Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #110 - Building Ownership & Foreign Investment

[XQNP]

As I understand the part about companies they will not change with 1.7, only at a unspecified time in the future. So the boni from the company will still apply to all domestic buildings and only domestic buildings, no matter who owns them.

Even if nothing changes, there are still ambiguities about when and how certain bonuses will be applied, since foreign investments creates new situations that aren't possible under the current patch. If country-wide construction efficiency bonuses, as they exist now, are applied on a state-by-state level, then they won't apply to the company owner's construction in foreign states, but will apply to other countries' construction in the company owner's states. But if they're applied to the owner's construction queue rather than to each of the owner's states, then they instead will apply to the owner's foreign construction and won't apply to other countries' construction in the owner's states.

 

[ErringMelkor]

Not strictly related to the DD, but, there are any news on multiplayer stability? We get multiple desyncs every session, at least 3 to 5 or more, which causes either a stall for the week or to abandon the run around 1890-ish. Even while only in a 2 player multi, it's a hard struggle to get past 1900. I don't know how many people play multi, but as much as I love the game, I must share my displeasure with this situation. Sadly, I can't say my heart is wholly on financially supporting this while SP is a struggle performance-wise and MP is straight out unplayable many times.

 

[Swamphill]

Even if nothing changes, there are still ambiguities about when and how certain bonuses will be applied, since foreign investments creates new situations that aren't possible under the current patch. If country-wide construction efficiency bonuses, as they exist now, are applied on a state-by-state level, then they won't apply to the company owner's construction in foreign states, but will apply to other countries' construction in the company owner's states. But if they're applied to the owner's construction queue rather than to each of the owner's states, then they instead will apply to the owner's foreign construction and won't apply to other countries' construction in the owner's states.

You are right, it is more ambigious than I first thought. I had a look in the files and found that the company boni was named "country_company_[something]" which seems to suggest they are applied at country, not state, level.

 

[Byamarro]

Exciting changes,

But please tell me you have more ownership building types in the pipeline.

The potential of this is great.

- Religous orders siphoning wealth to the Vatican or mount Athos

- tribal or military retinue barracks, linked to landowner or military igs with their forces determined by the wealth of their holdings

- tax exemptions by differing ownership building types

Please also tell me i can nudge the privatisation system. Full price sales to international investors and discounts for domestic would be an interesting trafe off.

Whoa the Vatican idea is awesome. I also wonder how was Switzerland back then.

 

[SaltyYuyuko]

This is one of the most promising DDs in some time and addresses some of my main concerns.
Although there are still a fair bit left.

Some questions about the changes so far:

1) Will there be a way for the majority owners of a building to change their Production Methods without the country doing it for them? Like the capitalists owning a factory buying new equipment themselves instead of the state ordering how they produce goods.

2) Are you looking into making pops be able to decide their own trades?
Having the state control the entirety of trade and decide everything that leaves or comes for its population feels disconnected from everything. Companies/building owners should be able to decide themselves from where they import materials and where they sell their goods.
The player could control this behavior like the government would, by creating tariffs and taxes on different type of goods depending on where they come from. Of course, the state itself could also intervene to direct trade, but that should be more the exception than the rule.

 

[aariz57017]

I like this game very much . But , if you can introduce caste system in indian subcontinent and please make some middle eastern , central asian and indian rulers more white.

 

[Resharr]

So the best way to have Somalian iron mines use explosives is to annex then release? Seem kinda like a chore.

 

[Kingman]

This comment has been reserved by the community team for developer responses!


"Worker-owned" also covers the artisan economy and things like small landholders on farms, but the vast majority of farms and plantations will be owned by aristocrats.


Correct.


Yeah, worker-owned does not mean equal dividends for everyone.


Command Economy does not actually make this instant on enactment anymore, you have to actively nationalize non-state owned buildings after enacting it and either compensate the owners or seize them by force. It's also possible to simply leave some vestiges of a private economy in place (though it won't grow).


The building is put up for sale immediately on construction and counts as state-owned until it is purchased. So you'll have some buildings temporarily managed by the state until an investor snaps them up.


They use somewhat different score calculations, with a very heavy emphasis on potential profit for privatization. Generally speaking privatization of profitable buildings has the highest return on investment, so is what they'll often do first if possible, but it's not guaranteed or anything.


The latter. You'll have to trade for it or be part of the same market to access the resource.


The AI should generally want to nationalize as much as they can under Command Economy, exactly how they handle it depends a bit on their strategy though.


