Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #66 - Patch 1.1 (part 2)

[Darsara]

Huh; 20 is how much oil I had added to Saskatchewan in my current game.

 

[Amorenkaire]

View attachment 912519

For most of the games time period Russia was the largest supplier of oil

That's just blatantly wrong, as shown in the graph I posted before. The entire USSR only overtook the USA as the world's largest oil producer in 1970, four decades after the game's end date. By 1936, it was only producing a fraction of the USA's.

You're wrong. From its beginning in the 1860's to the mid 2010's, the US produced ~38,550,000,000 bbl and the estimated remaining oil at that time was at 35,230,000,000. So at gamestart, going by historic data, we're looking at ~74B bbl total oil in what is today the territory of the USA.

Russia's oil reserves at the same time were estimated at ~80B bbl, so the remaining oil in the mid 2010's was already more than what the USA had left plus what they ever produced.

Now take into account that Russia actually produced oil from the late 1870's and was over many years one of the largest producers and exporters of oil, and then it becomes clear that Russia should have more oil in Vic3 than the USA.

The metric for the devs should be how much oil was in the ground in 1830, nothing else. The data is clear on that, regardless of what you think or wish for.

It doesn't matter how much physical oil is in the ground if its inaccessible, or would take more energy to extract it from the ground than could be harvested. And as fun as it would be to allow people and AI to sink 10 units of oil into PMs to harvest only 8, for the game's abstraction its fine enough to list these reserves as 'non-existent' for the time period. Likewise, it doesn't matter if the oil is there if it was undiscoverable, and until or if they ever make a mechanic for more dynamic resource discovery rather than just 'have technology, discover it after a few years', that should likewise impact what each country can produce.

All of this means that trying to get a total holistic representation of oil production in the game's time period would be A) Notoriously tricky, and rather arbitrary about where you cut off the technological potential limit, B) Require a horrendous amount of research to determine what each oil producing state's reserves were potentially tapped with the technology at the time period, C) Require a new system to determine discoverability of oil reserves based off of technology, socioeconomic factors in the area, investment, if there was already oil discovered there, etc.

Or, they can use historical record production over the time period, which is rather easily sourced, and use that as a rough ball park to figure out what would be discovered and exploited in the time period, with some nudging here and there for things such as earlier investment into Saudi Arabia's oil fields.

Nevermind that oil reserves seem to infrequently include Shale Oil, or other unconventional oil reserves which are less easy to estimate because of the geography involved. And some shale oil was tapped during the time period, so you can't just discount its presence either.

"Sources sometimes differ on the volume of proven oil reserves. The differences sometimes result from different classes of oil included, and sometimes result from different definitions of proven. [The data below does not seem to include shale oil and other "unconventional" sources of oil such as tar sands. For instance, North America has over 3 trillion barrels of shale oil reserves,[1] and the majority of oil produced in the USA is from shale, leading to the paradoxical data below that the USA will finish all its oil at current production in 11 years, because the production is mostly from shale but the reserves cited omit all shale reserves.]"

Why is rubber even a resource like coal, gold or oil? It grows on the ground, on plantations in certain regions around the equator (See your own map) like many other plants. The plant comes from Brazil, was stolen by the Brits and planted in their asian colonies in industrial scale to match the big demand they had. There is actually a very interesting story behind the cultivation of the rubber plants.

Let the game discover places where it can be grown, but just use the regular arable land if you do not have any special event or journal entry in place currently.

Rubber was critically dependent resource for the later part of the time period that countries, such as Japan, would go to war to try and control.

Some figures with Rubber might be off as well. There's an argument that Rubber shouldn't be a limited resource, but function like other crops (limited in location but not amount except by Arable Land), considering Liberia became one of the largest producers of Rubber and was a major supplier of Rubber for World War 1 irrc.

