Home Trending Latest threads New posts Developer diaries
Jump to latest Follow Reply
  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Victoria 3 11708 Bug Reports 7414 User Mods 529 Multiplayer 64 Suggestions 3133 Tech Support 905 After Action Reports (AARs)
Previous dev diary Next dev diary
Show only dev responses

Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #148 - Prestige Goods

16_9.jpg

​
Hello Victorians,

and a Happy Thursday! Lino, Game Design Lead here, and talking to you today about Prestige Goods. Keep in mind that today is a public holiday in Sweden, so while I’ll be around to answer some burning questions, more answers will have to wait until we’re officially back at work on Monday.

Prestige Goods are going to be part of Charters of Commerce, our upcoming Mechanics Pack which releases on June 17 alongside the free 1.9 Update.

Before we begin: As always, any values, texts, designs, graphics etc. are work in progress and are subject to change.

Well then, let’s take a look at Prestige Goods.

Prestige Goods​

Prestige Goods are a feature we have wanted to do for a while. In my internal pitch for Companies I had brought up a different variant of the feature already - at this point almost two years ago. So we are happy to be able to bring them to you now of course.

From this, you can tell already that there is a strong connection between Prestige Goods and Companies. In fact, Prestige Goods can only be produced by Companies. In some cases, they represent particular brands or products these Companies produced, in other cases they are more of a quality label for a type of product. At the end of this Dev Diary I am showcasing a couple of examples if you are curious.

Something worth noting is they are variants of existing goods, not new goods. For example Champagne is a Prestige Good variant of regular Wine. This has a couple of advantages, most importantly the performance is not nearly as affected by this as it would be if we introduced this large number of new goods. They are part of the same buy packages, serve as the same inputs and outputs as regular goods etc., with some differences which I’ll go over later.
Additionally, there can be multiple Prestige Good variants of any given good, for example we are introducing three different Prestige silk versions.

So how are Prestige Goods produced?

Production​

Companies can only ever produce one Prestige Good type. A company that is prosperous will be able to produce their assigned Prestige Good.
You might be wondering: what makes certain Prestige Goods truly unique? Well, we made sure to include about 50 historical examples of goods and companies that were iconic for the era - keeping both immersion and replayability in mind.
For example the Manufacture d'armes de Saint-Étienne Company in France will start producing the Prestige Good Saint-Etienne Rifles instead of regular small arms as soon as they hit the prosperity threshold. All company-owned building levels get the new blueprints and get to work on them, while all other weapon manufacturers in the country continue producing boring standard rifles. So while other companies around the world might be able to produce a generic Prestige Small Arms, there can be only one true producer of Saint-Etienne Rifles(TM)!
It doesn't necessarily mean that France has an exclusive right to that good - as country borders can always change.

Unique icon showcasing the production of the new rifles has begun
DD148_01.png

​
Once you have at least one Prestige Good variant of a good in the market, we need to show that somehow of course. For that, we can expand the entry of a good and show all Prestige Good variants of this good that are part of the market and can see how high their share is.

Here’s an example for how this entry looks on the World Market, there’s a filter to disable the fold-out entries too
DD148_02.png

​
While we wanted to make Prestige Goods somewhat special, we didn’t want to exclude all companies that lacked a good historical example. So, for all other companies that lack a historical Prestige Good, players will get a Journal Entry with the additional requirement of becoming one of the top three producers of the according good to start production of a “generic” kind of Prestige Good, e.g. Prestige Cloth or Prestige Iron rather than a special name and look.

It may not be Haute Couture, but Spanish fashion could still become a thing
DD148_03.png

​
Now let’s look at the effects that Prestige Goods have when they are being produced and introduced into your market.

Effects​

The effects of Prestige Goods are manifold. In general one can say that they are more desired and of higher quality than their regular good counterparts and the higher the percentage of Prestige Goods, the better it is generally.

For one, of course Prestige Goods increase the prestige of the country where the producing company is located. This behaves like the top-producer Prestige gain for a regular good, but with a significantly higher bonus. So if you are the number one Prestige Wood producer, you can collect a nice Prestige bonus for example.

“The French produce the best wine, clearly! And guns too.”
DD148_04.png

​
On the World Market, Prestige Goods provide a trade advantage bonus based on the percentage of goods of that type that are Prestige Goods. This calculation is market area based, so for example if 50% of all iron in France is a form of Prestige Good iron, they receive 50 Trade advantage on exports from France for that particular Prestige Good. But if in one of their colonies the share of Prestige Good iron is only 25%, exports from that colony would only receive a 25% trade advantage bonus, without affecting the exports from France mainland itself.

