Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #72 - Economic Law Changes in 1.2

[veryalien]

Any progress on arable land rebalance?

 

[Lys91]

Aren't all games a hot code on launch anyway? At least anything made by midsize to largest corporations.

I think there is a difference between a buggy release and what happened with V3 (not to say it wasn't buggy too, but it goes beyond that).

 

[Notme1]

I think there is a difference between a buggy release and what happened with V3 (not to say it wasn't buggy too, but it goes beyond that).

You haven't seen this gem. That is catastrophe.
I assumed that Vic3 might have rocky launch like any game.

 

[Oglesby]

It's not so much about reworking the mechanics as it is about preventing the formation of too disunited parties. We'll have more to say about this next week.

Can we also figure out handle votes when party affiliation change? I had the old ruling party (with very high legitimacy) both leave their party and start another party together (so the only difference was the name in the end) become an sub 25 legitimacy ruling party.

Can we add votes to the default state for nations that start with parties? Some could have to wait for up to 4 years until the first vote.

 

[Lys91]

You haven't seen this gem. That is catastrophe.
I assumed that Vic3 might have rocky launch like any game.

As you can see from my badges, I am a big PDX fan. Consequently, I have a bit more expectation from them than that. It could always be worse, but ...

 

[M0R0S]

At the moment this is required since Cooperative Ownership is such a radical economic shift that it should require multiple legal changes to implement. I do think there is room for mixing co-ops and government ownership into the regular economic laws but we'd need to do in a way that you can't just eliminate the aristocrats by changing some PMs.

Has there been any consideration to rebalancing how ownership shares are distributed?

Currently privately owned and publicly traded only give ownership shares to capitalists, when aristocrats could and did invest in industries other than agriculture. I think privately owned should split ownership shares mostly between capitalists and aristocrats and publicly traded should give at least some shares to other pops that could afford to invest like shopkeepers, officers, or engineers.

I feel as though allowing aristocrats more sources of income would go a long way towards helping them remain relevant for more than 30 years.

 

[Songlingye]

I would love to know when I can invest in foreign markets, like V2

 

[Meriador_]

I'd prefer if the Autocracy/Oligarchy boost to a group was dynamic based on other laws. So sometimes it would boost Aristocrats or Capitalists and other times - the Bureaucrats. I can see how difficult to do that well would be, though.

A thought: maybe instead giving a flat boost to any particular IG or pop type, Autocracy could just increase the clout/political power modifiers of all other laws? So in your generic fully-conservative game-start state, autocracy empowers the landowners by increasing the boosts they already get from serfdom, slavery, monarchy, hereditary bureaucrats, and peasant levies - also increasing the Devout's boost from state religion. Whereas, a theoretical communist state would instead see an increase to the farmer and machinist boosts from council republic, the intelligensia boost from appointed bureaucrats, the armed forces from professional army, etc. Unsure if this would fully work with the modifiers precisely as they are now, since most laws just go from landowner/devout empowering versions to "neutral" versions with few exceptions, but it's my first thought for how autocracy could "know" who to boost without getting too complicated.

Oligarchy could give pops political power based on their investment pool contribution, on top of the (lessened with oligarchy?) autocracy clout/political power boosts and a specific bureaucrat boost (since they probably should get boosted but don't fit neatly into the wealth or law boosting scenarios).

 

[Jamaican Castle]

I do think there is room for mixing co-ops and government ownership into the regular economic laws but we'd need to do in a way that you can't just eliminate the aristocrats by changing some PMs.

Now that there's a distinction between government-purchased and pop-purchased buildings, maybe the player can have a free(r) hand to adjust the former than the latter?

e.g., if an Aristocrat pop builds a new farm with its invested funds, that's sacrosanct private property that can't be seized without passing a law to that effect. But, if the government builds a new farm with subsidy funds from the treasury, it can decide whether it's going to be privately owned, directly run by the government, or a worker co-op.

 

[cylordcenturion]

i see a potential... annoyance in the future here. there are several different farm types, as well as the desirable thoughput bonus for agriculture. i can see the investment AI ending up with five different plantations/farms evenly distributed accross five states rather than specialising. additionally wheat farms are (in my opinion) the superior choice as theyre the only source of wine, (something a friend in agriculture has told me is silly) while liquer, fruit, and sugar are all obtainable elsewhere.

could you give the AI a bias towards already established farm/plantation types, and allow the player to select a "preferred" farm type.

or maybe, could we get a "convert building" option, that lets you convert an industry or agriculture building to another of the same cost for an additional 50% of the construction cost. i.e cost 20 to build so costs 10 to convert.

 

[Dryhad]

There has been a bit of internal debate about this but I do honestly have a hard time seeing how a fully centralized economy with everything being directly owned by the central government would work without a whole lot more power being vested into that central government than you would get under a system where power ultimately rests with the electorate. I would argue that the Cooperative law fits Syndicalism far better than Command Economy, though perhaps we could introduce some sort of hybrid model.

In that case, will The Five Year Plans journal entry still require Command Economy or will the new Cooperative Ownership be worked into the success conditions as well? I'm thinking in particular because this journal entry activates even if you choose Anarchist as your communist specialisation, but these changes would make it difficult or impossible to implement if you're moving to Anarchy.

 

[seppafer]

At the moment this is required since Cooperative Ownership is such a radical economic shift that it should require multiple legal changes to implement. I do think there is room for mixing co-ops and government ownership into the regular economic laws but we'd need to do in a way that you can't just eliminate the aristocrats by changing some PMs.

