What do you mean by this?
Please take into account I have ADHD, so sometimes this might look chaotic. I hate to say this and I know this sounds like an excuse but this combined with translating into english makes writing complicated stuff like this hard for me. I'd appreciate if you read all of it. Thank you.
I assume you're happy to be provided with some historical perspective, not just gameplay-wise. I highly disagree with Vic3 having "population" as core source of power in game. I think it should be more of capital + technological advantage + education + institutions + population as being source of strength. And my POV is from someone who plays in Europe mostly, but that doesn't mean that certain points do not apply overall to the every VIc3 country.
Okay, so, the problem that I think I found that lead to this currently is:
1. Qualifications are too easily gained
Currently, in VIC3 education and qualification is way too easy to gain. I don't know if it's just not enough pop types or there's a problem with overall qualification gain, but this is a huge problem. As an example, America actually had shortages of qualified workers in certain fields, where they incentivized migration of certain specialists from Europe to come to America. if I recall correctly, this happened for example in Textile Industry in second part of XIX century America. In Vicky there's no such thing as shortage of highly qualified workers I feel like.
My proposals:
- Qualification gain should be slower, while techs improve it more gradually, so later on (around 1880-1900) it grows more rapidly than in Vanilla, like a snowball effect of sorts; the quicker you have more techs, the more edge you have and more edge you gain. % of World's GDP of Europe grew over time and kept growing over time. We need a snowball effect, and I mean that not only in qualification's sense, but overall technology, production, output etc.
- Discrimination should give huge debuffs to qualifications. Some mods try to fix qualification problems (like Ultra Historical Research) but overall they aren't perfect (as in parts of the mod are good, but overall it isn't good at replicating certain things);
- Probably literacy levels/wealth levels requirements should be upped for certain pop types, especially since there's more wealth and SOL in the world as of recent patches. It's too easy to have lots of highly qualified engineers
- IDK, but maybe add more high-qualification workers to certain buildings? Other than that the only way to fix this is to add more pop types, but this will never be done due to performance concerns.
- Education, qualification and tech should be more nuanced. Universities in game are just buildings. This is way too simplified. On this I won't write much, as it'd be too long of a post.
What it would fix?
Slower industrialization, more of a snowball effect that picks up later in the game.
Make game more snowbally, as in, strong nations grow more stronger over time due to tech edge, while lower tech nations have to try hard to catch up (this could be mitigated by tech spread maybe? or some extra allocation of $$ into research? not really sure). Europe "ran away" from Asia in that time perod and kept running away, game should try to simulate this by giving more granular buffs tied to tech.
Examples: France was like 25% agrarian workers in 1900 or even more (I think it could be as high as 30%, but I'm writing from memory), I've read this in some French scientific paper, and if someone asks for source I'll find it. If a country had worker shortages, it wasn't exactly due to lack of populace, but due to lack of qualified workers (simplified). This almost never happens in Vicky when playing in Europe, where everyone just migrates to high SOL urban centers and the rest of the states have sub 1 million pop. And btw, yes, France was an outlier in this part, but still, many people worked in agriculture in other countries. Due to how trade currently is (this is my best bet) agriculture is almost never profitable in Europe and people leave en masse to towns, which is good from POV of history, but also it is
too fast and too dramatic.
Also there was no huge immigration from colonies into "core" of the Empire at the scale that VIc3 does it, so while a good way to overcome shortages of workers from in game perspective, this is not historical.
2. Construction is too fast and too simple to build up
So you've got 4 techs that need to be researched to get construction PM, with each tech giving you a huge boost in construction. In combination with construction in general being way too cheap, buildings being made too fast, this causes problems.
Let me explain: there's clear "boosts" to construction techs, so you can easily go from 100 construction then 150, and then 200 construction, with no small steps in between just based on tech alone. So you should just rush those techs and make even more buildings, make more goods, get more taxes and get more universities for qualifications/techs more easily -> get more employment. This also ties to qualification problems: it's never been so simple as to put down 5 universities in a state and suddenly gain qualifications.
Also in general, it's too easy to build up resources. Read this: it's from wikipedia, but it is valid. In Vicky everyone can build up huge sectors waaaaay to fast. There's no "know-how", no overall edges to certain nations that had it's industries booming in 1836. France can make 50 iron mines in Rhone, Prussia 50 in Silesia by 1845 etc, but this isn't how things worked.
"In 1875, Britain accounted for 47% of world production of
pig iron, a third of which came from the
Middlesbrough area and almost 40% of steel. 40% of British output was exported to the U.S., which was rapidly building its rail and industrial infrastructure. Two decades later in 1896, however, the British share of world production had plunged to 29% for pig iron and 22.5% for steel, and little was sent to the U.S. The U.S. was now the world leader and Germany was catching up to Britain. Britain had lost its American market, and was losing its role elsewhere; indeed American products were now underselling British steel in Britain.
[5]"
Construction speed and growth of industries should in fact be more gradual and tied to technology, to tie it with tech advantages that disappeared over time.
Right now it's too easy to develop a nation. Industries need to pick up steam over time, rather than being "slap 10 iron mines in Silesia" and call it a day. This is not how things worked and leads to too much growth.
