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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #39 - Shipping Lanes

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Ave and welcome to another Dev Diary! I am Johan (No, the other Johan) a tech lead on Victoria 3 and today I will be talking about Shipping Lanes. It is an interesting addition to maritime empires in that there is now a cost to overseas possessions and sending a military expedition halfway across the globe is no longer as straightforward as in some older Paradox titles.

But first we have to talk about Convoys which are an essential part in maintaining shipping lanes. They are produced from Ports, a government building which requires Clippers (or their era-equivalents) and possibly other goods.

Each country has a set number of required convoys and not having enough will incur penalties on all shipping lanes. This may for example occur due to an overstretched colonial empire or hostile convoy raiders.

Ports also fulfill an important role in connecting your overseas territories but more on that later.

“Aha! I told you the Clipper factory was a good investment!”
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Shipping Lanes represents port-to-port connections and are established for three different reasons:
  • Trade Routes to an overseas market
  • Supply Routes for an overseas General
  • Port Connections to link states in a market

Each shipping lane must have its own origin and destination port. Once established it will span across a number of sea nodes and have its own individual cost in convoys which adds up to the country’s total convoy requirement.

It also tracks its own Effectiveness score which is based on the overall Supply Network strength (more on that later) and may be reduced by any local convoy damage done along the route.

While India provides Great Britain numerous benefits such as raw materials and population it is clear that the Crown Jewel of the British Empire is by no means cheap. A massive civilian and military naval industry is required to maintain it and keep it safe and thus it is by no means obvious whether such overseas possessions are always worth it.
Note that UI and values are very much WIP.

DD39 02.png

Trade Routes between two markets which do not share a common land border must be done overseas and will necessitate a shipping lane. Land adjacency is determined from where the two market capitals are located.

The convoy cost is influenced by the number of sea nodes, quantity of goods and any goods-specific modifier (if any). The effectiveness affects the trade route competitiveness and by extension the quantity of goods shipped.
It will use the two closest ports in the respective market capitals region. If either country lacks ports no overseas trade routes can be established.

Supply Routes are required when a general is sent to a front that is not reachable by land. It will use a friendly port connected by land to the generals headquarters and trace to the closest friendly port reachable from the front.
The convoy cost is based on the number of sea nodes, battalions supplied and any general traits. Low effectiveness reduces supply status of the general and his troops. If a front is landlocked no generals can be sent there.

Supplying troops over great distances is quite an enterprise. Rather than sending an expeditionary force from England all the way around the Cape to reach India perhaps Britain should consider building a standing army using either colonial settlers or locals?
DD39 03 v2.png

Lastly, Port Connections are a bit more complicated. In order for a state to access the goods within the market it needs to be able to trace a path back to the market capital. If this path requires it to go via the sea (meaning it is overseas) a shipping lane must be established to the market capital.
This must be done for every state within the market including foreign ones. Rather than a single state having its own shipping lane a group of adjacent overseas states can form a cluster with a single exit port to the market capital - such as Bombay in the case of British India.

This assumes such a port exists however. If the connection is severed from either end then the overseas states cannot access the market and thus forms its own isolated enclave. Likewise if the shipping lane effectiveness is strained it will lower the accessibility of goods to and from the overseas states. Reflect back on previous dev diaries and consider the cascading consequences that were to occur if a maritime empire reliant on its overseas possessions were to suddenly lose control of its shipping lanes.

It is the market owner which must establish and pay for the port connections to all overseas market states. To somewhat compensate for this its subjects must share a portion of their convoys with their overlord. Subjects are still required to pay for their own trade and supply routes however.

The convoy cost of a port connection is influenced by the number of sea nodes and the overseas infrastructure usage. By extracting your raw materials from overseas colonial plantations and mines, while the high-Infrastructure manufacturing industries producing finished goods are located near the market capital, you can keep your Port Connection cost down - though at the expense of the development and wealth of your colonies.

Connecting India to the British market means it has to go all the way around the Cape to reach the British Isles which significantly impacts costs. But what if Britain somehow managed to discover a shortcut?
DD39 04.png

And lastly when combining all the shipping lanes of a country we get its overall Supply Network. As outlined early on we derive its Strength score from the costs of all individual shipping lanes compared to the country's total supply.