Note the +85.9 trade advantage from 85.9% of all Small Arms production being a Prestige Good
DD148_05.png

​
Buildings consume Prestige Goods as input goods too. Based on the share of Prestige Goods, they are profiting from increased throughput.

Prestigious Swedish Oregrounds Iron helps to increase the throughput of this Tooling Workshop
DD148_06.png

Now what would be the point of producing prestigious Saint-Étienne Rifles if you couldn’t show them off on the battlefield too?

Prestige Goods also increase Offense, Defense and Morale recovery.

They shoot extra accurate
DD148_07.png

​
Pops also heard about the new shiny Prestige Goods - and they want them. As you may know, goods that are consumed by Pops are organized in a couple of need categories, e.g. basic food or luxury drinks.
Within a category, Pops will consume more of a particular good depending how much of it is a Prestige Good. For example if you have a lot of Champagne, say 80% of all wine, but none of the other goods in the luxury drinks category has any Prestige Good, Pops will shift some of their spending from tea and coffee towards wine. If all goods were Prestige Goods, nothing would change about their spending.
Additionally, we also increase the chance of Pops getting obsessed with a particular good, increasing with the percentage of Prestige Goods variants of that good.

Closing thoughts​

Alright, that’s our walkthrough for the new Prestige Goods mechanic. I’d like to end today by showcasing some of the fantastic work that our 2D artists have done to make these new Prestige Goods shine.

Some historical ones + all “generic” Prestige Goods made by Ingela
DD148_08.png


More historical ones made by Kenneth, don’t you want to bite into that River Plate Beef?
DD148_09.png

That’s it for today. Next week already, Tunay (aka Doodlez) will be writing about some other changes that we made for the 1.9 Update. What exactly that entails, you will have to check out yourself.

Until then, have a Happy Thursday and goodbye!
 
  • 123Like
  • 73Love
  • 9
  • 6
  • 1
Reactions:
Sort by date Sort by reaction score
PDX_H4n1baL said:
Two things:
1. We can't base it off the company, because every company around the world that can produce a generic prestige good will produce the same one. So for example Bavarian Motor Corporation and Motor Corp Virgina will produce the same good "Prestige Cars".
2. The renaming is an entirely separate feature. As mentioned, we can try and look into that in the future.
Click to expand...
I'm excited for this feature. I get that generic prestige goods can't be named after their company because they all point to the same good on the backend. But would it be possible to still get some more immersive names?

Could you use some custom localization to insert the country adjective, something like “country_adjective good_name” like “American Liquor”.

If not that, maybe just change the word “Prestige” to “Quality”, which in my opinion, sounds better across the board.
 
  • 4Like
  • 1
Reactions:
You have no idea how happy I am seeing Clyde built steamers on the list. I feel Glasgow as a whole has gotten a really raw deal from Victoria 3, glad they're getting some recognition
 
  • 1
Reactions:
I saw the example of prestige goods mentioned in your latest development journal. In it, the Catalonia Textile Corporation needs Spain to be in the top 3 globally for clothes production in order to produce Prestige Clothes. That seems really strange — why is the requirement based on the country's production ranking, instead of the company's own production?

For example, if I'm playing the Netherlands and my rubber company has monopolized rubber production in my subject, the Dutch East Indies, extracting and exporting huge quantities and holding the global top share — then what? Because the Netherlands proper doesn’t produce rubber, my rubber company can’t produce prestige goods?

And the Dutch East Indies, despite having abundant rubber production locally, can’t open a rubber company due to my monopoly — so they also can’t produce prestige rubber goods?

Under your current rules, the world’s number one rubber extraction and trading company is unable to produce prestige goods — that just doesn’t make sense.
In reality, most of Nike’s shoes are manufactured in Vietnam — but would you seriously attribute this globally renowned brand to Vietnam just because of that?
 
  • 1
  • 1
Reactions:
How does prestige goods interact with trade? Say Sweden is exporting 200 prestige iron, adding up to 20% of sell orders on the world market. Would that give all importers 20% prestige iron, or is it depending on trade advantages? Do I get more prestige iron if I have trade deals with Sweden?
 
  • 1
Reactions:
I really like V3, but prestige goods are too gamey for me. You shouldn't get so much bonuses by having prestige goods. Or, if you do, they should be of a higher base price.

