A Snapshot Economic output of Venice in 16th Century to context of EU5

[Fluffy_Fishy]

I'm posting this as a question about how cities function in the game with the context of my understanding of major economic action within the specific city of Vencie during the 16th century with roughly specialised outputs and with the thought of how they interact really.

I'm hoping the game produces a similar setting of somewhat specialised outputs as was generally the case in this timeframe and would love to know and understand a little bit more, I'd be really sad to see cities basically become a homogeneous blob being where everywhere tends to feel insignificant which is sadly the case in vic3 in my opinion.

So I'll start out by saying the rough population of Venice was around 175,000, with population moving in and out of the city quite frequently due to the specific nature of the city of itself, more unstable than most other populations of cities of the era, but typically with an underlying core stable population of somewhere around 150,000 with 20-40,000 staying in purpose built trading dwellings and mostly originating from Germany, Italy and the Balkans.

The Economy is something I'm more focusing on with core trades being the lifeblood of the city and disproportionately part of output in no particular order:

• Shipbuilding (Including some gunfounding to supply to government ships)
  • Majority of this for domestic supply but it was also a significant export to help facilitate two way trade in foreign nations as well as centralise skills away from foreign powers.
• Printing + Art
  • An absolutely huge export, peaking at Venice typically producing something like just over half the supply of Books in Europe and the Mediterranean basin. Art becoming an increasingly important export to the city over this period.
• Glassblowing
  • Specialising in luxury products exported and reaching the whole world but also producing large amounts of more simple supplies for domestic use.
• Trade and Finance (Including hospitality of foreign traders)
  • Facilitating trade around the whole Mediterranean, Importing raw goods and exporting manufactured goods as well as the vital need for sustaining the city with food. Finance Including minting and exporting a stable trade currency in denominations of both gold and silver also being backed by national salt storage.
• Textiles (Including some furniture)
  • Another huge export with some specialist skills in lace kept secret in Venice as national importance
• Fishing/Hunting
  • Where agriculture isn't possible, huge numbers of people were employed to partially sustain the food needs, nearly all for domestic supply
• (Administration)
  • The Government centre, not always permanant work and often part time unless in specific positions, nevertheless a huge part of daily life for a significant portion of the city.

From this list it becomes quite obvious that one of Europes largest cities was very much not self sustaining in crafts and while a slightly more extreme example shows just how interwoven and inter-reliant late medieval and early modern cities were between each other. While there are some small cottage industries of most types, It feels disingenous to expand a city output to be much more than this, with Venice also being a major manufacturing centre that's not as specialised as some other cities of the era such as famous examples like Liecester for woolenworks.

Imports are the life of a city, from agriculture to basic goods!

I hope so much this is properly modelled in the game where there's limits to what a city can produce with it being increasingly difficult to diversify too much within a single city


Thank you so much for reading if you got this far, I'd be really interested to hear views

 

[Álvaro Núñez de Lara]

• Trade and Finance (Including hospitality of foreign traders)
  • Facilitating trade around the whole Mediterranean, Importing raw goods and exporting manufactured goods as well as the vital need for sustaining the city with food. Finance Including minting and exporting a stable trade currency in denominations of both gold and silver also being backed by national salt storage.
• Textiles (Including some furniture)
  • Another huge export with some specialist skills in lace kept secret in Venice as national importance

What worries me about this is that there seems to be no system to model specialization and craftsmanship. Anyone from day one, as far as I know, can start manufactoring fine cloth, completely destroying north Italy's and Netherlands industry and outcompeting them.

While that may sound fair and fun, it really isn't if anyone can do it as the game fails to simulate country differentiation. You may say that you are limited by the amount of dye and other resources required to produce fine cloth, and only trading nation such as Hansa, Flanders and the Italian cities are in a position to secure those imports. That's the other problem with the game. Anyone can just spam markets and monopolize markets, rendering nations like Venice, Flanders, Genoa, Hansa etc completely not only useless and un-unique at producing fine crafts like fine cloths, but also at being specialized trading nations, as there is no edge for trading nations nor no cap for non trading nations. Serbia can become the world trade centre by just spamming markets. There is no skill or mechanic involved.

So I am afraid that as soon as you star the game you just need to spam trade markets and fine cloth guilds and you will just outcompete and destroy any historical producer and become the world richest trading and manufacturing nation. With no skill or gameplay at all involved except spaming a couple of buildings.