That is all for today! Hope you enjoyed this dev diary and in the words of Admiral John Fischer you may sleep easy in your beds. In next week's Dev Diary, Daniel will be back to tell us about how the Opium Wars are represented in the game.
 
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nice DD, I'm srry if this information has been out alrdy but I couldn't find it anywhere.

how would trade work with landlocked countries like Paraguay? are they limited to trade only with countries they share a border with? and what if they get in a customs union under Brazil, it means it could be possible for them to trade using brazilian trade ports with overseas nations?
If devs decide to make game design which tracks every single trade good (eg. piece of wood or furniture) like a pop, there will be a need for paraguay to trade with its neighbours and import - buy their goods. But historically wise paraguay should be at that time a nation in its early stages with relative low demand compared to its european counterparts. On top of that historically correct they faced as a tiny nation the tripple alliance which decimated their territorial ambitions.
Only in case if devs implement a bit deeper war system which includes equipment, they can be early on hyped to stand a chance to conquer a nearest sea port on easter shore near brasil-uruguawy
 
interesting, i would like to know more about the difference 19th and 20th century shipping infrastructure..
it raises indeed question connecting to similar questions what if a single port of a colony is captured, how realistic is it to somehow still receives supplies and export as party who lost the port. I understand they not have viking ships which are simply rammed on the shore.
again hope devs look into stockpiling mechanics for goods etc. like game Ultimate General: Civil War

I'm in two minds about this - even in the early 20th century, some trade was done by traders coming out to a larger ship with smaller boats (including grain from isolated farming towns near the coast - so it would be possible - but shifting large quantities like this would be slow and tiresome (and worthwhile for goods with no spoilage, when labour is cheap).

In terms of shipping infrastructure, the difference is more between non-steam and steam, than 19th century and 20th century (and we were technically talking about the difference between military and civilian shipping, pre-steam vs post-steam). But some things that come to mind off the top of my head are:
  • Larger drydocks, and more of them - iron hulls fowled more easily than copper-sheathed wooden hulls, and iron (then steel) ships were expensive to sheathe, and larger.
  • Fuel - steamships (military and civilian) consumed huge amounts of coal, that lead to the establishment of coaling stations across the world to supply them. This shifts to oil/diesel fuel later on.
  • Munitions (the big difference between civilian and military, that I'm aware of) - the complexity and diversity of military weaponry increased substantially - from around the 1880s including torpedoes as well as guns. Powder was replaced by cartridges, and round shot by shells. Guns when from muzzle-loaders to more complex (thus requiring more maintenance) breech-loaders, mounts went from wooden "trucks" to complex iron/steel pedestals and turrets.
  • Machinery - engines needed maintenance, repairs and spare parts. Sail lofts slowly become a thing of the past (but there were decades when both were required, as steam engines lacked the endurance for long ocean voyages, so the infrastructure for sail and steam were both required for a substantial period). The introduction of turbines increased the complexity of maintenance further.
  • Armour - military dockyards had to be able to shift large plates and put them in place, and fix them, and repair them after battle.
  • Cranes - powerful steam cranes to lift out guns, for example (even the first British 12in muzzle-loaders, from the 1870s, weighed 35 tonnes and up, and the 18in gun mounted on Furious weighed around 150 tonnes), as well as to speed the transfer of cargo for civilian ships, or to replace boilers/engines.
  • More broadly, a lot less (but still some) wood-working capability, and a lot more capability in working iron and steel.
 
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Obviously, it would become Canada's internal market. Why would each Canadian state become completely isolated just because access to the UK market got cut off? As long as the Canadian states have trade access to each other (not surrounded by hostile territory), Canada would in effect be leaving the UK customs union on a temporary basis until access to the UK market is restored.

This would be economically disastrous for your Pops and politically destabilizing as you would go through a See-Saw of industry gains and losses and your Pops would gain and lose access to many critical goods in a cyclical manner.