"In 1926, the Liberian government granted Firestone a 99-year lease for a million acres (to be chosen by the company wherever in Liberia) at a price of 6 cents per acre,[2] Firestone then set about establishing rubber tree plantations of the non-native South American rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis in the country, eventually creating the world's largest rubber plantation.[1] The United States government was involved in the off-shore rubber production operation from the outset, as scholar Christine Whyte point out: "The deal had the approval of the US State Department, who hoped that the huge contract would keep Liberia within the American sphere of influence, without necessitating direct governmental control. The last-minute addition of a twenty-five million dollar loan attached to the concession was intended to ensure that American corporate influence dominated."[3]"

 

[Owen123]

That's just blatantly wrong, as shown in the graph I posted before. The entire USSR only overtook the USA as the world's largest oil producer in 1970, four decades after the game's end date. By 1936, it was only producing a fraction of the USA's.

Your graph doesn't cover around 2/3 of the games timeframe

Edit: it also doesn't appear to show data from pre-soviet union Russia

 

[Amorenkaire]

Your graph doesn't cover around 2/3 of the games timeframe

Edit: it also doesn't appear to show data from pre-soviet union Russia

Fair enough, harder to find data of the 1800s, but while Russia/Persia seemed to have had a head start with the Baku oil fields it quickly lost the race for number one to the USA.

"This was followed by the first modern oil well in 1846, which reached a depth of 21 metres. At this time, a single oil field in Baku accounted for over 90% of the world’s oil production, mostly going to Persia (now Iran).

Commercial oil wells soon followed in Bobrka, Poland (1854), Bucharest, Romania (1857), Ontario, Canada (1858) and Pennsylvania, USA (1859), sparking a ‘black gold’ rush in several of these regions.

Pennsylvania was the clear winner and within a couple of years was producing almost half of the world’s oil. Prices rose quickly – from roughly $0.49 a barrel in 1861 to $6.59 a barrel in 1865."

 

[Amorenkaire]

Researching into things more, would be nice to have the different drilling and refining techniques be represented in game. Open pit oil fields like Baku being low production but quickly available in game, followed by oil refining in the 40s, then drilled engines in the 50s to 60s that cause the oil boom catapulting the USA to lead producer in Pennsylvania. Then later refining making Californian and Oklahoma dance back and forth for number 1, but I imagine that much detail would be too much for the games extrapolation.

 

[Owen123]

Pennsylvania was the clear winner and within a couple of years was producing almost half of the world’s oil. Prices rose quickly – from roughly $0.49 a barrel in 1861 to $6.59 a barrel in 1865."

Do you have a source for this? Everything I've read seems to indicate that Russia led the world in oil production until the beginning of the 20th century.

 

[Idle America]

Fingers crossed for a political fix for the USA!

 

[lUndeadl]

@PDJR_Alastorn was struggling with resources and it was great to see this problem solved so quickly.
But the problem with resources in the game goes beyond that, and I think there are a lot of resources that are scarce when both the player and the ai nation can use them properly, such as coal, hardwood, etc. I have a bold but justified idea. Can we make more kinds of resources, like coal and iron, be discovered with the game, just like oil and rubber? For example, in 1836 an area with 50 units of coal could grow to 80 or more by the end of the game.In fact, the world didn't explore all of its resources in 1836, so if this feature can make up for late game resource shortages without affecting the balance of resources early in the game, and make the technology of "increasing resource discovery" more useful.
In addition, I think the productivity will increase too fast when I build steel structures in the middle of the game. If I use a country like Spain, I can frantically build factories after steel structures and make the gdp reach 1 billion in the 1880s,building points(is that true in English?) are more than 1500, while ai's gdp is still in the same place. Their gdp adds up to mine. There is a reason why the ai is not smart enough, but I also think there is too many building points in the middle of the game

 

[Amorenkaire]

Do you have a source for this? Everything I've read seems to indicate that Russia led the world in oil production until the beginning of the 20th century.

That quote came from an investment site's page on the history of petroleum industries, here: https://www.ig.com/sg/commodities/oil/history-of-crude-oil-price

Grabbing some more from Wikipedia as well; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_petroleum_industry

"In 1857, the total production of Romania was amounted to 275 tons of crude oil. With this figure, Romania was registered as the first country in world oil production statistics, before other large oil producing states such as the United States of America (1860), Russia (1863), Mexico (1901) or Persia (1913).[34][35]"

"In 1875, crude oil was discovered by David Beaty at his home in Warren, Pennsylvania. This led to the opening of the Bradford oil field, which, by the 1880s, produced 77 percent of the global oil supply. However, by the end of the 19th century, the Russian Empire, particularly the Branobel company in Azerbaijan, had taken the lead in production.[36]"

Taken in total, it looks like the timeline during Victoria's timeframe is;

1837: Oil refinery in Baku and 1846 First commercial oil well leads to Baku producing 90% of the crude oil in the world (in game terms, they built the buildings first?).

