Regional HQs as a mechanic needs more time to cook.

[Don_Quigleone]

Overall, CoC has been very satisfactory for me, and I've been absolutely happy with the DLC.

However, the regional HQ mechanic I think is overall negative. They're annoying to deal with, impossible to counter, and their existence cuts off several viable strategies. I think they'd be better if redesigned.

A) It makes it impractical to use a strategy of going after foreign direct investment, as your country ends up swarmed with these regional HQs that also cause your own companies to grow anemically.

B) They seem to be able to privatise your own buildings without you giving explicit permission for them to be privatised.

C) It's very all or nothing. Either you get no investment agreement with Russia, or your entire lumber industry is monopolised by the Russo-American company

D) When nationalising, they don't come up as foreign owned, making them really annoying to deal with and nationalise out of existence.

E) Even as a country thinking of investing in other countries they're of dubious utility, as often you want to give yourself a trade edge by dominating the production of a single good. Using these means other countries produce a particular good as well as you.

Personally, I think this mechanic should be reworked. I'd like to instead see it as a treaty article as an alternative to investment agreements and monopolies, and be more mutually beneficial for both countries, and controlled.

Instead, I think it should be a way to invest in a country without needing an investment agreement. Instead, it's a way for you to get the construction, prestige goods and throughput benefits of another country's company in return for the sending country getting investment pool from the regional HQ (Like now) and the company giving you trade advantage in buying and selling its input/outputs. EG let's say you're France and you sign a deal with Mexico so your fertilizer company now has a regional HQ in Mexico. Any fertilizer plants it builds with Mexican investment pool sends its investment pool dividend to you AND you now gain trade advantage selling Mexico Sulfur and buying the fertiliser, and it doesn't bring down the trade advantage of the mother company's fertiliser plants.

Perhaps also, to further sweeten the deal, Regional HQ owned buildings could also have access to PMs from the sending country.

 

[Prob32]

I don't think regional HQ's actually act any different than they would historically. Regional HQ's were most definitely a thing during the period, General Motors for example had several offshoot companies, famously Opel. They would use local or national capital and send back a portion of dividends to the parent company.

I think some of the positive impacts of these regional HQ's are not yet modeled. In reality they had quite a few Positives:

1. You might want GM in your country because they have better production processes than your domestic auto industry which you can learn from at a faster rate.
2. You might want GM in your country because they might be able to make trucks which your domestic industries haven't figured out yet.
3. You might want GM because you just need more auto industries to build a large qualifications base around automotive industries as you don't have any yet.
4. You might want GM in your country to help make the United States less willing to go to war with you because of the dividends they receive which they no longer would during a war.

 

[Prob32]

Continuing on my soapbox for a minute if you'll indulge. There's two primary reasons a developing nation such as Japan would want foreign investment rights in their nation. The first is technological exchange is greatly increased, outlined in the post above. The second which makes me particularly excited for the future is increasing capital costs. Assuming for a moment the eventual PM re-work which Wiz mentioned below comes with increasing construction costs.

for example, I could envision doing something similar with production methods on privately owned building levels.

Developing nations were incredibly poor and I think in general capital costs are under modeled because they don't scale with technological advancement. In fact - they're actually negative throughout the entire game as a steel factory costs 200 construction points in 1836 and 1936 despite being extremely different. Since construction becomes much more efficient we're actually saying it cheaper in absolute terms to build a Blister plant than a Electric Arc plant. It should probably still be cheaper but only in relative terms % of GDP and time to construct.

Developing nations especially Japan at the turn of the Century NEEDED foreign investment to build the factories, they had very little domestic capital to do so. Without foreign investment it should be extremely difficult to bootstrap industrialization later in the game because the cost of "catching up" should increase as the top players invent new technology.

Example: You're Japan in 1865, you've just gotten rid of serfdom and have interventionalism economy law in place. You have great natural resources for domestic steel production but to be competitive you need to construct open-hearth production plants. These should cost 400 construction instead of 200 construction for blister steel. The only way you're going to be able to get the capital necessary to construct these sites and develop the expertise needed is through foreign investment agreements and perhaps even a 10 year steel monopoly for Bolckow, Vaughan & Co to help get you off the ground and get you jump started on some Economy of Scale bonuses.

 

[cyberrb25]

I had it considered for my idea for a navy rework with boats being items, where you have a "separate" construction queue for boats (using Shipyards/Military as "Construction Sectors" for navy) that also has to retain a percentage of the Construction points for repairing.

If you do it so the more buildings you have the more Construction Sectors you need in order to do repairs, or alternatively where changing "main" PMs on Urban buildings requires a Construction queue to refit the new features onto the old building, it would both nerf the economy as in you require to do it again, you can make it so higher rate PMs require more Construction points, and you can model better how those happen.

 

[WTH666444]

I agree.