My proposal:
C
onstruction should start really really slow, and then, almost every tech from production tree should give a small boost to construction output or even perhaps (that's a huge perhaps) lead to buffs to construction price of certain buildings (like iron mines let's say). This would:
- better simulate technological edge being tied to industrialization, and certain countries having edge and market domination in some industries
So like water tube boilers give +1% to construction output, same with other techs, to simulate "overall" advances in production. Britain would have more "iron" techs, so it makes iron mines faster, while other countries need to catch up. Countries should also be more happy to use tariffs, so that their industries don't get dominated, see protectionism after 1860s crisis. Free trade law is just flawed. Majority of income in some countries came from tariffs, and then evolved to more nuanced taxation systems over the span of century.
Example:
- So in 1836 there's not much difference of construction efficacy between Prussia and let's say China, both are using iron frame buildings, but construction is overall slower than in Vanilla;
- In 1850s Prussia has more tech overall in production tree than China, both use iron construction, but due to tech advantage Prussia has in production tree, it has 30% more output per construction sector than China.
- In 1880s Prussia has steel and x tech researched in production tree, so it's 150% quicker to construct than China, who still has iron and has 1/2 of the Prussia's techs researched.
Same with britain making cheaper iron mines/having more output due to tech advantage to let's say France.
(numbers are just an example)
What this allows is gradual construction speeding up, not just an instant buff from PM method. Combine this with debuff to base construction output and you slow overall overbuilding and mass employment. This would require tweaking numbers, of course. It could also how UK would have an advantage in 1836, due to having "lots" of tech in production researched, despite still using "same" iron construction PM, and then that advantage would gradually fall off as other nations research more techs and industrialize themselves (ex. Germany). So more of a game of gradual catch-up, rather than instant bonus from Steel Buildings and instant building of iron industries.
3. Companies production and throughput bonus is too big
4. Buildings have way too many employees
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Carnegie Steel had like 40-50k workers hired and accounted for huge % of USA steel output, there were around 800k miners in USA in 1900. Even if we say, that Steel Mills aren't just steel workers, but other industries that are tied to steelmaking, this still doesn't explain, why I can have over 500k people employed in Steel industry in 1880s Germany.
5. Prices, PM and overproduction
I feel like prices of goods overall are way too tight. So steel being $50 base price allows it to go from $12.5 to $87.5. I think there should be more variation to this, as some industries made huge strides in efficiency, steel especially so with Besemer process. This wasn't simply "there were more steel factories". Output boosts are limited by this, and also there's no room for overproduction/sharp declines in prices.
"The Bessemer process revolutionized steel manufacture by decreasing its cost, from £40 per long ton to £6–7 per long ton, along with greatly increasing the scale and speed of production of this vital raw material.""
See below:
This was actually better shown in Vic2, where there was supply and demand, and it was really easy to get your industries trashed, especially as unciv or low literacy country, by developed nations that had certain techs. Certain goods losing profitability due to tech advances and overproduction was something common IIRC in VIc2. Note that I am only talking about a certain part of Vic2 market, not saying it was better than VIc3 overall.
In Vic3 it's just more advanced PM, and this is bad.
Example:
Besemer process gives around 35 more steel compared to base method.
What it should do instead, is give like 3-4x more output and be later in the tech tree. Also PMs should apply more gradually, rather than being a simple click. PMs should be upgraded by spending construction points at least.
My assumption is that this could in theory lead to too much profit per worker, due to +75%/-75% limits of market price of steel due to price limitations, but IDK how to fix this. Countries should be more protectionist of their industries aswell, so that Britain or USA doesn't dominate steel industries and there being no domestic production.
Why?
This increased output would stem from technological advances, not just "manpower". Industrialization was in part
"throw more people into factories", but it was also hugely based on
"increase output per worker". What I mean is,
VIc3 skews too heavily into "throw more people into factories" part. See also above, this is confirmed by my point about Britain's steel output. So let's say 50k people work in Steel mills, while providing almost the same output as in vanilla's 250k people.
PS:
- I tried to keep it short, really. I also did not provide exact academic sources, because I don't want to spend hours on writing this;
- Some edits were made for cosmetic reasons;
- Please bear in mind that I am talking as someone who "wants" more historical gameplay, while I also understand people who look at this purely from gameplay perspective and care less about historical accuracy. I am not here to present some "best view" of how Vic 3 should be.
TLDR:
1. Slower construction;
2. More importance tied to tech;
3. More "snowball effect"
"Make game more snowbally, as in, strong nations grow more stronger over time due to tech edge, while lower tech nations have to try hard to catch up (this could be mitigated by tech spread maybe? or some extra allocation of $$ into research? not really sure). Europe "ran away" from Asia in that time perod and kept running away, game should try to simulate this by giving more granular buffs tied to tech overall in every aspect (be it social tech, production tech etc), which exacerbate differences over time and make them bigger.
4. More ways to specialize, simulate know-how;
5. More nuance in education/university, less qualifications;
6. Fixing PM to being more of an upgrade that requires input, be it construction points, $$ or anything;
7. Oh and I haven't written about this, but investment pool is just waaay too big too early. It should be nerfed.
