Construction as a local good

[echuu_shen_josh]

Why isn't construction a local good, like services, transportation and electricity? How can I build construction sectors in Argentina and use them to build factories in Shanghai? I know that construction capacity is practically the main gameplay loop, but it doesn't really make sense for all construction sectors to be useful in all states. There is a small construction efficiency bonus from local sectors, but it doesn't make a huge difference.

Imagine if construction points only applied locally; instead of building construction megaprovinces, you'd need a healthy construction center in every province you intend to build up. I suppose each province would divide its local construction points up among one or more government constructions, and some private construction depending on your laws. This would mean many more buildings being built in parallel, much more slowly.

I'm curious how people think this would affect gameplay. I like to think it would break up the rainbow-state-to-the-moon construction meta, where you build lots of logging, iron and construction in a couple stacked states to do construction everywhere, and lead to more balanced cultivation of all your provinces with high resource and population potentials. But maybe it would completely break the game as we know it. I don't just want things realistic for realism sake, I'm hoping something like this could improve game balance. But I do admit, I do like realism in my economy simulator.

 

[Helmut von Dandy]

I'm curious how people think this would affect gameplay.

It would make it borderline unplayable. Maybe there’s a better and more realistic system for construction, but making construction local is not it.

 

[Life is Comedy]

X er Thread about it. It would just result in endless Micromanagement or pointless employment / unrmplimoyment waves.

I dont mind and Like services électricité and électricité. But even more... And for some its already now to much

 

[kingsword]

Electricity is already a MASSIVE pain to properly distribute. Like it's so unbearably tedious that it's the #1 reason I drop late-game campaigns. While it might make sense, the game claiming to automate stuff somehow has these absolutely meaningless micromanagement stuff that's unreasonably manual. Transportation and services at least I can completely ignore, they can live with 75% to -75% costs for those unlike electricity.

Unless the game can totally automate this, the answer is no. In fact construction should be even more hands off as far as I'm concerned. When I'm at 50-150 capacity, it'd strategically meaningful choices. When I'm past 1000 capacity, it's meaningless tedium.

 

[Desseabar]

Construction should be, to some extent, local. It feels very silly that a bunch of laborers in Netherlands can build a port in an Indonesian jungle. But I'd rather see a more dramatic rework as opposed to a piecemeal local adjustment.

However I don't think that local construction would be the same annoyance as electricity and railroads (and could actually invert that). It would probably act more like a limiting factor on construction in non-urban areas, which imo would be an improvement. It's always silly to see a modern factory popping up in the middle of the Sahara.

 

[Niko92]

Maybe a midway solution would be to reduce overal construction speed, but then give construction speed buffs if the state has construction sectors. Construction "companies" from your capital could still build stuff elsewhere in the country, but things are more effective if you have local builders as well. This would give a bigger incentive to spread out construction sectors a bit more rather than just have them in a single state.

 

[yurcick]

As someone with the same starting position as you have (“I’d like more realism in my economic simulator, but not to great detriment to gameplay”), I think this either flies as a part of a huge comprehensive rework, or this doesn’t fly at all.
With the amount of construction the player is managing now, tracking construction capacity separately (and making sure it doesn’t stay idle) state by state would be a nightmare.

Essentially, I see two things that, if fulfilled, will allow us local construction, and I even think that it’s worth it (and both things separately are worth it too). But they’re huge, and I’m unsure we’ll ever see either implemented.

First, the player should simply have significantly less focus on construction. The ways to achieve that are twofold:
1) there should be more stuff to do for the player (getting better and better with each major version, but I don’t think we’re there yet)
2) budgets should be significantly rebalanced, and effective tax share of GDP — significantly reduced. Basically now player has a lot of money and too little ways to invest it productively, so construction has an unhealthy gameplay focus

Second, we need to turn the construction into a good, not a capacity. Without it, we should either add some base capacity to states (I dislike it even for countries), or face the chicken-and-egg problem of not being able to start development.
What I propose is a balanced situation where construction is constantly supplied (in early game — mostly by subsistence buildings and UCs) and constantly demanded (by subsistence buildings, UCs and all industries as maintenance). Then, when a construction order arrives locally (from the government, the IP or a company), it just adds to the existing demand, changing construction price, but not introducing something new that wasn’t there before. I hope that this would create a much more stable behaviour, where if a player doesn’t want to track their construction locally, they won’t be forced to do that

So, in short, “construction less in government, and more in private hands; local good and not capacity; with most of the demand for the good coming from maintenance and refurbishing”. This, I hope, can all together make a balanced system.

