Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #148 - Prestige Goods

[PDX_H4n1baL]

There go my dreams of XIX. century IKEA

That's a very easy mod to make, even for somebody who's never modded before. I'd encourage you to try it

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

How much have obsessions been changed? Is it now reliably viable to incite a Luxury Clothes Obsession by flooding the market with dirt cheap Luxury Clothes for a while? Or is it just slightly more likely than before?

I'm not sure we've done major changes to obsessions.

Also, is there a reason to want to import prestige goods over normal versions? I'm assuming a company like John Cockerill produces Prestige Steel, would it be worth nations with domestic steel production such as UK and France importing this prestige steel or is it just better for the Belgians to export due to trade advantage?

To be clear - you're not deciding to import specifically prestige steel from the world market. This is handled automatically by your trade centers.
But as mentioned, any building that consumes a prestige good benefits from it, so there's not only the advantage for the Belgian side, but also for the importers.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

Adding to this question, how is the throughput bonus calculated?

Check the image in the DD, it's 2% per 10% prestige good usage. So if all input goods would be prestige goods, you'd get a total of 20% throughput.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

1 - Is the generic prestige good going to keep a generic name ? Or will we be able to name it (if several people have the same generic clothes, it might be difficult to check which one people are buying !) - though i'm unsure of the performance weight of such option.

See my other replies on this please.

2 - The example with the french arms is very telling, it means that by embargoing someone, of exporting your weapon to someone else (through treaties for instance), you can effectively add +/-5% stat on their armies, thus support a side economically ! Wouldn't this be a kind of ‘military support’, more organic and interesting than the existing (and rather superficial) diplomatic action?

Yes, it's certainly a bit more organic. But since not every country can produce those goods, I'm not sure we'd want to remove the diplomatic action for now.

3 - Will the luxury goods that can be used as mobilization options by the military also offer bonuses ? I hope it's just limited on military goods because the bonus stacking could be concerning !

See my other replies on this please.

4 - As the interest play a role in trade advantages, will the number of interests be reduced? I fear that the major powers will be able to spam their interests everywhere in order to gain a passive advantage that will disqualify lesser powers that want to compete economically on one or two goods. but maybe that's the way it's meant to be?

I'm not aware of any changes on that front at least. As always we'll keep an eye on numbers after release and are happy to react fast if something's over or undertuned.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

Is it possible to specifically import a prestige goods through diplomatic treaties, or does it come mixed in with the generic variant?

You cannot specifically import prestige goods, correct.
The percentage of prestige goods should follow the share in the source market though.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

First of all, happy holidays.

Secondly, i have been in an argument on reddit, how "new" goods would not be cumbersome on performance of game as much as to avoid introducing any new goods.

From a developer perspective, can you comment on how much this new good brought load on game? I am aware that there is so much changes will happen to game on 1.9 so a definitive calculation is impossible. An educated guess would sufficient for me.

New goods are cumbersome on performance.
Which is why we're not adding 50 new goods with Prestige Goods, but had to find a solution that is lighter on performance by having the goods alternatives.

I cannot tell you how much more heavy prestige goods specifically are. There's certainly an extra cost which is weighed against other improvements we've done. For example the new trade system is much lighter on performance. Overall, we should be landing at roughly the same performance as 1.8, but as always this is to be seen with a big grain of salt, as it's always different with different setups.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

The existence of historical prestige goods shows that multiple versions of a prestige good are technically possible, so couldn’t each company get a procedurally generated variation? The generic companies themselves are already procedurally generated with unique names based on country or state.

I get that it’s work and wouldn’t be possible before launch, but I’m hearing “won’t” rather than “can’t”.

Sure, with a lot more effort, most things can be made possible.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

Is there mechanically speaking a difference between historical prestige goods and generic ones of the same type or is it just cosmetic? For example, generic prestige telephones vs Ericcson telephones.

Only the unlocking conditions and which companies have access to them are different.

