't like Victoria 2 much either, the rebel experience ruined my perception of the game. But this is not really much of an improvement. Not at all.

 

[Nutria]

retarded AI that get progressively worse as Paradox bloats the games with more half implemented mechanics until the project collapses under it's own weight

Thanks, it's about fucking time that someone besides me said this. You cannot make a game with decent AI if you add 20 different pointless DLCs to it. The AI needs to be designed from the ground up understanding what game it's going to be playing. You can't just make the AI, add on a bunch of shit over 10 years, and then expect it to still work.

And if the AI doesn't work, then you either end up with either the event engine forcing things down the right path or with wildly stupid results. Both of which are hallmarks of Paradox games.

 

[Malakal]

Beats the random ass reform desire from Vic2

I actually didn't like Victoria 2 much either, the rebel experience ruined my perception of the game. But this is not really much of an improvement. Not at all.

How is it not an improvement when POPs have their 'desires' that you, most likely, will be able to modify? Pdox will offer some kind of system and then modders can tweak it to make it sensible if it is lacking.

Plus its a generalization but makes sense, at least from what we see in the screenshots.

 

[thesecret1]

Wow, that seems to be the faction system from Stellaris, with a couple bells and whistles on top Leave it to Paradox to recycle as much as it can. Still, (hopefully) being able to actually influence and interact with the various ideological currents in the country seems like a good idea. Victoria 2 suffered from having little in the way of tools to do this, so a western nation inevitably ended up getting drowned in Jacobins unless it went full democracy, and if it did, then it started drowning in socialists and commies and what not (and if it went commie, then it drowned in other rebels. It was a never ending cycle). On the other hand, this is still barebones as fuck. I expect them to flesh this out to maybe being able to actually talk with the interest group leader, bribe him or ask for favours, etc. in a future DLC, because what's on display here is basically just a bunch of modifiers.

 

[Hace El Oso]

Pdox will offer some kind of system and then modders can tweak it to make it sensible if it is lacking.

Except more and more important areas of Paradox games are becoming hardcoded, not less, and they care less and less about making it modable.

 

[Malakal]

Pdox will offer some kind of system and then modders can tweak it to make it sensible if it is lacking.

Except more and more important areas of Paradox games are becoming hardcoded, not less, and they care less and less about making it modable.

Not sure about that as I am not playing Stellaris or cK3 but HoI4 and DLCs seem very moddable.

 

[Hace El Oso]

Not sure about that as I am not playing Stellaris or cK3 but HoI4 and DLCs seem very moddable.

HoI 4 is indeed easily moddable (It was the second paradox game I modded after CK2, I never modded big systems though so can’t speak to that). But they aren’t making them that way anymore if CK3 is any indication. Hard coding title succession, title levels, mercenaries, men at arms, it’s not promising.

 

[Malakal]

There will so much abolitionist interest group spamming that your eyes will bleed.

Wouldn't that be very historical? At Least for Europe and USA.

 

[Sranchammer]

Pink hair edition!

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Eh, it mostly regurgitates the info already available in the previous dev diaries.

 

[fantadomat]

Eh, it mostly regurgitates the info already available in the previous dev diaries.

LoL what did you expect?

 

[Lord Commissar Alexer]

I wonder if Fascism is also included...