At least that is the impresion I got from the footag. I REALLY hope I am wrong. But I do not care for people making up excuses based on supositions. If it is a problem it is a huge problem that while it leads to "fun sandobx" experience, it kills replayability and makes playing different nations "samey" bared their unique flavour they may have. So I would rather to no see any excuses and if it is an issue the devs need to sit and think of a new design solution to represent this so it actually becomes a very hard and time consuming challenge to dethrone Flanders as the provider of fine cloth of north western europe, or to replace Venize as the main arbitrage centre of Europe between east and west or the Hansa as the main trading nation in all of northern Europe.

While there are some small cottage industries of most types, It feels disingenous to expand a city output to be much more than this, with Venice also being a major manufacturing centre that's not as specialised as some other cities of the era such as famous examples like Liecester for woolenworks.

Again, with a mechanical clean slate for all nations that currently exists, any nation can easily become in the first few decades a manufactoring behemoth. Problematic. There does not seem to be a mechanic to simulate cottage industry and how difficult and expensive it is to transition. Given building's ridiculously cheap prices and OP trade figures, either the player or the burghers will just spam lots of industries very early on very cheaply and very easily.

I hope so much this is properly modelled in the game where there's limits to what a city can produce with it being increasingly difficult to diversify too much within a single city

I don't think this will be achieved. Because of control and market access, you are pushed to build everything in a single city or the towns closest ones, as market access and control means you get less output and tax. On the other hand the efficiency bonus for upgrading an industry might lead, at least end game, to choose to specialize so your limited population can focus on one industry. This is hard, if not impossible, to know without playing the game. It just depends on balance and numbers. So if you you are playing as England, you have little to no reason to build anything in York, as from control you will lose a huge chunk of your industry output. This might be good to simulate the capital being the industrial centre and the rest of the country focus on RGO resources which are not affected by control. It's not, however, very realistic, but to an extent it is true that capitals always had more industry because they are, well, capitals, but it does not mean there are no other industrial centres by any stretch at all. So not ideal either. Not sure how can they fix this proble. Maybe control should not affect building outputs? Not sure how that would affect balance though, it might not as long as you slightly tweak control to make up for the increase number of goods being sold to the market.

 

[LordThanatos]

What worries me about this is that there seems to be no system to model specialization and craftsmanship. Anyone from day one, as far as I know, can start manufactoring fine cloth, completely destroying north Italy's and Netherlands industry and outcompeting them.

That's a very good point. My mind immediately goes to both the cloth industry as you've mentioned, and of course the famous glassworks of Venice - the methods behind which were protected for years. I'd not expect a totally unique good for every regionally famous export (And that's not very dynamic) but I'd love if at some point there were a system introduced which added product prestige and/or quality into the mix. It'd be great to focus your energies on say a particular sort of alcohol, or furniture or something and have it pay off as your product becomes more expensive and desired.

I think it's a little late for something like that by release, though.

 

[Álvaro Núñez de Lara]

That's a very good point. My mind immediately goes to both the cloth industry as you've mentioned, and of course the famous glassworks of Venice - the methods behind which were protected for years. I'd not expect a totally unique good for every regionally famous export (And that's not very dynamic) but I'd love if at some point there were a system introduced which added product prestige and/or quality into the mix. It'd be great to focus your energies on say a particular sort of alcohol, or furniture or something and have it pay off as your product becomes more expensive and desired.

I think it's a little late for something like that by release, though.

Yeah no way to make it to release. They can only do tweaks like add unique buildings, different building caps for different tags and other artificial tweaks. I would not be opposed but still would not be ideal. I would expect eventually to get maybe a system of skill? Or link literacy to production? Something that increases very very slowly. Literacy affects too many other things so it would become too meta? Dont know but something that increase very slowly and you actually have to work hard towards. Outcompeting the flemish in an industry in which they have accumulated knowhow should be extremely difficult. Like for instance in Castile, Segovia, they tried. And they did have a booming industry through the 17th century. But at the end of it all it was not able to compete with the english clothing industry entering into the 17-18th century in the international market. It simply couldnt. So it should be difficult in the game to be able to achieve it.

I am expecting once after a few months or a couple of years hype dies a bit and people catch up to the fact of how boring it is, the devs will introduce such mechanic to add a challenge to the tall play/economic playstyle.

Or im wrong, nobody cares because they just want to easily blob and become the best at everything without effort so the devs never touch it. But i doubt people will be too happy with Flanders, Florence, Venice etc being completely irrelevant and easy to kick out of the competition. Will have to see.

