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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #5 - Production Methods

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Hello again and happy Thursday! Today we will be taking a deeper look inside Buildings to explore Production Methods. These determine the functions of the building, its inputs and outputs, and what employee types it requires to operate.

Many management games let you upgrade a building to increase its efficiency or expand its functionality. In these games, after the upgrade investment has been paid the impact is permanent and nearly always superior in every way to the building's previous functionality. But in Victoria 3 there are no actions without reactions, and novel innovations don't just make buildings better with no side effects. Improving industrial processes over time is to be expected, but in some cases those improvements might require goods as input that the country has scant access to, while others permit the output of a new type of end product at the expense of the old one. As a result, buildings in Victoria 3 require more flexible upgrade paths than what's afforded by permanent, linear, “no-brainer” improvements.

All buildings have several categories of Production Methods, usually between 2 and 5. Only one is active at any given time in each category. Most categories fall into one of these types:

Base: governs the general "tech level" and efficiency of the building, produces goods typical for the building type
Refining: reduces output of typical goods in favor of output of specialized or luxury goods, sometimes adding a special input
Automation: adds industrial goods as input to reduce the building's unskilled workforce requirement
Ownership: determines who owns shares in the building; typically governed by Laws

With the right technologies Food Industries can make Groceries from both Grain (Bakeries) and Fish (Canneries). They can also refine Grain and Sugar into Liquor (Distilleries). With advanced technologies Food Industries can be partially automated, drastically reducing the need for unskilled labor. Simple Food Industries are operated by Merchant Guilds (Shopkeepers), while more advanced and profitable Food Industries are owned by Capitalists who reinvest some of their dividends.

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As one example, an Iron Mine's base Production Method determines if miners use only picks and shovels or if they also use some sort of engine-driven pumping mechanism. There are several different pumping technologies which also determine what fuel is used. The more advanced the pumping mechanism the more deposits can be accessed and the faster Iron can be mined, but the more Coal or Oil is used in the process. With higher tech pumps comes a requirement for more Engineers and Machinists to be on-site to control and oversee its operation. This creates more demand for qualified workers and also opens up a number of better paid positions to those Pops who meet the qualifications.

The revolution in chemical sciences of the era also enabled the use of explosives in mining, which is a secondary Production Method category used only in mines. Once Nitroglycerin is invented, it can be used in mines to generate even more minerals, at the expense of Explosives produced by the Chemical Industry but also with a higher rate of workplace accidents. By researching less volatile Dynamite, even more minerals are extracted at the expense of even more Explosives, with the additional benefit that far fewer workers will blow themselves up on the job.

Once invented, portable Steam Donkey engines can be deployed at mining sites to drastically reduce the amount of manual labor required just for hauling. This costs the building some money in the form of Coal and Engines, but reduces the amount of money they have to pay in wages. Perhaps more importantly it frees those Laborers up to do other work in other buildings if the state is running low on workers. But if wages are already very depressed it might not be a great idea to purchase expensive industrial goods just to increase the unqualified labor pool further, so this might not be a no-brainer decision for a player to make.

In most countries, simple mines are owned and operated by Merchant Guilds at game start. These are small-time purveyors of the goods produced represented by Shopkeepers. Once mines start to industrialize, Capitalists step in to take over ownership. In most cases these Capitalists will come from Shopkeepers promoted to these newly created positions, but some might come from other Pops in the state, even other Capitalists in buildings not quite as lucrative as these new mines. There are fewer Capitalists than Shopkeepers but they draw a higher wage, and more importantly they will reinvest some of their earnings into the country's expanding industry depending on how much profit their workplace is generating for them. As new ideas spread across your society you might be able to make the mining industry publicly traded instead of privately held, and later on in the game perhaps even nationalize them to be run by government bureaucrats or turn them into cooperatives where profit is split between workers.

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Production Methods aren't limited to consuming and producing goods. Government Administrations employ Bureaucrats and Clerks who use Paper to produce Bureaucracy, one of the game's Capacities that let you govern more people and extend more state services to them. Railways consume Engines and a fuel such as Coal to produce both Transportation and Infrastructure, the former which is sold on the market and the latter which allows the state to support more buildings without loss of Market Access. Universities employ Academics that let the state guide research and development of new technologies and ideas. Virtually any kind of currency, modifier, or effect can be produced by Production Methods in buildings and can be applied in a variety of ways to the country, state, or even the building itself.

