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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #92 - Companies

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Hello and welcome back to a new round of Victoria 3 dev diaries! Today we’re going to be talking about Companies, a new free feature being added in the 1.5 update, which will be available to test and feedback on in the first version of the 1.5 open beta.

As we have previously mentioned, one of our major focuses for the 1.5 update is to improve the replayability and challenge in the core economic gameplay loop, and the main purpose of the Companies feature is to do just that by encouraging countries to specialize in certain industries and develop competitive advantages against other nations. Companies are also intended to add more flavor and differences in gameplay between different nations, as well as giving players more of a reason to care about prestige and their position in global national rankings.

Before I go into the nitty-gritty, I should mention that this dev diary is going to be focused mainly on the Companies feature in the form that will be available in the first open beta release, with a fairly narrow focus on achieving the above design goals for economic specialization, flavor and prestige. However, Companies is a feature that we consider to have near limitless potential for expanding on and hooking into more parts of the game, so I’ll wrap up the dev diary by mentioning some of the ideas we have for building on this feature in the future. Also, please note that this is very much a feature under development, so expect placeholder/WIP art, names, numbers and interfaces!

But enough preamble, let’s get into the details. Companies are national-level entities that are established by a country, with each country being able to support a certain number of companies based on factors such as technology and laws. The vast majority of countries will not start with the ability to support any companies, but will need to reach a certain level of society tech before their first company becomes available.

Each Company is associated with a certain set of building types, for example a Company specializing in metal mines might be associated with Iron Mines and Lead Mines, while a more agriculturally inclined company might instead be associated with certain types of plantations and/or farms.

To establish a company, you need to have the technology and resource potential to construct at least one of their associated building types - it’s currently possible to establish companies without having any of their associated buildings built, though this is something we will be actively looking for feedback from the open beta on how it feels, as it’s something of an immersion versus gameplay question. Flavored companies (more on those below) have other more specific requirements to be established in addition to these basic requirements.

A selection of potential candidates for Sweden’s first company: Combine of Fisheries and the United Forestry Conglomerate are immediately available, while the buildings of Wine & Fruit Inc are… not so suitable to the Swedish climate and hence will only be available if Sweden acquires some warmer lands with potential for those resources.
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Once established, a Company will have effects on all buildings of their associated building type in their parent country. These effects are twofold: They increase the throughput of the buildings, as well as the construction efficiency when constructing new levels of the associated building types. The degree by which companies boost their associated buildings is partially scaled based on the Prestige ranking of their parent nation, with the 3rd-ranked nation gaining a larger boost than the 4th-ranked nation and so on. While somewhat abstracted, this is meant to represent competitive benefits the company enjoys from the international status of their home country. The purpose of this effect as a game mechanic is to give players a direct economic reason to care about their overall prestige ranking versus other nations.

It’s also worth noting that in conjunction with this change, we have increased the base construction cost of all buildings and, through the change to local pricing, somewhat lowered the base economic efficiency of most buildings. The overall intent is that the baseline economy should be less efficient, with companies allowing countries to make up the difference in select areas, providing the incentive for specialization and competitive advantages mentioned above. However, one exception to this is that base construction production was increased from 5 to 10 to ensure the baseline slowdown of construction did not make small nations entirely unviable to play.

While the majority of the construction efficiency increase from companies does not depend on your prestige ranking, Sweden’s relatively high placement on the global scoreboard does give its companies an additional edge.
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Established Companies also have Productivity and Prosperity ratings. Productivity is simply the average Productivity (yearly average earnings per employee) of all its associated building levels. This is compared against the global average Productivity of all companies in the world, with companies that are doing better than average gaining Prosperity over time, and companies below a certain threshold (which is lower than the threshold for gaining Prosperity) losing it instead.

If a Company reaches 100 Prosperity, its Prosperity modifier will activate, granting a company-specific bonus to its parent nation. This is intended to add an additional dimension to the selection of companies - do you simply want to focus on whatever resources are going to be most profitable for your nation, or aim to build up a specific industry for the bonuses it can give you? As an example, a player that is planning to play a particularly aggressive campaign may want to focus on building up an arms-industry related Company for the military advantages it can grant.

