Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #71 - Autonomous Investment in 1.2

[Wizzington]

Hey, thanks for the DD!

What are your thoughts on balancing around a game rule that has as much impact as this one?

I think it is fair to say that the speed and focus of an economic build-up will differ quite significantly between an AI-controlled investment pool and a player-controlled investment pool.
For example, players will be likely to realise that it can be advisable to just build 100 levels of opium straight for the massive amounts of additional investment pool contribution this can generate, whereas the AI would be (and with good reason) less likely to build the economy in such an extremely optimal fashion.

My concern here is that the dev team has to account for both this manual tryhard and a more AI-guided approach since the game rule allows for either.
Is balancing this even viable? Is this not quite likely to end with one or the other game rule setting leading to rather unbalanced economic (and with that political, technological, warfare, diplomatic etc) circumstances as only one setting gets focused in development?

All in all quite excited by these alterations, but I can't help but feel that the additional manpower/manhours for testing this game rule are likely to become an issue. I'd even say that I would have liked it if the game instead fully committed to this new investment pool approach even if not everybody were to be a fan of it.

Honestly, I would say that I'm not too worried by it - for sure it's likely that experienced players will have an easier time with the game if they decide to play with Autonomous Investment off, but given that this is only difficult in context of a single player game (or a MP where everyone uses the same rule) I don't think this is something that requires a ton of careful balancing on our part - that time is probably better spent improving the AI or finding ways to make it more challenging to 'snowball' your GDP in general. In regards to your last point, we intentionally built this feature in such a way as to piggyback on the existing investment pool mechanics, and the amount of extra testing required on our end should be minimal.

 

[Wizzington]

2 questions:

Can the pop investment pool build queue decide to queue up construction sectors? Or is that government construction only?

If the government queue is empty does the private queue get to make use of the idle construction capacity? Same for the reverse.

At the moment there is no private construction industries, it's something we're looking into but it's fairly tricky to implement (would likely require turning construction into an actual good and subjecting it to market forces, which is a *major* revamp with severe implications) and so isn't coming for 1.2 at least.

Yes in both cases, if there's unused capacity on one type the other gets to use it.

 

[Wizzington]

I very much like this idea, although I still have concerns about how it can handle in a late game economy. While the construction queue is being updated, would it be possible to combine multiple level upgrades being performed at the same time into a single queue item to help address performance issues with the queue in late game? If for example the private sector has money and desire to build 20 levels of an industry at once, can they queue it as a single item?

I do like that it will help economic development somewhat when the nation is bankrupting itself (as long as AI doesn't decide to demolish the entire construction sector), but hoping you are addressing issues with AI bankrupting themselves with conscription (in particular using opium consuming PM with low access to opium, but also later in game with rubber and bicycle messenger PM).

The construction queue 'behind the scenes' is actually still a single queue, it's just presented as separate queues to the player, so there is no performance impact from this. We also think we have identified a way to majorly improve the performance impact of large construction queues in general, a programmer is actually working on it right as we speak.

 

[Wizzington]

is there any chance that workers co-ops will have their restrictions to council republics removed?

There are a bunch of changes coming to economic laws in general in 1.2, but that's the topic for next week's dev diary.

 

[Wizzington]

Good afternoon,a great dd and very happy for the game rules,this way,everyone is happy.However,i have a few questions:
1) Can we mod the investment pool contribution for pop types other than capitalists,aristocrats,shopkeepers and farmers,just like it work in the current version,for example,for modded pop types?
2)How moddable the investment pool in general will be compared to the current version?
Thanks for any replies about this.

1) Yes, absolutely.
2) I'm actually unsure what the question here entails - what parts of it would you like to be able to mod?

 

[Wizzington]

Would there be a way to move funds from the national treasury into the private investment pool? Say, I have a good surplus but I want to let the pops do the building and decide what to build - can I subsidize this, from treasury? Or just build myself what I think should be built?

At the moment no, it's something I'd like to do but I can't promise it for 1.2.

 

[Wizzington]

Is it considered to actually give all pop types investment option? I can't see why for example farmers would be investing but say not academics. Maybe add in a ratio based on factors such as present wealth, literacy as well as law types that shifts these investment ratios.

I can see for example a highly literate and developed society, such as Netherlands, having all of their pop types investing. While in a low literacy, low economic development and low education society it would be odd that farmers are investing.

There does seem a high level of correlation between being educated and having wealth already to investing your money. So arbitrarily decided percentages may not be the best compared to literacy and wealth.

Pops invest based on dividends from ownership shares, so Academics wouldn't actually have any money to invest - which Pops do invest is generally based on who tends to have ownership shares.

 

[Wizzington]

Can you give the AI any good modifiers for building? I'm not a great player, but I think I can build more decently than the AI, so I'm not inclined to turn this mode on just to let the AI do it.

