Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #2 - Capacities

[EUnderhill]

I'm not sure what do you want to say. The question was "how democratic government can assert its authority to maintain infrastructure", as a policy. That's examples how they do it.

The way you phrased it implied that there must be a post office, which is not the case. That is all.

 

[Wizzington]

Is bureaucracy capacity equals to how much money you invest? Sounds like that if you has enough money to afford administration building and bureaucrats' salary, you can have as many bureaucracy capacity as you want. I'm worry about that when you get everything on track in the mid-game and have stable income, bureaucracy capacity will never be a problem.

The need for bureaucracy scales upwards with a higher incorporated population, especially if you want to run social programs. You're essentially paying for every pop you want to educate, provide healthcare for, etc. As the example given, it's extremely expensive just to govern China, providing it with solid infrastructure and social programs is meant to be a herculean undertaking.

 

[aono]

The way you phrased it implied that there must be a post office, which is not the case. That is all.

Ah, no. I meant it's the way of democratic government to enforce road maintenance (historically used one). One of them.

 

[Meanmanturbo]

The first thing that crossed my mind as well

It's the herring salad, sitting in the corner of the Swedish-Norwegian union flag

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_mark_of_Norway_and_Sweden

 

[aslothehunter]

If you are building railroads, you need to pay the workers and provide the steel etc. If you issue a decree that landowners must maintain the dirt and gravel roads to a certain standard or face arrest and imprisonment, then the landowners get the peasants to do the needed shovel work and you maintain a minimally-functioning road network.

So you will pay money to the landowner in a way of corruption, or you will pay the bureucrats/police to keep the revolts neutralized, still no need to have an "authority coin". Maybe i want it to be "realistic" because our governments don´t have authority capacity, they pay police military and antirioters to keep the country paying the taxes, and when they pay little corruption grows in public service. And corruption is not a coin, is literal money stolen from the goverment or the people or both.

 

[Enkvi]

Realy cool background picture !

 

[Butter For Less]

Is road maintenance a constant thing (ie. infrastructure always costs authority) or is it more akin to a focus used to increase infrastructure?

 

[Meanmanturbo]

Now for the really important question, has Sweden expanded in the screenshot or has Sweden got 5 states now rather then the 3 in Vicky 2?

I wonder how they are split. Svealand being one. Norrland is probably still one huge state since it is so sparsley populated. Skåneland, Västergötland and Småland-Östergötland-Gotland?

 

[Stein14]

So you will pay money to the landowner in a way of corruption, or you will pay the bureucrats/police to keep the revolts neutralized, still no need to have an "authority coin". Maybe i want it to be "realistic" because our governments don´t have authority capacity, they pay police military and antirioters to keep the country paying the taxes, and when they pay little corruption grows in public service. And corruption is not a coin, is literal money stolen from the goverment or the people or both.

Authority is an important resource. An unpopular command is being carried out. 100 not.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

So you will pay money to the landowner in a way of corruption, or you will pay the bureucrats/police to keep the revolts neutralized, still no need to have an "authority coin". Maybe i want it to be "realistic" because our governments don´t have authority capacity, they pay police military and antirioters to keep the country paying the taxes, and when they pay little corruption grows in public service. And corruption is not a coin, is literal money stolen from the goverment or the people or both.

I think it's there to model societies where the landowners do what the king says because they don't want to face the king's punishment, and the peasants do what the landowners say because they don't want to face the local lord's punishment. The more you have actual rights under the laws, the less this approach works.

It's also worth noting that the king's authority doesn't scale over large areas. You get a fixed amount based on your law set up, and you pay an amount per state where you try to enforce your decrees. A government of laws can't just force that labour, so they have to pay for the infrastructure maintenance, or let the customers do that if the infrastructure is private.

 

[mikhail321]

Will bureaucracy usage grow lineary with the number of states and pops or will there be an upward curve? I.e. will large states like China and Russia need to allocate a larger share of resources to bureaucracy than say Serbia everything else being equal? Will it make blobing beyond certain point prohibitively expensive? And will the mechanic apply to colonial states?