 

[Wizzington]

The existence of historical prestige goods shows that multiple versions of a prestige good are technically possible, so couldn’t each company get a procedurally generated variation? The generic companies themselves are already procedurally generated with unique names based on country or state.

I get that it’s work and wouldn’t be possible before launch, but I’m hearing “won’t” rather than “can’t”.

Each variant comes with a performance and memory cost so this isn't really feasible.

 

[Wizzington]

Did the implementation of the actual prestige goods therefore have a significant effect on performance? Does this mean that the new trading system has had such a positive effect that the cost of the prestige goods has been ‘offset’?

The impact is quite small with only a few variants per good. Basically it's not the number if prestige goods, but the number of possible variants per good. So 100 prestige goods spread over all goods would have little impact, but 10 variants of fabric would have a large one, hence the issue with dynamic variants.

 

[Wizzington]

Is the issue with the definition of 10 possible fabric variations, or is it the risk that all 10 could be active at one time? In current builds is it common to have lots of countries producing the generic prestige good, such that there would be a large number of variants if they were all unique?

I’ve never actually paid much attention to whether other countries start companies, or which ones, so I’m actually curious how many producers of prestige goods there are likely to be in a normal game. If it’s relatively common to have 10 countries producing Prestige Meat then I can see how that would be a problem, but if it requires having a specific company and being a top 3 producer for the journal entry, how many are there actually going to be in practice?

The definition or even possibility itself. It's a code architecture issue.

 

[Wizzington]

Is there vodka as a prestige good for Russia?

Smirnoff Vodka is indeed a Russian prestige good (it was actually a luxury brand at the time).

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

Just a quick info based on feedback here and on other platforms:

We've now renamed all generic Prestige Goods to be a bit more flavorful.
Instead of Prestige Meat, it's now Prime Meat for example. That does mean that we don't have a common term anymore, but I tried to go for generic enough names that one wouldn't confuse them with the unique ones.

Thanks everybody for the feedback!

I'll go over more questions later tonight probably.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

In a situation where there are more goods produced than there is demand for, will pops prioritize purchasing the prestige goods in this category or will it be proportionally divided?

It's proportional. The other version could theoretically be feasible but would be a lot of extra work for questionable benefit.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

So, I have a few questions.

1. Is it possible for modders to expand the army buff from prestige goods to other goods, potentially even adding different buffs to different goods or adding similar prestige good buffs for navies?

I'm afraid that's hard-coded.

2. Is it possible for modders to make prestige good variants for goods that don't have any, and if it is can you add them for local goods?

Creating new Prestige Goods is scriptable, yes. I'm not sure what would happen if you made a local Prestige Good though. Have not tried it myself.

3. Is it possible for modders to add prestige good buffs to other places than military and buildings, such as adding an effect to pops based on the prestige good to normal good ratio in their consumption?

Same as the first I'm afraid.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

Slightly off topic but I thought I'd ask anyways because there was just a post about it on the reddit: have you guys thought about using the new system to simulate refrigerated and perishable goods? Not by adding new goods but changing their cost based on distance so that things like meat or fruit can't be shipped long distances until refrigeration is unlocked?

I don't really see how the Prestige Good system would enable us to do that. You'd still need to add a varying cost based on distance, which doesn't really have anything to do with Prestige Goods. So in short, no plans for that.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

I didn't quite understand from the DD, the effect that producing a prestigious good will have on the demand. I think just bonus demand and obsession chance isn't accurate enough. Economics 101 is that there would be a segment which would prefer the prestigious variant, but also a segment which would stick to the non-prestigious version for its lower price. The shift in preference should be dependent on the disposable income of the pop, not be a flat increase. I hope I misunderstood the wording and that's not what you will be implementing.

Pops aren't consuming more Prestige Goods specifically.
They are consuming more goods that have a high percentage of Prestige Goods compared to other goods in the same category.