Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #110 - Building Ownership & Foreign Investment

[PDX_H4n1baL]

Will mod owners get early access to allow them time to make such drastic changes to their pop and building set ups. I do look forward to creating wealthy centers of commerce.

I don't know at this moment, but I'll get back to you with an answer sometime after the easter weekend.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

So state can be traded, conquered, etc back and forth, while manors and financial centers don't care that it was Prussian then Austrian then Russian state in quick succession.

Is that stating a fact or including a criticism?
No other building really cares about it. If you have a point of feedback on why they should, I'd like to hear it though.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

Can you build railroads in countries that don't have the railroads tech? Or buildings a country doesn't have tech for in general?

Yes, you can. For construction purposes the game looks at the tech of the one who is trying to construct, not where the building will be located.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

Bavaria? Proud, you say? Is there even as much as one proud Bavarian?

But in all seriousness: the ownership changes are the best change since launch, I think!

God damnit, I should have definitely written "Bavaria, one proud member..." instead

Thanks, we're very glad to hear!

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

To expand on this, how are investment rights retracted? I assume it is unilateral?
So you can get investment rights from another country, build stuff there, then they break the treaty and nationalize it? That's kinda cool

As mentioned in the DD, there's different ways of getting the rights, not only unilateral, also mutual.
But for all diplomatic pacts, there should be only fairly low barriers to cancelling an ongoing pact, yea. Kind of like any other diplomatic pact, really.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

Will companies (when the changes come) own the building levels immediately or will they make an effort to buy those up over time? It'd be cool to see them representing a large company but not necessarily owning ALL of my relevant industry. Also, will we be getting company ownership characters?

I want to stress this is purely a design thought we are having at this point.
We think it could work like that or similar to it and will need to see during implementation if it is actually feasible the way we're thinking about it currently.
So, with this in mind, another pure from-the-top-of-my-head response to your question:
I'd expect companies to start small and grow over time, yes. And definitely not owning ALL your relevant industry unless you let it intentionally come to this.
Company owner characters are definitely on my personal wishlist, but again, no clue if that's realistic. They need to fit within the context, otherwise we likely won't pursue this idea.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

Can I change Production Method in Privately owned buildings?

Yes. As I mentioned elsewhere: PMs are always controlled by the country where the building is located and this rule also applies to privately owned buildings.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

Most farms, for example - your typical small farmer owned or rented his own land, and maybe had a few hired hands. Similarly, artisanal production is the same.

We should mentally distinguish between worker-owned because the operation is too small to warrant outside ownership, and worker owned as a legal structure for a large organization.

I'd like to inquire about a few things, @PDX_H4n1baL :
- Can non-state owners (workforce, manor houses, or financial sectors) buy from each other, or just from the state when you decide to privatize?
- What happens if you revoke investment rights with a foreign country, but do not nationalize?
- Related to the previous two questions, can non-state owners purchase foreign-owned property?

Anyway, I'm extremely excited about this patch, and, depending on how it plays out, it could be what gets me to finally buy Vicky3.

1. Not between them at this point
2. Nothing, they just continue existing with the foreign ownership
3. Yep, if the foreign country privatizes these assets, they can

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

Normally I would agree, I just think it could be annoying from a gameplay perspective. Early game is dominated by government building iron mines. Do you really want to have to go iron mine -> admin-> iron mine -> admin -> iron mine -> admin -> tools -> admin ->paper ->admin ect.

Thanks for your suggestion.
I'll see if that'd be a feasible alternative to employ bureaucrats. I do see some problems with it though which I'll need to investigate first.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

Can my nation or pops own all buildings in the world?
You could grab more and more subjects and buildings over time if you have GDP 2x bigger than next country.

Theoretically, yes.
Practically, probably only through conquest. Though I haven't tried, so I challenge you to do it!

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

Very nice rework! Do the new "allow investment" pacts cost diplomatic capacity to maintain? And how much if so?

50 per pact as of right now.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

Hello great DD, Does your diplomatic relationship affect the likelyness of the AI building in your country ? Like will the investment decreases in your country you have too much infamy ?

Not currently as far as I know. But of course the initial signature willingness for Investment Rights is affected by it.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

When you privatize a building and pops go and buy it, will they always be pops from that same state creating a new ownership building in that state?

Can an existing ownership building buy a privatized level of a building in another state?

Can pops in one state create a completely new ownership building in order to buy a recently privatized building in another state?

Doesn't have to be from the same state. It's not necessarily a new building, can be, but can also be an existing manor house/financial district that expands (which should actually be more likely).

Can you privatize foreign investments? If so, who can buy those levels?

No, you don't control them after all. You'd need to nationalize them first.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

Is there a way to force a country to accept foreign investment?
For trade we can either open their market or take a treaty port, do we have similar options for foreign investments?

Does our economic system law and/or trade law affect foreign investment?

Yes, there is a demand to get Foreign Investment Rights. You may need to go to war over it, but you can enforce it.

Can you expand on what you're getting at with the laws? What effects are you thinking of with relation to foreign investment?

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

What about privatization of unprofitable buildings though?

As Wiz said, they mostly care about profitability. So it would be very unlikely that they'd buy an unprofitable building compared to building a new profitable one for example.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

Why do government owned building suffer from economy of scale debuffs? If it's to motivate privatisation, why not just increase the bureaucracy cost? It seems kind of arbitrary to say that goverment is worse at producing stuff as a principle.

During initial testing we discovered that nationalization felt like an auto-click button basically that you would always want to press. So we added more consequences on all ends pretty much.
Personally, I think it does make sense that government-run buildings work less efficiently. If the private sector were in charge of a government's bureaucratic system for example, it would very likely see efficiency improvements. But maybe that's just a faulty perception being a German
In any case, we will keep an eye on this feedback when SoI releases of course and are happy to adjust it if it really doesn't work well.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

Hi, can you have the investment pacts with decentralised countries?

No, you cannot.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

"Because of this it no longer makes sense for players to be in charge of both public and private investments simultaneously, and as such the Directly Controlled Investment Pool rule has had to be removed for 1.7 and beyond."


I very very very dislike.

So I as a player only can build governmental buildings?

No, you can still build any building like before.
You will just not be able to direct what buildings are being built from the private investment money.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

Can my nation have urban centers, trade centers, manors, financial districts and government buildings as only buildings?
That is no anything except for those buildings.

That is country would be fully utilizing foreign investments for its own economy (microstate like Luxembourg).

Theoretically, maybe?
Try it out and ping me. I'd love to see it!

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

There’s a lot to unpack here, sorry for all the questions, but here goes:

Do you think the changes to ownership could provide a platform for adding more financial mechanics? Ie, banking, insurance, private and public lending, and international credit?

I would say these wouldn't necessarily require the changes we're making. But the changes also don't invalidate these ideas. So maybe eventually, no concrete plans for any of these at this point though.

Will capitalists buy/sell buildings from/to each other?

Not at the moment, no.

Are speculation and market bubbles modeled?

Not really. If there's highly profitable targets, you could theoretically see a bunch of investments into that particular state+building which would then reduce profitability, but not to a point of crashing I'd assume.

If a country my capitalist’s have invested in goes bankrupt or nationalizes foreign industry, will my capitalists create a lobby to invade and demand compensation?

Good question. I actually don't know if we could set it up with the current Lobbies systems since I was not really involved after initial design discussions. I'd recommend asking it again when we publish the Dev Diary on Lobbies!