Something that is worth noting here is that the AI for this only has to consider which buildings make sense to build for profit and supplying needed goods for the market, which it actually has pretty solid tools for doing. Many of the issues that result in poor AI economic performance is actually things like the AI razing their ports or ending up in too many civil wars. With that said, we are also making a general concerted effort to improve the AI across the board in 1.2, including building selections.

 

[Wizzington]

It was more a general question,since i have seen a few people mentioning they like modding it for subsidies,for example.To clarify,my main question was if there are any changes regarding investment pool modding compared to current version or not?

The modifiers and values involved are a bit different and you have some more efficiency tools to play with, but otherwise no significant changes.

 

[Wizzington]

Hey @Wizzington

Can I ask what the scope or roadmap of 1.2 is in general? Is this only focusing on economy or are we going to see other changes to systems?

1 DD for investment poool
1 DD for more economy
1 DD for graphical changes
1 DD for War changes
1 DD for Politics changes
1 DD for Balance
etc

1.2 release in a few months? or soon. What does that look like.

Thanks

PS
Also please add voting functionality to suggestions

We're not ready to talk about the whole scope of 1.2 yet, but you can definitely expect to see several points from our post release plans DD checked off.

 

[Wizzington]

Will it split always 50%-50%?

I would say more liberal economis should have lesser control over construction sector

No, it depends on economic laws, so the Private allocation is higher under LF for example.

 

[Wizzington]

That is indeed true under current system, so could there be anything regarding a more general and developed investment system where all pops which have surplus money could invest for dividends without ownership and without pre-determined percentage values in future? Perhaps as part of a content update or DLC later. Perhaps as part of a system of investing in foreign countries?

Honestly if we were to do something like that it would probably need to be something more akin to Pops buying private stock or investing in treasury bonds - an Academic working as a university isn't likely to just go over to the local factory owner and go 'here's my life savings, build yourself something nice'

 

[Wizzington]

Seems a bit arbitrary that shopkeepers and farmers contribute to the investment pool, but not say, bureaucrats.

Kinda feels like all the pop types except slaves should be able to contribute, assuming their standard of living is above a certain level.

It's based on who owns shares in buildings. Bureaucrats don't have building shares in 1.2.

 

[Wizzington]

Don't Academics get ownership shares in Art Academies, getting dividends from selling Fine Art?

You're right actually, though that's such an edge case I'm not sure it's worth throwing an investment modifier on them just for art academies.

 

[Wizzington]

Are the lag and fps drop issues introduced by 1.1 finally going to be addressed in 1.2?

Performance is for sure one of the top priorities of 1.2 and we have several programmers working on it.

 

[Wizzington]

Do the private sector takes pop available in consideration ? When I'm France i don't really care, but when I'm Hawaï and only have 10K paysants available, I'm bit scare that pop build things I don't need when every man (and sadly child) count.

It should avoid building where there's no available labor, but in the specific example you cited they would probably view those 10k peasants as peasants they could be using to turn a profit instead of saying 'oh, I guess the state needs them all'.

 

[Wizzington]

Is it possible to change the settings in-game, say if I really want to focus my economy for a bit before switching back to a privately managed investment pool, or is this just something you set prior to the game?

Will this also lead to any rebalancing of state-owned economies in relation to private-driven economies? I doubt this would be popular, but it would be interesting if state economies had a kind of "investment pool" which worked differently than the capitalist one and operated with different priorities with the money taken directly from dividends. Perhaps it focuses on reducing the price of industrial goods or increasing SoL instead of profit? But there are other ways command economies and council republics could be tweaked to balance them (like giving them a way to capture more of the dividends in the form of taxes etc).

In any case, I like the change since it makes the difference ownership methods more meaningful.

No, game rules cannot be changed over the course of a game (except by save-editing). You can always go Command Economy though if you don't want to deal with a private sector.

 

[Wizzington]

So when a new private plantage gets builded which pop will become owner? how does the game decide it?

For now Pops cannot own shares in buildings they don't work in so when Pops invest in 'new' buildings it's more about Aristocrats investing in the collective wellbeing of their social class etc. Ownership not being tied to employment is something I want to change eventually, but it's a major rework and outside the scope of 1.2.

 

[Wizzington]

This looks really cool. One question:
The ai calculates what to build based on profit, does this take into account pop class? Will for example Landowners mainly invest in farms in order to strengthen and preserve the power of the aristocracy or will they invest in the steel mill that's more profitable?

The investment logic takes into account who the money is coming from, so if your investment pool is mostly coming from Aristocrats, expect a lot of farms.

 

[Wizzington]

Great, we are seeing a little more of Vic 2 without losing what already makes Vic 3 a fun and engaging game.

We have been told a few times that GDP will probably be fixed for 1.2, so that input goods cost is subtracted from each factory, no longer over-inflating the contribution of highly processed goods. Is this still in the plans?

Value added GDP is indeed in 1.2.