Dev Diary 4 - The Economic System and why it may seem a little similar

Good, not too much changed on the economic side from Vic 1. Only improvements.

Btw though, why is every country I've seen so far very green? I mean, England and Sweden: yes they'd look green, but Spain should have more yellow in it.

And what's up with Chester/Liverpool/Manchester?

the world market is a great abstraction, one way to make it more realistic is to create some kind of modifier for countries with developed trade networks. For example britian actually would be able to ship good all over the world whereas a coastless switzerland might have a harder time. This modifier could be modified by tarrifs / laws / tech to give each nation a little more personilization and greatly improve the unrealistic parts of a world market ie: costless transport of goods all over the world.

As for the tin soldiers they look good, but as for any paradox title, easy modding should be a concern, in that it should be easy to replace these single representations of units with a line of soildiers or a series of dots if you feel so inclined.

World market is not a bad idea, but I hope embargoes and blockades will play a role this time.

Opponents of the world market seem to suggest that it is unrealistic. I would suggest that it is a good abstraction of how trade actually works. Indeed, Korea did not export anything to the Sahara, but Korea and Sahara each traded with their neighbours, and so we have an approximation to free international trade. Two-way trade, even in homogenous goods, is very common in real life. Germany imports and exports cars. The USA imports and exports grains. Victoria simplifies this by using the net import/export statistic, but it's quite likely that a series of middlemen would be happy to act as the enablers of Korean/Saharan trade, even if it didn't show up as actual trade activity on net.

Problem is with WM, when you export your game to HoI, you suddenly don't produce nearly enough recourses (because you were importing in Vic). Of course you can play such that you will have enough resources after your game converts, but the AI won't be able to so, so the economy is bad anyway. Of course, this is hardly a reason to abandon WM altogether . But I do hope the devs will put some thought into this.

King said:

The world market stays

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Well, that's disappointing. Me thinks it would have been better to have different regional markets. At least that way the game could better model the competition btw the great powers to gain access and even complete control over any given market, as well as how undeveloped nations were pretty much dependent on the great powers. How will blockade work with world market?

For example, during this period Latin America was totally dependent on Great Britain to sell its raw goods, and buy manufactured goods. It was also heavily dependent on said nation's banks and investors to "modernize" after the 1850's when liberal regimes took over most of the area. By 1890's most of the area had become "colonies" to GB, as GB had a lot of influence on the internal politics and economies of the region.


I would really love to see something like this:
World is divided into different regional markets.
Each regional market is represented on the map as a COT( kind of like EUII)
Nations gain "shares" of the market by sending "trade embassadors" to improve their standing on the region.
This in turn makes nations in region more favorable towards whomever gains the greater share of the market(say GB), allowing GB to gain favorable trade agreements that open up doors to encourage their rich, fat capitalist to invest there, increasing the influence in the area.
With increasing area of influence comes increasingly greater control of trade in the region. Pops in the region buy most of their gods from GB. If nation wants to borrow, they borrow from GB.

High militancy/revolt risk causes foreign capis to invest less or not at all
There is a revolution, regional nation can try to nationalize foreign investments, not pay loan--> Gb can use GunBoat diplomacy, blockade nation's ports and access to the market, forcing it to do what GB wants it to do. Which of course, can have diplomatic consequences; other nations in region become less favorable to GB/badboy?

world market is an abstraction even today.
we have the internet and still not every country, every company has inmediate access to products or information about production or demand numbers that set everyone in the same position to compete.

WM is a concept that describes how multinational companies work. before this, moreover in the colonialism era, the segmentation of the markets was a fact represented by the colonial ventures and colonial companies of trade.

you guys may like it, or say that it is a good invention for gameplaying or whatever but it doesn't represent well the economy of the era. and furthermore, commercial deals and exchange areas cannot be represented in this way.

for this time period there's an undeniable fact. WWI was a product of the lack of a world market, the protection of industrial sectors and sources of raw materials.

I like the new map style. The somewhat random naming of the UK areas is fun as well.