1857: Romania seems to become the leading oil producer, and oil is an important enough statistic to finally be recorded in statistics. Could be an argument that at this point Oil wells should be an industry in Victoria 3 with Romania again being an early leader (built the buildings first).

1860s: Sometime in the 1860s the Pennsylvania oil rush causes the USA to take the lead in oil production, growing to 50% of the world's production. By 1880, the Pennsylvania oil fields produced 77% of the global oil supply.

1890s: Sometime around the end of the century Russia took the lead with its control of the Baku oil fields, especially as Branobel started to acquire oil fields in Romania to further support its production. The US, as far as I can tell, was still a close 2nd, with the third leading producer at this time being Austria-Hungary with 5% production.

1910s: The Bolshevik revolution completely guts Branobel and likely causes a sharp decline in oil production (although I can't be certain, just my guess). At the same time, the US discovers the Oklahama Oil Field, and technological improvements in refining make California oil valuable, leading to another giant oil boom which catapults the US to the gigantic oil giant the chart shows in the 20th century that lasts until the 1970s.

All in all, it looks like Russia had the lead in oil production for 30-40ish years (20 at the very start, and 10-20 at the turn of the century), with the first being a major producer and the 2nd being closely followed by the USA. Romania holds the candle, maybe, for around ~10 years. The US meanwhile was the global producer of crude oil for ~30 years after the pennsylvania oil rush and for ~25-30 from the Oklahoma rush (going on for another 40 years after the game's end), for a total of 55-60 years.

Edit: Looks like Russia overtook exactly at 1900 to close to it as far as I can, and the civil war did damage their production - but no idea if the USA overtook in the 1910s because of expanding production or not. In 1917 foreign investment had brought the oil fields in Baku back online for export to third countries though.

Edit2: Nevermind, the US overtook Russia again in 1902 apparently. Source:

 

[Sighfer]

Don't be shy about buffing oil throughput AND output of American oil fields. They were producing 70% of the world's supply of oil for a reason.

 

[MJAnderson]

Absolute wrong direction and this disappoints me more than if they had done nothing. The "fix" is to allow for foreign investment and fix the AI. Foreign investment was an important aspect of development of resources around the globe, both in puppets and free countries (look at the development of the oil industry in Mexico).

For a game that tries so hard to not be a wargame it lacks the tools to achieve growth without constantly going to war. And their answer is "let's just make resources more readily available." A short term fix to a real problem that just hobbles future game improvement.

 

[Amorenkaire]

Absolute wrong direction and this disappoints me more than if they had done nothing. The "fix" is to allow for foreign investment and fix the AI. Foreign investment was an important aspect of development of resources around the globe, both in puppets and free countries (look at the development of the oil industry in Mexico).

For a game that tries so hard to not be a wargame it lacks the tools to achieve growth without constantly going to war. And their answer is "let's just make resources more readily available." A short term fix to a real problem that just hobbles future game improvement.

It was stated earlier by the dev that there's a fix for AI improvements for development, and foreign investment is on the docket as part of the free updates.

 

[FryFroFella]

I also consider it necessary. This will be an incentive to build enterprises in provinces with resources, as happens in real life.
Another option is to make the price of resources in the places of their extraction lower - then local production will be more profitable.

This will also complicate the players approach in a good way, since it becomes necessary to spread things out more or face fairly realistic consequences.