Thanks

On your question, as Martin wrote:
"They use somewhat different score calculations, with a very heavy emphasis on potential profit for privatization. Generally speaking privatization of profitable buildings has the highest return on investment, so is what they'll often do first if possible, but it's not guaranteed or anything."

I don't believe there's a change with regards to investments specifically in resources, but you should probably see it being a bit more developed inherently since you generally have more possible actors that could invest in it.





1) Should remain the same as far as I know
2) Like any other PM
3) Yes, I believe so
4) That should be possible, yes. There's a list like this which you should be able to include own modded buildings in:
investment_scores = {
bg_manufacturing_score = {
group = "bg_manufacturing"
score = {
value = 80
}
}
bg_modded_building_score = {
group = "bg_modded_building"
score = {
value = 20
}
}



Currently no functionality to just give them building levels outside Cooperative Ownership where they'll just take them, but that sounds like a potentially neat addition for the future.


Right now it's based on relative pay, but I'd like to add some differentiation for cooperative ownership vs artisan buildings there.


Investment Pool.


1. The example was specifically for Bavaria. Great Britain does start with a bunch of capitalists.
2. You misread, they DO consider them as targets.


1. Currently there's no refusal for peaceful nationalization, except having investment rights
2. Yes, you can demand it as a separate war goal


Yes, you can build railroads in other countries if you have Investment Rights.

The game does not distinguish between production methods. There is always one PM active for a whole building, no matter who owns how many levels. The controller of the country where the building is located also controls the PM that is active.

Nothing on foreign trade center ownership for the time being at least. Sounds cool, but that would require some fairly drastic changes to how trade centers are generated etc.


Few things I'd like to point out. The wargoal's use is likely ending up as the separate war goal more often than being used as a primary one. So you'd throw it onto other diplomatic pacts I'd imagine.
The war goal is also not going to be the primary way of nationalizing another country's assets. The most used for this will likely be cancelling their investment rights, then using the nationalize button and paying them (or not, suffering consequences to relations and radicals and such).
The "casus belli" idea you're pitching does sound cool though. Not quite how we thought about this and would require some work, but maybe something like that could work in the future.


Yes.
Buildings with several unstaffed levels and that are at least 50% privately owned, can autonomously reduce their privately owned levels if they fail to hire for an extended period of time.


Yes, we are including some kind of setup where that is the case. Just a small disclaimer: It's surely not going to be fully historic, especially not in all countries, but we're rather working with guidelines on how to distribute ownership buildings etc.
This is something we can easily tweak over time like any of our other historical setup attributes, e.g. resources, starting buildings, laws and so on.


Ideally, the colonies have a small privately-owned sector I'd say. But then they'd mainly build government owned buildings which do not require a financial district.
Maybe we could expand our laws to define what happens to these buildings in the future.

Auto-sell sounds like a neat idea, yes. Not coming with release, but I'm taking a note.


Correct, output stays in the country, profits are sent overseas.

Do you mean you'd want an additional tax specifically for profits made outside your country? Because of course any profits are taxed the usual way your country does taxation if the law applies, e.g. income, no matter where their income is coming from.


Depending on the circumstances, yes it can happen that they prefer investing outside. But I wouldn't say it's the default.

As I mentioned in another reply:
"Buildings with several unstaffed levels and that are at least 50% privately owned, can autonomously reduce their privately owned levels if they fail to hire for an extended period of time."


Yeah, possibly.
One thing we wanted to avoid is that people don't get confused with the state that the building is located in. There's no ownership by Normandy, Picardy and Burgundy, only French is what we wanted to make clear.
If you want to call it state-owned you're welcome to do so and we will understand.


1. Yes, that's nationalization
2. Subsidies can be set by the country where a building is located in. So no subsidies from foreign owners in building levels in your country.


Generally, aristocrats and capitalists will stay where they are even if there's a new owner. They didn't move before, so why would they move now?
If they own levels in your country, you can of course nationalize them or their assets might get expropriated over time and transformed into worker-owned buildings (laws depending). If they own levels outside your country, nothing really changes for these. Manor houses and financial districts are never country-owned after all. They just spawn if pops of your country own buildings somewhere basically.


1. Briefly mentioned it in the DD: there's a weighted random function in there to determine the owner since they all access the same shared investment pool
2. No concrete decision currently, no. But the investment preferences do apply, so aristocrats are a lot more likely to buy farms and plantations etc.
3. Not at this moment
4. Also not currently possible, except for the wargoal which will nationalize all assets of target country that are located in yours. We have talked about it in the past and will consider adding a better selection in the future.
5. If you enforce the nationalization wargoal, there is an infamy hit, yes
6. Where the owner is


Yep, that's exactly it.