A basic Government Administration consumes 10 Paper and produces 50 Bureaucracy per fully-staffed level, but each additional level beyond the first adds a +2% Throughput bonus due to economy of scale. This increases both consumption of Paper and output of Bureaucracy, yielding more productivity from each of the Pops that work the building.

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This of course adds a tremendous capacity for modding in new Buildings and Production Methods! Embassies that increase your Influence, but which can also be configured to consume Wine and Meat at state expense to increase the speed at which you Improve Relations? Shantytown Temples that can only be built on coastlines, that consume Fish and create jobs for pops qualifying for the Deep Ones profession, increasing state mortality but also the weekly rate of the global cthulhu_rising counter? We can't wait to see what madness you unleash!

If tweaking multiple Production Methods across several categories on every single building in the game sounds a bit complex compared to linear building upgrades - you're right! Thankfully we've built a number of tools to help with this process. Foremost among these are the Buildings panel, where you can get an overview of all buildings in your country organized by major and minor type. For example you could get an overview of all Rural buildings, or all Furniture Manufactories, or all Ports. If you have buildings of the same type in several different states, you can break it down further to view the individual building. On each level you can see how profitable the building is and adjust its Production Methods. You can even set all Production Methods for a certain building type to a specific setting all across your country with one click.

From the Buildings panel you can get a birds-eye view of all industries in your country and see at a glance how they’re doing financially. You can change Production Methods on an individual building or on all of them at once. You can even expand buildings directly from this screen if you so choose, or click on one to get an in-depth view of its balance sheet and workforce.

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To minimize the requirement for mental math we have also created prediction tools that give you a breakdown of what to expect from choosing a certain Production Method, based on profitability predictions taking adjusted production and consumption into account, and summarizing which new job positions will be created and which will disappear. While it may on the surface seem obvious to just enable the Production Methods that make the buildings more profitable, keep in mind the societal effects as well - are there enough Pops in the state that qualify for the more advanced jobs this new process requires? Will the wage for these new jobs be sufficient to entice those Pops to switch professions? Will you inadvertently create a whole new class of well-to-do Machinists that may have pro-labor union sentiments? Or will the increased profits not lead to higher wages in the building because they're already competitive and fully employed, and will simply result in more dividends for the shareholders which will be funneled into increased luxury consumption? Which you choose might depend on your population’s social mobility, what politics you favor in your country (a socialist uprising may not be in your plans!) and whether you're able to supply luxuries yourself without benefiting your rival. More profitable domestic industries are never bad, but should be far from the only consideration when building your society.

Predictive tooltips will explain the anticipated impact on the building’s Balance as a result of changes in production, consumption, and wage requirements, as well as the changes in employment that could also impact the country’s politics over time. You will also be forewarned if there aren’t enough qualifying Pops to take on any new professions created, as this could limit your industry’s effectiveness.

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That is all for this week. We will return to discussing more economic intricacies later, but for the next little while we'll be exploring domestic politics - starting next week when Martin will be presenting Interest Groups!
 
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Cheers for the DD Iachek and the extra info from you, Wizzington, hagerthink and KaiserJohan, this sounds all sorts of wonderful, both in terms of the base game and moddability . If I ever get the free capacity to mod this, factories producing simple compound engines, triple-expansion engines, steam turbines and marine diesels here we come!

The buildings interface sounds wonderful in terms of minimising micro, and maximizing gameplay, as well. The predictive tooltips as a player aid, and the various trade-offs involve, sound very Vicky – ie, lots of complex gameplay systems coming together to make a really engaging gameplay experience.


We have resource depletion only in a few select cases, I think it would be interesting but probably not something we'll have in a widespread way on release (there is full support for it in the code though, if modders want to make iron etc depletable)

This is super-super cool :) Appreciate it'd be a ton of research work at least for launch, but having at least some key deposits being able to be plausibly run down (and others discovered) could add some depth in terms of trade and production strategy.

or press 37 buttons to execute on your intentions.

This is one of those cases where I'll take ease-of-use over nostalgia every day of the week :)

We're playing around with some things surrounding civilian factories contributing to the war effort. We'll see.

This would be super-duper cool - at the very least for the later period of the game (war in the 1930s), as best I understand it for longer conflicts (ie, WWII - not quite in scope of the timeline, but generally similar production methods to the late-game) there was widespread adaptation of civilian factories to military goods (and appropriate adjustments in demand for 'normal' civilian goods as well through rationing).