The abstract nature of V1 world market may not represent the fine detail of trade during the period but I am not sure the added complexity of separate regional markets would be playable. The original game's trade advantages to Great Powers was a simple but clever mechanism that geared trade to the most powerful countries which is representative of the 19th century. On the other hand, who is going to play V2 unless they like complex game play?

Properly functioning blockades and embargoes area must, however.

BipBapBop said:

I would really love to see something like this:
World is divided into different regional markets.
Each regional market is represented on the map as a COT( kind of like EUII)
Nations gain "shares" of the market by sending "trade embassadors" to improve their standing on the region.
This in turn makes nations in region more favorable towards whomever gains the greater share of the market(say GB), allowing GB to gain favorable trade agreements that open up doors to encourage their rich, fat capitalist to invest there, increasing the influence in the area.
With increasing area of influence comes increasingly greater control of trade in the region. Pops in the region buy most of their gods from GB. If nation wants to borrow, they borrow from GB.

Click to expand...

But that is not how trade worked in the time period of Victoria. Perhaps it is how it worked in the time period of EUII; indeed, this proposal is just a slightly modified version of CoTs in EUII, with the advantage shifted to the player who sends the merchants rather than the CoT base. But the 1800s were marked by real globalisation and real world markets. World Market represents it VERY well.

My former professor wrote this: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8493.html - it explains the point quite well. The idea of free international trade was crucial to how the Victorian era worked.

A final note. Can opponents of the world market please list the perfectly segmented regional markets that operated between 1836 and 1936?

extox said:

the world market is a great abstraction, one way to make it more realistic is to create some kind of modifier for countries with developed trade networks. For example britian actually would be able to ship good all over the world whereas a coastless switzerland might have a harder time. This modifier could be modified by tarrifs / laws / tech to give each nation a little more personilization and greatly improve the unrealistic parts of a world market ie: costless transport of goods all over the world.

As for the tin soldiers they look good, but as for any paradox title, easy modding should be a concern, in that it should be easy to replace these single representations of units with a line of soildiers or a series of dots if you feel so inclined.

Click to expand...

I actually had this thought several hours ago when King told us that the world-market would remain. I think this is a very important issue. Harbor-capacities play an important role here. Somehow, I feel that something like a "portuary capacity"-modifier like in Magna Mundi for EU3 could and should be applied, also taking several other components into consideration, such as the local land-infrastructure connecting ports with industrial regions or the production-facilities that are necessary to provide the world-market with products...

For me today's dev. diary destroys a lot of hope I had for Victoria 2. If I got it right all the basic mechanisms even those most critisized by the community will stay more or less the same. However, keeping the old model means that things you might want to add as employment cannot be easily done in a plausible way either. The economic side of the game will always appear arbitrary without having a general equilibrium economic model as a backbone. I would really appreciate if King and Johan could explain why they don't even seem to consider this option. Maybe King could also describe how close the current enginge comes to a general equilibrium model and how these indeed qustionable world-market even works and what it does for the game. Basically, my question is why do we need a world-market if we don't have a general equilibrium model anyway. In a general equilibrium setup, which should be somewhat resource intensive (computer-power), a world-market could be a necessary simplification to keep things doable. Nevertheless, one could easily think of a general equilibrium economy with regional markets, maybe even one for each country. It couldn't even make many things easier in term of algorithm and necessary computations.

Another obvious thing that was critizised before is the RGO system. Personally, I think it was really childish how this worked in Vicy 1. In fact industrialization meant that people moved away from the countryside to work in factories but this didn't mean that they shut down farms and mines. Instead technological advantages in these areas freed up manpower for factory work. Having a general food supply score for every province would be a much better and also practical solution. Besides you should have an agricultural productivity number, which depends on your tech level. The province production could be determined like: Productivity x supply score (think of it as soil quality) x allocated pops. The latter factor should show decreasing rates of return that should depend on the productivity level. In the beginning the scarce ressource will be labour, hence production should rise almost linearly with allocated pops. Under industrialized circumstances the scarce resource will be land. Allocating additional pops wouldn't yield much extra then. This would give you a strong incentive to move them into factory jobs.