 

[Fluffy_Fishy]

I'm going to go away and think a little harder about what you've both said so far but my instant thoughts are that there must be a simple "trade secrets" (building?) that shouldn't be too hard to implement and if its on a similar system to eu4 it could be on a 6 month pulse or something which could be lost, gain power, or gradually move elsewhere. There should sometimres be costs to the nation trying to maintain it and competition should be able to steal it but largely it should be fairly as a regional advantage to give regions like Flemish wool mills the absolute textiles advantage over other regions.

I didn't choose Venice for any specific reason other than I'm far more familiar with the history than anywhere else but I imagine they will be somewhat given a preference treatment and recognition through a murano glass flavour but otherwise there's not much.

I guess its something that was looked after by national ideas which aren't very dynamic and I'd much prefer to see almost something like a province modifier that could be applied in certain historical areas that might give better trade advantage and production advantage of some kind. The Nile Delta had a whole lot of doubled production wheat provinces in EU4 for similar reasons.

We all know the consequence of this is having greenland as the textile capital of the world by 1500 videos coming to youtube kind of thing instead of centuries of harshly guarded knowledge.

Even today Normandy has managed to maintain an economy based around linen that has been maintained despite attempts competition internationally for centuries. While I don't think every province should have a specialist production or possibly in some very rare cases two something really needs to be done to stop what sounds like sure lets build jewelers meta style play wherever by a thoughtful advantage to places like Constantinople/Istanbul for the good.

It would make for a much more flavourful world at very little input.

 

[JacceDON]

Drop simulationism, embrace flavour. Lock more advanced manufacturing and craftsmanship behind advances, and allow tags in regions famous for said manufacturing and craftsmanship to have it researched from the start of the game.

 

[Álvaro Núñez de Lara]

Drop simulationism, embrace flavour. Lock more advanced manufacturing and craftsmanship behind advances, and allow tags in regions famous for said manufacturing and craftsmanship to have it researched from the start of the game.

I kind of agree with this approach in my post. As I said I am happy to represent these things as flavour. Not ideal but it does give sense of uniqueness and distintion to cettain countries. Locking them in tech might work but it has to be burried enough to be a concious and specific strategy to go tall/focus on a certain type of economy that allows you to reach it. Otherwise if its just a matter of statting behind, in 50-100 years everyone is on the same level played field and you have the same problem again just a few years later.

 

[Vohen]

It seems to me that they are choosing to do this through advances/PMs, there are some advances with a specific production boost, like with Bohemian Crystal, and others with better PMs, like Bavarian Breweries.
I don't recall seing one, but there might be special production buildings as well.
We haven't got a Venice TF just yet, so it's yet to be seen how they'll simulate all of this.
And well, as for if this approach will actually work to make gameplay more varied in the end, your guesses are as good as mine.

 

[Fluffy_Fishy]

It seems to me that they are choosing to do this through advances/PMs, there are some advances with a specific production boost, like with Bohemian Crystal, and others with better PMs, like Bavarian Breweries.
I don't recall seing one, but there might be special production buildings as well.
We haven't got a Venice TF just yet, so it's yet to be seen how they'll simulate all of this.
And well, as for if this approach will actually work to make gameplay more varied in the end, your guesses are as good as mine.

But going back to my original question; We have seen how there are some mechanics that have been carefully thought out to limit blobbing, there seems to be some great effort played into reducing map footprint but are we aware of some mechanics that stop a similar attitude to City production blobbing and universally producing in what's essentially a similar way other than population and inputs?

I hope I'm asking this in a way that makes sense in my head this should really limit outputs to some significant focus outside maybe a few cities in asia

 

[Vohen]

But going back to my original question; We have seen how there are some mechanics that have been carefully thought out to limit blobbing, there seems to be some great effort played into reducing map footprint but are we aware of some mechanics that stop a similar attitude to City production blobbing and universally producing in what's essentially a similar way other than population and inputs?

I hope I'm asking this in a way that makes sense in my head this should really limit outputs to some significant focus outside maybe a few cities in asia

From what I understand, there are a few limits and incentives in this direction, yes.
Towns and cities will have a building cap (25 for towns, 100 for cities + development), and there are efficiency bonus for having RGO for the building's inputs in the province and from stacking the same building in one location (economy of scale) link.
So from this, thinking about the Venice example, they have a silk RGO, so that'll boost fine cloth production (I'd argue they should also have lumber and sand in their province, to boost paper, books and glass as well), so if they manage to stack those buildings there, their production should be very potent.
And this goes for other places as well, provinces with of iron or copper would be good to produce tools, possibly even cannons if there's some saltpeter or lead, for example.
Again, how well this works in practice, remains to be seen.