The Agricultural Development Society is doing well enough compared to other companies that its Prosperity is increasing, which will please the Rural Folk once Prosperity hits 100.
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As we hinted at earlier in the dev diary, Companies come in two varieties: Standard and Flavored. Standard Companies are ones that are available to all nations unless replaced by a Flavored Company, while Flavored Companies tend to be restricted to a certain culture and/or geographical region. For example, a North German nation that owns certain parts of the Rhineland will have certain historical German companies available to them.

Flavored companies are mostly historical (but not always, as sometimes we have to go a bit alt-history), with a set of building types based around their real-life historical business focuses, and tend to have stronger or more interesting prosperity bonuses than the standard companies. Flavored companies may sometimes replace very similar Standard companies, but this is the exception rather than the rule, most Flavored companies do not replace Standard companies.

Alright, that’s the general gist of what Companies will look like when you first get your hands on it in the 1.5 open beta. As I mentioned at the beginning though, there is a lot of places we envision taking this feature in the future, so here are a few examples of that, though you definitely shouldn’t expect all of this be in scope for the 1.5 update:
  • Having companies ‘level up’ beyond just a single prosperity bonus, possibly in a way that ties into diplomacy/rank and replaces the current company bonuses from prestige
  • Having pops, specific buildings in specific states, Interest Groups, and/or characters more directly associated with Companies instead of them just being a national-level entity
  • Companies having political and/or geopolitical ambitions (for example, a certain fruit-company might wish to create some, ahem, fruit-focused republics)
  • Multinational companies that aren’t limited to a single country

I’ll sign off by leaving you a bonus screenshot of the first companies added to the game in the earliest iteration of the feature. Sadly, neither Björnmetall nor Martin’s Fish Tank Emporium will be available in the 1.5 version of the game.
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That’s all for today! Join us again next week as we go over what other additions changes you can expect to be coming in the 1.5 open beta, with a particular focus on the military. See you then!
 
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I'm skeptical.

This just looks like more state capitalism to me. Not only that, but it would seem to trend toward an oligopolistic economy by virtue of the fact that you'd have to have relatively few companies, or else the entire point is lost. If the design goal is to make the overall economy less efficient and make these named companies stand out, then you're all but forced to steer your economy into a few concentrated firms like these. I don't see any way to simulate a vibrant economy that is driven by many small firms. Or even simulate the fact that the titans of yesteryear are irrelevant dinosaurs of today. In any given, say, quarter century, the dominant firms in a dynamic economy are going to roll over almost completely. In the 1880s, you would not want to run afoul of the railroad tycoons. In the 1980s? Psh.

Not only that, but it doesn't look like there's any advantage in having multiple companies in the same industry, from what I can tell. Even though that is hardly rare. Yes, you might have monopolies, such as Standard Oil or Carnegie Steel. But you also have oligopolies, like Ford, GM, and Chrysler.

I also am extremely skeptical of the idea of comparative national advantages, as a general topic of actual economics. I know its been a constant feature of economic textbooks for centuries, but it only makes sense for relatively small, geographically compact, and culturally homogenous nations. Lets use the classic example from the textbooks: Britain has a competitive advantage in beer, Portugal has a competitive advantage in wine. Britain trades its beer to Portugal, and Portugal trades its win to Britain. Hooray, everyone has more, better, and cheaper beer and wine than if both countries produced their own. Except... what if one country annexed the other? If the UK included Portugal, would we expect the Portuguese vinters to become brewers? Or should the British brewers become vinters?

Of course not, and we all intuitively know thats silly. Yet, in real life, national economies are regarded in such simplistic terms. And, of course, in the game, it looks that, by capping companies on a per-nation basis, you'll get the same result. If you can only support one company as Britain, and you've just conquered Portugal, all of a sudden, all those expert Portuguese vinters are now going to be much worse at their job than they were before annexation.

A genuine problem for a game produced by a company that is known for map painting.

At the very least, companies should be partially a state-level affair, so that larger countries can support more companies than smaller countries. I'm not sure what the best formula for that would be.

And I think that a re-examinization of the merits of monopolistic, oligopolistic, and polypolistic economic structures is warranted. Vicky 2 had that, but only as a passive buff.

And have companies rise and fall, organically.
 