St Albans is in

Regarding your crisis, I assume that the POPs used too much fish? Are POPs and RGOs using the same amount of fish? I would suggest that RGOs and especially farmers use a very low amount, because they sustain them self and do not need the world market. While food like fish needs to be consumed by aristocrats and cleric from the world market.

EGaffney said:

But that is not how trade worked in the time period of Victoria. Perhaps it is how it worked in the time period of EUII; indeed, this proposal is just a slightly modified version of CoTs in EUII, with the advantage shifted to the player who sends the merchants rather than the CoT base. But the 1800s were marked by real globalisation and real world markets. World Market represents it VERY well.

My former professor wrote this: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8493.html - it explains the point quite well. The idea of free international trade was crucial to how the Victorian era worked.

A final note. Can opponents of the world market please list the perfectly segmented regional markets that operated between 1836 and 1936?

Click to expand...

Well, look at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian-American_Reciprocity_Treaty

It states that before 1854, there had been a 21% tariff to natural goods from Canada to USA. With this gone, it's obvious that Canadian wheat should be cheaper for American citizens than say, Mexican. That's not represented with a world market, as you can't set individual tariffs on individual countries.

Sebastian Jarl said:

Well, look at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian-American_Reciprocity_Treaty

It states that before 1854, there had been a 21% tariff to natural goods from Canada to USA. With this gone, it's obvious that Canadian wheat should be cheaper for American citizens than say, Mexican. That's not represented with a world market, as you can't set individual tariffs on individual countries.

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something that would be great, by the way. Just imagine how this could be used to sanction warmongers. I always thought it was weird that an aggressive foreign policy didn't hurt your ability to sell your goods at the world market. Once again, it wouldn't be very difficult to implement things like tariffs or transportation costs once you have set up a decent general equilibrium economy.

Sebastian Jarl said:

Well, look at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian-American_Reciprocity_Treaty

It states that before 1854, there had been a 21% tariff to natural goods from Canada to USA. With this gone, it's obvious that Canadian wheat should be cheaper for American citizens than say, Mexican. That's not represented with a world market, as you can't set individual tariffs on individual countries.

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You're proposing individual tariffs on each good from each country? Talk about micromanagement.

Was that really important enough to determine the cost of goods, or were the fundamental determinants (a) objective conditions of world supply and demand and (b) general tariff levels of each country?

But even that example destroys our idea of regional markets. What regional market should Canada be in, in that situation? Should regional markets be so fragile that a tariff reduction on a single good in another continent fundamentally changes their composition?

I just hope that the world market will stop buying every single surplus good.
Waste and losses can't be that hard to model.

MAHak said:

Its nice with the funny names for provinces like "Medicine Hat" on Canada's US border, in VIC 1.

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At least that one is the name of an actual place.

The economic concerns have been well addressed, but that stylized text is grating - I understand the need for atmosphere, but I don't like the font. Rome and EU3 had much nicer text, I feel. Though it's alpha so *shrugs*

King said:

Here is another random Screenshot that you may or may not like.

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If that red dot is supposed to be te capital, I think you've put it in Croydon.

And the Pennines appear to be AWOL. Otherwise, nice layout, very pretty. Would it be presumptuous of me to ask for a different map mode next DD?

The interface: I like the design, but having everything clustered up top I find off putting. It's a psychological thing; like the roof is very low but there's no floor. I very much doubt you'll say yes, but would it be possible to allow for the player to rearrange it.

Wait. Is it possible to change the positions by editing the files in /interface and /gfx/interface ?

Filou said:

At least that one is the name of an actual place.

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So is Holyhead. :/ It's in Anglesey.

Without getting bogged down in details (or providing useful alternatives), I have to say that I am also disappointed with the retention of the WM from Vicky 1.

How are you going to model with any semblance of historicity the Opium Wars, for example? Or more generally speaking, the series of wars and near-wars that were fought (or almost fought) in China throughout the Vicky time-frame that centered on market access to the world's most populous nation?

While the WM may provide a rough approximation of the world economy viewed from a "macro" perspective, the "micro" of market access to particular nations is a factor which was a very significant factor in global power politics in the 19th century.

I hope future DD's will set my fears aside...