 

[Owen123]

That quote came from an investment site's page on the history of petroleum industries, here: https://www.ig.com/sg/commodities/oil/history-of-crude-oil-price

Grabbing some more from Wikipedia as well; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_petroleum_industry

"In 1857, the total production of Romania was amounted to 275 tons of crude oil. With this figure, Romania was registered as the first country in world oil production statistics, before other large oil producing states such as the United States of America (1860), Russia (1863), Mexico (1901) or Persia (1913).[34][35]"

"In 1875, crude oil was discovered by David Beaty at his home in Warren, Pennsylvania. This led to the opening of the Bradford oil field, which, by the 1880s, produced 77 percent of the global oil supply. However, by the end of the 19th century, the Russian Empire, particularly the Branobel company in Azerbaijan, had taken the lead in production.[36]"

Taken in total, it looks like the timeline during Victoria's timeframe is;

1837: Oil refinery in Baku and 1846 First commercial oil well leads to Baku producing 90% of the crude oil in the world (in game terms, they built the buildings first?).

1857: Romania seems to become the leading oil producer, and oil is an important enough statistic to finally be recorded in statistics. Could be an argument that at this point Oil wells should be an industry in Victoria 3 with Romania again being an early leader (built the buildings first).

1860s: Sometime in the 1860s the Pennsylvania oil rush causes the USA to take the lead in oil production, growing to 50% of the world's production. By 1880, the Pennsylvania oil fields produced 77% of the global oil supply.

1890s: Sometime around the end of the century Russia took the lead with its control of the Baku oil fields, especially as Branobel started to acquire oil fields in Romania to further support its production. The US, as far as I can tell, was still a close 2nd, with the third leading producer at this time being Austria-Hungary with 5% production.

1910s: The Bolshevik revolution completely guts Branobel and likely causes a sharp decline in oil production (although I can't be certain, just my guess). At the same time, the US discovers the Oklahama Oil Field, and technological improvements in refining make California oil valuable, leading to another giant oil boom which catapults the US to the gigantic oil giant the chart shows in the 20th century that lasts until the 1970s.

All in all, it looks like Russia had the lead in oil production for 30-40ish years (20 at the very start, and 10-20 at the turn of the century), with the first being a major producer and the 2nd being closely followed by the USA. Romania holds the candle, maybe, for around ~10 years. The US meanwhile was the global producer of crude oil for ~30 years after the pennsylvania oil rush and for ~25-30 from the Oklahoma rush (going on for another 40 years after the game's end), for a total of 55-60 years.

Edit: Looks like Russia overtook exactly at 1900 to close to it as far as I can, and the civil war did damage their production - but no idea if the USA overtook in the 1910s because of expanding production or not. In 1917 foreign investment had brought the oil fields in Baku back online for export to third countries though.

Edit2: Nevermind, the US overtook Russia again in 1902 apparently. Source:

I stand corrected, but the data still shows that Russia had the capacity to produce oil quantities on par with or in greater quantities than the US, but was hampered by internal factors, not access to oil deposits.

 

[Herzmut]

Regarding oil and its scarcity: Germany utilized alternative production methods for synthetic fuels for about in the game's timeframe (since 1910): Germany processed coal and tar to extract fuel in their "Leuna" factories for cars, tanks and aircraft. This method was expensive and not very efficient, but helped Germany to overcome certain problems regarding its access to oil.

It wouldn't have been necessary to expand oil fields on the map if countries could just make use of what was established knowledge: the inventor of the process, Friedrich Bergius, who started to work on this in 1910, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1931.

The process is used in Mongolia today, to support the Chinese market.

 

[zipaks]

Santa Catarina is the 2nd largest producer of rice in Brazil today, and yet the game doesn't allow a single rice farm there.
147 thousand hectares (source: https://www.conab.gov.br/component/k2/item/download/45014_60f8a673c2e671abb5efe72174e06810 )

I feel personally hurt, because this is what my ancestors did, and the fields are still there.

you can download my mod, although I put wheat in there.. brazil flavor all the way!

 

[maxirage]

x2 oil is far too little. I recommend reading through this thread

Black Gold Drought

So, it's almost 1920, and the world economy is starving for the black gold. I'm the leading producer by a country mile and I need to double supply, but I can't because there's not enough oil even potentially in the world. Even If every...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

You could increase global oil supply x8, and it would still be far lower than real life. Late-game resource balance is absolutely horrible.

 

[Amorenkaire]

I stand corrected, but the data still shows that Russia had the capacity to produce oil quantities on par with or in greater quantities than the US, but was hampered by internal factors, not access to oil deposits.