I think he's talking about the Canadian states as independent dominions of the United Kingdom not states of a united Canada.
 
how would trade work with landlocked countries like Paraguay? are they limited to trade only with countries they share a border with? and what if they get in a customs union under Brazil, it means it could be possible for them to trade using brazilian trade ports with overseas nations?
If I understand correctly, if Paraguay is a member of a customs union and any member of that union has ports, Paraguay can use them to facilitate its trade routes. Hence why the starting German customs union is so important to all the landlocked German minors.
 
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Why would that make any difference?

It's the question of whether separate countries that are isolated together away from their custom unions market capital vs states that are linked together in one country separated from the custom unions market capital.

The difference depends on where countries within a custom union has to all have access to the market capital to be able to trade with each other
 
1. Employment level and supply chain complexity. Employment level can be fixed with subsidies, yes, the main question is when would you ever turn them off? There are extremely few cases where you'd ever be OK with not having full Port employment. Since that means you have to cover any shortfall anyway, that means the only mechanical advantage to you (the player) to have Ports operate independently is that if they're making enough from Trade Centers buying their services, you don't have to pay their operating costs.

However, this means these cost will be borne by Trade Centers instead, meaning you have to babysit your trade routes more to ensure they remain profitable - otherwise the interplay between Trade Centers and Ports could turn into an extremely hard to troubleshoot death spiral, where there aren't enough Convoys to do efficient Trade and Trade isn't profitable enough to buy Convoys. If in practice these problems are so difficult to manage that you just turn on the "subsidize" buttons on every building type involved in the trade supply chain and then just poke at them to try to bring your total marginal cost down a bit, there's no real advantage to it compared to making only the terminus of the supply chain (Ports) government owned and the other buildings private.

In addition, since Shipping Lanes created for reasons other than Trade Routes (military supply and port connections) should actually be state expenses, having all Convoys bought by Trade Centers is also non-immersive. To fix that you'd need some way of having the state buy goods from the market directly, which likely means the player should be able to determine what price they're willing to pay for those goods, as this would be what calibrates the economy of the privately owned building supplying it. Since choosing the amount you're paying a building for its services freely in order to ensure it's profitable enough to not fail to provide you with those services is essentially a roundabout way of subsidizing it (something I've discussed at length elsewhere on the forum) this would be a whole new system to replicate the functionality of an existing one, only in the service of making the mechanic feel a tad more true-to-life.

2. Not sure what you mean by "free" here. Ports cost both materials and labor to operate, just like every other building. That cost is just borne by the treasury directly rather than by other buildings or Pops.

3. If you mod ports to be a privately owned building, it's going to need a source of revenue to operate. This means you have to add a (non-tradeable) market good for it to sell, preferably to Trade Centers. You may be able to turn Convoys into this kind of market good directly even though it also acts as a capacity with other mechanics associated with it, but it'd probably be easier for balancing to make it a separate good. You'd then have to rebalance Trade Centers to ensure they remain profitable enough after buying this new product that they can pay competitive wages. All this is perfectly doable, but like I said in #1 above, I'm pretty sure you'll find that you're going to want to subsidize all buildings involved by default as a result, leading to slightly less compelling gameplay with more complexity. But YMMV!

4. In the current build this would do nothing other than reduce the cost of the goods the building sold - it wouldn't actually improve your treasury balance or even the building's internal economy, since wages are fixed and it's assumed that government buildings do not provide revenue to offset its costs. Having government-owned buildings at least be able to offset its operating expenses by providing goods & services for sale sounds like cool modding functionality though, it's very likely something we'll support in the future.
1. here, wouldnt that be solved by making trade routes also privatly owned? What I mean here, is that you the palyer open up a trade agreement with another nation and then the private sector can use the ports which have access to the market to establish the trade routes (as I undertsand for now players are the ones importing goods or at least establishing trade routes). If the AI of the private sector establishes the tarde routes they dont need to be concerned about "profitability" at least from the players viewpoint. All you as a player would need to manage is traiffs on goods, to encourage or discourage the trade of specific goods (though that would need a individual tariff setting).
As I undertsand the systems at the moment, if my proposal was implemented, wouldnt the trade routes just put the transport cost and tariffs on the price of teh imported goods? which then would lead to companys buying the goods they need from the cheapest and most aviable source (aka if its profitable to import coal teh steelplant will buy it, if it isnt they wont and the trade route is lost). Volume would probably make sense to include in these trade routes but if taht isnt feasable at the moment, such a system would lead as to my current understanding to a non micro intesive automatic trade route managment where the palyer takes high level influence through tariffs and trade deals. (Of course the current system makes much more sense in a communist state). Employment whcih was also raised also doesnt sound to me that bad, there are a lot of people today and then even more who had non steady jobs very dependent on private whims, like if trade is profitable.