One of the big points when I introduce the game to my mates is that it's not like, let's say, eu4 where you get a lot of bonuses out of air just increasing numbers of income or unit stats without any side effects like you
'd need to pay more for it. And now you add that stuff to Vicky 3.
I'm sorry, but this is a big L
 
  • 4
  • 1Like
  • 1
Reactions:
Aidayen said:
I really like V3, but prestige goods are too gamey for me. You shouldn't get so much bonuses by having prestige goods. Or, if you do, they should be of a higher base price.

One of the big points when I introduce the game to my mates is that it's not like, let's say, eu4 where you get a lot of bonuses out of air just increasing numbers of income or unit stats without any side effects like you
'd need to pay more for it. And now you add that stuff to Vicky 3.
I'm sorry, but this is a big L
Click to expand...
How I see it, it's not coming out of thin air, but large companies have a better way to standardize stuff than traditional producers. Therefore, they have more trade advantage (because the buyer gets the quality they expect) and perform better when used in industries or on the battlefield. The companies don't pay more to get that quality, they are just better at organizing stuff efficiently.

A higher base price does not make much sense: I pay less for an IKEA couch nowadays than a couch from an independent furniture store. Fiddling with base prices sound more like "coming out of thin air" to me tbh.
 
Last edited:
null12345 said:
I'm excited for this feature. I get that generic prestige goods can't be named after their company because they all point to the same good on the backend. But would it be possible to still get some more immersive names?

Could you use some custom localization to insert the country adjective, something like “country_adjective good_name” like “American Liquor”.

If not that, maybe just change the word “Prestige” to “Quality”, which in my opinion, sounds better across the board.
Click to expand...
This change is most likely much more complicated from programming point of view than it seems.

I would imagine that they can't have the same good under different names - and from what I understood all companies making "prestige gizmo" are making the exact same thing from architectural point of view.

Maybe in future patch they will be able to change their architecture to allow it, but certainly not any time soon.
 
So after seeing how Victoria 3 handles Prestige Goods, I honestly can’t stop thinking about how perfect this system would be in games set way back in antiquity or the medieval era.

In Vic 3, having something like Champagne instead of just Wine is such a vibe—it makes companies feel way more alive and connected to the world. Now imagine that, but with ancient or medieval stuff. Not just “wine,” but Falernian wine from Rome. Or Phoenician purple dye, Egyptian linen, Athenian olive oil in antiquity. Then jump forward to medieval times—Damascus steel, Venetian glass, Flemish cloth, Toledo blades. All those iconic goods could be Prestige Goods versions, just like in Victoria 3.

Same mechanics: boosts to trade, military buffs, more prestige, maybe even cultural obsession effects. Just like Vic 3, but with togas or chainmail.

I really hope more games (especially ones set in older times) steal(?) this idea.
 
  • 3Like
  • 1
Reactions:
I'm concerned, if it would make Companies too desirable.

Even in current build, Company-owned Building offer huge advantages over State-owned ones. Throughput bonus, construction efficiency bonus, Company-soecific prosperity bonus, Economy of Scale bonus, better reinvestment efficiency, pumping up goods demands and empowering progressive IGs with rich Capitalists employed at Headquaters. All that while offering no actual serious drawback. It makes Laisses-Faire clearly superior to other laws in it's group, just for the sheer fact of having one more Company available.

If we don't want Vic3 to end up with Free Market Paradise meta as the only optimal way of playing every country, we should weaken the Companies somehow. Otherwise, all the other forms (Command Economy, Worker Cooperatives etc.) will serve RP purpose only.

Since Prestige Goods are already meant to represent Company's streamlining, efficiency of production, and inmovativeness, I don't think they still need their other bonuses, which were meant to represent these, so much. This, and/or give Companies some drawbacks, like meddling in Country's internal politics, lobbying for/against other Countries, artifically raising the prices (with detriment to Pops SoL) after becoming monopole etc.
 
  • 5Like
  • 2
  • 1
Reactions:
Claudius84 said:
How I see it, it's not coming out of thin air, but large companies have a better way to standardize stuff than traditional producers. Therefore, they have more trade advantage (because the buyer gets the quality they expect) and perform better when used in industries or on the battlefield. The companies don't pay more to get that quality, they are just better at organizing stuff efficiently.

A higher base price does not make much sense: I pay less for an IKEA couch nowadays than a couch from an independent furniture store. Fiddling with base prices sound more like "coming out of thin air" to me tbh.
Click to expand...
You see, companies already have bonus throughput that represents what you're talking here about. And on top of that, company prestige goods will also have throughput bonus. That one is the problem.
 
  • 2Like
  • 1
  • 1
Reactions:
Hopciu said:
I'm concerned, if it would make Companies too desirable.