 

[bizkit]

Here where I live they're building many blocks and malls, construction company is Israeli and I don't live in Israel

 

[KopiG]

As someone with the same starting position as you have (“I’d like more realism in my economic simulator, but not to great detriment to gameplay”), I think this either flies as a part of a huge comprehensive rework, or this doesn’t fly at all.
With the amount of construction the player is managing now, tracking construction capacity separately (and making sure it doesn’t stay idle) state by state would be a nightmare.

Essentially, I see two things that, if fulfilled, will allow us local construction, and I even think that it’s worth it (and both things separately are worth it too). But they’re huge, and I’m unsure we’ll ever see either implemented.

First, the player should simply have significantly less focus on construction. The ways to achieve that are twofold:
1) there should be more stuff to do for the player (getting better and better with each major version, but I don’t think we’re there yet)
2) budgets should be significantly rebalanced, and effective tax share of GDP — significantly reduced. Basically now player has a lot of money and too little ways to invest it productively, so construction has an unhealthy gameplay focus

Second, we need to turn the construction into a good, not a capacity. Without it, we should either add some base capacity to states (I dislike it even for countries), or face the chicken-and-egg problem of not being able to start development.
What I propose is a balanced situation where construction is constantly supplied (in early game — mostly by subsistence buildings and UCs) and constantly demanded (by subsistence buildings, UCs and all industries as maintenance). Then, when a construction order arrives locally (from the government, the IP or a company), it just adds to the existing demand, changing construction price, but not introducing something new that wasn’t there before. I hope that this would create a much more stable behaviour, where if a player doesn’t want to track their construction locally, they won’t be forced to do that

So, in short, “construction less in government, and more in private hands; local good and not capacity; with most of the demand for the good coming from maintenance and refurbishing”. This, I hope, can all together make a balanced system.

This is so unnecessary. Construction is in a good place. Its not even worth to talk about. But of course feel free to disagree with me as I have done so as well.

 

[yurcick]

This is so unnecessary. Construction is in a good place. Its not even worth to talk about. But of course feel free to disagree with me as I have done so as well.

Idk. I disagree strongly.

It’s not in a reasonable place in terms of player attention. I’d rather spend 30% of “active game time” on construction instead of 85% I have now. I’m glad that this number is down from some 95%, where it was on release, and I want it to decrease much further, both in having more diverse occupation for the player (diluting, increasing the denominator) and reducing construction (decreasing the numerator).

It’s not in a reasonable place in terms of realism, from many points of view.
You may not care for the “realism for the sake of realism” argument, that it’s very weird for the acting government of a semi-modern country to direct most of what’s built in the country themselves, and that it’s then shouldn’t be the player’s main focus.
Still, the lack of realism in this case has a lot of unintended consequences (as it often does) that can be relevant for the “gameplay first and only” camp as well. For example, now it’s way too easy to develop new regions, which leads to
1) lack of meaningful challenge in developing them that could be fun in itself (there it would actually make sense for the government to take the reins to kickstart the development, while building the 27th cloth factory in the capital — hardly so)
2) lack of diversity in development and SoL between regions, which if existed properly, would fuel the resentment of the peripherial pops. Then, controlling and combating this resentment could be another fun and meaningful challenge

I really hope this changes in 1.14 or something.

 

[dmdelor]

Maybe a midway solution would be to reduce overal construction speed, but then give construction speed buffs if the state has construction sectors. Construction "companies" from your capital could still build stuff elsewhere in the country, but things are more effective if you have local builders as well. This would give a bigger incentive to spread out construction sectors a bit more rather than just have them in a single state.

There already is a buff for state construction sectors- mouse over your construction buildings- it's just very small so you won't notice it except in really built-up regions.

I had a similar thought- lower base construction efficiency, larger construction efficiency bonus with some cap- but balancing that seems like a lot of work to fix something that isn't really broken. The new -30% efficiency in unincorporated states also models construction penalties in underdeveloped areas somewhat, and MAPI further creates at least a bit of incentive to spread out your construction. We've got a good enough model in place.

Another thought that occurred to me is "what if states had a maximum number of construction centers that could be applied to them simultaneously and local construction centers raised that?" Like, the base is 10 and then it's +10 per local construction center. That seems easier to balance and makes sense, IMHO. On the other hand... again, construction works pretty well and also that's an extra thing players would need to be aware of.

 

[Metz]

What about having building abroad share construction points for that specific building until it is done? Workers would be temporarily hired from the state or the country as a whole and then fired afterwards without the radicalism penalty? This would give foreign pops some money boost which would then be used in the local economy.

The way it could work in practice is that countries would have a nationwide construction sector when hiring but the buildings themselves would work like barracks. That way if you have a lot of construction points then building abroad would allow that countries construction sector to grow to meet the needs of efficient building and then release the workers when done.