Not creating worker-owned industries, no.


A different PM for Financial Districts that shifts workforce more towards Capitalists and away from Shopkeepers (without fully removing them).

Of course as always, take it with a grain of salt. Everything you're seeing in the Dev Diaries is subject to change until release. Might change, might not.


The country that is constructing a building. So if GB invests, they pay for the cost until it's completed. Then, basically all control (PMs, subsidies etc.) goes to the target country.


You don't buy their buildings. You can nationalize building levels in your own country. You can construct new buildings in their country. If you privatize buildings, any Pop with investment rights in the target country can buy it, so it could be your own Pops or the local population.

If you nationalize a level, the money largely goes to the investment pool (depending on laws).


It's mentioned in the Dev Diary

"If you don’t have any capitalists in your country yet, other Pops may step up though, using the investment pool’s funds to buy a building you put up for sale and become Capitalists in the process, which in turn leads to the first Financial District appearing."


Yes



Thanks, but you can just call me Lino or H4n1baL



Yeah, we have actually investigated splitting PM ownership but it's really complex.
Maybe one day :crossed_fingers:


Not in the near future. We've investigated it during development and it comes with a lot of difficult problems.


I apologize. I had wrongly assumed it was known widely enough.
PM = Production Method


I don't know at this moment, but I'll get back to you with an answer sometime after the easter weekend.


Is that stating a fact or including a criticism?
No other building really cares about it. If you have a point of feedback on why they should, I'd like to hear it though.


Yes, you can. For construction purposes the game looks at the tech of the one who is trying to construct, not where the building will be located.


God damnit, I should have definitely written "Bavaria, one proud member..." instead

Thanks, we're very glad to hear!


As mentioned in the DD, there's different ways of getting the rights, not only unilateral, also mutual.
But for all diplomatic pacts, there should be only fairly low barriers to cancelling an ongoing pact, yea. Kind of like any other diplomatic pact, really.


I want to stress this is purely a design thought we are having at this point.
We think it could work like that or similar to it and will need to see during implementation if it is actually feasible the way we're thinking about it currently.
So, with this in mind, another pure from-the-top-of-my-head response to your question:
I'd expect companies to start small and grow over time, yes. And definitely not owning ALL your relevant industry unless you let it intentionally come to this.
Company owner characters are definitely on my personal wishlist, but again, no clue if that's realistic. They need to fit within the context, otherwise we likely won't pursue this idea.


Yes. As I mentioned elsewhere: PMs are always controlled by the country where the building is located and this rule also applies to privately owned buildings.


1. Not between them at this point
2. Nothing, they just continue existing with the foreign ownership
3. Yep, if the foreign country privatizes these assets, they can


Thanks for your suggestion.
I'll see if that'd be a feasible alternative to employ bureaucrats. I do see some problems with it though which I'll need to investigate first.



Theoretically, yes.
Practically, probably only through conquest. Though I haven't tried, so I challenge you to do it!



50 per pact as of right now.


Not currently as far as I know. But of course the initial signature willingness for Investment Rights is affected by it.


Doesn't have to be from the same state. It's not necessarily a new building, can be, but can also be an existing manor house/financial district that expands (which should actually be more likely).


No, you don't control them after all. You'd need to nationalize them first.


Yes, there is a demand to get Foreign Investment Rights. You may need to go to war over it, but you can enforce it.

Can you expand on what you're getting at with the laws? What effects are you thinking of with relation to foreign investment?


As Wiz said, they mostly care about profitability. So it would be very unlikely that they'd buy an unprofitable building compared to building a new profitable one for example.


During initial testing we discovered that nationalization felt like an auto-click button basically that you would always want to press. So we added more consequences on all ends pretty much.
Personally, I think it does make sense that government-run buildings work less efficiently. If the private sector were in charge of a government's bureaucratic system for example, it would very likely see efficiency improvements. But maybe that's just a faulty perception being a German
In any case, we will keep an eye on this feedback when SoI releases of course and are happy to adjust it if it really doesn't work well.


No, you cannot.


No, you can still build any building like before.
You will just not be able to direct what buildings are being built from the private investment money.


Theoretically, maybe?
Try it out and ping me. I'd love to see it!


