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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #4 - Goods

Happy Thursday and welcome back to yet another Victoria 3 dev diary, this time on the subject of Goods! Goods are a core economic feature of Victoria 3, just as they were in previous Victoria games, and come in a wide variety of types. Also, as in previous Victoria games, the manufacturing of Goods (by Pops in Buildings) is how the vast majority of the wealth in Victoria 3 is created.

Fundamentally, a unit of Goods represent a quantity of a certain type of natural resource, manufactured good or intangible service and come attached with a price tag. This price varies both in base (a single unit of Tanks is pricier than a single unit of Fabric) and in actual market value, as the prices of Goods change depending on supply and demand.

A selection of goods that are bought and sold in the British Market.

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There are four broad categories of Goods: Staple Goods, Luxury Goods, Industrial Goods and Military Goods. Of these, Staple/Luxury Goods are mainly consumed by Pops, and Industrial/Military Goods are mainly consumed by buildings, but there are no hard rules here - you will find Buildings using Luxury Goods and Pops purchasing Industrial Goods when and where it makes sense for them to do so.

Staple Goods are everyday goods that Pops need to live, such as food to eat, wood to heat their homes, and clothes to wear. Staple Goods tend to be purchased in vast quantities by poor and middle class pops, with richer pops generally eschewing them for luxury variants.

Grain - possibly the most Staple of all Staple Goods!
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Luxury Goods are the things that Pops do not necessarily need but definitely want, such as fine foods, luxury drinks like Tea and Coffee, or fine clothes made from chinese silk. Luxuries tend to be more profitable to produce than Staple Goods, but depend on having a customer base with money - a poor factory worker isn’t going to be buying a whole lot of mahogany cabinets.

You can never have too many painted Ming vases, I always say.
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Industrial Goods are goods such as Iron, Coal, Rubber and Lead whose main purpose is often to be converted into other, more profitable goods. Securing a steady supply of vital Industrial Goods is crucial to Industrialization and growing the GDP of your country.

Tools are essential to the operation of many industries.
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Military Goods are goods such as Small Arms, Ammunition and Warships that are used by military buildings to arm and supply the armies and navies of the 19th century nations. The more technologically advanced the army or navy, the more complex (and expensive!) Military Goods they will need.

I’m told that soldiers tend to perform better if they’re given ammunition for their guns.
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We’ll be returning to the topic of Goods in later dev diaries when discussing related mechanics such as Markets, Pop Needs, Goods Substitution and Cultural Obsessions... but for now, I bid you adieu for a while, as next week Mikael will provide you with a dev diary about something we’ve been teasing for some time now - Production Methods!
 
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On a technical level, how's the potential stuff work? For each state, is there a list of potentials for every good, or is it calculated based on various factors and not directly set? Just curious about the workflow of adding new goods is, not just in getting something to show up in the game but integrate it as a usable option.
 
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Tractors are a thing.
A thing as in an actual physical good that has to be produced in automobile factories and then bought by farms that employ a late game production method that makes farms consume tractors at the offset of increasing farm production substantially?

Or a thing as in there is a tractor technology that gives farms extra production if its researched and invented, so very much like vicky2?

If its the former, then that would change so much, as if you dont have the industry and/or resources to produce tractors, then that means that you cannot profit off the production bonus afforded by tractors, while in vicky2 any country could gain a production boost to its farms by inventing tractors no matter their industry.
 
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I'm really loving how much more in depth goods and economic production chains are going to be.
 
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The teaser from a few days ago showed several types of grains (wheat, barley, maize...). Does this mean that certain goods (in this case grain) are actually a broader category and include several sub-goods, or is this only relevant for buildings (i.e. maize and wheat farms both produce the same good - grains - but from different buildings)?
 
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At the moment, Services is a single good that is non-tradable (meaning it can only be bought and sold locally) but it would be easy to split it up into different kinds of intangible goods if we wanted to.
Would services be able to be bought and sold within shared markets? So if I am France and I open up a common market with Belgium, could I "export" services to them?
 
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Could pops or factories ever take loans in order to purchase goods?

I have always wondered if interest-based/no-interest loans would be included in vic 3 seeing how the rise of commercial banking was in tandem with industrialization in Western countries. These loans could also be a way for governments to subsidize/support the creation of certain goods by industries, or purchase of certain goods by pops.
 