 

[Fluffy_Fishy]

It will be really curious to see if that includes international trade posts etc, with cities in hot spots getting interest from about 10 external builders essentially lowering building counts

I'm guessing that what will happen is that the research documents from eu4 has gone massively towards providing a base for flavour and it does seem to be done through unique techs and events that replace national ideas etc honestly I really just want to get my hands on it at this point

Going back to the specific example talking at your point on RGOs Venice as a city/province has pretty low local sources of wood, most supplies were imported from Istria and the national woods just north of Treviso conquered just after the start of the game. The main RGO of Venice proper is either salt, shellfish, silk or saltpetre.

The most recent Generalist Gaming video did go into a little more depth for things I've mentioned more broadly and he answered a couple of questions I asked in the discord but I just want to know all the little niche questions.

I'd love a deep dive into rural, towns and cities so much right now, if anyone finds a video covering it please point me in the direction!

 

[Vohen]

Going back to the specific example talking at your point on RGOs Venice as a city/province has pretty low local sources of wood, most supplies were imported from Istria and the national woods just north of Treviso conquered just after the start of the game. The main RGO of Venice proper is either salt, shellfish, silk or saltpetre.

You mean Venice proper the location or the province? Because the location itself has silk, while the province has silk, wheat (2x), clay and livestock, as it includes the locations of Treviso, Ceneda, Conegliano, and another to the west of Treviso which I cannot read the name on the map.
The bonus comes from having the RGO in the province, so none of those will boost production of paper, books, ships or glass, but lumber and sand would, giving Venice a proper competitive advantage.
So I suppose the idea would be to replace livestock with lumber (since the location right next to it has lumber) and one wheat with sand (if that's even possible, I think sand is coastal, and the only coastal location in that province is Venice itself).
I can't say anything about the historicity of it though, this is purely on gameplay terms.

 

[magistairs]

That's a very good point. My mind immediately goes to both the cloth industry as you've mentioned, and of course the famous glassworks of Venice - the methods behind which were protected for years. I'd not expect a totally unique good for every regionally famous export (And that's not very dynamic) but I'd love if at some point there were a system introduced which added product prestige and/or quality into the mix. It'd be great to focus your energies on say a particular sort of alcohol, or furniture or something and have it pay off as your product becomes more expensive and desired.

I think it's a little late for something like that by release, though.

Advances specialized in such industries model that I think

Not all countries will research them and the tags of North Italy and Netherlands will probably ignore the war advances and focus on production and trade instead

 

[Fluffy_Fishy]

You mean Venice proper the location or the province? Because the location itself has silk, while the province has silk, wheat (2x), clay and livestock, as it includes the locations of Treviso, Ceneda, Conegliano, and another to the west of Treviso which I cannot read the name on the map.
The bonus comes from having the RGO in the province, so none of those will boost production of paper, books, ships or glass, but lumber and sand would, giving Venice a proper competitive advantage.
So I suppose the idea would be to replace livestock with lumber (since the location right next to it has lumber) and one wheat with sand (if that's even possible, I think sand is coastal, and the only coastal location in that province is Venice itself).
I can't say anything about the historicity of it though, this is purely on gameplay terms.

I was talking about the location, I'm not 100% sure what they are finalising with the province I think its still subject to some change how they model the city and its surrounding islands because they changed so much in shape over the timeline as well as how armies are supposed to potentially access it

It is always the issue talking about Venice though, Are you talking about the city, the location, the province or the nation

Anyway I'm not really focusing too much about the City/Location too much I'm just using it as a pure example on specialising in cities. It feels like the history details have been a mini sidetrack of the thread I wasn't aiming to achieve.

 

[Álvaro Núñez de Lara]

Advances specialized in such industries model that I think

Not all countries will research them and the tags of North Italy and Netherlands will probably ignore the war advances and focus on production and trade instead

We will probably have it overhauled because the sweats and minmaxers/map painters will whine and whine saying they want to unlock ALL technologies BUT

I absolutely love the design phisolophy of doing your own "build" with the advances, as Generalist Gaming put it, having an opportunity cost and having to focus on 2 of the three tree branches of each age, having to neglect the military if you want to minmax the economy, trade, naval government efficiency, control and things like these... I love that it no longer is like EU4 where you are always cutting edge of all technologies at all times and you have to specialize.