There is a heap of scope for a Vicky-3 modded (or official expansion) covering WW2 with more emphasis on industry/economics than HoI4 for example - it presumably wouldn't have the detail in military units or mechanics, but would have more detail in terms of social impacts and overall economic management (as well as hopefully deeper trade as well).

For a naval-themed pic, it has to be more dockyards - here's the fitting-out basin at John Brown and Co, Clydebank (from the Royal Musuems, Greenwich site - lots of great period pics here):

John Brown fitting out basin.jpg
 
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At the moment no, but I have been personally toying with the idea that maybe they should under certain economic systems. No promises that this will be in release though. The main problem with aristocrats owning mines at the earliest methods is that it doesn't transition in the same logical way as capitalists buying out and taking over merchant guild operations, and also ownership of mines is something that varied quite a bit between different countries so it wouldn't be accurate everywhere either.
Such a thing can be controlled by laws. The state forcibly subsidizes the nobles' losses, but does not receive the profits.
 
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Wonderful work! It could be the best economy simulation game. Will we have more types of Ownership, for example, mix ownership between government and capitalists?
As time pass, Some famous cartels, syndicates, trusts, and chaebol will form, influence, and even kidnap one government or more countries could also be interesting, we need anti-trust laws even the pass of it could make the president stand down or even die from assassination.
 
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Is corruption modeled in the game?
Only very indirectly: when you have too few bureaucrats. It's hard to simulate that. You can't shape the bureaucracy differently and as a player you always get all the information. I know in real time how much money has to arrive and it is not spent without my intervention.

But you can see it depending on your perspective. When I, as a government, use tax money to build a few buildings that are then given to the capitalists, it is also a kind of corruption.
 
Since Paradox is going to have to design some kind of AI for all the countries that aren’t played by humans, the automated mode can just use that (unless it cheats very very blatantly).

The game AI is absolutely going to have problems with a system like this—it will not, for example, realistically be able to foresee what factories it will want to have built in the late game when production methods change or new resources appear on the map. But it ought to be able to do a plenty decent job of building what would be profitable now.
The economy system is going to be much more complex than in Stellaris and AI is already struggling handling economy (or assisting the player with micromanagement) there. I don't think many use AI automation in Stellaris. I fear that in Vic3 the AI will need a lot of bonuses to be competitive with the player. With the rule-based system, at least AI will be able to use the best of what community managed to produce and as an additional benefit, AI will be harder to predict if it chooses amongst several available scripts.
 
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The economy system is going to be much more complex than in Stellaris and AI is already struggling handling economy (or assisting the player with micromanagement) there. I don't think many use AI automation in Stellaris. I fear that in Vic3 the AI will need a lot of bonuses to be competitive with the player. With the rule-based system, at least AI will be able to use the best of what community managed to produce and as an additional benefit, AI will be harder to predict if it chooses amongst several available scripts.
The advantage of an economic system like Vicky is that the AI cannot fail completely. People will still work somewhere and produce something. Rather, there is a risk that the player can manipulate the world heavily without the AI reacting to it. An example: through price dumping, weapons production is concentrated in one's own country. The AI of the German Reich doesn't care. The Germans are happy that they now mainly produce furniture. Then when it comes to war, they run out of ammunition after two months.
 
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The advantage of an economic system like Vicky is that the AI cannot fail completely. People will still work somewhere and produce something. Rather, there is a risk that the player can manipulate the world heavily without the AI reacting to it. An example: through price dumping, weapons production is concentrated in one's own country. The AI of the German Reich doesn't care. The Germans are happy that they now mainly produce furniture. Then when it comes to war, they run out of ammunition after two months.
AI doesn't fail completely in Stellaris either, it's just much weaker than a human player, so AI nations don't offer much challenge and delegating player's nation to AI feels terribly inefficient.
 