One thing I could see is potentially to make something similar to the publicly traded tech/PM where maybe through research you either get a boost to the privately owned farms pms we already have like maybe have a tech down the romanticism line give a pm for farms and plantations that brings some farmers into the ownership alongside the aristocrats likely with an efficiency bonus or just an increase in aristocrat jobs.
This could potentially keep the landowners and rural folk influential if you want to go for an agrarian run.

 

[Kyoumen]

I've had this problem too, its happened more than once where IGs gain the radical ideology through events, they all join the Radical Party, the Radical Party wins the elections by a landslide, and even if it is the only Political Party in Government, legitimacy is non-existent because the one party is too diverse. Also, because they get all the votes, the legitimacy of any other party (though admittedly higher) is still terrible.

I would say that simulates reality really well, but I do think the game could do better at making it clear to players what all this actually means.

 

[Kyoumen]

not only new industries, but munitions plants and arms factories which are generally unprofitable during peacetime. it would basically make Lassiez-Faire economies easy targets for everyone else since their arms industries would all be insufficient for war time.

I've argued before, and would suggest again, that all war industries (including shipbuilding) should be able to be subsidised under any economic system, but also that it be sufficiently expensive to do so that the game is coaxed towards the historically accurate "most smaller countries import their guns/munitions/warships rather than building their own".

 

[Kyoumen]

Can we unify the usage of the word "Agriculture". It is used in various places like the image below and state modifiers to mean "Any Farm" but also used in the building lens and state specific building tab to mean "Farms, Plantations, and Ranches".

Spoiler: Interventionism

On a similar note, provinces with bonuses for agriculture throughput should also apply that to agricultural plantations (probably not lumber, though, at least while replanting timber isn't really in the game).

 

[Kyoumen]

I would still really like to see an option where LF disallows you from spending government money on private construction. That way yes, you have a very efficient investment pool, but also you pay for that by actually being in the free market that the law advertises. It's very silly that in a supposedly free market the government can still choose to spend vast portions of its wealth to support an industry. And it would properly make LF feed very different from the other systems. Each economic system should feel very distinct, and this would help a lot for LF.

edit: at the absolute minimum, if you control the IP. I understand the devs never want to fully lock out the player of construction but frankly my answer to that is don't go to LF then. You aren't locked out, you chose to disable it. Though I would like to see this as an option all around as well but at least if it's doable in one way then it can be modded for the other as well.

The problem with this is outside of a theoretical anarchocapitalism (which as people pointed out wasn't really a thing until much later), it just didn't exist and basically nobody even wanted it. The only states with this kind of "pure" laissez-faire are ones where the government functionally doesn't exist.

Also, of course, you're not playing the government per se, though you perform a lot of their functions.

But I just can't see even the most wildly fantasy laissez faire government taking their hands completely out of infrastructure, the military, et cetera. And in reality, even the most classical liberal governments still had many levers to influence the direction of the economy, encourage and protect certain industries, et cetera.

 

[Kyoumen]

Maybe you could have a military junta take over a corrupt country formerly ruled over by feckless liberals and they install a Generalissimo to take control and steer the country back onto the right path

On that note, one thing I honestly feel is very conspicuous by its near-absence in Victoria 3 is military takeovers and juntas in general. It's possible to get the military to revolt, et cetera like any other IG, but the military is very UNIQUELY likely to take over the reins of power in a country historically, many countries had to play delicate balancing acts to avoid this outcome, and I just... don't really get that in the game as is. It's hard to make the military IG very powerful, it's pretty easy to keep them happy, and couping the government and taking over isn't really supported by the rules. I'd like to see a military IG that is much more of a double-edged sword, where a powerful and happy military IG can lend legitimacy to a government and suppress the opposition, but also can turn around and be your worst enemy (and here's where the mechanic of IG leaders influencing them would really come to play, with a Royalist military leader putting up with a lot more from the Tsar than one with, shall we say, less helpful traits).

 

[Bearjuden]

But I just can't see even the most wildly fantasy laissez faire government taking their hands completely out of infrastructure, the military, et cetera.

Oh, well thankfully that's not what I said in the slightest. I didn't suggest you be banned from using government money for the military. I suggested that there be an option to not be able to use government money for steel mills. The stuff that was, in societies that self-described as LF, seen as private industry.

 

[Kyoumen]

Oh, well thankfully that's not what I said in the slightest. I didn't suggest you be banned from using government money for the military. I suggested that there be an option to not be able to use government money for steel mills. The stuff that was, in societies that self-described as LF, seen as private industry.

But the military IS equipped through private industry in the game. If you take away the ability to build guns, artillery, ammunition and warships and leave it entirely to the private market, you will have issues. That was my point; there should always be industry you can directly invest in because it is necessary for the government to have any power at all, which would at least include those ones. I'm not averse at least in theory to the suggestion that everything else be left to the Invisible Hand if you pass the laws for it, although I would suggest renaming the existing Laissez-Faire to something else and making that a new level.

 

[Kaiser Tiberius]

There has been a bit of internal debate about this but I do honestly have a hard time seeing how a fully centralized economy with everything being directly owned by the central government would work without a whole lot more power being vested into that central government than you would get under a system where power ultimately rests with the electorate. I would argue that the Cooperative law fits Syndicalism far better than Command Economy, though perhaps we could introduce some sort of hybrid model.

A "collective ownership" law representative of decentralized economic planning might better fit Syndicalism and also serve as additional necessary step for achieving communism, to better represent the "moneyless" part of a stateless classless moneyless society. I can link a description of a historical example of this sort of decentralized planning from the end of the period if convenient.