I was actually mistaken by my Bolshevik revolution assertion. The US overtook Russia as the world's leading crude oil producer in 1902, long before the strife, turmoil, and economic upset of the commies taking power. Russia did seem to have a retraction in oil production in the decade (perhaps from other wells running dry), and during the revolution, but it wasn't as disastrous as I thought. It came primarily from the US having a massive +10% growth to oil production as other oil fields were discovered.

So prior to the 20th century, yeah, from what I can tell primarily from the Baku oil fields (there might be more, but that one in a source was atributed for being the primary reason why the Russians briefly overtook the USA in production around ~1900). So the Russians had one REALLY good oil field in Persia. But the US had several, and eventually left Russia in the dust as much of its petrochemical reserves are harder to reach due to terrain, remoteness, etc.

 

[zipaks]

There's so much that needs fixing. The trade route screen tells you the tariff revenue, which is the least important information.

kinda true

You never have enough market access even in dense urban areas, it's pointless.

not true, as soon as u get railroads, and have enough resources, you'll never have that problem.

You never have enough convoys and are stopped from building enough ports.

only true if your economy is based only in trade, nonsense..

Almost every part of the UI doesn't give enough information or gives the wrong information.

VERY MUCH TRUE

The AI doesn't colonize the whole map and colonies don't exploit their resources fully. There's effectively no way to do most things diplomatically, even making a protectorate which logically should be something you can do to countries you have a lot of influence over.

Couldn't agree more.

There should be a way to replace interest group leaders, even at some cost, since their personal traits (not their personal ideology, but they traits like cruel or bandit) can cause modifiers like -100% votes for the interest group in elections.

hmm maybe, but the cost should be just as bad as a bad trait.

A bunch of laws need to change or be reoriented, private healthcare does almost nothing even for the rich and income taxes don't have tax brackets.

AGREEEEEED! (military schools)

So many production methods'factories just shouldn't be combined and only feel complicated by being combined, like glass and porcelain, or clothes and fancy clothes, and the bizarre ratios of fertilizer/explosives, it just makes the game more confusing to play and adds a ton of micro.

I agree that many times one might have to pause too many times to check the production ratio of a factory that produces 2 goods, to calculate how many upgrades it needs and if you should construct another factory but producing only 1 good and how many upgrades of it.. THAT plus the UI makes me want to sleep...

The UI elements are often self defeating. For example silver coins could mean a good is 40% above its base price, or 30% beneath it, much of the time it's just a matter of if the base price is high which makes zero sense whatsoever.

now that you said it, I confirm I have to squeeze my eyes to check if it's up or below, either that or try to use the UI to get the price breakdown.

The GUI of Victoria 2 was generally a nightmare but honestly in same ways it has a advantage. The pop screen, especially for large nations, was miles ahead of the one in VicIII, a full screen that made it really easy to zero in on any demographic anywhere in your nation or everywhere in your nation.

besides the nightmare part, this is true

construction wasn't one long chain that feels really cool but really unrealistic and arcadey.

hmm I barely agree with you on this one. it is kinda unrealistic and arcadey, yes. instead of cool, it feels like your effort is being rewarded. maybe give us sliders one for how much money is invested and others for each building type, the game will automatically invest. ie set slider for building investment to 50k, ranches to 20, grain to 20, coal to 50 and tools to 10, that means grain and ranches will get 20% each of the 50k money allocated to building, coal will get 50% = 25k money and so on.. that's just an idea on top of my head.. actually remember eu3 tech sliders? based on your slider position they'd show you how long it'd take to research the next tech! "# farms will be constructed in X weeks" now thats dope, only problem is choosing locations, dealing with employment, infrastructure and stuff like that..

 

[pokeme]

@PDJR_Alastorn lovely changes, in my playthroughs i noticed some particular shortcomings of coal in the very early and very late game. In the late game particular i was also confronted with a huge surplus of wood. I personally would love to see an extra PM added to logging camps that adds a small output of coal at the expense of wood output to solve both issues.

Agree, while wood surplus, hard wood shortage. I hope there will be more production methods to increase hard woods and reduce wood.