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AI doesn't fail completely in Stellaris either, it's just much weaker than a human player, so AI nations don't offer much challenge and delegating player's nation to AI feels terribly inefficient.
In Stellaris she often just gets bonuses, otherwise she would often slide into the red and their economy would slide into a death spiral. At Vicky there are mechanics who partially decouple the economy from the country itself. The Pops then just pull away or look for other branches of employment. In this respect, Vicky's failure of the AI will not be so obvious. It will only be noticed with great powers that they will not pursue any strategic interests with regard to their economic composition
 
In Stellaris she often just gets bonuses, otherwise she would often slide into the red and their economy would slide into a death spiral. At Vicky there are mechanics who partially decouple the economy from the country itself. The Pops then just pull away or look for other branches of employment. In this respect, Vicky's failure of the AI will not be so obvious. It will only be noticed with great powers that they will not pursue any strategic interests with regard to their economic composition
In Stellaris AI problem is that it's not building optimal buildings and the game is fairly tight, so it makes a big difference. In Vic3 it would need to choose right buildings and production methods and since economy is more complex (involving production chains, markets and feeding into pops) writing good AI for it is going to be (significantly) more difficult.
 
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Can you have different production methods active for the one industry within a state?
If I have a level 4 furniture industry making cheap furniture as I put it in a forested state, can I make it so 1/4 of the production is luxury furniture? I don't want to have it run making regular furniture 9 months of the year, then swapping for 3 months to luxury furniture, throwing out equilibriums and creating unemployment. Or do I need a second state to house the luxury industry?
 
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The economy system is going to be much more complex than in Stellaris and AI is already struggling handling economy (or assisting the player with micromanagement) there. I don't think many use AI automation in Stellaris. I fear that in Vic3 the AI will need a lot of bonuses to be competitive with the player. With the rule-based system, at least AI will be able to use the best of what community managed to produce and as an additional benefit, AI will be harder to predict if it chooses amongst several available scripts.
Scripts seem like they’d be good in this game. They can also help keep countries on a reasonably-historical path. I think Prussia could probably get pretty far with, “Try to build a strong navy, and the domestic industries you need for that. Prioritize researching things Germans historically invented, like artificial fertilizer, which you need for your armaments industry anyway. Once you have self-sufficiency in food and weapons, build factories that use the resources you have. Any pops left over can grow sugar beets and make chemical dyes.”

A player doesn’t need an AI to pick a sound long-term strategy. If I’m saying, “Automate this state,” it’s because I’m putting down my strategic buildings elsewhere, and whatever the AI builds is fine with me as long as it makes some sense.
 
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The advantage of an economic system like Vicky is that the AI cannot fail completely. People will still work somewhere and produce something. Rather, there is a risk that the player can manipulate the world heavily without the AI reacting to it. An example: through price dumping, weapons production is concentrated in one's own country. The AI of the German Reich doesn't care. The Germans are happy that they now mainly produce furniture. Then when it comes to war, they run out of ammunition after two months.
Hopefully they will hardcode the AI a bit to ignore the profitability analysis and maintain a foothold in key military industries. Something along the lines of:
If arms production < Army's demand ---> Expand/subsidize arms industry
 
Hopefully they will hardcode the AI a bit to ignore the profitability analysis and maintain a foothold in key military industries. Something along the lines of:
If arms production < Army's demand ---> Expand/subsidize arms industry
The AI just needs long-term goals and security precautions in relation to wars. It should not be able to rely on getting everything from the world market. Yes, the AI should also be willing to subsidize things for strategic reasons.
 
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Are following manufacturing goods producible? @lachek @Wizzington

1. Cars, Trucks, Planes, Telegraphs, Lamps, Air balloons..
2. Locomotives, Rail cars, Railway, Subway..
3. Steam boat for rivers, Littoral combat ships, Battleships, Dreadnoughts..
4. Guns, Support equipment, Explosives, Machine gun, Powder, Tank..
 
Are following manufacturing goods producible? @lachek @Wizzington

1. Cars, Trucks, Planes, Telegraphs, Lamps, Air balloons..
2. Locomotives, Rail cars, Railway, Subway..
3. Steam boat for rivers, Littoral combat ships, Battleships, Dreadnoughts..
4. Guns, Support equipment, Explosives, Machine gun, Powder, Tank..

We know too little about the war in the game so far. In what form and how the corresponding goods are consumed.

Otherwise there will be quite a lot of goods and mods will be able to make it even more complicated if desired.
 
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In general, pops whose jobs are made obsolete by changes in technology or laws should be angered by it, especially if they used to own the industries that have been taken over by others.
How about the other way around - Will e.g. capitalists be angered if you don't change to new production methods that will earn them more money?
 
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Please reconsider the name Buildings. Companies and institutions are far better names.
 
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