 

[Alfred Dreyfus]

Voting rights don't directly increase the wealth of pops, but they do give them the ability to push for social reforms that benefit them, which in turn may mean the player is able to get those reforms passed.

Authoritarian non-democratic governments should be able to give social rights to their population. It shouldn't be something that only democratic governments can do.

The game should let you be an authoritarian non-democratic government that cares about their citizens and treats them well, and it should also let you be a democratic government that doesn't care about their citizens and treats them badly.

The difference between non-democratic vs democratic governments should be:
- Non-democratic: you can easily squeeze and disrespect your population (you have "absolute" power and you can try to do anything) BUT if you do the population's riots and revolts will be very violent and aggressive (coups, regions declare independence, civil wars, guillotine, etc).
- Democratic: you cannot easily squeeze and disrespect your population (as there are legal limitations against your actions, like the Constitution, the Parliament, etc) BUT if you do the population's riots and revolts won't be very violent and aggressive and instead they will express their anger voting radical parties that will forbid what you are doing as a player (the new elected parliament by angry voters will not let you continue what your doing: no more wars, lower taxes, more social rights, etc).

TL;DR: non-democratic systems should let you do as a player whatever you want but if POPs get angry they will burn your country, democratic systems should limit more what actions you can do as a player but if POPs get angry they won't burn your country that much and will just elect a new parliament that limits even more your actions so you don't continue the path you are taking (capitalism vs socialism, militarism vs pacifism, unitarism vs confederalism, etc).

This could lead to interesting strategies, for example if you want your POPs to vote for something, you could do exactly the opposite for some time to provoke their votes.

 

[ctl3]

You can't pay more people than are employed, so no, even if you have the money you won't be able to have as much bureaucracy capacity as you want. And increasing the number of people employed in the bureaucracy will move them out of other areas like resource production or factories, so it becomes a balancing act.

In my experience in VIC2, usually 80% of people works in farms and factories. Even if I grow my bureaucrat pop from 1% to 5%, the impact to economy is not significant.

The need for bureaucracy scales upwards with a higher incorporated population, especially if you want to run social programs. You're essentially paying for every pop you want to educate, provide healthcare for, etc. As the example given, it's extremely expensive just to govern China, providing it with solid infrastructure and social programs is meant to be a herculean undertaking.

My concern is that I don't want to mindlessly squeeze money from my people to get my social programs done. I wish there would be more choices to run an efficient bureaucracy such as high literacy, low corruption, cultural unity etc. The influence capacity is determined by rank, which is determined by prestige, GDP and military ( assume that it's similar to VIC2 ) so you have three different way to increase your diplomatic influence. The other two types of capacity probably need the same.

 

[Wizzington]

Will bureaucracy usage grow lineary with the number of states and pops or will there be an upward curve? I.e. will large states like China and Russia need to allocate a larger share of resources to bureaucracy than say Serbia everything else being equal? Will it make blobing beyond certain point prohibitively expensive? And will the mechanic apply to colonial states?

Bureaucracy usage scales with the number of people you administrate. Providing education to a million people is ten times more expensive than providing it to a hundred thousand people. There is also a flat cost per incorporated state, to represent the difficulties in governing large territories (even if those territories are depopulated).

 

[aslothehunter]

I think it's there to model societies where the landowners do what the king says because they don't want to face the king's punishment, and the peasants do what the landowners say because they don't want to face the local lord's punishment. The more you have actual rights under the laws, the less this approach works.

It's also worth noting that the king's authority doesn't scale over large areas. You get a fixed amount based on your law set up, and you pay an amount per state where you try to enforce your decrees. A government of laws can't just force that labour, so they have to pay for the infrastructure maintenance, or let the customers do that if the infrastructure is private.