I would say these wouldn't necessarily require the changes we're making. But the changes also don't invalidate these ideas. So maybe eventually, no concrete plans for any of these at this point though.



Not at the moment, no.


Not really. If there's highly profitable targets, you could theoretically see a bunch of investments into that particular state+building which would then reduce profitability, but not to a point of crashing I'd assume.


Good question. I actually don't know if we could set it up with the current Lobbies systems since I was not really involved after initial design discussions. I'd recommend asking it again when we publish the Dev Diary on Lobbies!


1. Skyscrapers are still there. The Trade Nexus PM provides a trade route quantity multiplier, so I'm not sure how it would relate? Is this in relation to question 5? If so, see answer on that
2. Yep, there can be as many manor houses and financial districts as you have states. There's a random chance function to determine where it spawns.
3. Depends what you mean with each of these terms. Any country-owned buildings' ownership is transferred to the winning country, no matter where the building is located. Any privately-owned buildings remain in place and they also keep their possessions, no matter where they are.
4. Nothing changes for unique buildings pretty much
5. Not with release of SoI at least. We do have very cool new 3d models for these financial districts though. We could theoretically think about turning them into a skyscraper if size is above 100 and you have all the tech etc. for example, but it's nothing we're planning at this point.


Yeah. Building based investment pools would be awesome, wouldn't they?
It's definitely something we've talked about especially in relation to the potential company changes. Doing that would require a significant rework of very fundamental code though.
It would require more design and tech investigations before we can make any kind of more concrete statement on its feasibility.


As has been mentioned in other replies, AI considers anything up for sale compared to building new buildings. So a productive building you're privatizing may stay "on sale" for some time until the investment pool is filled enough, and then will likely be bought.


There are weights for what industries the ownership buildings will invest to. It doesn't exclude anything, just makes it more or less likely.


Thank you
As you may have seen, we do have some plans with Navy in general. Because we do agree that the Naval Warfare is not where it should be. When we'll get around to that is not clear at this point though.


1. There is a reduction in the number of Pops as a result of this change, yes. The later in the game, the more noticeable the reduction. But I would be careful with expecting a significant performance gain from this. It helps, but will not move the needle enough on its own.
2. Yeah, they are able to. We will have to keep an eye on this to see how bad this gets and see if we need to react.


Shopkeepers are mainly employed by the new Financial Districts.


No, the costs are not modified as of right now.
Unprofitable buildings might not be sold at all because they are still compared versus new investments into profitable buildings. So time is definitely a component that will be affected.


No, subsidies are controlled by the country where a building is located in.


1) The player does not always control it. It is the country where the building is located that sets the PM. So not sabotaging that way.

2) They have to increase their level pretty much. An exception being subsistence farms where we look at the employment rather than the amount of levels. I don't think you'll be able to mod that. What you can mod though are the PMs, so you could reduce the number of Pops that "work" in these buildings and you'll create a very rich upper class.


If the owner of the steel mill is a country, let's say GB, they can privatize that steel mill. Then japanese pops can buy that steel mill, yes.
As I mentioned, there's no transfer of ownership between two private pop investors (at least with release of SoI).



We have set it to 0 as it was creating a lot of issues, since it would score urbanization twice effectively, once for the industry building, then again for the owning building.



The building country gets the entry in their construction queue, independent of where in the world the building is being constructed.


A group nationalization button is on our list.
I cannot promise that it will be there for release. If it's not, it will likely be in a post-release patch not too long after.


Yep, it's on a level basis, not whole building.


No plans to change it at this point I'm afraid.


Maybe, yeah.
I'll investigate in more detail if I find the time.



Your country can own some levels, your Pops can own some levels. The country owner controls all PMs, no matter who owns each level.
Not sure what manual configuration you are referring to. I guess we'll see when OP writes back if I answered their question or not

Why not split the urbanization between the industry building and the ownership building.

This would solve issue and also build up "finantial service" metropolises in places like New York

 

[Yyyman]

I don't know at this moment, but I'll get back to you with an answer sometime after the easter weekend.

Do we have an update? I'm currently working on a mod for my MP group and having to wait several weeks to play with our mod due to having to update is a major annoyance.

 

[Fawr]

I'm really sad to see direct investment go. I've tried the AI investment a number of times and each time had to quit the game very early as it felt unplayable.

Hopefully 1.7 will make it less braindead.

 

[oledude]

​

In a worker-owned economy, the private investment pool will continue to function, but they will only expand their own buildings, not create new ones.

So does that mean cooperative economies won't be able to do foreign investment?