3. I may not see the problem, but if ports sold convoys, wouldn't supply and demand govern the price? If the AI establishes teh trade routes by itself, then the question woudl become wether or not they can buy for example cheaper coal from somewhere else. If thats the case they buy convoys, which then go up in price if a lot of trade is done. To me it sounds perfectly reasonable to assume, if there arent any goods worth importing ports will fail, subsidising them woudl only lead to make imports cheaper no? So if there arent good trade deals or colonies with cheap raw resources to import, why would the port still be operating? I at least dont see why I would want to subsidiese them all the time. The problem I see is more that the player is establishing these trade routes rather than the private sector through the buying of goods. If the private sector establishes these routes themselves the problem would be not present (to my understanding). This also raises the argument again that the palyer should have more influences on traiffs for individual goods, that way we can influence what is imported while not needing to micro manage tarde routes at all. Lastly military supply line would just necessitate that the state buys convoys form the port, which I think is fine. A large oversees war woudl in all liklyhood cause a enourmes shoartage of convoys and drive the price of imports up.
 
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It's the question of whether separate countries that are isolated together away from their custom unions market capital vs states that are linked together in one country separated from the custom unions market capital.

The difference depends on where countries within a custom union has to all have access to the market capital to be able to trade with each other
I get that, I was more asking if there was any comment by the Devs that would suggest that it would make a difference.

Because I think that would open a whole can of worms. Like, what would Canada's market capital be?
What would happen to Canadian states that still are somewhat connected to the British market. Say, the Gulf of St. Lawrence is blocked, but Newfoundland is not.
 
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I'm in two minds about this - even in the early 20th century, some trade was done by traders coming out to a larger ship with smaller boats (including grain from isolated farming towns near the coast - so it would be possible - but shifting large quantities like this would be slow and tiresome (and worthwhile for goods with no spoilage, when labour is cheap).

In terms of shipping infrastructure, the difference is more between non-steam and steam, than 19th century and 20th century (and we were technically talking about the difference between military and civilian shipping, pre-steam vs post-steam). But some things that come to mind off the top of my head are:
  • Larger drydocks, and more of them - iron hulls fowled more easily than copper-sheathed wooden hulls, and iron (then steel) ships were expensive to sheathe, and larger.
  • Fuel - steamships (military and civilian) consumed huge amounts of coal, that lead to the establishment of coaling stations across the world to supply them. This shifts to oil/diesel fuel later on.
  • Munitions (the big difference between civilian and military, that I'm aware of) - the complexity and diversity of military weaponry increased substantially - from around the 1880s including torpedoes as well as guns. Powder was replaced by cartridges, and round shot by shells. Guns when from muzzle-loaders to more complex (thus requiring more maintenance) breech-loaders, mounts went from wooden "trucks" to complex iron/steel pedestals and turrets.
  • Machinery - engines needed maintenance, repairs and spare parts. Sail lofts slowly become a thing of the past (but there were decades when both were required, as steam engines lacked the endurance for long ocean voyages, so the infrastructure for sail and steam were both required for a substantial period). The introduction of turbines increased the complexity of maintenance further.
  • Armour - military dockyards had to be able to shift large plates and put them in place, and fix them, and repair them after battle.
  • Cranes - powerful steam cranes to lift out guns, for example (even the first British 12in muzzle-loaders, from the 1870s, weighed 35 tonnes and up, and the 18in gun mounted on Furious weighed around 150 tonnes), as well as to speed the transfer of cargo for civilian ships, or to replace boilers/engines.
  • More broadly, a lot less (but still some) wood-working capability, and a lot more capability in working iron and steel.
this must have given the devs some true deepness how to add some teching options, things can go to deep, but this post shows community is not shallow water
 