Even in current build, Company-owned Building offer huge advantages over State-owned ones. Throughput bonus, construction efficiency bonus, Company-soecific prosperity bonus, Economy of Scale bonus, better reinvestment efficiency, pumping up goods demands and empowering progressive IGs with rich Capitalists employed at Headquaters. All that while offering no actual serious drawback. It makes Laisses-Faire clearly superior to other laws in it's group, just for the sheer fact of having one more Company available.

If we don't want Vic3 to end up with Free Market Paradise meta as the only optimal way of playing every country, we should weaken the Companies somehow. Otherwise, all the other forms (Command Economy, Worker Cooperatives etc.) will serve RP purpose only.

Since Prestige Goods are already meant to represent Company's streamlining, efficiency of production, and inmovativeness, I don't think they still need their other bonuses, which were meant to represent these, so much. This, and/or give Companies some drawbacks, like meddling in Country's internal politics, lobbying for/against other Countries, artifically raising the prices (with detriment to Pops SoL) after becoming monopole etc.
Click to expand...
As it often happens, I agree with you.
While I'm really happy that devs threw out some initial game pillars (like controlled IP), there were some abstractions I'd prefer they kept.
Namely, two economic bases, set in stone in 1.0
1) there is nothing to affect price but supply and demand. Price is a very straightforward function of those two and nothing else
2) quality is transformed into quantity. When you receive a better PM, you don't get "improved tools" with their own price, you just get more tools
There are drawbacks to them, but I ultimately believe they were a wonderful, very elegant and simple abstraction.

Now, with 1.9, both get broken, and I don't find the reasons anywhere near convincing.
1) monopolies increase price not by creating scarcity, but out of thin air
2) prestige status does not give output/throughput bonus, it somehow creates a new version of good that newer PMs don't

Let's see how this would play, but I tend to think this is an architectural shot in one's foot. Which is especially frustrating as there were options to introduce roughly the same effects without breaking the basics.
 
  • 5
  • 2Like
  • 1Love
  • 1
Reactions:
Hopciu said:
, better reinvestment efficiency, pumping up goods demands and empowering progressive IGs with rich Capitalists employed at Headquaters. All that while offering no actual serious drawback. It makes Laisses-Faire clearly superior to other laws in it's group, just for the sheer fact of having one more Company available.
Click to expand...
It was mentioned in the previous diaries that they do want to make empowering companies to be a dangerous decision but they dont have the time now. The downside of lascia-fare economy though less explicit is that if you dont want capitalist IG and dont want them to have a huge consumption, you are better to control everything by yourself
 
Will there ever be an option to turn off prestige goods, for performance reasons? Or a mod that could remove prestige goods altogether?

I ask because the game already runs poorly in late-game scenarios, so squeezing any blood from the performance stone would be nice.
 
  • 2Like
  • 1
  • 1
Reactions:
Sietrin said:
It was mentioned in the previous diaries that they do want to make empowering companies to be a dangerous decision but they dont have the time now.
Click to expand...
That's... bad. So, if making Companies dangerous isn't possible right now, at least make them less powerful, or it'll end up in a catastrophe. If we provide them with Prestige Goods, which indirectly increase their profitability, and increase throughput of buildings using them as input, then maybe we should deprive them of their inherent throughput bonus, or at least make State-owned ones equal in terms of EoS?
Sietrin said:
The downside of lascia-fare economy though less explicit is that if you dont want capitalist IG and dont want them to have a huge consumption, you are better to control everything by yourself
Click to expand...
The thing is, I can't really imagine a scenario, where my reluctance toward strong Industrialists IG could outweight such clear economic benefits.
 
  • 3Like
Reactions:
yurcick said:
1) monopolies increase price not by creating scarcity, but out of thin air
Click to expand...
You dont need scarcity to increase the price, if you need 10 food to survive I can charge you 10 coins instead of 5, you will still pay me by cutting your spending elsewhere.

yurcick said:
2) prestige status does not give output/throughput bonus, it somehow creates a new version of good that newer PMs don't
Click to expand...
A valid point but the pillar itself isnt that good to keep it. Just giving a +100% to stats just for the sake of it would not be enough to show the differences of the good having same quantity but still being more desirable for some reason
 
  • 1
Reactions:
It's a shame Champagne isn't limited to being produced in the Champagne region, but I hope the generic prestige wine name can be "Sparkling wine" rather than just "prestige wine" :)
 
  • 4Like
  • 3Haha
  • 2
Reactions:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back