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A thing as in an actual physical good that has to be produced in automobile factories and then bought by farms that employ a late game production method that makes farms consume tractors at the offset of increasing farm production substantially?

Or a thing as in there is a tractor technology that gives farms extra production if its researched and invented, so very much like vicky2?

If its the former, then that would change so much, as if you dont have the industry and/or resources to produce tractors, then that means that you cannot profit off the production bonus afforded by tractors, while in vicky2 any country could gain a production boost to its farms by inventing tractors no matter their industry.

My bet would be a production methods that makes farms consume some kind of generic automobile resource. This could also be something where the different farm types play a role, with some crops easier to mechanize.
 
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Could pops or factories ever take loans in order to purchase goods?

I have always wondered if interest-based/no-interest loans would be included in vic 3 seeing how the rise of commercial banking was in tandem with industrialization in Western countries. These loans could also be a way for governments to subsidize/support the creation of certain goods by industries, or purchase of certain goods by pops.
Intereting as that would be, it would probably increase the complexity of the systems too much. Having a supply/demand system where prices converge towards some equilibrium is hard enough as is. Hopefully we will hear about how these price dynamics work and how "base price" is relevant to this in future updates.
 
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Since someone asked about USSR...
Will a government be able to implement confiscatory policies (non-compensated like bolsheviks and commies do or compensated ones like Roosevelt did)? For example order all citizens to surrender their luxury items to the government?

Related topic - will factory conversions be possible by governmental edict - for example will a furniture factory be possible to convert tor rifle stock manufacturing or cloth factory to uniform manufacturing (all real life examples)


On a broader topic - will there be region-specific economic policies or only country-wide - i.e. as US government - will you be able to lower taxes in newly acquired territories to stimulate migration? Or if you are Germany and you are occupying part of France - will you be able to implement food / valuables / horses requisitions in occupied territories for the benefit of the homeland or your army?
 
What determines the wealth levels? Are the pops in these levels static or do they change over time?
The Wealth of a Pop changes along with their ability to consume. That is, if their total income exceeds their total expenses, the magnitude of the difference determines the growth in Wealth and vice versa. So Pops that are paid a higher wage, or whose basket of goods is relatively cheap, increase their demand for quantity and variety of goods over time. This relates to Profession only insofar that higher-tier Professions tend to get paid more, but a Machinist in a profitable industry might well develop higher Wealth than an Engineer in a failing one.
 
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Urban centers produce them like wheat farms produce wheat. Which in my mind would indicate service/labor as in bellhops.
Yeah I'm 99% sure they are services. But bellhops, huh, didn't think of it that way. I thought the bell represents like the bell that smaller shops have installed over the door to indicate when a customer has entered, since they mentioned before that urban centers are mainly supposed to represent shops.
 
Intereting as that would be, it would probably increase the complexity of the systems too much. Having a supply/demand system where prices converge towards some equilibrium is hard enough as is. Hopefully we will hear about how these price dynamics work and how "base price" is relevant to this in future updates.
I agree that the system will be more complicated, but I don't see it as being a problem.


What I personally hope to see is a more realistic approach to money - all the fiat vs. specie based money, various gold - silver -bimetal standards, movement towards fiat money and government-controlled money supply - all these things were happening in game period and played enormous role in what happened then and is still happening now.

Just imagine how incredibly different would the 20th and 21st centuries be if FRS was never established.
 
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Yeah I'm 99% sure they are services. But bellhops, huh, didn't think of it that way. I thought the bell represents like the bell that smaller shops have installed over the door to indicate when a customer has entered, since they mentioned before that urban centers are mainly supposed to represent shops.
And I thought about a bell some lord or lady uses to summon their valet
 
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The teaser from a few days ago showed several types of grains (wheat, barley, maize...). Does this mean that certain goods (in this case grain) are actually a broader category and include several sub-goods, or is this only relevant for buildings (i.e. maize and wheat farms both produce the same good - grains - but from different buildings)?
Wiz already answered this, see the quote below in regards to the moddability of goods.
To give an example, we have a variety of different farms (rice, grain, millet etc) which all produce the 'grain' good (but might vary in efficiency and have different secondary production methods, more on this next week). It wouldn't be hard at all for a modder to actually break these up into different goods which can all be used to fulfill pop food needs according to what's locally available in a market.
 
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