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I don’t need to wait the Open Beta to say, that players will say that Companies should start as state based entity with ability to expand to other regions and only after this to become nationwide entity
So why you didn’t make it like this in the first place?
We need to start somewhere and need to assign our resources wisely. As you may well know there's tons of other stuff coming to 1.5 (Military and such). That doesn't mean it's off the table forever, just that it's not going to be in the first version that we work on.
Companies growing over time is definitely an interesting idea which we will think about more in the future.
 
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@lachek

Can you add a graph to show how specific POPs have fluctuated? Also maybe add to the population UI an indicator showing how many people have been born, died, immigrated, and emmigrated in the past year if possible.
 
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Would that be connected with AI strategies? Meaning if the country has a certain Aspiration to build, say, dye plantations, the AI nation would prioritize states with dye production?
Yes, if we get around to introduce the Ambition/Aspiration system, AI strategies would surely be influenced by that. But as mentioned, we're not releasing Companies with that for this Open Beta release. We hope to get there at a later stage.
 
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Really love the idea of companies and how they could help into countries specialization.

However I think that would be better if companies could be established autonomously without the intervention of the State with a random chance based on the amount of buildings that would go under that specific company. Then I would personally restrict this mechanic to both:
  • the Economic System Laws: under Command Economy you have to establish them manually but you can also do it preemptively (for example a Command Economy Sweden could establish that Wine&Fruit Inc. without owning any of those plantation); under Interventionism you can establish them but they will also naturally form by themselves; and then under Laissez-Faire you can no longer establish them but they have twice the chance to be founded.
  • and the Game Rules (under the directly controlled investment pool setting you can create the companies regardless of the economic system).
 
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This seems like an interesting addition and I hope it works out, I have a small dose of scepticism surrounding:

1. At least some historical companies will be essentially hardcoded unique "cultural" bonuses, which is something that I have an inherent dislike of from years of EU4 silliness

2. I find it hard to imagine a design space where, let's say, a mining company and a fruit company are equally desirable. Hopefully you'll manage to square this circle, but I can envision the "best" companies being the ones which support the stuff everyone wants to do already - coal, iron, steel, wood.
We will have to keep an eye on how it feels. Right now, we feel like it's a good starting point with lots of room for growth for later releases.
Same is true for the balance between the different companies. Some imbalance is fine and really not a big problem. But of course we will strive to keep it within a reasonable range.
Thanks for voicing your concern though! They are valid points.
 
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Maybe you said it and I missed it, but will companies own specific buildings, for example Standard Oil would own the oil fields in Kansas and Texas, but not the ones in Nebraska, or is it where the company's ownership is abstracted away and Standard Oil is benefiting from all oil fields in the country?
No, to clarify because I've seen it a couple of times in this thread:
In this release of the open beta (and probably also not with the release of 1.5), Companies do NOT own specific buildings. Rather, they affect whole sectors of buildings, e.g. ALL steel mills in your country.
Of course we had the same thought about making specific buildings attached to Companies but it's a lot more complicated to setup. So for now, they're not but we will investigate in the future what we can and want to do there (if anything).
I've seen the proposal to rename the category from "buildings" to "sectors" and I think that's a good idea to improve the perception of the feature. Thank you!
 
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I'm a little bit disappointed. I hoped companies would finally allow a mechanic that is (in my opinion atleast) really necessary for properly simulating the economy of the time period: Colonizers funneling away the wealth from the colonies. Due to the (capitalist) owners of the buildings in the colonies having to live in the colonies, they often end up richer than the homelands. Unrealistic and annoying, because you need the qualifying pops in the colonies.

When i read companies, i hoped they could own buildings, while they pay out cash to their shareholders themself, solving that problem in a elegant way.

Hope you will go this way in the future (or maybe find a better way). Still love your work on Victoria! Great game, great team!
 
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Excellent DD and extremely exciting feature! Can't wait to try this out!

That said, while I don't expect this to be available at the Open Beta (or 1.5, for that matter), have you considered a more "hands-on" approach, where the player can select industries to form a company, with dynamic modifiers for "compatibility" of industries, kind of like legitimacy for the government? I.e., while different crops are pretty much the same and iron leads into steel, having a "coal + dyes" company makes no sense, and so would be extremely inefficient.

As you said, the potential is endless and I, for one, love the direction the game is going in!
 
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The 1.5 implementation reminds me a bit of design companies in HOI4. They're not actually companies in that they're competing with other industries in your country, they're a national bonus that you can select based on what industry you'd like to focus more on.

