Yes and things like pollution don't do enough to disincentivize this type of play through. However I think the trade off will feel much less bad to the player when building steel in Pennsylvania and Tools in CT when they get to see a trade capturing value between the two states.
They've definitely tried to steer away from it but as the dev diary shows they've probably erred too far in the direction of not enough flavour and fulfilling bonuses. At the end of the day players have a sort of visceral apathy to temporary modifiers or "cosmetic" modifiers like prestige. They shouldn't go full EU4 modifiers for everything but there's definitely more room for narrative-driven bonuses in the game, especially for difficult journal entries that have been received as "unfulfilling".
I think this is both mechanically fine and realistic. If you as the benevolent liberal dictator manage to industrialise the largest (or second-largest) country in the world, then of course you should be able to totally corner the global market in the goods you have an advantage in. To be fair this is already kind of the case so that throughput bonus might be a bit overkill (but you could easily provide it for, say, agriculture or something else that makes narrative sense). But this is the kind of gameplay we want, where players try to expand their trade empire and focus their diplomatic efforts on trying to grow their domestic industries.
I know what you're saying here is for examples sake so I'm trying to not nitpick it too hard but I don't throughput is the right layer to have these types of bonuses. I would rather see them applied as character traits and have characters actually impact things. Someday companies will have CEO's and someday we will have production research tree's similar to MIO's for all our companies. I think that's the place these type of JE's need to tie into, I think narratively completing Indian home rule increasing your textiles MIO's research or removes the malus.
Yes definitely and we'll get there eventually- I'm hopeful the trade re-work will really open up a second gameplay loop of trying to build internal networks for those key items that you can really differentiate hard and export.
I think this would both be frustrating for players and also feels a little Great Man-ish: after a lot of work in moulding your society, the actual benefit is... some guy gets marginally better. At the very least it should be on a company itself, or even unlock a powerful company itself (which would feel rewarding).
But Victoria is a pop simulator at it's core so having better characters spawn is the most root level implantation. Like having Carnegie spawn or get an experienced innovator trade giving the company he helms extra research through it's tree? Why would the bonus stick around past the life time of pops that were around when it was earned?
I hope some day we get to build our own companies instead of choose from pre-sets
Pops and Characters are different. Pops represent a group of people rather than the individuals themselves. In that regard Vic3 takes a more society-centred approach to politics and history than, say, CK3 where it's the actions of movements and collectives that affect events, not individuals themselves. Completing a journal entry wouldn't be the work of one man alone (narratively), it would represent a generational shift in popular culture and thinking. I think it makes total sense for modifiers to be nationwide (even if they're temporary), sticking them to characters that can die at any time would both be unfulfilling and wouldn't fit the vision of Vic3.
Bonuses are not the only way to specialize. Having lower manpower costs for labor intensive industries, access to cheaper inputs, either thanks to trade or to productive structure… All these are present already in the game, although they can be made more powerful, for instance making geography and global trade infrastructure more important for trade, or making production chains a little bit longer.
While it is true that trade is too costly, or more properly too limited as you can reach your upper limit for convoys and that’s that, I think that, playing a medium or large country, it is reasonable and realistic that you produce a little bit of everything. Sometimes I have the impression that specialization is taken as an absolute thing, producing something and don’t developing other industries. This is not realistic. For instance Germany had a very competitive chemical industry, and supplied a lot of chemicals to many markets. But there was also some local production of chemicals in many countries that imported big quantities from Germany. At the end, in a medium or large economy you are going to have a little bit of everything. It is important to remember that the years covered by Vic3 had period of globalization and periods of de-globalization. The latter would have not be possible if specialization was absolute.
Kind of a minor digression but once devs get trade up and running and actually significant I would love if they added those OECD trade good graphs, would look really neat and would be useful.
That's really the point, if their bonuses were to be more aggressive, and more unique, they'd matter far more, giving an actual competitive advantage.
That is true, which is why I see specialization as a way to break this deadlock.
Cheaper labor does give a competitive advantage, but isn't by itself a tool for specialization.
While I agree with that, this would be, once again, a tool for competitive advantage, not specialization per se.
This is very true. My original point on specialization was not to have all supply of a good come from trade.
It'd be interesting to have a trade balance mechanic indeed, it could even be tied to politics in some way.
Is not only state traits. You can make your market to have some goods cheaper than others, for instance by securing access to some goods.
Isn’t competitive advantage a way for specialization?
But that’s also a competitive advantage. The only thing is that you script it to be available only to some tags or company tags.
But what would be the logic of that? Because Germany had a powerful steel industry historically? So India can become independent in 1850, but let’s say Brazil can’t dominate the global steel industry because doesn’t have a company allowing that. That’s taking the Civ approach, where each country is good at some strategy and you choose the way you are going to play by choosing a certain country, like a class in an RPG game.
True, for some resources, simply having access is already the defining advantage.
Competitive advantage and specialization are related, but not the same thing.
That's fair enough, I suppose it's more a matter of taste than anything else.
I do not think so, what works in a game does not need to be ported to another game.
I like trade maintenance there as a simpler option, but I'm really not a fan of trade efficiency as an additive metric.
I like your point about it being subtractive versus additive. I think this also makes sense to apply it to a per location to location basis- so if you’re going to NY>Paris you want more trade to increase trade efficiency which subtracts from convoys and the bureaucracy requirements. Ideally it’s efficiency goes up the closer it is to net 0 zero convoy requirements between locations
Probably not. Something not immediately apparent in EU5 (though it's there if you look closely enough) is that most of the money in that game is borne from nothing and is returned to nothing in short order. Pop demands are static; the demand itself injects money into the market but the pops spend nothing to actually buy anything. Rather, price only impacts satisfaction and scales on literacy. "Troop wages" are just money that's burnt into nothing for the sake of a morale modifier. The "estate wealth" that we've seen is pretty much exclusively used for estate-based building and nothing else, and the only source of that is building income per location divvied up by estate power in that location. You can then tax that. Also burghers do trading. Again though, the entire demand system underpinning the bulk of the market is "money from nothing".
Ahh that's a good thing to stitch together. I find it difficult to do this while just reading the DD's.