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this must have given the devs some true deepness how to add some teching options, things can go to deep, but this post shows community is not shallow water

It could go a lot deeper than this :) That post was literally from the top of my head without referencing any books - but I'm not suggesting vanilla Vicky 3 should look like HoI4 Black ICE. I'm also not suggesting Vicky 3 should be "Industrialising Dockyard Simulator" in disguise (although I'm probably one of a small proportion of the fanbase that would still play it :) ) On depth, I'm also quite sure the devs are well aware of much more depth than we see in the game.

Also - big props for your water-based analogy :)
 
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It could go a lot deeper than this :) That post was literally from the top of my head without referencing any books - but I'm not suggesting vanilla Vicky 3 should look like HoI4 Black ICE. I'm also not suggesting Vicky 3 should be "Industrialising Dockyard Simulator" in disguise (although I'm probably one of a small proportion of the fanbase that would still play it :) ) On depth, I'm also quite sure the devs are well aware of much more depth than we see in the game.

Also - big props for your water-based analogy :)
thx, i agree also with prdx has definitely talented people (wouldnt like using smart versus dumb descriptions)
but over time see need as a customer to voice my needs, this seems still invaluable
if they implement some of your naval tech suggestiosn and for land warfare ultimate general civil war mechanics.. this game will be a blast to play
than as paraguay despite the odds can try to hype yourself up.. And as a cool side effect if u as paraguay buy better rifles out of the market you deny other nations
the ability to field them as such they have come with lower quality equipment, giving also better realism for large nations which rely on kind of hoi4: mass assault doctrin/human wave less weapon quality more manpower.
 
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I really think we need some clarification about #Canadagate from @KaiserJohan or @Iachek. If a cluster of states interconnected by land (say, Canada) gets temporarily separated from their market capital (say, London), will they form a local market capital, or will they have to rely on each state's internal market (since interstate trade would have to pass from the market capital from what we know)
 
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I really think we need some clarification about #Canadagate from @KaiserJohan or @Iachek. If a cluster of states interconnected by land (say, Canada) gets temporarily separated from their market capital (say, London), will they form a local market capital, or will they have to rely on each state's internal market (since interstate trade would have to pass from the market capital from what we know)
The latter
 
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The latter
That feels... defective by design, I'm afraid.

It does not make any sense at all to need trade connectivity to Liverpool or Southampton for whale products brought to port in St. John's to be sold in Toronto, or for Kashmiri wheat to be sold in Rajasthan, and there is no way on God's good green Earth you can persuade me it makes sense.
 
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The latter
So I can completely ruin a country just by taking over states or provinces surrounding market capital, or ruin their colonies just by shutting down mainlands shipping routes.

Also what happens if I take over their market capital, if they have exclaves?
For example conquer New York or London? Market Capital should be created somewhere else.

It is weird, that states in exclave can't trade with each other, if connection to market capital is severed.
 
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That feels... defective by design, I'm afraid.

It does not make any sense at all to need trade connectivity to Liverpool or Southampton for whale products brought to port in St. John's to be sold in Toronto, or for Kashmiri wheat to be sold in Rajasthan, and there is no way on God's good green Earth you can persuade me it makes sense.
I think it works well enough, but it's definitely not perfect, and seems like a limitation of having very defined custom unions that you're either completely in or completely out as well as simplification of logistics networks for ease of computing. When you join a customs union your national market no longer exists as a separate entity. Perhaps it's possible to adjust things so that customs unions revert to country national markets when a country gets cut off from the custom union capital, but I can see a lot of issues and edge cases that would create.
 
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So I can completely ruin a country just by taking over states or provinces surrounding market capital, or ruin their colonies just by shutting down mainlands shipping routes.
Leaving aside that they can move their market capital at will, think about what you're saying here. "I have a perfect way to ruin the British Empire: blockade London!" Yes, that's a strategy that will be devastating if it works, but I think you're underestimating how hard it will be to actually isolate a great power from its market.
 
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