The future ideas seem very interesting though, with multinational companies and "Aspirations". Definitely a lot of potential, but I think people are maybe letting their fantasy run wild with what's being implemented for 1.5.
 
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Will Companies contribute to research? In that era a lot of innovation came from private investment, rather than public ventures, as they had excess capital to invest for technology.

Would be interesting if lets say a strong Heavy Industry company will contribute innovation strictly to technologies of their category. But also means they will have adopters/innovation advantage and ONLY their building will get to use updated production methods to get edge over competitors for a certain period of time.
Or honestly upgrading production methods should cost construction and money, it doesn't make sense how you can upgrade hundreds of buildings instantly for no cost, which is the biggest fault of the game and economic gameplay currently.
 
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Given 1.5 will have more focus on economy , are you guys considering expanding the array of outputs and inputs of the factories? For instance. Instead of having glasswork consume oil when using PM plastics, chemical industries will consume oil to generate plastics and then plastics will be consumed by factories and pops.
There are currently no plans for 1.5 that would go in that direction.
 
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PLEASE make the names dynamic, especially based on states in your country or a name from a generated character.

EDIT:
Would be cool if something like "Khuzestan Oil Co." forms based on good in that state, or "Jackson Steel" based on random name.
We will investigate this, but it's definitely not coming with the first release of the beta. But I've taken a note to take a closer look.
 
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Not at this point, but it's a thought we had as well. Maybe in the future.
That's the nice thing about companies - there's no shortage of ideas what one can do with them.
Please not, just show where the HQ is based in the company screen and it will be done fine. Having it be an actual building will clog up the UI screen more and will offer nothing new. This feels like too much like EU4/Stellaris abstraction that doesn't belong in this game.
 
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Ah, another dream of mine for the vicky series coming to life...keep up the good work guys!
 
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While I love this feature Im not sure about companies (or rather conglomerates since it seems those are no simple companies) being a state based activity. It would be far more interesting to have these companies arise naturally. By simply tying the spawning chance for a X type of a company to existing buildings and their profitability it would still allow the player to influence what companies are created and make it so that this whole mechanic is far more reactive to what is actually happening in the world. So say if one decided to build a economy heavily focused on coal extraction and build quite a lot of profitable coal mines that would almost guarantee that a coal related company would arise. That would still leave space for state owned companies so companies created by the players themselves. The player could then use one of their company slots to instead create their own state owned company and pick exactly which type they want to create. Of course both of these should depend on what laws are in play so say a laissez-faire law should either make it impossible to create new state-owned companies or at least make it very hard to do and limit their number. I think that would be a far more interesting system to engage with compared to the player just being able to completely customise what companies are created in their country. The creation of autonomous investment and other mechanics intended to make the game feel more alive were a good direction and Im somewhat concerned that these companies are taken in the opposite direction.
We've talked about making Companies appear more "naturally" and we're still investigating options there.
For the first release of the open beta it's not going to happen though.
Furthermore two questions:
In the current system how will companies interact with economic and other laws?
There are already ownership methods for buildings will those interact at all with companies? So for example would companies not affect guild owned buildings or be available only for buildings with public stock ownership?
As mentioned before on laws: We will add more differences between laws in their relation to Companies in the future, not for the first release though.
On the ownership methods: Currently there's no impact. We'll see if we want to change that going forward.
And one more suggestion:
Would it be possible to make companies employ a certain number of capitalists which would take away a portion of the profits of all buildings associated with the company for themselves? It would be a interesting way to represent stock owners and since the company would now have its own pops with certain wealth it could perhaps enable expanding the mechanic in the future to say make companies able to invest or acquire assets autonomously?
Might be possible, but we haven't investigated it very far. Maybe we will take another look at that in the future, not for the open beta though most likely.
 
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-Are characters with their own entrepreneurial agendas gonna be added down the line? Ie someone like rockerfeller appearing and having the majority of shares of oil in the USA and be able to influence the parties for his own goals?

-Is the stock market feature gonna be expanded upon ie the nation builts a railroad and the capitalists build another and we have 50/50 share and we split revenue and be able to sell/buy or nationalize the industry?

-Are the raw materials like coal and iron gonna be expanded upon at the start of the game like for example the starting industry to be Coal and Iron pits that will give a very small amount of resources without being needed to be built but just to cover the starting needs of a nation
 
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