 

[Vohen]

I was talking about the location, I'm not 100% sure what they are finalising with the province I think its still subject to some change how they model the city and its surrounding islands because they changed so much in shape over the timeline as well as how armies are supposed to potentially access it

It is always the issue talking about Venice though, Are you talking about the city, the location, the province or the nation

Anyway I'm not really focusing too much about the City/Location too much I'm just using it as a pure example on specialising in cities. It feels like the history details have been a mini sidetrack of the thread I wasn't aiming to achieve.

It actually does tie into specialization, as having the raw goods present in the same province as Venice (so in the locations of Venice, Treviso, Ceneda, Conegliano, and the other one) would boost production of the goods Venice is famous for.
Since you were talking about the location, I suppose it still makes sense, no? But I agree with the others, Venice will likely already have a tech to specialize it anyway.

 

[Fluffy_Fishy]

We will probably have it overhauled because the sweats and minmaxers/map painters will whine and whine saying they want to unlock ALL technologies BUT

I absolutely love the design phisolophy of doing your own "build" with the advances, as Generalist Gaming put it, having an opportunity cost and having to focus on 2 of the three tree branches of each age, having to neglect the military if you want to minmax the economy, trade, naval government efficiency, control and things like these... I love that it no longer is like EU4 where you are always cutting edge of all technologies at all times and you have to specialize.

I am on the fence about the technology thing, I'd be up for I think it was a civ mechanic where if (generic number like 70%) of say european culture research an old tech in a previous they should be available to everyone, it does feel a bit silly you could be in 1800 and not research something that was such common knowledge by then but it does make things kinda interesting that its not currently like this, I don't like the idea of minmaxers who will probably find a way to have 90% literacy by 1439 or something though. I mean you could also nerf it like auto researched gives half the bonus.

There were a few nations that were at cutting edges of most technologies for some periods, its not sustainable though. I hope literacy is hard to build up for those reasons. I'm following generalist a lot at the moment his media has been fascinating the last week

It actually does tie into specialization, as having the raw goods present in the same province as Venice (so in the locations of Venice, Treviso, Ceneda, Conegliano, and the other one) would boost production of the goods Venice is famous for.
Since you were talking about the location, I suppose it still makes sense, no? But I agree with the others, Venice will likely already have a tech to specialize it anyway.

I feel like yeah I suppose so, in general and the amount of feedback the devs have taken on the resources available in the regions has been absolutely phenomenal and I'm probably over dragging this now but at the moment I'm scared about being able to whoosh out say a large city like paris or milan that makes a lot of everything with very few downsides, looking at the production bonuses to specific goods some countries seem to be getting instead of ideas I'd love to see properly how this plays out first hand, from what laith and ludi have said as well as generalist I feel like I'm leaning positive more than negative but I'm not sure how interested they are in little things like this and they were only allowed to play the first 200ish years or so for now. I can't wait for more!!

 

[Znikii]

Venetian artisan guilds were tech leaders in lenses, mirrors and metallurgy well into the late 18. century.

 

[Froonk]

I am actually very disappointed after the Venice flavor diary. It seems to have nothing related to Venetian print, metallurgy and chemical industries aside from glass and they don't really have much of a bonus to trade either. It feels like the entire thing is just laser-focused on Venice as a modern touristic city and they are denied even the Fondaco which was something that Venetians themselves pioneered.

They really should have advances on production of armor, firearms, artillery, dyes, paper and advances related to their print industry. Currently it is just nothing but some government administration bonuses (which ought to remain) and minor trade bonuses with nothing regarding their prowess in state-regulated trade ventures and production output.

 

[Álvaro Núñez de Lara]

I am actually very disappointed after the Venice flavor diary. It seems to have nothing related to Venetian print, metallurgy and chemical industries aside from glass and they don't really have much of a bonus to trade either. It feels like the entire thing is just laser-focused on Venice as a modern touristic city and they are denied even the Fondaco which was something that Venetians themselves pioneered.

They really should have advances on production of armor, firearms, artillery, dyes, paper and advances related to their print industry. Currently it is just nothing but some government administration bonuses (which ought to remain) and minor trade bonuses with nothing regarding their prowess in state-regulated trade ventures and production output.

Relax. By the looks of it they show like 10% of the events/content of a country.