What I‘ve settled on doing (since LF still seems to be what you want, with the ability to tap into deficits, but prevents you from nationalising altogether) is to only grant investment rights to eventual subjects, so I don‘t get stuck with buildings using my investment pool to siphon off dividends for foreign benefit.

This seems mechanically wonky. There should be some way to nationalise foreign ownership, no matter what.

 

[Don_Quigleone]

I agree.

What I‘ve settled on doing (since LF still seems to be what you want, with the ability to tap into deficits, but prevents you from nationalising altogether) is to only grant investment rights to eventual subjects, so I don‘t get stuck with buildings using my investment pool to siphon off dividends for foreign benefit.

This seems mechanically wonky. There should be some way to nationalise foreign ownership, no matter what.

I think on LF you can still nationalise via WAR, but significantly this doesn't work on Regional HQs.

Regional HQs are a fun idea, but in practice I think they detract more from the game then they add, at least as they are now.

 

[Heatth]

I don't think regional HQ's actually act any different than they would historically. Regional HQ's were most definitely a thing during the period, General Motors for example had several offshoot companies, famously Opel. They would use local or national capital and send back a portion of dividends to the parent company.

The problem is that in-game they don't send back a portion of the dividents to the parent company. They send all of it. But somehow they still use the capital of the other capitalists in the country (the investment pool) to grow the regional HQ,

Ultimately that is the main issue. They get to benefit from an investment pool that they don't contribute too. That is not only immersion breaking but make them a parasitic drain in-game with little benefit. If they actually did just send a portion back to the parent comapny and the rest got invested into the host country investment pool, it wouldn't be nearly that bad;

 

[Herrebrugh]

The problem is that in-game they don't send back a portion of the dividents to the parent company. They send all of it. But somehow they still use the capital of the other capitalists in the country (the investment pool) to grow the regional HQ,

Ultimately that is the main issue. They get to benefit from an investment pool that they don't contribute too. That is not only immersion breaking but make them a parasitic drain in-game with little benefit. If they actually did just send a portion back to the parent comapny and the rest got invested into the host country investment pool, it wouldn't be nearly that bad;

Indeed. Maybe this should also depend on whether the country with the regional HQ is recognised or not. If it isn’t, its population doesn’t get any dividents, but if it is, a percentage (maybe half) stays there.

This is essentially about how exploitative the arrangement is (in a recognised country, this would maybe be less likely to be the case). This could however also be done by only having all dividents being sent to the home country if the company has a monopoly in the host. Here there’s already a presumably exploitative arrangement going on.

But I agree with others in this thread that the biggest issue with foreign companies is that they offer little benefit to the host. There should be good reasons to allow foreign companies to invest in your country.

 

[Don_Quigleone]

But I agree with others in this thread that the biggest issue with foreign companies is that they offer little benefit to the host. There should be good reasons to allow foreign companies to invest in your country.

I do think the benefit should be tilted towards the sending country, but regional HQs, as implemented tilt way too far to benefiting the sending country at the expense of the host, whereas before patch 1.9 the benefit was more balanced,

 

[Secret Master]

A) It makes it impractical to use a strategy of going after foreign direct investment, as your country ends up swarmed with these regional HQs that also cause your own companies to grow anemically.

There's a bug in monopolies and companies anyway. Regional HQs are getting access to privatizations that they really shouldn't be.

Some screenshots:

My company has a monopoly on textile industries.

View attachment 1330110

View attachment 1330111

Note that the Confederation of the Rhine is my puppet.

But notice I can't nationalize any levels of the textile mills because of a monopoly:

View attachment 1330112

The game is treating Rhine's company as having a monopoly.

Bug report is here:

Integrity​

I have verified my game files (on Steam)​

Yes

I have disabled all mods​

Yes

Required​

Summary​

Monpoly granted to company treats foreign regional HQs as part of that company

Description​

Granting a monopoly to your company will result in regional HQs from foreign companies being allowed to privatize building levels and an inability to nationalize those same building levels.

Steps to reproduce​

1) Grant a monopoly to a company; for testing purposes, use a country like France that starts with an existing company you can grant a monopoly to.
2) Let the company grow and gain some assets.
3) Grant investment rights to a country that has a company in the same industry.
4) Spam build around 50 levels of a building in that monopolized industry. Make sure the building is turning a profit and will hire up to capacity (no empty levels)
5) You will see that the foreign regional HQ will buy some levels despite the monopoly
6) You cannot nationalize those levels from the foreign regional HQ because the game says it has a monopoly despite no treaty granting them a monopoly and your own company having the monopoly.

Game Version​

Lady Grey 1.9.5 chesksum a209

OS​

Windows

Additional​

Bug Type​

Other

Save Game​

View attachment 1330108

Attachments​

View attachment 1330108

Player Pain​

5

It would not surprise be if there are other little problems buried in there that we aren't seeing that skews regional HQ behavior.