I understand the reasoning behind why they have decided to add this feature, but i think is a bad way to implement a world situation. Goverments usually pay higher wages to the public service workers they need to keep the power. In a Dictatorship/Monarchy if you are able to pay well to the military an higher classes the country will be very stable, because the middle class is small and the general people are to poor to have enough power to make a proper revolution. To make sure a law stays you don´t need a "capacity" you need policemen to enforce it, jails to punish, jail workers to keep the ofenders in, Judges, lawyers local government, etc. That costs money and population, and being this a game about economy and population creating an abstract nunmber as capacity looks lazy.

In a Democracy or more democratic country goverment will still keep paying the enforcers, but also will pay to their loyals. In monarchies loyas were nobles, in a democracy loyals are the one who voted for your party.

I want this to be the best game possible and i don´t think there is a need for another currency apart from money and workers

 

[Datagalningen]

If decrees like road maintenance use authority to ensure the population of the state follow it's directives, I think it would make more sense to have the authority "cost" of decrees be affected by the population size of the state it is issued to instead of just being -200. This would make issuing decrees more interesting than always putting them in your highest population states to ensure the greatest effect possible.

 

[Promanco]

I really love Bureaucracy and Influence, I like how they seem to be implemented and abstracted in a natural way that makes sense.
Not a big fan of Authority tho, but we'll see how it gels with everything else.

 

[Ulysses Edmundsson]

Bureaucracy represents a nation’s ability to govern, invest in and collect taxes from its incorporated territory. It is produced by the Government Administration building, where many of a nation’s Bureaucrats will be employed. All of a nation’s Incorporated States use a base amount of Bureaucracy which increases with the size of their population, and further increased by each Institution (such as Education or Police - more on those later!) that a country has invested in. Overall, the purpose of Bureaucracy is to ensure that there is a cost to ruling over, taxing and providing for your population - administrating China should not be cheap!

It's great to hear more about Victoria 3's mechanics, they look well thought out and immersive. I just have one question about bureaucracy though: is it used locally or globally? Is bureaucracy capacity evenly divided among all states, or is the capacity generated by buildings used up locally first with the surplus distributed to other areas? I think it could be interesting if it was distributed locally first as that would permit the player to favor certain areas in the country over others if they thought that was important.

 

[WhapXI]

I think a lot of people were wound tight over the idea of there being mana so any sort of abstract resource has completely set them off. Honestly this sort of stuff seems more like a forcelimit mechanic.

I think it could do with being tied more to POPs though. It seems like from the screenshot that you get no Bureaucracy from Bureaucrats outside of Svealand, presumably because the building isn't built? And presumably since that Goverment Administration is giving a large round number, it's fully staffed and the excess Bureaucrats are giving no additional benefits?

Regarding Authority, that could be tied more to approval from your ruling class pops. Whoever the ruler's powerbase be, whether it be landowners, officers, or the proletariat. As long as your supporters continute to ardently support you, they won't challenge your authority, and will support you, even if what you do is repressive.

Influence would be a lot harder to tie to POPs. Maybe something to do with how well met the needs of upper class pops in your capital are? Just to sort of link it to how wining and dining ambassadors well enough was vital for forging diplomatic ties in this era.

 

[kaozen]

The more I learn about vicky3, the more I love it.

I think capacities will be a really nice mechanic to play with. You can choose to focus on something or something else with some limitations because, of course, nothing is unlimited and everything comes with a price. Despite it, we can understand there will be no hard caps on things like population size in a state, so indirectly, on admin capacities/industries/etc. and I think it's great.

Also, the more we will be able to manage the cost of bureaucracy in our states, the more we will save precious educated pops in doing something more profitable.

And of course : you managed to lowering the price of paper in your market ? Great, administration "profitability" is better !

Every good needed to sustain an """unproductive""" job is a good lost for the """productive""" parts of the population. So that should be interesting to balance that !

In vicky 3, we will have to think in a "systemic" way, and I love it. Thank you paradoxe and devs you're on a really good way to make a great great game !