 

[Prob32]

The problem is that in-game they don't send back a portion of the dividents to the parent company. They send all of it. But somehow they still use the capital of the other capitalists in the country (the investment pool) to grow the regional HQ,

Ultimately that is the main issue. They get to benefit from an investment pool that they don't contribute too. That is not only immersion breaking but make them a parasitic drain in-game with little benefit. If they actually did just send a portion back to the parent comapny and the rest got invested into the host country investment pool, it wouldn't be nearly that bad;

Agreed it should be a portion not all dividends

 

[Heatth]

Indeed. Maybe this should also depend on whether the country with the regional HQ is recognised or not. If it isn’t, its population doesn’t get any dividents, but if it is, a percentage (maybe half) stays there.

No. Regardless some pércentage should stay there. If the regional HQ is benefiting from the investment pool, it should contribute to it.

What you are describing sounds more about what portion should go to the capitalists in the regional HQ itself, which I think make sense, the rich folk in recognized countries would benefit more while everyone in an unrecognized country would be exploited. The problem I am describing is different though. IT is the issue that the regional HQ currently literally steal money from capitalist pops that aren't related to them.

The Investment Pool is an abstraction to represent the private investments in your country, as a group capitalists (and aristocrats, shopkeepers, etc) contribute to the pool and later the "pool" spends the money building something. That new building is then owned by capitalists/shopkeepers/aristocrats/etc. This represent return of investment, these owner pops are the ones who, as a group, put the money into the pool and, therefore, are the ones who know own the building. The problem is that regional HQ benefit from the pool equally, they are treated as part of the regional owner pop as normal, but they don't contribute to it at all. So why do they get to own it?

 

[strattonthebard]

I think the ratio of reinvestment going to the host country versus the company founder country should change based on a bunch of different factors. Relative power ranking, domestic laws, and also maybe a different treaty article for the most exploitative versions. There should be a big difference between countries on friendly terms giving each other mutual investment rights and it being imposed on country through war and lopsided treaties. But honestly even at the most exploitative end of the scale I don't think it should be zero reinvestment going to the host country, maybe like 5%

 

[Koravis]

I'm not totally against a rework, but I'd probably be fine with sorting out the worst of the current kinks.

1. Fix the bug Secret Master mentioned.
2. Make regional HQ's shut down and all their ownership be transferred to the main HQ upon ending of the investment agreement (So that they don't stick around building stuff when the deal has ended).
3. Less necessary with nr. 2 fixed but it would be good to have buildings owned by a regional HQ show up as if owned by the foreign country in the interface when nationalizing, or given its own slider entirely.

I do like the idea of allowing regional HQ's be an additional treaty article just in of itself, would make the Investment Rights company charter a bit less of an always on no-brainer too.

To discuss your suggestion more directly, since the source of each good is not tracked I don't know how it would be possible for you to only have advantage on sulphur produced by your regional HQ's buildings. You also can't have a building have partial PM's and they're not certain to be owned solely by the company, so that bit is probably unimplementable as well.

What I do like however is trade advantage depending on how much of a good is produced by stuff owned by you in the foreign country! So if you have a complete monopoly on iron in a foreign country then you get a significant trade advantage on iron with that country in particular. Makes sense to me that your companies would mainly trade with you!

PS: Do regional HQ owned buildings even show up as owned by you in the GDP ownership thingies since they're in the foreign country?

 

[Don_Quigleone]

To discuss your suggestion more directly, since source of each good is not tracked I don't know how it would be possible for you to only have advantage on sulphur produced by your regional HQ's buildings. You also can't have a building have partial PM's and they're not certain to be owned solely by the company, so that bit is probably unimplementable as well.

Simple, it would be based on the fraction of the production in a given market associated with these company's. If 1/3 of sulfur production/consumption is affiliated to the company, then you get 1/3 of the advantage possible with this mechanic (if its 100%, you get the whole bonus).

What I do like however is trade advantage depending on how much of a countries goods are produced in the foreign country though! So if you have a complete monopoly on iron in a foreign country then you get a significant trade advantage on iron with that country in particular. Makes sense to me that your companies would mainly trade with you!

Glad you approve!

 

[Heatth]

PS: Do regional HQ owned buildings even show up as owned by you in the GDP ownership thingies since they're in the foreign country?

I believe it doesn't, which is another way to regional HQ feel odd to play with. Even if it is your own companies doing it it can be detrimental to you because to weakens the economic dependency.

The mechanics just don't quite mesh with the rest of the game.

 

[cyberrb25]

I do have to say, having seen the current integration of Prestige Goods, the one case where I wouldn't consider having Companies get Regional HQs is with Prestige goods companies – as the way the Prestige goods ownership makes it so building outside your country can break your own Prestige boost by building those elsewhere.

When they fix that, then having Foreign Investment for the company to build around will no longer matter.

 

[Froonk]

I think it just highlights how centralized construction queue is becoming vestigial and detrimental as a mechanic. If there wasn't a centralized construction queue there couldn't be such a direct parasitism by the Regional HQs because they'd have to just buy the construction goods themselves instead of leeching off your private construction.